Source: Britannica
Puerto Rico, officially Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Spanish Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, self-governing island commonwealth of the West Indies, associated with the United States. The easternmost island of the Greater Antilles chain, it lies approximately 50 miles (80 km) east of the Dominican Republic, 40 miles (65 km) west of the Virgin Islands, and 1,000 miles (1,600 km) southeast of the U.S. state of Florida. It is situated in the northeastern Caribbean Sea, its northern shore facing the Atlantic Ocean. Two small islands off the east coast, Vieques and Culebra, are administratively parts of Puerto Rico, as is Mona Island to the west. Compared with its Greater Antillean neighbours, Puerto Rico is one-fifth as large as the Dominican Republic, one-third the size of Haiti, and slightly smaller than Jamaica. It is roughly rectangular in shape, extending up to 111 miles (179 km) from east to west and 39 miles (63 km) from north to south. The capital is San Juan.
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Head Of Government: Governor
Capital: San Juan
Population: (2021 est.) 3,143,000
Currency: US dollar
Head Of State: President of the United States
Puerto Ricans, or puertorriqueños, have an intermingled Spanish, U.S., and Afro-Caribbean culture. The island’s social and economic conditions are generally advanced by Latin American standards, partly because of its ties with the United States (including the presence of U.S.-owned manufacturing plants and military bases in the commonwealth). Although that relationship has become politically controversial, the vast majority of Puerto Rican voters have continued to favour permanent union with the United States, with a slightly greater number favouring the current commonwealth relationship rather than statehood. A small but persistent minority has advocated independence.
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The land
Relief
Puerto Rico is largely composed of mountainous and hilly terrain, with nearly one-fourth of the island covered by steep slopes. The mountains are the easternmost extension of a tightly folded and faulted ridge that extends from the Central American mainland across the northern Caribbean to the Lesser Antilles. Although Puerto Rican relief is relatively low by continental standards, the island sits less than 100 miles (160 km) south of a precipitous depression in Earth’s crust: an extensive submarine feature of the Atlantic known as the Puerto Rico Trench, which descends to more than 5 miles (8 km) below sea level—the Atlantic’s deepest point—at a site northeast of the Dominican Republic. Powerful tectonic forces that over millions of years have created these features still occasionally cause earthquakes in Puerto Rico.
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The island’s highest mountain range, the Cordillera Central, trends east-west and exceeds 3,000 feet (900 metres) in many areas; its slopes are somewhat gentle in the north but rise sharply from the south coast to the loftier peaks, topped at about 4,390 feet (1,338 metres) by Cerro de Punta, the highest point on the island. Near the island’s eastern tip, the partly isolated Sierra de Luquillo rises to 3,494 feet (1,065 metres) at El Yunque Peak.
The northwestern foothills and lowlands are characterized by karst features, including sinkholes (sumideros), caverns, and eroded mogotes, or haystack hills (pepinos). There is a continuous but narrow lowland along the north coast, where most people live, and smaller bands along the south and west coasts that also include densely populated areas. The Caguas Basin, in the Grande de Loíza River valley south of San Juan, is the largest of several basins in the mountains that provide level land for settlements and agriculture. The islands of Mona, Vieques, and Culebra are generally hilly but ringed by narrow coastal plains; Vieques rises to 988 feet (301 metres) at Mount Pirata.
Beach on Vieques Island, Puerto Rico.
Image: © kai hecker/Shutterstock.com
Drainage and soils
None of Puerto Rico’s rivers is large enough for navigation, but several northward-flowing rivers are harnessed for municipal water supplies, irrigation, and hydroelectricity, and along the south coast irrigation is essential for agriculture. Puerto Rico’s precipitation mainly falls on the north-facing mountain slopes, so that most of the permanent rivers flow from the interior to the north and west coasts, including the Grande de Loíza, Grande de Arecibo, and Grande de Añasco rivers—all of which are some 40 miles (65 km) long—and La Plata, which extends 46 miles (75 km). The river courses on the south coast are dry most of the year, carrying water only after rainfall. Pockets of alluvial soils on the south coast are somewhat fertile, but all farmlands there are fertilized. Many formerly cultivated and eroded areas in the mountains have been set aside as forest preserves.
