Puerto Rico

An island that has been a possession for over five centuries and a state of nothing, whose legal status the United States Supreme Court once described as belonging to but not part of the country. Taino society was destroyed within a generation of Ponce de Leon's settlement in 1508, and Spain then held the island as a fortified way-station guarding the Caribbean approaches, its walled capital at San Juan repeatedly attacked and never taken. Autonomy was finally granted by Spain in November 1897; American troops landed nine months later during the Spanish-American War, and the island was ceded by treaty without anyone asking its inhabitants. The Insular Cases of 1901 onwards invented the category of unincorporated territory, where the constitution applies only partly. Puerto Ricans became US citizens in 1917, weeks before conscription for the First World War, but residents on the island cannot vote for president and send only a non-voting delegate to Congress. Operation Bootstrap industrialised the economy from the 1940s, and a mass migration carried more Puerto Ricans to the mainland than remained behind. Nationalist movements were surveilled and suppressed for decades. Six status referendums have produced no settled answer. A debt crisis in 2016 put finances under a federally appointed board, and Hurricane Maria in 2017 killed around three thousand people. The island is a commonwealth in name. San Juan is the capital and El Morro guards its harbour. Spanish and English are both official. Puerto Ricans have served in every American war since 1917. The island competes separately at the Olympics and in the Miss Universe pageant.

MyHistorian
A causal knowledge graph of history