Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
In the 19th century, slavery in Puerto Rico was increased, as the Spanish, facing economic decline with the loss of all of its colonial territories in the Americas aside from Cuba and Puerto Rico, established and expanded sugar cane production in the island. Since 1789, slaves in Puerto Rico were allowed to earn or buy their freedom.
The term "white Puerto Rican", as well as that of "colored Puerto Rican", was coined by the United States Department of Defense in the first decade of the 20th century in order to handle their own North American problem with nonwhite people whom they were drafting and had its basis on the American one-drop rule. [6]
In 1859, Ruiz Belvis returned to Puerto Rico and befriended Ramón Emeterio Betances, joining "The Secret Abolitionist Society" founded by Betances. The society baptized and emancipated thousands of black slave children. The event, which was known as "aguas de libertad" (waters of liberty), was carried out at the Cathedral of Mayagüez. [4]
Descendants of former Puerto Rican slaves in 1898, the year the United States invaded Puerto Rico. Ramón Power y Giralt was a Puerto Rican naval hero, a captain in the Spanish navy who had risen to become president of the Spanish Courts. Power Y Giralt was among the delegates who proposed that slavery be abolished in Puerto Rico.
Many colonists, arriving without women, intermarried with their slaves or with Taínos. Their mixed-race descendants formed the first generations of the early Puerto Rican and Cuban populations. [75] On March 22, 1873, Spain abolished slavery in Puerto Rico. The owners were compensated. The slaves had little choice but to adapt.
Puerto Ricans (Spanish: Puertorriqueños), [12] [13] most commonly known as Boricuas, [a] [14] but also occasionally referred to as Borinqueños, Borincanos, [b] or Puertorros, [c] [15] are an ethnic group native to the Caribbean archipelago and island of Puerto Rico, and a nation identified with the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico through ancestry, culture, or history.
The Jones Act of 1917, which made Puerto Ricans U.S. citizens, paved the way for the drafting of Puerto Rico's Constitution and its approval by Congress and Puerto Rican voters in 1952. However, the political status of Puerto Rico, a Commonwealth controlled by the United States, remains an anomaly.
Slavery was never formally abolished in Spain itself, but had gradually declined into insignificance there by the early-mid nineteenth century. [3] The Moret Law was approved in Spain on July 4, 1870 for application in Cuba and later Puerto Rico, with other colonies following.