Puerto Rico, officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, is a self-governing Caribbean archipelago and island organized as an unincorporated territory of the United States under the designation of commonwealth. Located about 1,000 miles (1,600 km) southeast of Miami, Florida, between the Dominican Republic in the Greater Antilles and the U.S. Virgin Islands in the Lesser Antilles, it consists of the eponymous main island and numerous smaller islands, including Vieques, Culebra, and Mona. With approximately 3.2 million residents, it is divided into 78 municipalities, of which the most populous is the capital municipality of San Juan, followed by those within the San Juan metropolitan area. Spanish and English are the official languages of the government, though Spanish predominates.
Puerto Ricans, most commonly known as Boricuas, but also occasionally referred to as Borinqueños, Borincanos, or Puertorros, 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. Puerto Ricans are predominately a tri-racial, Spanish-speaking, Christian society, descending in varying degrees from Indigenous Taíno natives, Southwestern European colonists, and West and Central African slaves, freedmen, and free Blacks. As citizens of a U.S. territory, Puerto Ricans have automatic birthright American citizenship, and are considerably influenced by American culture. The population of Puerto Ricans is between 9 and 10 million worldwide, with the overwhelming majority residing in Puerto Rico and mainland United States.
Mulatto is a racial classification that refers to people of mixed African and European ancestry only. When speaking or writing about a singular woman in English, the word is mulatta. The use of this term began in the United States of America shortly after the Atlantic Slave Trade began and its use was widespread, derogatory and disrespectful. After the post Civil Rights Era, the term is now considered to be both outdated and offensive in America. In other Anglophone countries such as the British Isles, and English and Dutch-speaking West Indian countries, the word mulatto is still used. The use of this word does not have the same negative associations found among English speakers. Among Latinos in both the US and Latin America, the word is used in every day speech and its meaning is a source of racial and ethnic pride. In four of the Latin-based languages, the default, masculine word ends with the letter "o" and is written as follows: Spanish and Portuguese – mulato; Italian – mulatto. The French equivalent is mulâtre. In English, the masculine plural is written as mulattoes while in Spanish and Portuguese it is mulatos. The masculine plural in Italian is mulatti and in French it is mulâtres. The feminine plurals are: English – mulattas; Spanish and Portuguese – mulatas; Italian – mulatte; French – mulâtresses.
Dominicans are an ethno-national people, a people of shared ancestry and culture, who have ancestral roots in the Dominican Republic.
The region known as Hispanic America and historically as Spanish America or Castilian America is all the Spanish-speaking countries of the American continent. In all of these countries, Spanish is the main language - sometimes sharing official status with one or more indigenous languages or English, and Latin Catholicism is the predominant religion.
Afro-Latin Americans or Black Latin Americans are Latin Americans of sub-Saharan African ancestry.
Puerto Rican Spanish is the variety of the Spanish language as characteristically spoken in Puerto Rico and by millions of people of Puerto Rican descent living in the United States and elsewhere. It belongs to the group of Caribbean Spanish variants and, as such, is largely derived from Canarian Spanish and Andalusian Spanish. Outside of Puerto Rico, the Puerto Rican accent of Spanish is also commonly heard in the U.S. Virgin Islands and many U.S. mainland cities like Orlando, New York City, Philadelphia, Miami, Tampa, Boston, Cleveland, and Chicago, among others. However, not all stateside Puerto Ricans have knowledge of Spanish. Opposite to island-born Puerto Ricans who primarily speak Spanish, many stateside-born Puerto Ricans primarily speak English, although many stateside Puerto-Ricans are fluent in Spanish and English, and often alternate between the two languages.
The United States has a racially and ethnically diverse population. At the federal level, race and ethnicity have been categorized separately. The most recent United States census recognized five racial categories, as well as people who belong to two or more of the racial categories. The United States also recognizes the broader notion of ethnicity. The 2000 census and 2010 American Community Survey inquired about the "ancestry" of residents, while the 2020 census allowed people to enter their "origins". The Census Bureau also classified respondents as either Hispanic or Latino, identifying as an ethnicity, which comprises the minority group in the nation.
