Puerto Rico

In class on Thursday we had a guest speaker/substitute talk to us about Puerto Rico. I thought it was very interesting and I really did learn a lot. First of all, in the Spanish-American War Puerto Rico was to given to the U.S. by Spain. It is a territory of the U.S. and not a state. It remains a territory rather than independent of the U.S. because the people fear becoming poor and having problems much like Cuba does. Although Puerto Rico is a part of the U.S. they can not vote in federal elections. However, lucky for them, they also do not have to pay federal taxes. I thought it was really cool that I would not need a passport to visit and they do not need one to come here. I did think it was strange though that they have their own Olympic team. On the climate side of things, Puerto Rico seems very nice. It is pretty much summer year-round and the beaches are similar to Hawaii's beaches and have warm water! There is also a high possibility gor hurricanes because it is surrounded by water. Like in the U.S., they celebrate Christmas with a Santa Clause. However, they have another holiday for the three kings on January sixth. The most interesting thing to me was that most people do not know English. It's actually less than half of the population!