Loíza River, eastern Puerto Rico.
Image: David Sanchez
Climate
Puerto Rico has a tropical climate with little seasonal variation, although local conditions vary according to elevation and exposure to rain-bearing winds. Northeast trade winds bring heavy rainfall to the north coast, while the south coast is in a rain shadow. San Juan receives about 60 inches (1,525 mm) of precipitation per year, whereas El Yunque Peak farther east receives 180 inches (4,570 mm), and Ponce on the south coast receives only 36 inches (914 mm). Rain falls each month of the year, but the heaviest precipitation occurs between May and December. The average daily temperature in the lowlands is about 78 °F (26 °C), but relatively high humidity makes daytime temperatures feel warmer. Highland temperatures average a few degrees lower. Hurricanes develop in the region between June and November and occasionally traverse the island, including a storm in 1899 that killed about 3,000 Puerto Ricans; other devastating but less lethal hurricanes occurred in 1928, 1932, 1956, 1989, 1998, and 2017.
El Yunque rainforest, Puerto Rico.
Image: © Rubens/Fotolia
Plant and animal life
Plant life is abundant and varied. Tropical rainforests cover parts of the north side of the island, and thorn and scrub vegetation predominates on the drier south side. Most of the island’s original vegetation was removed through centuries of agricultural exploitation, particularly during the first two decades of the 20th century, when farm settlers and plantation workers destroyed large tracts of coastal forest and used the lumber for railroad ties and fuel. Although some woodlands have been replanted since the mid-20th century, introduced varieties of trees, shrubs, and grasses now predominate.
The scarlet- and orange-flowered royal poinciana, or flamboyant (Delonix regia), and the African tulip tree (Spathodea campanulata) are among the flowering trees that dot the mountains with patches of vivid colour against a lush green background. The Caribbean National Forest in the Sierra de Luquillo southeast of San Juan preserves rare species of orchids and the small green Puerto Rican parrot, an endangered species. Puerto Rico has more than 200 species of birds, but land animals are mostly confined to nonpoisonous snakes, lizards, mongooses, and the coquí (Eleutherodactylus portoricensis), a frog whose name is onomatopoeic with its call (“co-kee!”) and which has become a kind of national mascot. Numerous varieties of fish abound in the surrounding waters, but edible and inedible species mingle together, limiting commercial fishing there.
Caribbean National Forest, southeast of San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Image: James P. Rowan
Settlement patterns
In the early 16th century Spanish explorers founded San Juan, which prospered throughout the colonial period as a trading port. The island’s other colonial settlements, also predominantly coastal, expanded slowly. From the time the United States took possession of the island in 1898 until the mid-20th century, settlement in Puerto Rico was characterized by dispersed rural farmsteads, as well as some large sugarcane plantations, but the commonwealth subsequently became predominantly urban. More than nine-tenths of the population now live in cities and towns, with only scattered settlements in the mountains. The population of the San Juan metropolitan area, which had swelled to about 400,000 people by 1950, had increased an additional threefold by 2000.
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A nearly continuous urban area has developed from Caguas to San Juan and along the north coast from Fajardo through San Juan to Arecibo. Ponce on the south coast and Mayagüez on the west are other urban cores. Few places on the island are more than an hour’s drive from a major urban area, each of which sprawls with modern shopping centres and residential developments such as those found in comparably sized cities in the United States.
