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Learn about Puerto Rico
787daily covers the news. This page gives you the background that makes the news make sense: plain-English primers on Puerto Rico's economy, government, utilities, culture, and more. Each section links to authoritative sources so you can dig as deep as you want.
Not advice. These primers are written for general orientation and link to the authoritative primary sources for specifics. Check important decisions with a qualified legal, tax or other professional.
Background by topic
Understanding Puerto Rico's Infrastructure
Puerto Rico's power grid, water systems, roads, bridges and ports had already suffered years of deferred maintenance tied to the island's fiscal crisis when Hurricane María struck in September 2017, causing an estimated $90 billion or more in island-wide damage.
- PREPA/AEE is the public power authority; it owns the generation plants and has been in federal bankruptcy (Title III under PROMESA) since 2017.
- Genera PR has operated PREPA's power plants since July 2023 under a private contract.
- LUMA Energy took over transmission and distribution in June 2021 under a 15-year contract. Outages and its performance remain a major public debate, and Governor Jenniffer González's administration has asked the Puerto Rico Supreme Court to void the contract (still pending in October 2026).
Puerto Rico's Economy: Pharma, Tourism, and Recovery
Puerto Rico's economy is shaped by several overlapping forces: a large pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturing sector, a growing tourism industry, and the long shadow of a decade-long fiscal and debt crisis that culminated in a 2017 Title III bankruptcy filing under the federal PROMESA law.
- Pharmaceuticals and medical devices are the backbone of Puerto Rico's manufacturing economy: the island makes a large share of the prescription drugs sold in the U.S.
- Tourism has grown significantly, and San Juan is a major cruise port.
- PROMESA (2016) and La Junta oversaw restructuring of ~$70 billion in debt; a confirmed debt plan reduced obligations substantially.
Community Life in Puerto Rico: Health, Housing, and Safety
Puerto Rico's community landscape is shaped by its status as a U.S. territory: residents access many federal programs (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid), though historically at lower per-capita rates than U.S. states.
- Healthcare: Puerto Rico receives lower per-capita Medicaid matching funds than U.S. states, a long-standing disparity that affects hospital capacity and provider supply.
- Education: The Department of Education operates public schools; enrollment has declined significantly over two decades as the population falls, leading to school consolidations.
- Housing: costs have risen in popular areas (partly linked to Act 60 migration) while many lower-income communities still recover from Hurricane María damage.
Culture, Food & Recreation in Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico blends Indigenous Taíno, West African, and Spanish heritage into a culture that is unmistakably its own, expressed through music (salsa, reggaeton, plena, bomba), food (mofongo, lechón, tostones, alcapurrias, sofrito), festivals, beaches, and sports.
- Music: Puerto Rican musicians in New York and San Juan helped create salsa; the island is a global center of reggaeton and keeps older traditions like plena and bomba, rooted in African heritage.
- Food: mofongo (mashed plantains), lechón (roasted pork), tostones, pasteles, and the sofrito-based cooking tradition are cornerstones of the cuisine.
- Festivals: Las Fiestas de la Calle San Sebastián (January, Old San Juan) is one of the Caribbean's largest street festivals; municipalities hold patron-saint festivals (fiestas patronales) year-round.
Puerto Rico's Political Status and Government
Puerto Rico is an unincorporated U.S. territory; its roughly 3.2 million residents (3.18 million in 2025, World Bank) are U.S. citizens but do not vote in presidential elections and are represented in Congress only by a non-voting Resident Commissioner in the House of Representatives.
- The island's non-voting Resident Commissioner serves a four-year term in the U.S. House of Representatives.
- Puerto Rico has its own Governor and a bicameral Legislative Assembly (Senate + House of Representatives).
- Status debate: recurring referendums have shown majority support for statehood, though Congress has not acted; independence and enhanced commonwealth options also have advocates.
Puerto Rico's Act 60 Incentive Code
Act 60 of 2019, formally the "Puerto Rico Incentives Code" (Ley 60-2019), is an omnibus law that consolidated dozens of prior tax incentive statutes, most notably Act 20 of 2012 (export services) and Act 22 of 2012 (individual investors).
- Export Services decree: ~4% corporate income tax on qualifying revenues from services exported outside Puerto Rico.
- Individual Resident Investor decree: 0% Puerto Rico tax on capital gains, interest, and dividends accrued after becoming a bona fide PR resident, for decrees applied for by December 31, 2026; a flat 4% for decrees applied for from January 1, 2027, through 2055 (Act 38-2026, signed March 10, 2026).
