| Summary: | "Puerto Rico has a peculiar status among Latin American and Caribbean countries because of its dependence on the United States. On July 25, 1898, the United States invaded the Island during the Spanish-Cuban-American War of 1898, and has since dominated the Island militarily, politically, and economically. In 1901, the US Supreme Court defined Puerto Rico as "foreign to the United States in a domestic sense" because it was neither a state of the union nor an independent sovereign republic. Congress granted US citizenship to all residents of Puerto Rico in 1917, but the Island remained an unincorporated territory of the United States. Puerto Rico became a US Commonwealth (or Estado Libre Asociado, in Spanish) in 1952, while the US federal government retained jurisdiction in most state affairs. Although Puerto Rico has a resident commissioner in the US Congress, it has no voting representatives and Puerto Ricans living on the Island cannot vote for the US president or vice president. Today, the Island's electorate is still almost evenly split between supporting Commonwealth status and becoming the 51st state of the American union; only a small minority advocates independence. US culture pervades the Island, from the influence of the English language on the Spanish vernacular to the homegrown varieties of Pentecostal churches and the proliferation of fast-food restaurants. Puerto Rico currently maintains colonial ties with the United States-as evidenced, for instance, in its reliancedependence on massive transfer payments from the federal government and its colossal public debt to US creditors. In some respects, however, the Island does not fit the standard image of colonial societies such as the British and French overseas possessions before World War II. Contemporary Puerto Rico enjoys a greater degree of self-government than most classic colonies. The Island combines conventional elements of colonial rule with political autonomy (though restricted by the imposition of a fiscal oversight board since 2016), a relatively high standard of living (undermined by a long economic recession beginning in 2006), and a strong national culture (as expressed, for example, in the retention of the Spanish language as the primary means of communication on the Island). Puerto Rico may well be considered a "postcolonial colony" in the sense of a people with a tenacious persistent national identity but little desire for a nation-state, living in a territory that legally "belongs to but is not a part of the United States.""--
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