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 main island lies approximately 50 miles (80 kilometres) from the island of Hispaniola to the west and roughly 40 miles from the Virgin Islands to the east. The U.S. mainland lies about 1,000 miles to the northwest. Puerto Rico covers an area of 3,515 square miles (9,104 square kilometres), including offshore islands. It has a mountainous tropical ecosystem with very little flat land and few mineral resources; it also has a rapidly growing population. The capital is San Juan. Christopher Columbus discovered the island in 1493. Under Spanish authority from that time until 1898, Puerto Rico's lack of resources resulted in neglect and minimal investment by the Spanish. San Juan, however, has one of the best harbours in the Caribbean, and the Spanish built fortifications to protect this asset for their vital oceanic trade routes. When the United States acquired Puerto Rico in 1898 as a result of the Spanish-American War, it found itself in control of a poor island whose inhabitants were mostly involved in small-scale agriculture. The social system at that time was Spanish and conservative; the people were mostly rural, poor, uneducated, Roman Catholic, and resistant to change. The sudden intrusion of capitalistic ideas and values assured a high degree of social and cultural conflict. Modern Puerto Rico is generally well-off by Latin-American standards. Beginning in the 1940s, a political coalition between the Puerto Rican leader Luis Muoz Marn and the U.S.-appointed governor, Rexford Guy Tugwell, was forged to promote a self-help program, called Operation Bootstrap, of economic development and social welfare. In a little more than four decades, much of the territory's crushing poverty was eliminated. This was done partly through emphasis on the development of manufacturing and service industries, the latter related to an enormous growth in tourism. Improvements have been made largely with the cooperation of the United States, but relationships with that country have also become a focal point of political turmoil. Various factions have bitterly disputed the political status of the island, and, although a majority voted to retain its commonwealth relationships, strong minorities have continued to push for statehood orat times with violenceindependence. 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. It covers an area of 3,515 square miles (9,104 square km) and occupies a central position among the islands of the West Indies in the northern Caribbean. The capital is San Juan. Roughly rectangular in shape, the island of Puerto Rico extends about 111 miles (179 km) from east to west and 40 miles (64 km) from north to south. Two islands off the east coast, Vieques and Culebra, are also part of the nation. Puerto Rico is located about 1,000 miles (1,600 km) southeast of Florida (U.S.). The population in 1990 was estimated at 3,316,000. Additional reading Rafael Pic, The Geography of Puerto Rico (1974), offers a comprehensive survey. Anthropological, ethnological, demographic, and cultural features are discussed in Joseph P. Fitzpatrick, Puerto Ricans, pp. 858867 in Stephan Thernstrom (ed.), Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups (1980); Julian H. Steward et al., The People of Puerto Rico: A Study in Social Anthropology (1956); Mara Teresa Babn, The Puerto Ricans' Spirit: Their History, Life, and Culture (1971; originally published in Spanish, 1970); and Stan Steiner, The Islands: The Worlds of the Puerto Ricans (1974). For the country's economy, see Robert J. Tata and David R. Lee, Puerto Rico: Dilemmas of Growth, Focus 28(2):110 (NovemberDecember 1977); United States. Department of Commerce, Economic Study of Puerto Rico, 2 vol. (1979); and James L. Dietz, Economic History of Puerto Rico: Institutional Change and Capitalist Development (1986).Comprehensive histories are provided by Kal Wagenheim, Puerto Rico: A Profile, 2nd ed. (1975); and Kal Wagenheim and Olga Jimenez de Wagenheim (eds.), The Puerto Ricans: A Documentary History (1973). Other historical studies include Arturo Morales Carrin, Puerto Rico and the Non-Hispanic Caribbean: A Study in the Decline of Spanish Exclusivism, 2nd ed. (1971), with an analysis of the development of trade and commerce, and Puerto Rico, a Political and Cultural History (1983); Henry Wells, The Modernization of Puerto Rico: A Political Study of Changing Values and Institutions (1969); Thomas G. Mathews, Puerto Rican Politics and the New Deal (1960, reprinted 1976); and, on the contemporary situation, Raymond Carr, Puerto Rico, a Colonial Experiment (1984).