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History
When the Spanish found gold on Puerto Rico, they established farms for cattle, grain, fruits, and vegetables to supply mining camps. These farms later grew into large and small plantations for cash crops of sugarcane, tobacco, and coffee.
During the 1700s, Puerto Ricans began to develop their distinctive traditions and practices. The island received refugees from the Napoleonic Wars and other European immigrants after 1815. The contemporary culture of Puerto Rico emerged from the blending of European, African, and Native American traditions.
Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León (1460-1521) became the first Spanish governor of this Crown Colony in 1509. His highly centralized government controlled the colony's economic and social life
Roman Catholic priests who arrived with the explorers and soldiers came to convert native peoples. But the goals of the Crown and the Church sometimes clashed, as when priests criticized the way landowners treated enslaved Catholic converts.
Slavery ended in 1873, but the African presence is woven into Puerto Rico's language, music, cuisine, art, religious practices, and everyday ways of living.
By the 1890s, Puerto Rican political activists, writers, and other intellectuals began to organize political parties. Some favored a break with Spain. Others favored political autonomy while remaining part of Spain.
On February 15, 1898, the U.S.S. Maine sank in Cuba's Havana Harbor. The United States declared war against Spain. U.S. forces defeated Spanish defenses in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippine Islands, and Guam in the Pacific.
Spain ceded "Porto Rico" to the United States through the Treaty of Paris on December 10, 1898.
The USA ruled Puerto Rico as a colonial protectorate for the next five decades, but the 1930s depression hit the island hard and the independence movement turned to violence.
During World War II, the US military appropriated extensive agricultural lands that have never been returned, including the loudly disputed island of Vieques. Puerto Rico won the right to elect its own governor in 1948.
Puerto Ricans voted three to one in a 1951 referendum to become a commonwealth of the US rather than remain a colony. Nationalists seeking full independence took the fight to the US mainland where they attempted to assassinate President Truman and opened fire on US congressmen from the visitors' gallery in the House of Representatives.
The Puerto Rican economy continued to post impressive gains in GNP, around one million Puerto Ricans went to work in New York City and elsewhere in the US during the 1950s and '60s. Return migration to Puerto Rico increased during the 1970s and '80s; US citizenship has helped facilitate a type of circular migration that has led some intellectual types to label Puerto Rico the 'commuter nation.'
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