Foreword
For four centuries, from the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492 until the Spanish American War of 1889, Puerto Rico was a Spanish colony. Today, with a population of nearly four million people (approximately the same as Kentucky), the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, as it is officially known, is the largest American territory. Puerto Rico has sent a non-voting delegate, or resident commissioner, to the U.S. Congress since 1900, and its residents have been statutory U.S. citizens since 1917. The island elected its first governor in 1947.Puerto Rico’s current commonwealth form of government has been in place since 1952, when…
