Located about a thousand miles from Florida in the Caribbean Sea, Puerto Rico is a United States territory—but it's not a state. U.S. citizens who reside on the island are subject to federal laws, but can't vote in presidential elections. Why? The answer lies in the island's long colonial history—one that arguably continues to this day.

Puerto Rico had been a Spanish colony since the 16th century, but hundreds of years of repression, taxation, and poverty took their toll. By the 19th century, an independence movement sprang up on the island. Though Spanish forces quickly quelled an armed insurrection in 1868, the country tried to diffuse tensions by allowing the island more independence.

But a few decades of relative autonomy came to a halt in 1898, when the United States declared war on Spain—ostensibly to liberate Cuba from colonial rule. On July 25, 1898, U.S. forces invaded Puerto Rico and occupied it during the ensuing months of the Spanish-American War. As part of the peace treaty in December 1898, the colony was transferred to the U.S. and a military government took over. (How yellow journalism helped spark the Spanish-American War.)

Puerto Ricans continued to call for autonomy. In 1900, the Foraker Act established a civilian government—but stopped short of conferring full rights on Puerto Ricans. As legal scholar José A. Cabranes explains, white American legislators thought granting statehood to Puerto Rico would force the United States to admit the Philippines, which was another U.S. territory at the time, as well asendanger the interests of white laborers and farmers, and increase racial mixing within the U.S. Instead, they granted Puerto Rico “unorganized territory” status and offered Puerto Ricans limited self-governance without U.S. citizenship.

In 1917, that changed with the Jones-Shafroth Act. Seeking to address ongoing tensions on the island, Congress passed the law which gave most Puerto Ricans U.S. citizenship, but allowed the U.S. president and Congress to veto Puerto Rican laws. As citizens, Puerto Ricans also became subject to the newly enacted Selective Service Act, which led to the conscription of nearly 20,000 Puerto Rican men in World War I.

But it wasn’t until the Nationality Act of 1940 that all people born in Puerto Rico were designated citizens by birthright regardless of their parentage.

Then, in 1950 the United States gave the territory permission to draft its own constitution, provided it didn’t change Puerto Rico’s territorial status. In response, Puerto Rico held a constitutional convention, establishing its own republican form of government and bill of rights.

In 1952, Puerto Rico adopted the official name of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and a new constitution. Since then, there’s been an ongoing debate about what “commonwealth” means. Some scholars and policymakers contend the term is a mere moniker, as in the state names of Massachusetts or Pennsylvania. Others say it gives Puerto Rico a special status as a new kind of legal entity that renders it neither a territory nor a state.


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