Puerto Rico

Mexico’s president made a public request Wednesday to Puerto Rican reggaeton star Bad Bunny to play a free concert in Mexico City, to make up for a fake ticket scandal that left thousands frustrated outside his sold-out appearance Friday.

In honor of December 10, the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Paris that transferred ownership of the Spanish colony of Puerto Rico to the United States, a look back at the U.S. invasion of the island, what it meant to Puerto Ricans at the time, and what it means today.

Despite ample federal funding, less than one percent of the federal money slated for the island’s public water utility corporation since 2018 has been set aside to buy generators for water pumps. Local officials instead have been forced to rely on a patchwork supply of emergency units.

At approximately 45 days, Puerto Rico is known for having one of the longest holiday seasons in the world. Starting the week leading up to Thanksgiving, and ending with Las Octavitas on 14 January, a festive aura envelopes the archipelago. But amidst the merriment, there’s one significant cultural tradition whose absence is painfully palpable : Los Reyes Magos.

This week’s wrap-up comes to you from the cozy confines of quarantine, as senior editor Hector Luis Alamo has managed to catch COVID for only the second time this year.

Hurricane María, a Category 4 storm that swept through Puerto Rico in September 2017, left the island with a “new coast,” according to a new study by the Institute of Investigation and Coastal Planification of Puerto Rico.

The recent image of a car stuck in a massive pothole in Humacao, Puerto Rico makes a fine metaphor for the state of Puerto Rico today and the role played by the pro-statehood Gov. Pedro Pierluisi and his New Progressive Party in the deterioration of the island.

A group of 16 municipalities filed a lawsuit on November 22 against multiple Big Oil companies for downplaying the risks of their fossil-fuel products on climate change.

Senior editor Hector Luis Alamo gives a review of some of the most interesting and important things he saw, read, and heard over the past week.

Debt restructuring efforts for the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority’s $9 billion debt have come to a new standstill after almost six years of negotiation. Multiple failed attempts to exit bankruptcy have led nowhere.

“It bothers me how the producers, the world-famous martial artist, and I didn’t stop to think about how poorly it reflects on our island that such a segment needed to air in the first place”

Almost $9 billion in bad debt and a half-century of high electricity prices hang in the balance in Puerto Rico.

On the same day it was set to expire, the Puerto Rico Public-Private Alliances granted LUMA Energy an extension of its provisional contract that will only end once the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority’s debt restructuring is completed.

Puerto Ricans will likely spend this Christmas without their time-honored tradition of eating plantains with dinner, after Hurricane Fiona destroyed 80 percent of the island’s plantain and banana crops in September.

Three days before LUMA Energy’s contract is set to expire, the Public-Private Partnerships Authority requested authorization to extend LUMA’s provisional contract until the debt restructuring process for the publicly owned Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority is finalized.

A panel of four Supreme Court justices unanimously rejected a petition filed by the Puerto Rico Privacy Association that sought to block the lower court’s decision ordering the disclosure of the annual reports submitted by Act 22 beneficiaries, a statute that has been part of the Act 60 Incentives Code since 2019.

Teachers and electrical workers in Puerto Rico are calling for protests outside schools on November 30, the day that LUMA Energy’s contract is set to expire, in hopes that the government cancels the company’s impending 15-year contract.

The first of a weekly column by senior editor Hector Luis Alamo in which he gives an overview of the most interesting and important things he’s read, seen, or heard during the past week, providing his thoughts on them.

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent and a suspected smuggler died during a shootout Thursday off the Puerto Rico coast, authorities said. Two other U.S. officers were injured.

A dozen Haitian migrants who spent five days on a tiny, uninhabited island near Puerto Rico where human smugglers abandoned them were rescued, the U.S. Coast Guard said Wednesday.

Following the U.S. National Parks Service’s announcement that it plans to deal with the “cat problem” in Old San Juan, local residents and activists say they oppose any attempt to get rid of their feline friends.