30 - Puerto Rico

Summary

Much of the raw material for the history of Puerto Rico since 1940 is buried in the statistics gathered by various agencies of the commonwealth government. Puerto Rico is probably one of the most ‘measured’ societies in Latin America. The statistics are generally reliable, if copious and not always easily available. The yearly Economic Reports to the Governor, published by the Planning Board, are a useful source of basic information on the economy, as are the monthly reports on employment and unemployment put out by the Department of Labor and Human Resources. The Division of Social Planning of the Planning Board has published a number of special reports and studies; an example is its 1974 study, ‘Informe recursos humanos: Puerto Rican migrants, a socio-economic study’. The annual reports of the important government agencies, such as the Departments of Public Education, Commerce, Agriculture, Labor and Human Resources, and Fomento, and the Electoral Commission, are sources of useful, though undigested, data.

The Report of the United States–Puerto Rico Commission on the Status of Puerto Rico (Washington, D.C., 1966), with its supplementary background papers, is a major source of information on Puerto Rico as well as a crucial document in itself. Another source of important data on the Puerto Rican economy, as of the late 1970s, is the two-volume Economic Study of Puerto Rico: Report to the President Prepared by the Interagency Task Force Coordinated by the U.S. Department of Commerce (Washington, D.C., 1979).