Puerto Rico (United States)

Origins

American troops landed at Guánica in July 1898 during the Spanish-American War, months after Spain had granted Puerto Rico an autonomous charter. The Treaty of Paris ceded the island to the United States, and military rule gave way to civil government under the Foraker Act of 1900, with an appointed governor.

Rule and society

The Jones Act of 1917 made Puerto Ricans US citizens. American sugar companies dominated the economy until the 1940s. The Nationalist Party of Pedro Albizu Campos demanded independence, and police killed protesters at Ponce in 1937. Luis Muñoz Marín became the first elected governor in 1948, and in 1952 the island became the Estado Libre Asociado, or Commonwealth, with its own constitution. Operation Bootstrap industrialised it, while hundreds of thousands migrated to New York.

To the present

Puerto Rico remains an unincorporated US territory. Repeated referendums have shown divisions between statehood, Commonwealth and independence. A debt crisis led Congress to impose a fiscal oversight board in 2016, and Hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2017.