Puerto Rico Travel Guide & Location Information

The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, is a commonwealth of the United States located east of the Dominican Republic in the northeastern Caribbean. Puerto Rico, the smallest of the Greater Antilles, includes the main island of Puerto Rico and a number of smaller islands and keys, including Mona, Vieques, and Culebra.

The nature of Puerto Rico's political relationship with the United States is the subject of ongoing debate in the island. Those who support maintaining the status quo (i.e., Commonwealth status) insist that upon attaining this status, Puerto Rico entered into a voluntary association with the U.S. "in the nature of a compact", but opponents of Commonwealth disagree: according to them, Puerto Rico is no more than an unincorporated organized territory of the U.S., subject to the plenary powers of the United States Congress.

Puerto Rico consists of a main island of Puerto Rico and various smaller islands, including Vieques, Culebra, Mona, Desecheo, and Caja de Muertos. Of the latter five, only Culebra and Vieques are inhabited year-round. Mona is uninhabited through large parts of the year except for employees of the Puerto Rico Department of Natural Resources.

The mainland measures some 100 miles by 35 nautical miles (170 km by 60 km). It is mostly mountainous with large coastal areas in the north and south regions of the island. Some beautiful beaches on the north-west side of the island are Jobos Beach, Maria's Beach, Domes Beach and Sandy Beach. The main mountainous range is called "La Cordillera Central" (The Central Range). The highest elevation point of Puerto Rico, Cerro de Punta (4,390 ft; 1,338 m), is located in this range. Another important peak is El Yunque, located in the Caribbean National Forest, with a maximum elevation of 3,494 feet (1,065 m). The capital city, San Juan, is located on the main island's north coast.

Located in the tropics, Puerto Rico enjoys an average temperature of 28ºC (82.4ºF) throughout the year. The seasons do not change very drastically. The temperature in the south is usually a few degrees higher than the north and temperatures in the central interior mountains are always cooler than the rest of the island. The hurricane season spans between June and November.

Puerto Rico has 17 lakes (none of them natural) [9] and more than 50 rivers. Most of these rivers are born in the "Cordillera Central." The rivers in the northern region of the island are bigger and with higher flow capacity than those of the south region. The south is thus drier and hotter than the north region.

As of 1998 [10], 239 plants, 16 birds and 39 amphibians/reptiles have been discovered that are endemic to the archipelago of Puerto Rico. The majority of these (234, 12 and 33 repectively) are found in the main island. The most recognizable endemic species and a symbol of Puerto Rican pride is the Coquí, a small frog easily recognized by the sound from which it gets its name. The Caribbean National Forest, also known as El Yunque (the name of its highest peak), a tropical rainforest is home to the majority (13 of 16) of species of coquí. It is also home to more than 240 plants, 26 of which are endemic and 50 bird species, including one of the top 10 endangered birds in the world, the Puerto Rican Parrot.

Puerto Rico has sometimes been said to have a European (Spanish) descent majority, an extinct Amerindian population, persons of mixed ancestry, Africans, and a small Asian minority. In August, 1999 a researcher at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez received a grant from the National Science Foundation to determine the continental origin of the mtDNA of Puerto Ricans through the analysis of a representative sample. The results of the analysis of approximately 300 samples identify 62% as having Amerindian maternal mitochondrial DNA, 30% as having African maternal mitochondrial DNA and 8% as having Caucasian maternal mitochondrial DNA [11]. Conversely, patrilineal input as indicated by the Y chromosome, showed that 70% of all Puerto Rican males have inherited Y chromosome DNA from a male European ancestor, 20% have inherited Y chromosome DNA from a male African ancestor and less than 10% have inherited Y chromosome DNA from male Amerindian ancestor. Making Amerindian, European and African the three largest components of the Puerto Rican genetic pool. These results cast doubt on the notion that the Tainos disappeared from Puerto Rico by the end of the sixteenth century.

During the 1800s, hundreds of Corsican, French, Lebanese, Chinese, and Portuguese, along with a large numbers of immigrants from the Canary Islands and numerous Spanish loyalists from Spain's former colonies in South America, arrived in Puerto Rico. Other settlers have included Irish, Scots, Germans, and many others who were granted land from Spain during the Cedula de Gracias of 1815, which allowed European Catholics to settle in the island with a certain amount of free land. A census conducted by royal decree on September 30, 1858, gives the following totals of the Puerto Rican population at this time, Whites 300,430 (many of the inhabitants, classed as white, have, both in their features and manners, definite traces of the Indian race, mestizo), Free colored 341,015, Slaves 41,736, Unclassified 127, this census also clearly verifies Puerto Rico's diverse ancestral heritage. More recently Puerto Rico has become the permanent home of over 100,000 legal residents who immigrated from not only Spain, but from Latin America as well. Argentines, Cubans, Dominicans, Colombians, Panamanians and Venezuelans can also be accounted for as settlers. The variety of surnames which exist in Puerto Rico suggests widespread immigration to the island from many regions.

