Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States; its people have been US citizens since 1917 and elect their own governor and legislature. Of the four large Greater Antilles it is the smallest. The Cordillera Central runs along its spine, with coffee on its cool slopes, and trade-wind rain soaks the forest of El Yunque in the north-east. Limestone hills in the north-west are riddled with sinkholes and caves, and Vieques and Culebra lie offshore to the east.

Taíno villagers called the island Borikén, a name kept in the anthem ‘La Borinqueña’. Columbus arrived in 1493, and Juan Ponce de León founded Caparra, the first Spanish settlement, in 1508. For four centuries stone forts guarded the harbour, and sugar estates worked by enslaved Africans spread across the coastal plains until slavery was abolished in 1873. In 1898 Spain ceded the island to the United States. Islanders approved their own constitution in 1952, as Operation Bootstrap moved the economy from cane fields into factories.

Bomba, a dialogue between dancer and drummer, and plena, once called the sung newspaper, carry the island’s African roots, and reggaeton came out of its underground parties in the 1990s. Night brings the chirp of the coquí, a tiny tree frog. Mofongo, garlicky mashed plantain, sits beside roast pork, and Roberto Clemente is the great baseball hero. Factories make medicines and medical devices, Bacardí distils rum at Cataño, and cruise ships berth beside the old walled city.