Thinking of Puerto Rico

Out of curiosity, when you think of Puerto Rico, what image pops into your head? Is it one of the countless beaches? Maybe the jungle and el Yunque? Las garitas in San Juan (a popular one off and on the island)? The city of Old San Juan? Salsa dancing? Cacos and their reggaetón? A specific dish? A specific person?

For me, it's always the houses. The combination of gates everywhere, cement, rooflessness, and bright colors guarantees that the houses are always going to be what I think of first when I hear "Puerto Rico". Maybe it's just because I spend a lot of time in them.

How about you?

Changing your clocks?

Most of America and various other countries are changing their clocks tonight. But Puerto Rico won't. The island doesn't observe daylight's saving time, so actually now the East Coast of the U.S. will be catching up to Puerto Rico. Good to know!

A Super Short History of Puerto Rico, Part 2

For part 1, click here.

So, the Spanish-American War ends after the U.S. blockades Puerto Rico for long enough that the people were very welcoming to the American troops. It doesn't help that they were promised the liberty that the Spaniards didn't give to them. Of course, as you might have noticed, that's not really what they got.

The first effect of the invasion was the complete devastation of the economy. Americans had no interest in Puerto Rico's strong coffee so almost all industry turned to sugar, causing the loss of a lot of jobs. American companies bought up farmland and forced many owners of small-property to lose their land and just added to the pockets of American corporations, who in turn invested their money back into the U.S. The population exploded because of new American medicines saving lives without anyone considering its effects or how to deal with consequences, particularly unemployment. The conversion from pesos to dollars was poorly organized and allowed many merchants on the island to charge up to 40% more for even basic foods. Even worse, food was increasing imported from the U.S., eventually making up about 75% of all food on the island, so even though PR could have grown a lot of its own foods it turned to more expensive American products.

However, it was the Americanization that really wrecked havoc on Puerto Rico. First off, all education was suddenly English-only, even though no one spoke English. Censorship began to silence newspapers. American governors disapproved of any thoughts of independence and encouraged Congress to think of Puerto Ricans as too racially impure to manage a government. Citizenship was imposed in 1916 with the Jones Act...

Let me take a moment here to explain. Citizenship was offered to Puerto Ricans as a choice, which is something that most people bring up when defending statehood. However, it should be noted, despite a tiny minority refusing it, most people were indeed forced to accept American citizenship, because no employer would hire someone without it.

Also... the Navy began to occupy large parts of the island around WWII and refused to leave afterwards since their bases were good training areas. This continued until 2004, when they finally left Vieques.

Puerto Rico at first attempted peaceful compromises with the American government but as Congress ignored them more and more many islanders became violent. There were occasional protests on the island, some of which ended in tragedy for a few nacionalistas. A few attacks also occurred on the mainland, like the 1954 shooting in Congress and an attempt on President Truman's life. In response, the FBI became heavily involved in the independence movement. They profiled and blackmailed many important pro-independence politicians. In a sense the FBI was very successful, as the movement for independence has faded away since the 70s and now lags behind statehood and continuing the Commonwealth.

A Super Short History of Puerto Rico, Part 1

All right, this is going to be Puerto Rican history in a nutshell.

Before Christopher Colombus arrived in Puerto Rico in 1493, the island, like much of the Caribbean, was populated by Taíno Indians. The Taínos became slaves for the Spaniards and were practically exterminated... there are a few different opinions to whether the Taíno is "extinct", I wrote a paper on this in Spanish so I'll be sure to upload that eventually. Anyways, in response to a lack of workers the slave trade was born. Other than this, Spain more or less ignored the island. It was attacked by the English, Dutch, and French for years and it was a popular place for pirates, notably Puerto Rico's own Cofresí.

About the time of the 19th century Spain began to get more involved with the island. At first they were heavily restricting freedom as all of their other colonies began to free themselves. To "end" unemployment and help out their sycophantical elite, Spain forced a really strange form of indentured servitude by placing imaginary debts on the peasants and forcing them to work it off. This was abolished in 1875, 2 years after the end of slavery. Meanwhile, illiteracy was at 83%, the highest in the West Indies. There was little electricity, almost no sewer system, a high death rate, and few roads. Not surprisingly, something had to be done.

The first consequence of this was El Grito de Lares, the rebellion of September 23rd, 1868 in the town of Lares. It was unsuccessful. I'll save the details for a later post since it's very important.

The second was the Autonomy Charter in 1897. It wasn't exactly because of Puerto Rico, but rather pressure from the United States worrying that problems on the island and on Cuba would affect the sugar market. The Charter gave Puerto Rico the right to vote for half of their parliament, free trade, creation of tariffs, and representation in Spanish Parliament. Most importantly, only the Puerto Rican legislature could change or remove the Charter. But only eight days into Puerto Rico’s first elected legislature, the U.S. military invaded Puerto Rico.

Well that's part one of this brief history of Puerto Rico. Part two should be up soon.

The island

Sorry if I update kind of sporadically. This weekend is Thanksgiving weekend though, so I'm sure I'll post a bit.