The people
Ethnic composition
Puerto Rico’s population is ethnically mixed because of centuries of immigration and cultural assimilation. There is little overt racial discrimination, although people of Spanish and other European ancestry are still esteemed among most elite members of society. Between 20,000 and 50,000 Taino Indians inhabited the island when Columbus arrived there in 1493, but European diseases and maltreatment largely decimated them. The Spanish brought only a limited number of African slaves to Puerto Rico compared with other islands in the region because the local plantations remained relatively small and unimportant. Spanish males, who constituted the largest group of immigrants, freely intermarried with indigenous women and Africans. When slavery was abolished in 1873, only about 5 percent of the population was of entirely African ancestry. Some Chinese, Italians, Corsicans, Lebanese, Germans, Scottish, and Irish also found their way to the island in the mid-19th century, a time when the population was growing steadily. Additional immigrants arrived from the United States after 1898, and more than 20,000 Cuban exiles joined them after Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba in 1959. In subsequent decades an even larger number of job-seeking immigrants arrived from the Dominican Republic.
Puerto Rico: Ethnic composition
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Language and religion
Both Spanish and English are official languages in Puerto Rico, which remains a predominantly Spanish-speaking society. Many English words have been added to the island’s popular lexicon. English is also widely understood, and about one-fourth of Puerto Rican adults speak English fluently.
Puerto Rico’s constitution guarantees freedom of religion. Today about two-thirds of the island’s inhabitants are Roman Catholics, a legacy of its centuries as a Spanish colony. In the 19th century the church’s loyalty to Spain eroded much of its popular support, and after 1898 many Protestant missionaries arrived from the United States, including Pentecostals, Presbyterians, Methodists, Disciples of Christ, and Congregationalists. Adherents to Protestant churches now account for more than one-fourth of the population.
Demographic trends
Health conditions gradually improved in Puerto Rico following its occupation by the United States, contributing to a population explosion that included a 21 percent increase between 1930 and 1940 and a reduction of death rates. The growing population threatened Puerto Rico’s already fragile economy and quality of life because of the island’s rural economy and limited physical resources, including mountainous slopes poorly suited to agriculture. By 1947, when the island’s population reached some 2,110,000, chronic unemployment had triggered an exodus to the United States, where job opportunities were plentiful. In the 1950s, family planning and mass emigration began to slow the island’s population growth markedly, although crowded conditions continued to strain the economy. In the latter part of the 20th century, Puerto Rico was transformed from a rural to an urban society, allowing for a denser population that no longer depended on marginal agricultural lands. By the beginning of the 21st century, the population was nearly double its 1947 level, but the rates of population growth and infant mortality were reduced, and life expectancy and educational achievement had increased, so that Puerto Rican health standards approached those of the United States. Improved conditions in the early 2000s prompted a small return migration from the United States back to Puerto Rico, the rate of which, according to some sources, at times exceeded that of emigration. As the Puerto Rican economy slid into prolonged recession beginning in 2006, however, this trend was reversed and emigration climbed steadily.
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Puerto Ricans in the United States
In 1940 only about 70,000 Puerto Ricans lived in the United States, nine-tenths of them clustered in New York City. By 1960 the U.S.-based Puerto Rican population had increased to 887,000 (of which 615,000 were born in Puerto Rico and 272,000 in the United States) and had already begun to disperse throughout the country, although the largest group remained in New York City. By the late 1990s the number of Puerto Ricans in the United States had increased nearly fourfold over the 1960 level to more than 3,000,000, including some 1,200,000 born on the island.
As a result of the growing exodus from Puerto Rico, prompted by the island’s reeling economy in the early 21st century, the number of persons of Puerto Rican birth or origin residing in the United States exceeded the size of the island’s population. Between 2010 and 2014, net migration from Puerto Rico was estimated at 263,000 people. In 2014 alone some 84,000 Puerto Ricans emigrated to the United States, whereas only about 20,000 returned to the island, resulting in a net out-migration of nearly 2 percent of Puerto Rico’s population.
In the 2010s the Puerto Rican population of the United States was concentrated mainly in New York, Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut, California, Illinois, and Texas. Puerto Ricans have carved out a place for themselves in North American society, occupying leading positions in government, business, education, and the arts. Since virtually every Puerto Rican residing in the United States has relatives on the island, there is frequent back-and-forth travel, particularly during summer and Christmas holidays.
