LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Puerto Rico
built 288 days ago
Puerto Rico Telephone is an affiliate of Verizon Communications and a leading telecommunication provider in Puerto Rico. The company was a pioneer in launching the most advanced technology in voice, data and wireless services, including a 100% digital infrastructure, a sophisticated ATM network and the most powerful wireless network on the island. These advanced technologies have served as the main engines of economic growth and development in Puerto Rico. Verizon Communications is one of the world's leading providers of communications services, with approximately US$68 billion in annual revenues.
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Puerto Rico is the easternmost and smallest of the Greater Antilles. Located between the Atlantic Ocean to the north and the Caribbean Basin to the south, the island is a crucial access point to hemispheric waters and coasts, representing a valuable acquisition for European powers and the United States. Columbus landed in Puerto Rico on his second voyage in 1493. The island and its indigenous people, the TaÃnos, were colonized by Spain, which in 1508 appointed Juan Ponce de León its first colonial governor. In 1897, after almost four centuries of colonial administration, Spain approved an Autonomic Charter for the island that entailed local self-government, elected legislators, and voting rights in the Spanish parliament. But its implementation was soon thwarted by war between Spain and the United States.
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Puerto Rico has a pleasant tropical climate. On the main island, a fertile coastal plain surrounds a mountainous interior. Puerto Rico’s topography and climate have made it an excellent place to produce crops such as sugar and coffee for export to other countries. These export crops began to play a major role in the island’s economy by the end of the 18th century. They provided money for Spain, but they did not help develop a balanced, diversified economy. For most of Puerto Rico’s history, the economy was heavily dependent on outside markets and sharp fluctuations in demand and prices.
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As an unincorporated territory of the United States, Puerto Rico does not have any first-order administrative divisions as defined by the U.S. government, but has 78 municipalities at the second level. Mona Island is not a municipality, but part of the municipality of Mayagüez.[48] Municipalities are subdivided into wards or barrios, and those into sectors. Each municipality has a mayor and a municipal legislature elected for a 4 year term.
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The relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States did not begin with this war. By the eighteenth century, the Spanish and British colonies had long engaged in contraband trade. At the time a major producer of sugar and molasses, Puerto Rico exchanged these commodities for basic food staples produced by Anglo American colonists. Ongoing expansionism concerning the Spanish-speaking Caribbean paralleled these economic relations, becoming official policy by Jefferson's presidency in 1801. The initially clandestine economic exchanges were officially authorized in 1815 when Spain sanctioned commerce between its colonies and other nations. A declining colonial power, Spain no longer had the means to extract primary resources from its few remaining colonies—Cuba and Puerto Rico being the most productive among them—and benefited from their participation in international trade.
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Now Puerto Rico has become a major tourist destination and a leading pharmaceutical and manufacturing center. Yet it still struggles to define its political status. Three locally-authorized plebiscites have been held in recent decades to decide whether Puerto Rico should pursue independence, enhanced commonwealth status, or statehood. The relationship with the U.S. has remained unchanged due to narrow victories by commonwealth supporters over statehood advocates in the first two plebiscites, and an unacceptable definition of commonwealth by the pro-statehood leadership on the ballots in the third. In the latest status referendum of 1998, the "none of the above" option won over Statehood, a rejection by Commonwealthers of the definition of their status on the ballots, with 50.2% of the votes. Support for the pro-statehood party, Partido Nuevo Progresista (PNP) and the pro-commonwealth party, Partido Popular Democrático (PPD) remains about equal.
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