Puerto Rico (abbreviated PR), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, is a self-governing Caribbean archipelago and island organized as an unincorporated territory of the United States under the designation of commonwealth. Located about southeast of Miami, Florida, between the Dominican Republic in the Greater Antilles and the U.S. Virgin Islands in the Lesser Antilles, it consists of the eponymous main island and numerous smaller islands, including Vieques, Culebra, and Mona. With approximately 3.2 million people, it is divided into 78 municipalities, of which the most populous is the capital municipality of San Juan, followed by those within the San Juan metropolitan area. Spanish and English are the official languages of its government, though Spanish predominates, as it is culturally part of Latin America.
Puerto Rico was settled by a succession of Indigenous peoples of the Americas beginning 2,000 to 4,000 years ago; these included the Ortoiroid, Saladoid, and Taíno. It was claimed by Spain following the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1493 and subsequently colonized by Juan Ponce de León in 1508. Puerto Rico was contested by other European powers into the 18th century but remained a Spanish possession for the next 400 years. The decline of the Indigenous population, followed by an influx of Spanish settlers—primarily from the Canary Islands and Andalusia—and African slaves vastly changed the cultural and demographic landscape. Within the Spanish Empire, Puerto Rico played a strategically significant role. By the late 19th century, a distinct Puerto Rican identity began to emerge, centered on a fusion of European, African, and Indigenous elements. In 1898, following the Spanish–American War, Puerto Rico was acquired by the United States.José Trías Monge. Puerto Rico: The Trials of the Oldest Colony in the World. New Haven, CT; London: Yale University Press, 1999. p. 4.
Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens since 1917 and can move freely between the archipelago and the U.S.8 U.S. Code § 1402 – Persons born in Puerto Rico on or after 11 April 1899 (1941) Retrieved: January 14, 2015. Residents of Puerto Rico are disenfranchised from federal electionsIgartúa–de la Rosa v. United States (Igartúa III) , 417 F.3d 145 (1st Cir. 2005) (en banc), GREGORIO IGARTÚA, ET AL., Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ET AL., Defendants, Appellees. No. 09-2186 (November 24, 2010) and pay federal taxes and Puerto Rico income taxes; most are exempt from federal income tax on personal income earned in Puerto Rico.The trauma of Puerto Rico's 'Maria Generation' . Robin Ortiz. ABC News. February 17, 2019. Accessed September 24, 2019.PUERTO RICO: Fiscal Relations with the Federal Government and Economic Trends during the Phaseout of the Possessions Tax Credit. General Accounting Office publication number GAO-06-541. US Gen. Acctg. Office, Washington, DC. May 19, 2006. Public Release: June 23, 2006. (Note: All residents of Puerto Rico pay federal taxes, with the exception of federal income taxes which only some residents of Puerto Rico must still pay). Puerto Rico sends a nonvoting representative to the U.S. Congress, called a resident commissioner, and participates in presidential primaries; as it is not a state, Puerto Rico does not have a vote in the U.S. Congress, which oversees it under the Puerto Rico Federal Relations Act of 1950. Congress approved a territorial constitution in 1952, allowing residents to elect a governor in addition to a senate and house of representatives. The political status of Puerto Rico is an ongoing debate.
Beginning in the mid-20th century, the U.S. government, together with the Puerto Rico Industrial Development Company, launched a series of economic projects to develop Puerto Rico into an industrial high-income economy. It is classified by the International Monetary Fund as a developed jurisdiction. It ranks 47th on the Human Development Index. The major sectors of the economy are manufacturing, primarily pharmaceuticals, petrochemicals, and electronics, followed by services, namely tourism and hospitality.
Etymology Puerto Rico is Spanish for 'rich port'. Puerto Ricans often call the island , derived from the Indigenous term (or Borinquen),Julian Granberry and Gary Vescelius. Languages of the Pre-Columbian Antilles. The University of Alabama Press. 2004. p.92. which is popularly said to mean 'Land of the Valiant Lord'. The terms , , and are commonly used to identify someone of Puerto Rican heritage.Borincano. Diccionario de la Real Academia Española. Accessed February 9, 2022.Archived. The island is popularly known in Spanish as , meaning "the island of enchantment". Note: The phase "The Island of Enchantment" has been traced back to a travel guide by that title that Theodore Roosevelt Jr. offered in House & Garden magazine in 1938.
Christopher Columbus named the island in honor of Saint John the Baptist, while the capital city was named ("Rich Port City"). Eventually traders and other maritime visitors came to refer to the entire island as Puerto Rico, while San Juan became the name used for the main trading/shipping port and the capital city.
The name was changed to Porto Rico by the United States after the Treaty of Paris of 1898. The anglicized name was used by the U.S. government and private enterprises. The name was changed back to Puerto Rico in 1931 by a joint resolution in Congress introduced by Félix Córdova Dávila.