The economy of Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico’s economy, now based on services and manufacturing, was dominated by agriculture until the mid-20th century. Under Spanish colonial rule the island was largely neglected because of its limited mineral resources. However, the harbour at San Juan prospered as a major link in Spain’s oceanic trade routes, and massive fortifications were built there. When the United States acquired Puerto Rico in 1898, following the Spanish-American War, it found itself in control of a poor island whose inhabitants were mostly involved in small-scale coffee and sugarcane production. Extensive U.S. markets were opened up for sugar as North American companies took over and expanded many of the island’s sugarcane operations.
In the decades after World War II, factories replaced and dwarfed farms as the driving force of Puerto Rico’s economy, stimulated by a government-sponsored program of economic development and social welfare. After the government failed to increase employment in cooperative agricultural enterprises and labour-intensive industries, it changed tactics and dramatically upgraded the island’s transportation infrastructure while promoting private enterprise. Low wage rates, advantageous tax breaks (most notably Section 936 of the Internal Revenue Code, enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1976, which exempted mainland companies from federal taxes on income earned in Puerto Rico), and government-supported start-up costs induced hundreds of manufacturers from the United States (and some from Europe) to establish operations in Puerto Rico. At first these factories produced mainly textiles, processed food, shoes, clothing, ceramics, tobacco, and wood products, but in the 1960s they also began manufacturing petrochemicals and other high-technology products.
By the late 20th century much of the island’s poverty had been eliminated, partly because of growth in manufacturing but also because of the growing importance of services, especially tourism. Income from U.S. federal agencies operating in Puerto Rico and various social welfare programs helped raise the standard of living through massive annual federal payments that included grants to low-income college students and widely available food stamps. Remittances from relatives living in the United States have also constituted an important source of household income.
In the 1990s the Puerto Rican government privatized several state-run businesses, notably hotels, food-processing facilities, telecommunications and transportation companies, and hospitals. In 1996 the U.S. Congress voted to gradually phase out Section 936 from the U.S. tax code. The rollback of these federal tax credits over the next 10 years led to an increasing decline in manufacturing production and employment in Puerto Rico. By 2006 the island’s economy had slipped into protracted recession.
Although there are extremes of wealth and poverty in Puerto Rico, from at least the 1970s the island traditionally had a large middle class. Its median household income is far below that of the United States, but the vast majority of Puerto Ricans live a modest middle-class existence by Caribbean standards. As the manufacturing sector declined and revenue fell in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Puerto Rican government borrowed heavily to continue to finance the comfortable lifestyle which most Puerto Ricans had become used to. By 2015, government debt had swelled to more than $70 billion (with pension obligations of an additional $49 billion), and the island’s governor announced that Puerto Rico could no longer meet its debt obligations. Like U.S. states, Puerto Rico was barred from filing for bankruptcy. However, congressional legislation enacted in 2016 created a federal board to oversee the island’s finances and allowed Puerto Rico to restructure its debt (effectively granting it bankruptcy relief).
Resources
Other than picturesque beaches and a tropical climate, Puerto Rico has limited natural resources. The mountainous terrain that dominates much of the island’s surface considerably handicaps agriculture. Only clay, silica sand, and stone are found in economically significant quantities. Large deposits of copper, and some gold, exist in the mountains south of Utuado and Lares but have not been mined, in part because of environmental concerns.
Agriculture, forestry, and fishing
Agriculture, forestry, and fishing account for a relatively tiny amount of the gross domestic product (GDP) and employment. Sugarcane production, supported by low-paying, seasonal labour, is now relatively insignificant, and Puerto Rico imports much of the molasses required for its important rum industry. Coffee, tobacco, and milk remain traditional farm products, but several farms are dedicated to specialized products, such as pineapples, mangoes, melons, and other tropical fruits as well as beef, pork, poultry, and eggs for local and export markets.
