Many Puerto Ricans in Chicago say their ancestral home stands to gain from the national attention on yesterday’s Democratic presidential primary there. We report from our West Side bureau.

The winner yesterday didn’t miss the primary’s significance.

CLINTON: Never before have these beautiful islands had such an important voice in a presidential election.

Campaigning in Puerto Rico, both Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama pledged to beef up federal programs ranging from education to veterans health care. And both vowed to honor whatever Puerto Ricans decide on the issue that’s shaped the islands’ politics for generations: whether to break from the United States, form a state, or continue as a territory.

ambi: Timbales

Timbales and congas filled the air of Chicago’s Humboldt Park yesterday. At a cookout nearby, a 30-year-old sign-maker named José González said friends back in the Puerto Rican town of Cidra asked for help choosing between the Democrats.

GONZALEZ: I told them that my candidate was Obama.

González predicted the spotlight on the primary will shift the debate on the islands’ status.

GONZALEZ: So I think you’ll be pretty soon seeing the 51st state.

A few blocks away, a 27-year-old Obama supporter named Luis Padial visited friends and kept an eye on the results through his laptop.

PADIAL: As the precincts come in…

Padial, an aide to Chicago Alderman Billy Ocasio, supports the islands’ independence.

PADIAL: We have, three or four times, taken plebiscites. And we haven’t been able to make up our own mind as to what we want to be. We’re pretty much split down the middle.

Padial points out that fewer than one in five eligible voters turned out yesterday. That’s in a place where elections often draw more than 80 percent.