The official name in Spanish is ("Free Associated State of Puerto Rico"), while its official English name is Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. The Spanish official name was suggested by its architect Luis Muñoz Marín and adopted by a constitutional assembly on July 25, 1952. Some authorities have called it a euphemism and have charged that the official name in English of "Commonwealth" constitutes a fig leaf, i.e., associated with the covering up of an act that is actually embarrassing or distasteful with something of innocuous appearance.Latino/a Thought: Culture, Politics, and Society. Francisco H. Vazquez. Page 380. Lanham, Md: Rowman Littlefield Publishers. 2009. Accessed May 25, 2012. Puerto Rico remains a colony of the United States, exercising substantial internal self-government but subordinated to the U.S. Constitution in areas such as foreign affairs or defense. For this reason, it is not considered to be a full-fledged associated state under either international or U.S. domestic law.Extended Statehood in the Caribbean ~ Fifty Years of Commonwealth ~ The Contradictions Of Free Associated Statehood in Puerto Rico. Rozenberg Quarterly. Accessed August 15, 2020.The Constitutionality of Decolonization by Associated Statehood: Puerto Rico's Legal Status Reconsidered. Gary Lawson and Robert D. Sloane. Boston University School of Law. Working Paper Number 09-11. August 3, 2009. Archived on October 18, 2019, at the Wayback Machine.
History
Early settlement and European conquest
The history of Puerto Rico began with the settlement of the Ortoiroid culture, an Archaic population characterized by a hunter-gatherer subsistence strategy and a pre-ceramic material culture. Archaeological evidence suggests that these early populations may have been present in Puerto Rico as early as c. 4000 years before present.Rouse, Irving. The Tainos: Rise and Decline of the People Who Greeted Columbus. Yale University Press. .
Around 500–200 BC, Saladoid populations originating from the Orinoco River basin migrated to Puerto Rico, introducing sedentary agriculture and ceramics. Genetic evidence suggests that this migration was associated with a major demographic transition in which Saladoid-related ancestry became predominant in later Ceramic Age populations that developed into the Taíno.
At the time of Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1493, the dominant indigenous peoples were the Taíno. The Taíno population declined significantly during the 16th century due to introduced infectious diseases, exploitation by Spanish settlers, and warfare.
Located in the northeastern Caribbean, Puerto Rico formed a key part of the Spanish Empire from the early years of the exploration, conquest and colonization of the New World. The island was a major military post during many wars between Spain and other European powers for control of the region in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.
In 1593, Portuguese soldiers, sent from Lisbon by order of Phillip II, composed the first garrison of the San Felipe del Morro fortress in Puerto Rico. Some brought their wives, while others married Puerto Rican women, and today there are many Puerto Rican families with Portuguese last names. The smallest of the Greater Antilles, Puerto Rico was a stepping-stone in the passage from Europe to Cuba, Mexico, Central America, and the northern territories of South America. Throughout most of the 19th century until the conclusion of the Spanish–American War, Puerto Rico and Cuba were the last two Spanish colonies in the New World; they served as Spain's final outposts in a strategy to regain control of the American continents. Realizing that it was in danger of losing its two remaining Caribbean territories, the Spanish Crown revived the Royal Decree of Graces of 1815. The decree was printed in Spanish, English and French in order to attract Europeans, with the hope that the independence movements would lose their popularity and strength with the arrival of new settlers. Free land was offered to those who wanted to populate the islands on the condition that they swear their loyalty to the Spanish Crown and allegiance to the Catholic Church.
U.S. era In 1898, during the Spanish–American War, Puerto Rico was invaded and subsequently became a possession of the U.S. The first years of the 20th century were marked by the struggle to obtain greater democratic rights from the U.S.
The Foraker Act of 1900 established a civil government, ending rule by American generals and the Department of War. A 1906 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Ortega v. Lara, , involving the Foraker Act and referring to the island as "the acquired country", affirmed that the U.S. Constitution applied within its territory and that any domestic Puerto Rican laws which did not conflict with it remained in force.The Jones–Shafroth Act of 1917 made Puerto Ricans U.S. citizens. The act paved the way for the drafting of Puerto Rico's Constitution and its approval by Congress and Puerto Rican voters in 1952. During the Cold War period, Puerto Rican politics continued to be shaped by debates over political status-particularly independence and the meaning of the commonwealth arrangement established in 1952. In the early commonwealth years, pro-independence organizing continued but it faced significant legal and policing restrictions, including the 1948 Ley de la Mordaza (Law 53), which curtailed a range of political expression associated with the independence movement. The period also included high-profile nationalist actions intended to draw attention to independence demands, including the 1950 uprisings and the 1954 attack in the U.S. House of Representatives. During this time, the constitution took effect after congressional review required amendments as a condition of approval, most notably the removal of Article II, Section 20 (a social and economic rights provision), before Puerto Rico's constitutional convention accepted the revisions and put into effect the final text. Puerto Ricans also served in U.S. military operations; the 65th Infantry Regiment (the "Borinqueneers") fought in the Korean War between 1950 and 1953. Puerto Rico is one of five territories with less representation in the federal government, along with Washington, D.C.
21st century