Puerto Rico
For its first 250 years as a Spanish colony, Puerto Rico was largely a military establishment fortified to protect the sea lanes between Spain and its American colonies. Most farms were small, and farmers raised subsistence crops, such as vegetables, rice, plantains, and corn. By the end of the 18th century, export crops began to play an important role in the economy.
Puerto Ricans exported sugar, coffee, tobacco, and cotton, as well as meat, animal hides, and other items. The economy grew during the 19th century, but agriculture remained dominant. Coffee, tobacco, and sugar became the most valuable export crops during the 19th century Puerto Rico traded mostly with Spain and other European nations (Abodaher, 1993).
One of the immediate effects of the Spanish-American War was to place Puerto Rico within the U.S. tariff wall. In 1870, Congress had enacted a tariff to protect domestic producers of beet sugar, and this had the effect of driving many of the island's sugar producers into bankruptcy. Once the United States acquired jurisdiction over Puerto Rico, however, there was free trade between the two. Capital flowed into Puerto Rico with the effect of modernizing its sugar processing mills. A glance at the production figures illustrates the magnitude of sugar in the Puerto Rican economy.
In 1899, approximately 40,000 tons of sugar was produced, whereas in 1934, Puerto Rico produced approximately one million tons. By 1940, the sugar industry employed one-fourth of the labor force (Abodaher, 1993). Sugar paid the major part of the insular taxes, employed the major part of its workers, created the major part of its business, supported seventeen of Puerto Rico's twenty seaports in the sense that those seventeen handled sugar exclusively and had no warehouses or other facilities for anything else..........