Emigration has been a major part of Puerto Rico's recent history as well. Starting in the Post-WWII period, due to poverty, cheap airfare, and promotion by the island government, waves of Puerto Ricans moved to the United States, particularly to New York City, Chicago and Hartford, Connecticut. This continued even as Puerto Rico's economy improved and its birth rate declined. Emigration continues at the present time, and this, combined with Puerto Rico's greatly lowered birth rate, suggests that the island's population will age rapidly and start to decline sometime within the next couple of decades.

In the 2000 U.S. Census Puerto Ricans were asked to nominate with which racial category they personally identify. 95.8% answered with only one choice. The breakdown is as follows: 80.5% described themselves as "white"; 8% described themselves as "Black"; and only 0.4% described themselves as "Native American" [12]. These figures demonstrate that racial terms are relative, not absolute, and highlight the potential for confusion when they are used in a definitive and distinct way. Also 95% of the population consider themselves of Puerto Rican descent (regardless of race or skin color), making Puerto Rico one of the most culturally homogenous societies in the world.

The official languages of the island are Spanish and English. Spanish is the primary language in government; English is taught as a foreign language in schools. As of 2006, an estimated 3,860,120 people use Spanish as their primary language; for 82,000, English is their primary tongue. While relatively few Puerto Ricans use English as their main language, the large majority of residents living in metropolitan areas are bilingual, or at least understand and speak English to a certain extent.

In 1991, Governor Rafael Hernández Colón signed a law declaring Spanish as the sole official language of the island's government. Upon signing this law into effect, English had lost its status as an official second language. While many applauded the governor's decision, mainly members of the parties supporting commonwealth-status and indepedence, statehood supporters saw it as a threat to their ideology. The signing of the law also brought the island acclaim, as the people of Puerto Rico won the prestigious Prince of Asturias Award in literature in 1991. The award is given annually to individuals and organizations worldwide for their defense and contribution to the growth of the Spanish language by Principe Felipe of Spain [13]. Upon his election as governor in 1993, Governor Pedro Rosselló overturned the law and re-established English as an official language. This was seen by many as a move by the pro-statehood governor to move the island closer to statehood, something that never came about under his two consecutive four-year terms.

In the early 1900's the greatest contributor to Puerto Rico's economy was agriculture, its main crop being sugar. In the late 1940's a series of projects codenamed Operation Bootstrap encouraged, using tax exemptions, the establishment of factories. Thus manufacturing replaced agriculture as the main industry.

The economic conditions in Puerto Rico have improved dramatically since the Great Depression due to external investment in capital-intensive industry such as petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, and technology. Once the beneficiary of special tax treatment from the U.S. government, today local industries must compete with those in more economically depressed parts of the world where wages are not subject to U.S. minimum wage legislation. In recent years, some U.S. and foreign owned factories have moved to lower wage countries in Latin America and Asia. Puerto Rico is subject to U.S. trade laws and restrictions.

Tourism is an important component of the Puerto Rican economy supplying an approximate $1.8 billion. In 1999, an estimated 5 million tourists visited the island, most from the United States. Nearly a third of these are cruise ship passengers. An steady increase in hotel registrations, which has been observed since 1998, and the construction of new hotels and new tourism projects, such as the Puerto Rico Convention Center, are indicators of the current strength of the tourism industry.

Puerto Ricans had a per capita GDP estimate of $17,700 for 2004 [18] , which demonstrates a growth over the $14,412 level measured in the 2002 Current Population Survey by the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund [19]. In that survey, Puerto Ricans have a 48.2% poverty rate. By comparison, the poorest State of the Union, Mississippi, had a median level of $21,587, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, 2002 to 2004 Annual Social and Economic Supplements [20]. Since 1952, the gap between Puerto Rico's per capita income and U.S. national levels has essentially remained unchanged — one third the U.S. national average and roughly half that of the poorest state.

On May 1, 2006, the Puerto Rican government faced significant shortages in cash flows, which forced the closure of the local Department of Education and 42 other government agencies. All 1,536 public schools closed, and 95,762 people were furloughed in the first-ever partial shutdown of the government in the island's history [21]. On May 10, 2006, the budget crisis was resolved with a new tax reform agreement by the Presidents of both legislative bodies and the Governor, with plans to apply a temporary 1% tax input so that all government employees could return to work.