THE UNITED STATES TAKES POSSESSION OF PUERTO RICO

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Puerto Rico, that was taken by the United States in possession on a day like today in 1898.

Puerto Rico is a self-governing Caribbean archipelago and island organized as an unincorporated territory of the United States under the designation of commonwealth.

Located about 1,600 km southeast of Miami, Florida, between the Dominican Republic in the Greater Antilles and the U.S. Virgin Islands in the Lesser Antilles, it consists of the eponymous main island and numerous smaller islands, including Vieques, Culebra, and Mona.

With approximately 3.2 million residents, it is divided into 78 municipalities, of which the most populous is the capital municipality of San Juan, followed by those within its surrounding metropolitan area. Spanish and English are the official languages of the government, though Spanish predominates.

Puerto Rico was settled by a succession of peoples beginning 2,000 to 4,000 years ago; these included the Ortoiroid, Saladoid, and Taíno. It was claimed by Spain following the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1493 and colonization by Juan Ponce de León in 1508.

Puerto Rico was contested by other European powers, but remained a Spanish possession for the next four centuries. An influx of African slaves and Spaniard settlers, primarily from the Canary Islands and Andalusia, vastly changed the cultural and demographic landscape of the island. Within the Spanish Empire, Puerto Rico played a secondary but strategic role compared to wealthier colonies like Peru and New Spain.

By the late 19th century, a distinct Puerto Rican identity began to emerge, centered around a fusion of indigenous, African, and European elements.

In 1898, following the Spanish–American War, Puerto Rico was acquired by the United States.

Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens since 1917, and can move freely between the island and the mainland. However, Puerto Ricans who do not reside in a U.S. state are disenfranchised from federal elections and generally do not pay federal income tax.

In common with four other territories, Puerto Rico sends a nonvoting representative to the U.S. Congress, called a Resident Commissioner, and participates in presidential primaries; as it is not a state, Puerto Rico does not have a vote in the U.S. Congress, which oversees it under the Puerto Rico Federal Relations Act of 1950. 

Congress approved a territorial constitution in 1952, allowing residents of the archipelago and island to elect a governor in addition to a senate and house of representatives. The political status of Puerto Rico is an ongoing debate.

Beginning in the mid-20th century, the U.S. government, together with the Puerto Rico Industrial Development Company, launched a series of economic projects to develop Puerto Rico into an industrial high-income economy. It is classified by the International Monetary Fund as a developed jurisdiction with an advanced, high-income economy; it ranks 40th on the Human Development Index. The major sectors of Puerto Rico's economy are manufacturing (primarily pharmaceuticals, petrochemicals, and electronics) followed by services (namely tourism and hospitality).

Puerto Rico is Spanish for rich port. Puerto Ricans often call the island Borinquen, a derivation of Borikén, its indigenous Taíno name, which is popularly said to mean Land of the Valiant Lord. The terms boricua, borinqueño, and borincano are commonly used to identify someone of Puerto Rican heritage, and derive from Borikén and Borinquen respectively. The island is also popularly known in Spanish as La Isla del Encanto, meaning the island of enchantment.

Columbus named the island San Juan Bautista, in honor of Saint John the Baptist, while the capital city was named Ciudad de Puerto Rico (Rich Port City). Eventually traders and other maritime visitors came to refer to the entire island as Puerto Rico, while San Juan became the name used for the main trading/shipping port and the capital city.

The official name of the entity in Spanish is Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico (Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), while its official English name is Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

In 1898, during the Spanish-American War, Puerto Rico was invaded and subsequently became a possession of the U.S. The first years of the 20th century were marked by the struggle to obtain greater democratic rights from the U.S.

The Foraker Act of 1900 established a civil government, ending rule by American generals and the Department of War. A U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Ortega v. Lara, 202 U.S. 339, 342 (1906), involving the Foraker Act and referring to the island as the acquired country, soon affirmed that the U.S. Constitution applied within its territory and that any domestic Puerto Rican laws which did not conflict with it remained in force.

The Jones Act of 1917, which made Puerto Ricans U.S. citizens, paved the way for the drafting of Puerto Rico's Constitution and its approval by Congress and Puerto Rican voters in 1952. However, the political status of Puerto Rico, a Commonwealth controlled by the U.S., remains an anomaly.

More information: Puerto Rico

You know, you may not be born in Puerto Rico,
but Puerto Rican is definitely born in you.

Rosie Perez

JOSEPH DE CA'TH LON VISITS ARECIBO IN PUERTO RICO

Joseph de Ca'th Lon in Arecibo, Puerto Rico

The Arecibo Observatory is a radio telescope in the municipality of Arecibo, Puerto Rico. This observatory is operated by SRI International, USRA and UMET, under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation (NSF). 

The observatory is the sole facility of the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center (NAIC), which refers to the observatory, and the staff that operates it. From its construction in the 1960s until 2011, the observatory was managed by Cornell University.

