Today

As the commonwealth moves more deeply into the new millennium, Puerto Rico continues to make headlines in mainland newspapers. Sometimes the news is good; at other times, troubling.

First the good. Puerto Rico's tourism figures have been rising annually since the beginning of the 21st century; the island's aggressive hotel and marketing promotion seems to be paying off. Travelers from the United States are the major visitors, and their numbers rose steadily throughout the early 2000s. Canadian tourism is also on the rise, and the greatest increase is in Latin American visitors.

The island's 3.88 million people -- 1 million of whom live in the San Juan metropolitan area -- have forged ahead economically and made rapid strides. Their annual income is now the highest in Latin America, and their average life expectancy has risen to 73.8 years. And with the island's economy evolving from agriculture to manufacturing and tourism, a demand for an educated workforce has resulted in the ordinary worker having at least 12 years of schooling.

Tourism represents about 6% of the gross national product. Puerto Rico's present governor, and its first woman governor, Sila M. Calderón, has challenged both the private and public sectors of the tourism industry to double that contribution to the GNP within the next decade. At once both labor intensive and environmentally friendly, tourism is seen as the island's best alternative to continued heavy industrialization in pursuit of new jobs for its people.

Even in the now-prosperous tourism industry, storm clouds loom. The unspoken fear among developers of megaresorts is the possible impact of Cuba reopening to the American tourism market. Before Fidel Castro took over Cuba in 1959, Americans by the thousands flocked to Havana, and Puerto Rico was a mere dot on the tourist map. The island's growth was fueled enormously by the embargo imposed on Castro's communist government.

Now the bad: As part of legislation raising the U.S. minimum wage in 1996, President Bill Clinton vetoed a set of tax breaks for U.S. companies operating on the island. That ended 75 years of federal incentives that attracted stateside industries and helped make Puerto Rico the industrial powerhouse in the West Indies. For example, it produces about half the prescription drugs sold in the United States.

Even with the tax breaks, Puerto Rico struggles with a 12.5% unemployment rate and a per capita income of $8,509, about half the level of the poorest U.S. state, Mississippi.

Mirroring the U.S. mainland, rising crime, drugs, AIDS, unemployment, overpopulation, and more troubles plague Puerto Rico. The island has America's third-highest AIDS rate and the dubious distinction of being a major gateway into the United States for drugs from Latin America. The violence and social ills associated with drugs have beset the island. Although the drug issue is of epidemic proportions, you can visit Puerto Rico and be completely unaware that all this criminal activity is going on around you, especially if you're heading to one of the big, self-sufficient resorts. And efforts are being made to solve the drug problem. Since the mid-1990s, the government has increased the number of police officers, enacted harsher prison sentences for drug dealers, and conducted arms and drug raids -- part of a battle to stop the flow of illegal drugs into the United States.

The New Progressive Party wants to make Puerto Rico the 51st state, but the opposition is strong, both on the island and in Congress. A nonbinding reference in 1998 resulted in a defeat of statehood.