1917: citizens, with an asterisk

Puerto Rico spent about four hundred years as a Spanish colony. In 1898, after the Spanish-American War, Spain handed the island to the United States in the Treaty of Paris. Nobody asked Puerto Ricans.

For nearly twenty years after that, people born on the island were neither Spanish nor American citizens. They were "citizens of Puerto Rico," a status that didn't mean much outside it.

The Jones Act

On March 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Jones–Shafroth Act. It made Puerto Ricans US citizens and gave the island an elected senate. A month later, the United States entered World War I, and thousands of Puerto Rican men were drafted.

Historians still argue about why citizenship came when it did: as a step toward equality, as a way to keep the island permanently, or both. What's clear is that it was citizenship on different terms.

The asterisk

• People living on the island can't vote in presidential elections, although they can vote in party primaries.
• The island sends one Resident Commissioner to Congress, who can speak and serve on committees but can't cast a final vote on laws.
• Move to any state, though, and you vote like any other citizen. Fly back to San Juan, and you lose that vote again.

1952 and the status question

In 1948, Puerto Ricans elected their own governor for the first time, Luis Muñoz Marín. On July 25, 1952, the island adopted its own constitution as the Estado Libre Asociado, the Commonwealth. July 25 is still a holiday.

What Puerto Rico should be next is the oldest argument at many family tables. Some want statehood, some independence, some a stronger version of the commonwealth. Islanders have voted on it several times since 1967, and every result has been argued over. Mami Bruny doesn't take sides here. She just asks that you know the history before you argue.

FuentesSources

• Jones–Shafroth Act, Pub. L. 64-368 (1917)
• Library of Congress, "The World of 1898: The Spanish-American War"
• Constitution of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (1952)