The observatory's 305-metre radio telescope was the largest single-aperture telescope from its completion in 1963 until July 2016 when the Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope was completed. It is used in three major areas of research: radio astronomy, atmospheric science, and radar astronomy. Scientists who want to use the observatory submit proposals that are evaluated by an independent scientific board.

More information:  Arecibo Observatory

The observatory has appeared in film, gaming and television productions, gaining more recognition in 1999 when it began to collect data for the SETI@home project. It has been listed on the American National Register of Historic Places starting in 2008.

In 1974, the Arecibo Message, an attempt to communicate with potential extraterrestrial life, was transmitted from the radio telescope toward the globular cluster Messier 13, about 25,000 light-years away.  The 1,679 bit pattern of 1s and 0s defined a 23 by 73 pixel bitmap image that included numbers, stick figures, chemical formulas and a crude image of the telescope.

Arecibo is the source of data for the SETI@home and Astropulse distributed computing projects put forward by the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley and was used for the SETI Institute's Project Phoenix observations. The Einstein@Home distributed computing project has found more than 20 pulsars in Arecibo data.

Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is a program to search for extraterrestrial life or advanced technologies. SETI aims to answer the question Are we alone in the Universe? by scanning the skies for transmissions from intelligent civilizations elsewhere in our galaxy. In comparison, METI, Messaging to Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, refers to the active search by transmitting messages.

More information: SETI Institute

Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. 

Try to make sense of  what you see, 

and wonder about what makes the universe exist. 
Be curious. 

Stephen Hawking

PAU CASALS: FROM EL VENDRELL TO THE UNITED NATIONS

Pau Casals i Defilló

Pau Casals i Defilló (December 29, 1876-October 22, 1973) was a cellist and conductor from El Vendrell, El Baix Penedès in Catalonia. He is generally regarded as the pre-eminent cellist of the first half of the 20th century, and one of the greatest cellists of all time. 

He made many recordings throughout his career, of solo, chamber, and orchestral music, also as conductor, but he is perhaps best remembered for the recordings of the Bach Cello Suites he made from 1936 to 1939.

His father, Carles Casals i Ribes (1852–1908), was a parish organist and choirmaster. He gave Casals instruction in piano, song, violin, and organ. He was also a very strict disciplinarian. When Casals was young his father would pull the piano out from the wall and have him and his brother, Artur, stand behind it and name the notes and the scales that his father was playing.

More information: Fundació Pau Casals / Pau Casals Foundation

In 1899, Casals played at The Crystal Palace in London, and later for Queen Victoria at Osborne House, her summer residence, accompanied by Ernest Walker. On November 12, and December 17, 1899, he appeared as a soloist at Lamoureux Concerts in Paris, to great public and critical acclaim.

Pau Casals with John Fitzerald and Jackie Kennedy

On January 15, 1904, Casals was invited to play at the White House for President Theodore Roosevelt. On March 9, of that year he made his debut at Carnegie Hall in New York, playing Richard Strauss's Don Quixote under the baton of the composer.

Casals was an ardent supporter of the Republican government, and after its defeat vowed not to return to Spain until democracy was restored. Casals performed at the Gran Teatre del Liceu on October 19, 1938, possibly his last performance in Catalonia during his exile.

In the last weeks of 1936, he already settled in the French Catalan village of Prada de Conflent, near the Spanish Catalan border; between 1939 and 1942 he made sporadic appearances as a cellist in the unoccupied zone of southern France and in Switzerland.

More information: Els sons de Pau Casals / Pau Casals' sounds

Pau Casals in the UNO, 1971

So fierce was his opposition to the dictatorial regime of Franco in Spain that he refused to appear in countries that recognized the authoritarian Spanish government. 

He made a notable exception when he took part in a concert of chamber music in the White House on November 13, 1961, at the invitation of President John F. Kennedy, whom he admired. On December 6, 1963, Casals was awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom.

One of his last compositions was the Hymn of the United Nations. He conducted its first performance in a special concert at the United Nations on October 24, 1971, two months before his 95th birthday. On that day, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, U Thant, awarded Pau Casals the U.N. Peace Medal in recognition of his stance for peace, justice and freedom. Casals accepted the medal and made his famous I Am a Catalan speech, where he stated that Catalonia had the first democratic parliament, long before England did.

More information: El cant dels ocells / The song of the birds

Casals died in 1973 at Auxilio Mutuo Hospital in San Juan, Puerto Rico, at the age of 96, from complications of a heart attack he had three weeks earlier. He was buried at the Puerto Rico National Cemetery. He did not live to see the end of the Franco dictatorial regime, which occurred two years later.

In 1979 his remains were interred in his hometown of El Vendrell, Catalonia. In 1989, Casals was posthumously awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Al veure despuntar

el major lluminar

en la nit més ditxosa,
els ocellets cantant,

a festejar-lo van

amb sa veu melindrosa.

In seeing emerge

the greatest light

during the most celebrated of nights,
the little birds sing,

they go to celebrate Him

with their delicate voices.

El Cant dels Ocells / The Song of the Birds, Pau Casals