Afro–Puerto Ricans, most commonly known as Afroboricuas, but also occasionally referred to as Afroborinqueños,Afroborincanos, or Afropuertorros, are Puerto Ricans of full or partial sub-Saharan African origin, who are predominately the descendants of slaves, freedmen, and free Blacks original to West and Central Africa. The term Afro-Puerto Rican is also used to refer to historical or cultural elements in Puerto Rican society associated with this community, including music, language, cuisine, art, and religion.
The culture of Puerto Rico is the result of a number of internal and indigenous influences, both past and present. Modern cultural manifestations showcase the island's rish history and help create an identity that is uniquely Puerto Rican - Taíno, Spanish, African, and North American.
Stateside Puerto Ricans, also ambiguously known as Puerto Rican Americans, or Puerto Ricans in the United States, are Puerto Ricans who are in the United States proper of the 50 states and the District of Columbia who were born in or trace any family ancestry to the unincorporated US territory of Puerto Rico.
The Spanish West Indies, Spanish Caribbean or the Spanish Antilles were Spanish territories in the Caribbean. In terms of governance of the Spanish Empire, The Indies was the designation for all its overseas territories and was overseen by the Council of the Indies, founded in 1524 and based in Spain. When the Crown established the Viceroyalty of New Spain in 1535, the islands of the Caribbean came under its jurisdiction.
Caribbean Americans or West Indian Americans are Americans who trace their ancestry to the Caribbean. Caribbean Americans are a multi-ethnic and multi-racial group that trace their ancestry further in time to Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. As of 2016, about 13 million — about 4% of the total U.S. population — have Caribbean ancestry.
Historically, Puerto Rico, which is now an unincorporated territory of the U.S., has been dominated by a settler society of religiously and ethnically diverse Europeans, primarily of Spanish descent, and Sub-Saharan Africans. The majority of Puerto Ricans are multi-ethnic, including people of European, African, Asian, Native American, and of mixed-ethnic descent.
Large-scale Chinese immigration to Puerto Rico and the Caribbean began during the 19th century. Chinese immigrants had to face different obstacles that prohibited or restricted their entry in Puerto Rico.
Taíno is a term referring to a historic Indigenous people of the Caribbean, whose culture has been continued today by their descendants and Taíno revivalist communities. Indigenous people in the Greater Antilles did not refer to themselves as Taínos, as the term was coined by the anthropologist Constantine Samuel Rafinesque in 1836. The Indigenous peoples of the Greater Antilles are sometimes referred to as Island Arawaks. At the time of European contact in the late 15th century, they were the principal inhabitants of most of what is now Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Haiti, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, and the northern Lesser Antilles. The Lucayan branch of the Taíno were the first New World peoples encountered by Christopher Columbus, in the Bahama Archipelago on October 12, 1492. The Taíno historically spoke a dialect of the Arawakan language group. They lived in agricultural societies ruled by caciques with fixed settlements and a matrilineal system of kinship and inheritance. Taíno religion centered on the worship of zemis.
Non-Spanish cultural diversity in Puerto Rico and the basic foundation of Puerto Rican culture began with the mixture of the Spanish-Portuguese, Taíno Arauak and African cultures in the beginning of the 16th century. In the early 19th century, Puerto Rico's cultures became more diversified with the arrival of hundreds of families from Non-Spanish countries such as Corsica, France, Germany, Greece, Palestine, Türkye, Pakistan, India, England, and Ireland. To a lesser extent other settlers came from Lebanon, China, Japan, Slavic countries of Eastern Europe and Scotland.
In the 2020 United States census, the number of people who identified as "European alone" was 536,044 or 16.5%, with an additional non-Hispanic 24,548, for a total population of 560,592.
The Dominican diaspora consists of Dominican people and their descendants living outside of the Dominican Republic. Countries with significant numbers of Dominicans include the United States and Spain. These two nations have had historical ties to the Dominican Republic and thus it is the primary destination for many migrants. Many Dominicans migrate to the United States via Puerto Rico in rafts.
Mixed Dominicans, also referred to as mulatto, mestizo or historically quadroon or castizo, are Dominicans who are of mixed ancestry, these stand out for having brown skin. Representing 71.72% of the Dominican Republic's population, they are by far the single largest racial grouping of the country.
