International Coffeehouses: Puerto Rico

The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico comprises the main island of Puerto Rico, together with the small offshore islands of Vieques and Culebra and numerous smaller islets, lying about 80 km (50 miles) east of Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic) in the Caribbean Sea. The climate is maritime-tropical, with an average annual temperature of 24°C (75°F) and a normal range between 17°C (63°F) and 36°C (97°F). The official languages are Spanish and English. Christianity is the dominant religion, and about 73% of the population are Roman Catholics. The flag (proportions 3 by 5) has five alternating red and white horizontal stripes of equal width, with a blue triangle, in the centre of which is a five-pointed white star, at the hoist. The capital is San Juan.

Citation:

Territory Flag (Puerto Rico), in Europa World online. London, Routledge. University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Retrieved 06 November 2018 from http://www.europaworld.com/entry/pr.FLAG. 

Country Profile (Puerto Rico), in Europa World online. London, Routledge. University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Retrieved 06 November 2018 from http://www.europaworld.com/entry/pr.is.2. 

The small Puerto Rican island is a natural reserve that has been nicknamed the “Galapagos of the Caribbean.”

Puerto Rico’s main island spans more than 9,000 square kilometers and is lined with large cities and infrastructure to support a population of 3.5 million people. But just 75 kilometers (45 miles) to the west, a lesser-known and mostly uninhabited island of the Puerto Rican archipelago rises from the Caribbean.

Mona Island is a fraction of the size of the main island, covering just 56 square kilometers (22 square miles). Very few people actually live here; some rangers inhabit the island in order to manage visitors and research projects. But the island’s primary inhabitants are the plants and animals, the diversity of which has led Mona to be nicknamed the “Galapagos of the Caribbean.”

According to Sebastián Martinuzzi, an ecologist and remote sensing expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the entire island is a limestone plateau with near-vertical cliffs on all sides. A narrow coastal plain is visible along the southwestern portion of the island. The dominant vegetation is subtropical dry forest, which thins as you move toward the east. An historic lighthouse, deactivated in 1976, is visible on the island’s eastern side.

The island is a natural reserve managed by the government of Puerto Rico. In 1975, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior designated Mona as a National Natural Landmark. Such distinctions are given to landscapes that preserve a significant biological or geological feature. Mona Island has both.

The National Park Service describes Mona Island and its tiny island neighbor to the northwest: “The sea caves on these islands are some of the largest, most extensive and most unusual in the world. The islands harbor a significant endemic biota and provide important seabird rookery areas.”   Puerto Rico is the only place in the United States and its territories where the threatened Higo Chumbo Cactus grows.

Citations:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Beaches_of_Puerto_Rico

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/87589/mona-island

Larry. (Photographer). (2011). Guava Strudel at Porto's Bakery. [digital image]. Retrieved on Nov 13, 2018 from https://flic.kr/p/9DDKFH. Used under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

Citation: Pamela Lalbachan. (1994). The Complete Caribbean Cookbook. Boston: Charles E. Tuttle Company, Inc.

José de Diego

Book from the Catalog: Cantos de Pitirre

Julia de Burgos

Book from the catalog: Antología poética

Manuel A. Alonso

Book from the catalog: El jíbaro

The Insider’s Guide to Puerto Rico is a travel documentary featuring the island’s best destinations.

Territory Map (Puerto Rico), in Europa World online. London, Routledge. University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Retrieved 08 November 2018 from http://www.europaworld.com/entry/pr.MAP.

Juan Morel Campos

Rafael Hernandez

Sylvia Rexach

Tito Puentes

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