Puerto Rico

12/11/2012 22:37

        

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-eighth of the GDP but employ only a proportionally tiny number of workers. 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 Japan, the Dominican Republic, and European nations. The chief exports are chemicals and chemical products, foodstuffs, and machinery; the main imports are electrical machinery, food products, and transportation equipment.

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.

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. Construction of a passenger rail system in the San Juan metropolitan area began in the late 1990s.

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

San Juan: Capitolio [Credit: AP]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.

 

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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. Nearly three-fourths 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.

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.

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; however, 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 have prompted a small return migration from the United States back to Puerto Rico, the rate of which has at times exceeded that of emigration.

Puerto Ricans in the United States

The number of persons of Puerto Rican birth or origin residing in the United States has approached parity with the size of the island’s population. In 1940 only about 70,000 Puerto Ricans lived in the United States, with 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. They were concentrated mainly in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois, Florida, and California. 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.

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