Borinquen MadeA history magazine in Spanish
The history of Puerto Rico in one order of time
Puerto Rico is the easternmost island of the Greater Antilles, a Caribbean territory whose history reads as a single arc: the first Taíno peoples, the centuries of colony under Spain, the transfer of the island to the United States, the territory and the Free Associated State. Current events on that arc are dated on News. This magazine arranges that arc by the time of the events, with no sections breaking the reading. Choose the years you want to read and start there.
Freeze 2026-08-22. Not current events in these History essays; News is. Not original historical research.
Orlando as the diaspora's capital
By 2010, a second capital of Puerto Rican life in Florida.
Act 20, Act 22, and the exemption that followed
A pair of 2012 laws offering some of the lowest rates under the U.S. flag became, within a decade, a flashpoint over gentrification.
A two-question ballot and a "trap"
Puerto Rico's fourth status referendum produced a confusing two-question format and results that were contested as soon as they were counted.
Two-question vote, November 6, 2012
Two questions; do not compress them into "statehood won."
Junk bond status
In 2014, America's three big rating agencies downgraded Puerto Rico's bonds to junk in the same year.
"The debt is not payable"
In 2015, Puerto Rico's governor said aloud what many feared: the island could not pay everything it owed.
South coast drought
A dry agricultural belt in the rain shadow, canals and all. Climate and crops, not a US Drought Monitor board.
PROMESA and the rise of "La Junta"
Congress's 2016 answer to the debt crisis took budget power away from Puerto Rico's elected government and handed it to an unelected federal board.
Puerto Rico's first Olympic gold
A 22-year-old unseeded tennis player named Mónica Puig gave Puerto Rico its first Olympic gold medal in Rio.
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.