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Puerto Rico
An island of US citizens who cannot vote for president, still debating what it should be
Puerto Rico belongs to the United States without being part of it, a distinction the US Supreme Court drew more than a century ago and has never fully undone. Its 3.2 million residents are American citizens by birth, serve in the US military, and use the dollar, yet they cast no electoral votes for president and send only a nonvoting resident commissioner to Congress. Officially it is a commonwealth, the Estado Libre Asociado in Spanish, a phrase that translates literally as Free Associated State and satisfies almost no one. Statehood, independence, and the current arrangement each have committed supporters, and the island has voted on the question seven times. The answer, so far, rests in Washington rather than San Juan.
The island is the smallest and easternmost of the Greater Antilles, roughly 160 kilometers long and 55 wide, with the Atlantic on its north coast and the Caribbean Sea on its south. The Cordillera Central runs down its spine and peaks at Cerro de Punta, 1,338 meters, while El Yunque in the northeast holds the only tropical rainforest in the US national forest system. The smaller islands of Vieques, Culebra, and Mona belong to it. The territory runs its own constitutional government, with an elected governor and legislature, but federal law, federal courts, and Congress have the final word. Spanish is the everyday language and English is co-official. Pharmaceuticals and medical devices anchor the economy, alongside tourism and federal transfers.
Spain held the island for four centuries until the Treaty of Paris ceded it to the United States in 1898 after the Spanish-American War. Congress granted US citizenship in 1917, and in 1952 Puerto Ricans approved a constitution that created the commonwealth. Status referendums followed in 1967, 1993, 1998, 2012, 2017, 2020, and 2024, the last a nonbinding vote in which statehood won about 59 percent, free association about 30, and independence about 12, on a turnout near 64 percent. Congress has not acted on the results. Since 2016 a federal oversight board created under the PROMESA law has supervised the island's finances after a debt crisis, and Hurricane Maria in 2017 deepened a long population decline. The UN decolonization committee still reviews the case each year.