Bamboo and tropical hardwoods support a small furniture industry. For decades the island’s commercial tuna industry was part of a large-scale international operation that brought its catch from distant fisheries to Puerto Rico, where fish were processed for export. However, by the early 21st century most of the canneries had been closed and their operations relocated to countries with lower hourly wages. The waters surrounding Puerto Rico are generally renowned for sportfishing but cannot support commercial efforts.
Manufacturing
At the beginning of the 2010s, manufacturing accounted for approximately two-fifths of the GDP. However, increasing global competition and the changes to the Puerto Rican economy brought about by the removal of Section 936 contributed to the closure of many manufacturing companies and reduced the number of those working in manufacturing by nearly one-half. The manufacturing sector is no longer as competitive in labour-intensive industries because U.S. minimum wages also apply in Puerto Rico. The island’s average hourly wages are significantly higher than those of Mexico, from which manufactured goods have also entered the U.S. market duty-free since the mid-1990s.
Bacardi rum factory, San Juan, Puerto Rico
Bacardi rum factory, San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Image: © Michael Levy
Goods manufactured or assembled in Puerto Rico primarily use imported industrial components. U.S. firms dominate the manufacturing sector, largely through high-technology industries producing pharmaceuticals, electronics, chemicals, and medical equipment. Apparel, processed foods, and soft drinks are also important. Several smaller factories are owned by local entrepreneurs.
Services
Services, including trade, finance, tourism, and government work, have become the dominant and most dynamic force in Puerto Rico’s economy, accounting for about half of the GDP and as much as three-fourths of employment on the island. Government functions produce about one-tenth of the island’s GDP and employ roughly one-fifth of the workforce.
Finance and trade
Trade generates about one-tenth of the GDP and employs one-fifth of the workforce, whereas finance, real estate, and insurance create roughly one-fifth of the GDP but employ less than one-twentieth of the workforce. Puerto Rico relies on U.S. currency (the dollar), and the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank regulates its money supply and rates of foreign exchange. In addition the federal treasury collects customs taxes on foreign goods imported to Puerto Rico and excise taxes on goods sold in the United States. U.S. banks, retailers and wholesalers, restaurants, insurance companies, hotels, airlines, and many other firms have branch operations on the island.
Puerto Rican trade is facilitated by the island’s inclusion in the U.S. Customs system, and Puerto Rico’s most important trading partner, by far, is the United States. The island also carries on significant trade with Singapore, Japan, Brazil, and Ireland and other European countries. The chief exports are chemicals and chemical products, foodstuffs, and computers and electronics. The main imports are chemicals and chemical products, petroleum and coal products, food products, transportation equipment, and computers and electronics.
Puerto Rico: Major import sources
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Tourism
Puerto Rico has become a major vacation destination because of its fine year-round weather and air and sea transportation links; hotels, guest houses, and condominium developments dot the island’s coastline. In the 1990s there was a boom in new hotel construction, in part because of tax incentives and financing assistance from the island’s government. Between one and two million visitors register each year at Puerto Rico’s hotels and inns, and vast numbers of cruise ship passengers stop over annually.
Carolina, Puerto Rico.
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Transportation
Many visitors flying into San Juan depart for other islands aboard the huge cruise ships based in the city’s deepwater harbour, one of the more sheltered ports in the Caribbean. The city is also a major commercial port for transatlantic and regional shipping. Port activities are controlled by the Puerto Rico Maritime Shipping Authority, which the government privatized in 1995.
The island has a comprehensive and efficient road system. Traffic is particularly heavy in and around San Juan. Operational since 2005, San Juan’s metropolitan rapid transit system, Tren Urbano (Urban Train), serves the city and its suburbs as well as parts of the nearby cities of Guaynabo and Bayamón.
