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Updated: June 6, 2025
An author of the last century has this to say about the Porto Ricans: "They are well proportioned and delicately organized; at the same time they lack vigor, are slow and indolent, possess vivid imaginations, are vain and inconstant, though hospitable to strangers, and ardent lovers of liberty."
Ponce de Leon permitted the fiction that the Spaniards were angels save the mark! for it smoothed his progress in stripping the Porto Ricans of their poor little possessions, taking their lands for settlement, foraging over the island, forcing his religion upon them, and compelling them to serve him as miners, carriers, farmers, fishermen, and laborers.
He had appeared in the camp long before, coming, some said, from the Costa Ricans, with whom he became disgusted on account of their bad behavior in battle on several occasions when he was there to see.
Just before sunset, the band comes into the Plaza at Ponce and plays the "Star Spangled Banner" in front of headquarters as the American flag is drawn down for the night. The Puerto Ricans noticed that the American men took off their hats and stood with uncovered heads while the flag made its descent; and now they, too, show their loyalty by doffing their hats when the flag comes down.
If the unfavorable opinion of the character of the Puerto Ricans to which this personage gave expression in one of his official communications was the motive for his proceeding in this case, it would seem that he changed it toward the end of his administration, for he founded a Royal Academy of Belles-Lettres, and a library which was provided with books by occasional gifts from the public.
After the United States acquired Puerto Rico, a sizeable number of Puerto Ricans moved to the mainland. This flow began as a trickle at the beginning of the century, and it has grown rapidly since. Most of the Puerto Ricans settled in urban centers in the Northeast, and they established a large, Spanish-speaking community in New York City.
This, and the library of the Royal Academy, which the society had also acquired, formed a small but excellent nucleus, and with, the produce of the public subscription of 1884 it was enabled to stock its library with many of the best standard works of the time in Spanish and French, and open to the Puerto Ricans of all classes the doors of the first long-wished-for public library.
The Puerto Ricans are very fond of this amusement, and when they hear the music of the band, they gather around for a frolic. Once a week, at least, they gather for a dance; and this, with their cock-fighting and gambling, is almost their only form of amusement. Few of these people can write or read. They have no books and can not afford to buy even a newspaper.
The Porto Ricans are not seagoing people. The eastern part of the island offers less advantage to commerce than the western, being to the windward and affording less shelter to vessels. Porto Rico has more than seventy towns and cities, of which Ponce is the most important. Ponce has 22,000 inhabitants, with a jurisdiction numbering 47,000.
It is a somewhat curious illustration of the truth that history repeats itself that for ten years before the Continental Congress met in 1774, the British and Americans alike, with some few exceptions, discussed the question of the relationship between Great Britain and the American Colonies as one arising from the extension of the Constitution of the State of Great Britain over America, just as for the past eight years Americans, Porto Ricans and Filipinos alike, have, with few exceptions, discussed the question of the relationship between us and our Insular brethren as one arising from the extension of the Constitution of the United States over these regions.
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