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Municipalities of Puerto Rico
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The municipalities of Puerto Rico (Spanish: municipios de Puerto Rico) are the second-level administrative divisions defined with geographic boundaries and governmental authority in the archipelago and island of Puerto Rico. Amounting to 78 incorporated towns and cities equivalent to U.S. counties, only two of which are outside the main island, namely the smaller islands of Vieques and Culebra, each municipality is governed by an elected strong mayor and a unicameral legislature. The municipalities are divided into 902 barrios, the third-level administrative divisions under the political leadership of the municipal government. As a U.S. territory without sovereignty, Puerto Rico does not have first-level administrative divisions akin to regions, states, provinces, or departments.
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Overview
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In Recent Civic Architecture in Porto Rico by Adrian C. Finlayson, architect for the Insular Department of the Interior Architecture, writing for the publication Architectural Record in 1920, the Puerto Rican municipality is described as:
Not merely a city, but something similar to a wide-extending township in New England—like Plymouth, Massachusetts, or Barnstable, on Cape Cod comprising a central town or city with perhaps several outlying districts or barrios, usually rural in character, and occasionally having sizeable concentrated populations in villages, the municipality bearing the name of the central urban portion and all under one local government.
Recent Civic Architecture in Porto Rico, 1920[1]
Having been a Spanish possession until 1898, the system of local government in Puerto Rico bears more resemblance to that of the Hispanophone nations of the Americas than to local government in the United States. Thus, there are no literal first-order administrative divisions akin to provinces or departments, as defined by the U.S. Federal Government. Instead, Puerto Rico has 78 municipalities as the secondary unit of administration.[2] For U.S. Census purposes, the municipalities are considered county equivalents. The municipalities are grouped into eight electoral districts, but these do not possess administrative functions. In 1991, the Autonomous Municipalities Act was passed, which slightly modified the rights and responsibilities of Puerto Rican municipalities with the aim of decentralizing control and improving government services.[3]
Every municipality is composed of barrios, except for Florida, which has only one barrio. The municipality of Ponce has the largest number of barrios, 31.[4][5][6][7][8]
Every municipality, except San Juan, also has an urban area made up of one or more barrios.[9] When the urban area is made up of only one barrio, it is called "barrio-pueblo". Some urban areas are made up of multiple barrios: Ponce's urban area, for example, is made up of 12 barrios. All of San Juan's barrios are urban barrios, and the municipality of San Juan is composed of urban barrios only - thus, the entire municipality of San Juan consists of one large urban zone.[10]
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Municipalities
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Puerto Rico is administratively divided into the following 78 municipalities (alphabetically ordered):
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Most populated municipalities
- Municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants
San Juan, the largest municipality and capital of Puerto Rico.
Bayamón, the second largest municipality of Puerto Rico, located just west of San Juan.
Carolina, the third largest municipality of Puerto Rico, located just east of San Juan.
Ponce, the fourth largest municipality of Puerto Rico and the largest municipality outside the San Juan metropolitan area.
Caguas, the fifth largest municipality of Puerto Rico.
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Administration
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The municipalities are governed as stated by the Autonomous Municipalities Act of 1991, which establishes that every municipality must have an elected strong mayor with a municipal legislature as the form of government. Each legislature must be unicameral, with the number of members related to adequate representation of the total population of the municipality. In contrast to other jurisdictions, both the mayors and the municipal legislators are elected on the same date and for the same term of four years in office.
From a political and ekistic perspective, several differences and similarities exist between municipalities of differing population sizes. For instance, municipalities with 50,000 inhabitants or more are considered incorporated cities, while those with fewer than 50,000 are considered incorporated towns.[16] Size affects the autonomy exercised by the jurisdiction: cities provide and manage their own services, while towns typically depend on nearby cities for certain services. Demographically, municipalities in Puerto Rico are equivalent to counties in the United States, and Puerto Rican municipalities are registered as county subdivisions in the United States census.[17] Statistically, the municipality with the largest number of inhabitants is San Juan, with 342,259, while Culebra is the smallest, with around 1,792. Arecibo is the largest in terms of geography, with around 125 mi2, and Cataño the smallest, with around 4.8 mi2.[12]
Except for San Juan, Ponce, Florida, and Vieques, all municipalities have a barrio equivalent to downtown in the U.S. called pueblo, officially known as barrio-pueblo (literally "neighborhood-town"), which typically is the site of the historic Spanish colonial settlement, administrative center and urban core of the municipality.[18] However, municipalities with large populations may have an urban core that consist of several barrios.
Finances
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In 2012, 36 of the 78 municipalities (46%) were experiencing a budget deficit.[19] In total, the combined debt carried by the municipalities stands at about US$590 million.[a]
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Racial composition
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The following is an alphabetical list of the municipalities and their population together with a breakdown of their racial composition.
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Proposed amalgamation
Multiple times, politicians have discussed and proposed consolidating Puerto Rico's municipalities but so far no proposals has been adopted. In 1902 the Puerto Rico legislature, under pressure from the U.S.-appointed governor of Puerto Rico, passed a law consolidating the then-76 municipalities of Puerto Rico into 46.[25] The law was repealed three years later.[26][27] In October 2009, a Puerto Rican legislator proposed a bill that would reduce the current 78 municipalities of Puerto Rico down to 20. The bill called for a referendum to take place on June 13, 2010, which would let the people decide on the matter.[28] However, the bill never made into law.[29] With the Puerto Rican government-debt crisis that emerged in the first half of 2010s, a new plan to consolidate municipalities was again circulated in the legislature in 2017 as a way to alleviate the government debt crisis.[30][31] In March 2019, then Governor Ricardo Rosselló created an initiative that would preserve the existing municipalities but create regional consolidation by sharing service overhead in the form of counties but he resigned prior to anything coming of his proposal.[32]
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See also
Notes
References
External links
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