San Juan’s international airport, located 5 miles (8 km) outside the city, handles most passenger and freight traffic. Near Aguadilla in the northwest, another airport (formerly a U.S. Air Force base) also handles international flights. Local and regional air service is available in Ponce and Mayagüez and at the smaller Isla Grande Airport of San Juan.
Administration and social conditions
Government
Puerto Rico’s political status is officially described in its 1952 constitution as a “freely associated state” within the federal system of the United States. The U.S. government’s Puerto Rico–Federal Relations Act (1950), which retains many provisions of the earlier Foraker (1900) and Jones (1917) acts, further defines U.S.–Puerto Rican relations. Universal suffrage has been in effect since 1932 (12 years after it was instituted for the continental United States); prior to that time, neither Puerto Rican women nor illiterate males had been allowed to vote. Although Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens since 1917, they cannot vote in U.S. presidential elections, but those 18 years and older may vote for a resident commissioner to the U.S. House of Representatives—who is allowed to speak but may vote only in committees. (Thus, Puerto Ricans do not pay federal taxes, because they are without representation.) The commonwealth constitution, which was patterned on its U.S. counterpart, provides for executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. The constitution may be altered by the commonwealth so long as its articles do not conflict with the U.S. constitution or the Puerto Rico–Federal Relations Act.
The governor, who heads the executive branch, is elected by direct popular vote to a four-year term and may seek reelection. The legislature is composed of the Senate (Senado) and the House of Representatives (Cámara de Representantes), whose members are elected to four-year terms and are also eligible for reelection. At a minimum, there are 27 seats in the Senate and 51 in the House of Representatives; the constitution provides for the addition of special at-large seats in order to limit a majority party’s membership to two-thirds of either house. Legislators from the island’s 8 senatorial districts (with 2 senators each) and 40 representative districts (with 1 representative each) are elected through a system of proportional representation. In addition 11 senators and 11 representatives are directly elected at large. The island is further divided into 78 municipalities, each of which is governed by a mayor and council who are directly elected to four-year terms.
Puerto Rico’s justice system is headed by the island’s Supreme Court (Tribunal Supremo), whose six justices are appointed to life terms by the governor with the advice and consent of the commonwealth Senate. There are 12 superior courts and scores of municipal courts. A U.S. district court has jurisdiction over the application of federal laws in Puerto Rico, and appeals may be carried to the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. The level of corruption in the Puerto Rican justice system is probably no worse than that found in the United States. Although the island’s prisons are overcrowded and in poorer condition than U.S. prisons, they are generally better than those found in other parts of Latin America.
Puerto Rico has three main political parties, each of which advocates a different political status for the island. The two leading parties are the Popular Democratic Party, which supports the continuation of commonwealth status, and the New Progressive Party, which favours U.S. statehood. Together these two parties have commanded virtually all the vote in elections since the late 20th century. The Puerto Rican Independence Party, which won one-fifth of the vote in 1952, is supported by about 5 percent of the electorate.
Armed forces and police
Puerto Rico continues to be a strategic site for the U.S. military. For decades the U.S. Navy has occupied a large base at Roosevelt Roads, on the east coast. By 2001 local protests had mounted against the navy’s use of a portion of the nearby island of Vieques for its maneuvers, including gunnery and bombing practice, and the federal government, bowing to public pressure, announced plans to halt the bombing.
Unlike the various municipal, county, and state police forces common in the United States, Puerto Rico has a single, centralized police force, which includes a body of detectives. Puerto Rico is considered a major transshipment point for illegal drugs from South America to North America, and local and U.S. law enforcement agencies have long been engaged in drug interdiction efforts there.
drug interdiction in Puerto Rico
U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) officers and Puerto Rican police restraining a defendant who attempted to flee during an operation targeting a violent drug-trafficking organization.
