As I watched Bad Bunny’s 2026 Super Bowl Halftime show, I felt a mix of curiosity and pride. I’m not Puerto Rican—nor Latino—but as a Black American, I recognize what it means to have a culture that is rich, influential, and still misunderstood or diminished. So to see those stories, those sounds, that energy, on one of the world’s biggest stages felt meaningful. But the performance did something else, too. It brought renewed attention to Puerto Rico itself: its history, its political status, and its complicated relationship with the United States.
A Different Kind of Colony
While most Latin American nations gained independence between 1800 and 1825, Puerto Rico never has. It passed from the hands of Spain to those of the United States in 1898, and has remained in American hands ever since. Puerto Ricans are US citizens, but cannot vote for president while on the island, hold no representation in Congress, and are subject to federal laws they have no democratic power to change. The island is neither sovereign nor a state. Puerto Rico belongs to the United States, but is not a part of it.
What does that actually mean for the people who live there? How does it affect their identity, where they live, and their well being? And how does this look compared to the US, whom the island could possibly fully join? Or compared to other Latin American countries, like Mexico, Colombia, and Guatemala who gained their independence long ago? I went to the data to find out.
Puerto Ricans, Black Americans, and the Idea of Freedom
My first real exposure to Puerto Rican culture came in college in New York. I noticed quickly how deeply Puerto Rican culture shaped the city through music, food, language, and community. That’s where I first heard Héctor Lavoe, ate arroz con gandules, and began to understand Puerto Rico’s influence on salsa and hip hop alike. But beyond culture, I saw something else: proximity.
Black Americans and Puerto Ricans often lived in the same neighborhoods, navigated the same systems, and faced many of the same constraints—underfunded schools, over-policing, limited access to healthcare, and economic margins that never seemed to move. These weren’t abstract parallels. They were lived realities.
I remember the first time that I went to Spanish Harlem to visit a friend. I didn’t even know that this area of Harlem even existed. And I remember it feeling so familiar. It was vibrant, loud, people hanging out on stoops, music permeating the air. And of course someone somewhere cooking something that smelled delicious. All of the realities weren’t hard ones.
Freedom from Different Perspectives
Later I’d learn that there are more Puerto Ricans living on the US mainland than on the island itself — roughly two to one. When I think about why that is, I understand why so many Puerto Rican Americans would long for a homeland that is free. A place to live and govern without the interference of an entity that sees you as Other. Because at its core, the conversation about independence and sovereignty is a conversation about freedom — and I think Puerto Ricans in the diaspora and Black Americans tend to share a very specific version of that longing: the dream of a place where we are not the exception, not the asterisk, not the managed population.
And yet. When I think about Puerto Ricans on the island, I can also understand why many people believe full integration into the United States would be the better path. So many left their homes precisely because of what the US seemed to promise. Why shouldn’t they be able to access that promise, tapping into a newfound socio-economic freedom, without leaving?
What the Data Actually Says
The Pull of the U.S.
The population of Puerto Rico has declined by more than 500,000 people — roughly 17% — since 2010. Over that same period, the Puerto Rican population on the US mainland grew by 1.4 million. People left in search of stability and opportunity. The numbers help explain why: 37% of Puerto Ricans on the island live below the poverty line. The US state with the highest poverty rate, Louisiana, sits near 19%. Puerto Rico’s poverty rate is, in other words, nearly double that of the poorest US state.
| State | Population Percent below poverty level |
| Puerto Rico | 37.3% |
| Louisiana | 18.7% |
| Mississippi | 17.8% |
| District of Columbia | 17.3% |
| West Virginia | 16.7% |
| New Mexico | 16.4% |
The structural reasons for this aren’t mysterious. The Jones Act — a 1920 maritime law requiring that all goods shipped between US ports travel on American-built, American-crewed ships — functions as a de facto tariff on the island, estimated to cost Puerto Rico roughly $1.4 billion annually (Hillberry). The island cannot negotiate its own trade deals, cannot choose its shipping partners, and has no vote on the laws that govern its commerce. Its largest trading partner is the US, which can benefit a smaller economy — but the benefits are harder to see when that party has no agency over the terms.
