Puerto Rico Puerto Rico Today

In 2000, Puerto Ricans elected the island’s first female governor, Sila Calderón, who focused her campaign on the US military presence in Puerto Rico and especially on the island of Vieques. In April 1999 a bombing accident on the island accidentally killed a Puerto Rican security guard, prompting extensive protests. Finally, in June 2001, US President George W. Bush announced that the Navy would leave Vieques by May 2003. The Navy kept its end of the bargain, but chose in 2004 to also close the Roosevelt Roads Navy Base, dealing a tough blow to the island’s economy with the loss of 6000 jobs. The unexploded bombs and other environmental hazards left on Vieques prompted Calderón to call for the former bombing range to be placed on the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Superfund National Priorities list of most hazardous waste sites. In 2005, the EPA took this step, and a clean-up of the former Navy sites is in progress.

In the 2004 elections, former Puerto Rican Congressman Aníbal Acevedo Vilá of the PPD defeated former Governor Pedro Rosselló of the PNP to assume the Governor’s seat. The excruciatingly narrow margin of victory, 0.2% of the vote, produced a politically contentious recount. In the same election, the PNP party was given a majority in the Puerto Rican legislature, splitting control of the government. Under Acevedo Vilá’s watch, the US Congress passed the Puerto Rico Democracy Act of 2007, calling for a plebiscite to be held on the question of Puerto Rican independence no later than December 1, 2009. In this vote, Puerto Ricans will choose between continued territorial status for Puerto Rico or pursuit of a path toward non-territorial status as a US state or its own sovereign nation. The revival of this question, combined with upcoming gubernatorial elections and an unemployment rate still hovering around 10%, shows that Puerto Rico has many domestic issues to confront as it looks toward the future.

Government

On July 25, 1952, Puerto Rico officially became a commonwealth of the United States. Ever since, people have been asking, “What does that mean?” In many ways Puerto Rico resembles a state: the national ...more

Economy

Puerto Rico is the economic success story of Latin America, thanks to Operation Bootstrap. Within 60 years, Puerto Rico transformed from one of the poorest islands in the Caribbean, with a single-crop ...more