Image: DEA
Education
More than nine-tenths of the people are literate. Schooling is compulsory and free for children between the ages of 6 and 16. Although most children complete at least eight years of education, there is a high dropout rate. About half of Puerto Ricans age 25 and older are high school graduates, and bachelor’s degrees are held by one-seventh of the population—nearly one-fourth of high school graduates. Puerto Rico invests heavily in education—nearly one-third of its annual budget—notably in vocational and technical programs, and U.S. federal funds also encourage attendance in schools and universities. The main public institution of higher learning is the University of Puerto Rico (founded 1903), with its main campus at Río Piedras. Among the several private universities and colleges are the Inter-American University (1912), which has several campuses, and the Pontifical Catholic University (1948) in Ponce.
Health and welfare
In 1947 the Puerto Rican birth rate was about 43 per 1,000 people, whereas life expectancy at birth was only about 50 years. Health conditions subsequently improved dramatically, approaching the standards of the U.S. states. The life expectancy at birth is now some 79 years for Puerto Rican women and 71 for men. Major causes of death include heart disease, cancers, diabetes, cerebrovascular diseases, and pneumonia and influenza. Urban clinics and rural health centres provide basic medical care, and the U.S. Medicare and Medicaid programs have contributed to improving health among lower-income residents, as have various other social programs. In the 1990s the Puerto Rican government initiated financial reforms of the health care system, including privatizing some hospitals and clinics.
The government has long worked to upgrade rural and urban areas with piped water, electricity, and other amenities. It has also improved the housing situation, notably through its Urban Renewal and Housing Corporation, which concentrates on low-income housing projects. A water-treatment system and aqueduct, laid out along the coast from north-central Puerto Rico to San Juan, opened in 2000.
Cultural life
The idealized folk hero of Puerto Rico is the jíbaro, a rustic independent hill-farmer whose status in local song and story is similar to that of the gaucho of Argentina. However, modern Puerto Rican cultural life is a blend of North American and Latin, African, and Caribbean forms, as is evident in much of the island’s dance, music, art, literature, and sports. The pre-Columbian Taino culture, which was largely decimated by European colonizers, has had only limited impact on Puerto Rican life and is evident mainly in the use of certain linguistic expressions and words incorporated into the Spanish language, such as hamaca (“hammock”), cacique (“chief”), and tabaco (“tobacco”). African influences are found in food, music, and art. Music festivals, museums in Ponce and San Juan, and theatrical performances encourage hispanidad, or Spanish customs. Puerto Ricans have worked to preserve a Latin heritage while welcoming U.S. economic and social novelties, engendering a cultural dilemma that has often catalyzed political debate.
Daily life
Puerto Rican lifestyles have changed rapidly as new technologies, economic opportunities, and patterns of development emerged. The island as a whole remains far poorer than the United States, but its growing middle class has adopted living standards that would be familiar to most North Americans. Some two-thirds of Puerto Rican families own their own homes. Large expanses of former farmland have been converted to suburban communities (urbanizaciones), rural wooden shacks have been replaced by sturdy cement houses equipped with modern appliances, and cars have increasingly clogged modern highways, particularly during evening rush hours in the San Juan area. A voracious appetite for consumer goods, coupled with easy access to credit, prompts shoppers to jam air-conditioned suburban malls that feature U.S. chain stores, fast-food restaurants, and multiplex cinemas. On most Saturday nights in San Juan, well-dressed young suburbanites crowd the dance floors of nightclubs and hotels (once the exclusive province of tourists) or frequent the bars and cafés of historic Old San Juan.
Puerto Ricans continue to prefer traditional dishes with rice and beans, plantains, and beef, chicken, or pork. However, North American fast-food restaurants that sell hamburgers, pizza, and other fare are growing in popularity, particularly among the young. Traditional Creole foods include sopa de arroz con pollo (chicken-and-rice soup), sancocho (a beef-and-vegetable stew), tostones (fried plantain slices), flan, and casabe, powdery cakes made from ground cassava, often served with molasses and coconut milk. Local supermarkets are well stocked with traditional fare as well as frozen and processed foods, which are mainly imported from the United States. Locally produced soft drinks and rums are also popular.
Source: Britannica