A Latin American Lens
When you widen the frame to compare Puerto Rico with Latin American nations that have been independent for two centuries, something interesting happens. Measured by poverty headcount ratio at $8.30 a day, Puerto Rico outperforms most of its Spanish-speaking regional neighbors. Only Panama ranks higher in the sample — itself a country with a long and complicated special relationship with the United States.
Puerto Rico also records one of the lowest remittance rates as a share of GDP in the region — a signal that its economy is not dependent on outside transfers in the way that Haiti’s or Guatemala’s is, where remittances approach 20% of GDP. Similarly, Puerto Rico’s Gross National Income per capita trails only Panama in Latin America.
The picture that emerges is contradictory: Puerto Rico is too poor to belong fully to the United States, and too prosperous to fit neatly into Latin America. It occupies a middle space that is the direct product of its political status. Hover on the chart below for more information about each line.
This raises an uncomfortable possibility: Proximity to power may matter more than independence itself.
What Puerto Ricans Actually Want
Since becoming a US territory, Puerto Rico has held seven referendums on its political status. The choices tend to be maintain the status quo as a US commonwealth, become the 51st state, or full independence. In every one, full independence has received the lowest vote share — historically under 5%, breaking out to 12% in the most recent 2024 vote. Statehood, by contrast, received 58% in 2024 and has generally led across the referendums, though three of the seven are considered flawed due to low turnout or mass blank ballots.
Taking the results at face value, the majority sentiment on the island seems to favor full integration into the United States — presumably on the theory that if the entity governing you is going to shape your life regardless, you might as well have a seat at the table. I understand the logic. I’m not sure I trust it.
All That Glitters
What I know about the United States — from the vantage point of a Black American — is that it has never been especially good at fairly governing people it considers Other. One case in point is Hurricane Katrina. It was not just a natural disaster; it was a revelation of how the American state responds when the people most affected are Black and poor. Or we can look at the everyday reality of American life—where Black and brown communities are more likely to face over-policing, underinvestment, and limited access to resources.
Puerto Ricans on the mainland already live inside that contradiction — American on paper, other in practice. Statehood might expand the formal rights available to Puerto Ricans, but it would not, on its own, change how the United States relates to people it has historically seen as peripheral. Formal belonging has never been the same thing as actual belonging. Inclusion does not equal equity.
On the other hand, Puerto Rico’s comparative economic performance in the region suggests that independence is not a guarantee of prosperity either. The Latin American nations that gained their freedom two hundred years ago have spent those centuries navigating the interests of more powerful nations — first European empires, then the United States — with varying degrees of success. Freedom is the beginning of the story, not the end of it.
Rethinking Independence
So what does independence actually mean? Perhaps the most honest thing the data reveals is that the question isn’t simply independence vs. dependence. Political autonomy, economic self-sufficiency, cultural freedom are all factors that come to mind.
What seems to be important are the terms on which a people are governed, and whether those terms are ever truly theirs to set. Puerto Rico has never had that. Whether it achieves it through statehood, sovereignty, or something yet unimagined, that is the thing that is really at stake.
This is the first in a series on independence in Latin America. Next: political independence vs. economic autonomy.
Sources
Remittances recibidos for PR: Junta de Planificación. Gobierno de Puerto Rico. https://jp.pr.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/APENDICE-ESTADISTICO-2025.xlsx
Remittances received for All Countries: WorldBank. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/BX.TRF.PWKR.CD.DT?locations=PR
Population, GDP, Trade, Poverty (PR excluded for poverty). For LatAm chosen countries. World Bank Development Indicators. https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators#
All states poverty breakout, incl PR. ACS. https://data.census.gov/table?q=S1701+&g=010XX00US$0400000
ACS Latino population origin breakout. B03001. https://data.census.gov/table/ACSDT1Y2014.B03001?q=B03001:+Hispanic+or+Latino+Origin+by+Specific+Origin
Hillberry, Russell and Jimenez, Manuel I. (Purdue University). The Jones Act’s Cost to Puerto Rico. Working paper, cited in Cato Institute analysis, 2024. cato.org