- Residency requirements include an IRS presence test (183+ days/year in PR), purchasing a home on the island, and an annual charitable donation to Puerto Rican nonprofits.
More guides
Hurricane hub
Puerto Rico sits at the center of the Atlantic basin's most active corridor. The hurricane hub covers season basics, the Saffir-Simpson scale, Puerto Rico's major storm history, live tracking resources, and preparedness guides.
Go to Hurricane hubMoving to Puerto Rico
Thinking about relocating? Our practical guide covers residency & Act 60 basics, driver's license, utilities, healthcare, schools, banking, and cost of living, each with links to the official source. General information, not legal or tax advice.
Open the relocation guidePuerto Rico Spanish, explained
What an advertencia is (an advisory, not a warning), what CRIM and DACO do, AAA's reservoir bands and the civic words in the news, each in plain English.
Open the glossaryDid you know?
Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens since 1917, when the Jones-Shafroth Act was signed into law.
Island residents can vote in presidential primaries but not the general election, and are represented in Congress by a non-voting Resident Commissioner.
El Yunque National Forest is the only tropical rainforest in the U.S. National Forest System.
Located in the Sierra de Luquillo mountains of northeastern Puerto Rico, El Yunque receives up to 200 inches of rain per year and holds about 240 tree species, 23 of them found nowhere else on Earth.
Mosquito Bay on Vieques holds the Guinness World Record as the brightest bioluminescent bay on the planet.
The bay's glow comes from microscopic dinoflagellates (Pyrodinium bahamense) that emit light when disturbed. Vieques is a small island municipality off Puerto Rico's east coast.
Puerto Rico has fielded its own Olympic team since the 1948 London Games.
Despite being a U.S. territory, Puerto Rico competes under its own flag. It has won Olympic gold twice: Mónica Puig in tennis (Rio 2016) and Jasmine Camacho-Quinn in the 100 m hurdles (Tokyo 2020).
The coquí frog, named for the sound it makes, is Puerto Rico's most beloved national symbol.
The common coquí (Eleutherodactylus coqui) is endemic to Puerto Rico; its distinctive "ko-KEE" call is heard across the island from dusk to dawn. Introduced to Hawaii, it became an invasive pest.
San Juan is the oldest continuously inhabited city under the U.S. flag, founded in 1521.
La Fortaleza, the official residence of Puerto Rico's Governor, is the oldest executive mansion in continuous use anywhere in the Americas. La Fortaleza and the San Juan National Historic Site's fortifications (El Morro, San Cristóbal) are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
More facts (6)
Puerto Rico has its own internet country code, .pr, run from San Juan.
The .pr domain is managed on the island by Gauss Research Laboratory, under the global root-zone registry. Puerto Rico also has its own telephone area codes, 787 and 939.
The island is divided into 78 municipios (municipalities), each with its own elected mayor and assembly.
The municipios range from densely urban San Juan to rural mountain towns like Maricao. Each holds its own annual patron-saint festival (fiestas patronales), making Puerto Rico one of the most festival-rich places in the Caribbean.
Spanish and English are both official languages of Puerto Rico.
Spanish is the everyday language and the language of the island’s courts; English is used in federal court and on many government forms.
The Arecibo Observatory, once the world's largest single-dish radio telescope, operated in Puerto Rico for 57 years before its collapse in 2020.
Built in 1963 in a natural karst sinkhole in the mountains of Arecibo, the observatory contributed to discoveries in pulsar astronomy, near-Earth asteroid tracking, and the SETI program. Its iconic dish appeared in films including GoldenEye and Contact.
As a U.S. territory, Puerto Rico has its own separate tax system: residents generally do not pay U.S. federal income tax on Puerto Rico-sourced income.
Puerto Rico's tax code is administered by Hacienda (the Treasury Department of Puerto Rico), not the IRS, for income earned on the island. This distinct status forms the legal basis for incentive programs like Act 60. Puerto Ricans do pay Social Security and Medicare taxes, and federal income tax applies to income from U.S. sources.
Bacardí has made rum in Puerto Rico since 1936, when it opened a plant in San Juan to save on U.S. import duty after Prohibition ended.
Its distillery in Cataño, across the bay from Old San Juan, opened in 1958 and is the largest premium rum distillery in the world.