Borinquen MadePeriod
2000-2026
The entries in this magazine that fall in these years, in the order the events occurred. Freeze 2026-08-22. Not current events in these History essays; News is. Not original historical research.
Bad Bunny before Bad Bunny was Bad Bunny
In 2016 he was uploading songs to the internet while working retail in Vega Baja. Two years later his debut album reached a global audience.
Puerto Rico v. Sanchez Valle, 2016
Puerto Rico is not a separate sovereign for double jeopardy.
PROMESA, June 30, 2016
A federal oversight board, not an essay about a hurricane.
Bankruptcy: filed in 2017, closed in 2022
Puerto Rico filed the largest public-sector debt restructuring in U.S. history in May 2017; it would not close until nearly five years later.
A referendum almost no one voted in
Puerto Rico's fifth status referendum produced an avalanche for statehood, and turnout so low it undercut the result before the counting was done.
Irma's warning, María's blow
Two hurricanes hit Puerto Rico within two weeks in September 2017; the second, María, became the worst natural disaster in the island's modern history.
The $300 million contract from Montana
Weeks after María, Puerto Rico's electric utility handed a no-bid $300 million repair contract to a tiny two-year-old company from Montana.
Counting the dead
Puerto Rico's government said 64 people died because of Hurricane María. A year of independent journalism and a lawsuit told a very different story.
June 11, 2017: ninety-seven percent and twenty-three percent
About 97 percent of the votes cast for statehood, and about 23 percent turnout.
María at Yabucoa, September 20, 2017
High-end Category Four near Yabucoa at about 1015 UTC, 155 miles per hour, 920 millibars. TCR track, not a death table.
The PREPA grid
The island grid of a public utility, broken by María, still unreliable in the EIA's later interruption tables.
LUMA takes the grid
Three years after María exposed an electric grid held together by deferred maintenance, Puerto Rico handed it to a private consortium.
Counting María: 64, 4,645, 2,975
Three layers, three windows, three methods. Not a blended headline.
After María, Florida
ACS and PRCS: moves to the mainland jumped, and a third of them went to Florida.
Housing and flood maps after María
Advisory Base Flood Elevations, then the National Flood Hazard Layer. A year of reconstruction, dated.
Telegramgate and "Ricky Renuncia"
A leaked chat between Governor Ricardo Rosselló and his inner circle set off the largest street protests in Puerto Rico's modern history.
Punta Ventana falls
An earthquake swarm in southwest Puerto Rico destroyed an iconic rock arch and left tens of thousands afraid to sleep under a roof.
COVID-19 reaches the island
Weeks before its first confirmed case, Puerto Rico's government moved faster and harder than most of the U.S. mainland.
A simple majority, a non-binding vote
For the first time, Puerto Rico's 2020 status referendum asked a single yes or no on statehood, and statehood won, narrowly.
The biggest album in the world was made in Puerto Rico
In 2022, Bad Bunny's Un Verano Sin Ti became the most successful album of the year on a global scale: a Spanish-language album crowning the world.