Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. You don’t need a passport to fly to Puerto Rico from anywhere within the United States. The island is located within U.S. borders and uses U.S. currency. Rich history and culture, exceptional food, pristine beaches, relaxation, and adventure is what we experienced in Puerto Rico.
The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is an unincorporated island territory of the United States of America, located in north-eastern Caribbean Sea.
Puerto Rico’s native Taíno population—whose hunter-gatherer ancestors settled the island more than 1,000 years before the Spanish arrived—called it Borinquén, and referred to themselves as boricua. During his second expedition to the Indies in 1493, Christopher Columbus returned several Taíno captives to Borinquén and claimed the island for Spain, calling it San Juan Bautista. In 1508, Juan Ponce de León founded the first European settlement, Caparra, near a bay on the island’s northern coast; Caparra was renamed Puerto Rico, “rich port”, in 1521. Over time, people began referring to the entire island by that name, while the port city itself became San Juan. Smallpox soon wiped out the vast majority of the Taíno, with many others enslaved by the Spanish to mine silver and gold and to construct settlements.
In order to produce cash crops such as sugar cane, ginger, tobacco and coffee, the Spanish began importing more slaves from Africa in the 16th century. They also spent considerable resources turning San Juan into an impregnable military outpost, building a fortified palace for the governor (La Fortaleza) as well as two massive forts—San Felipe del Morro and San Cristobál—that would withstand repeated attacks by rival powers such as England, the Netherlands and France.
Under Spanish colonial rule, Puerto Rico experienced varying levels of economic and political autonomy over the centuries. By the mid-19th century, however, a wave of independence movements in Spain’s South American colonies had reached Puerto Rico.
In 1868, some 600 people attempted an uprising based in the mountain town of Lares. Though the Spanish military efficiently quashed the rebellion, Puerto Ricans still celebrate “El Grito de Lares” (The Cry of Lares) as a moment of great national pride.
In July 1898, during the brief Spanish-American War, U.S. Army forces occupied Puerto Rico at Guánica, on the island’s south side. Under the Treaty of Paris, which formally ended the war later that year, Spain ceded Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines and Cuba to the United States. In 1917, Congress passed the Jones-Shafroth Act, which granted U.S. citizenship to all Puerto Ricans. In 1948, Congress passed an act permitting Puerto Ricans to elect their own governor. Four years later, Puerto Rico would officially become a U.S. commonwealth, which enabled the island to create its own constitution and granted other powers of self-government.
By that time, the U.S. and Puerto Rican governments had jointly launched an ambitious industrialization effort called Operation Bootstrap. Even as Puerto Rico attracted an influx of big American companies, and became a center for manufacturing and tourism, the decline of its agricultural industries led many islanders to seek employment opportunities in the United States.
Between 1950 and 1970, more than 500,000 people (some 25 percent of the island’s total population) left Puerto Rico, an exodus known as La Gran Migración (the Great Migration). Today, more than 5 million people of Puerto Rican descent live in the United States, with huge communities centered in Chicago, Philadelphia, Miami and especially New York City.
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