not utilized.With the arrival of the Spaniards in 1521, the native population was
pushed into slavery. The colonialists were drawn to the island fot it's
mineral wealth, which sebsequently ran dry in 1535. The decline of the mining
industry signaled the beginning of a long period of inactivity for Puerto
Rico's economy. Because nothing weas being manufactured, grown, or dug out
of the ground, the position of San Juan as the break in transportation between
sea and land was not utilized.
The industrialization of San Juan really began in the 1870s, with the first sugar refineries built in the greater San Juan area and the increased influence of the United States. According to the History Task Force at the Centro de Estudios Puertorriquenos, "The US military intervention of Puerto Rico in 1898 was the political culmination of a slow expansive process through which US capitalist interests penetrated the Puerto Rican colonial economy and directed the lines of it's development."
As it turns out, the Spaniards basically handed the Americans the island through their gross mismanagement of the Puerto Rican economy. Spain's failure to encourage production resulted in a network of independant subsistence producers before the 19th century. Because there was no economic structure at this time, when commercial cultivation was introduced in the 1800s, there emerged a large (and quite profitable) underground trading market between Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands as well as the United States.
Other agricultural exports included coffee and tobacco, which suffered a decline in production in the 1920s and haven't been a major factor in the nation's economy since then. With the change of Puerto Rico's political status came inclusion in the US economy, which for better or worse has drastically changed the economic climate to a frenzied Western capitalist system. The undeniable rule of the US economy over the world economy has translated into greater growth and production in Puerto Rico compared to the other Caribbean islands, which have suffered in the last few decades. Puerto Rico enjoys the same tax system and trade agreements as US states, which has been a huge factor in the relative stability of the economy.