I thought that a quick guide to Puerto Rico's geography would also serve as a good introduction to the island (and really, is kind of important). I hope in some future posts to expand on different parts of each region and what there is to do in each.

This is Puerto Rico:

Sorry for the... low quality map, I was looking for one with all the regions divided up and this was all I could really find for the moment. I also think the "Metro" area is too big (Caguas is in it! Seriously?).

Anyways, a brief introduction to each...

"Metro" is (obviously) San Juan and the surrounding municipalities ("municipios"... it doesn't quite roll off the tongue in English but it's not so bad in Spanish). Big cities besides SJ include (well, at least in this map) Carolina, which is where the Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport and Isla Verde are located, Río Piedras, where the University of Puerto Rico's main campus is, and apparently Caguas. I'm not really sure how to explain Caguas except that they have a web site talking about how great they are even though Caguas is in the middle of nowhere. I understand that they have a lot of industry going on there. I'm not sure. The only time I was in Caguas it was about 1 in the morning on Three Kings' Day (to be explained later) and we drove completely out of our way to try to see some house that supposedly was decorated with Christmas lights to some kind of record-breaking extreme. Of course, by the time we got there, there was nothing to see. I wish I were making that story up.

"Este" (East) includes cities like Loíza, the center of Black culture for the island, Luquillo, which has a nice beach (haven't been but I've seen it), Fajardo and Puerto Rico's smaller islands, Culebra and Vieques, and Humacao. There's also the famous park el Yunque here (in the Río Grande municipality).

"Sur" (South) is known for Ponce, the second largest city in Puerto Rico after San Juan. It's drier and hotter here in comparison to the rest of the island.

"Centro" (Center) is mostly mountains. It includes Utuado, Lares, where Puerto Rico's failed revolution, el Grito de Lares (the Shout of Lares), took place, and a few other smaller cities like Jayuya and Aibonito. It still hangs onto its Taíno and jíbaro roots.

"Oeste" (West) is a popular spot for tourists, particularly in Rincón, a gringo enclave and a surfing spot. It also has Mayagüez, a fairly large and pretty city, Cabo Rojo, which has a lot of beaches and the "Los Morrillos" lighthouse, and Aguadilla, which has some more nice beaches.

"Norte" (North) has Arecibo with its famous observatory and the world's largest radio telescope.

Keep in mind that this is just a very rough guide to the major cities. Puerto Rico, with a population of 4 million people in a tiny island, has a lot of interesting suburbs and rural areas that should be seen as well.

Why Puerto Rico?

So, as we get started, maybe you're wondering what is so exciting about Puerto Rico, anyways. Why aren't I writing about Mexico or Chile or Spain instead? And why should you be interested in going?

Well, the island is very accessible, particularly for Americans. Since it's a territory, it's convenient for Americans. It's only a few hours away from the East Coast, and tickets are cheaper than most international flights. Puerto Rican currency is the dollar, and many islanders speak English.

But those are the practical reasons. What's really attractive about Puerto Rico is the culture. I think I've really gone crazy for it. To me it's fascinating, and quite honestly, I don't think I'll be able to explain why, but I'll give it a shot. There is this great mixture of African, Taíno (Indian), and, of course, Spanish influences, plus a bunch of American thrown in. On top of this is just... Puerto Rican-ness. After all, people assume that Puerto Rico is like any other Spanish-speaking country, or that it's very Americanized, or that there are a lot of Black or Amerindian people. None of these is entirely true. It's a mixture, more successful than America's "melting pot" in many ways.

My favorite thing about this is how it manifests in the music. Puerto Rico has no film or telenovela (soap opera) industry to speak of. The literature is not as well known as Cuba's, much less Spain's or Argentina's. But I would bet that there are more musicians in each square mile than in any other country of the world.

Now, for those of you who don't like reggaetón, this can be hard to fathom. But reggaetón is just an additional part of Puerto Rico's music that has developed from as far back as the Taíno areytos. Meanwhile, reggaetón, whether you like it or not, is one of the largest musical waves in Latin America as well as the US, and it is nearly exclusively a product of the island.

I'll be sure to delve into music again, in less general terms. For now that should be fitting.

I guess something else that I love about the island is the speech, which is the point of this blog, after all. Puerto Rican Spanish is one of the most difficult varieties of Spanish to understand. Once you can understand it, however, you get to experience the fun of speaking it (because turning your s's into j's really is fun) and the richness of the culture that has seeped into it. A lot of very strange slang has origins in culture, and without knowing both the slang and the culture, communicating comfortably with Puerto Ricans becomes much harder. But the slang isn't necessarily difficult to learn and it certainly is interesting.

I could go on with this, but those are my two biggest reasons. I think any another incentives will reveal themselves after time. Hopefully I can cover the island enough in order to appeal to everyone. But let me say this again: this is my passion. I love this island and I love the people, quirky and irritating as they can occasionally be (don't take offense, no culture is complete without idiots). I just hope my enthusiasm can be shared with others.