Official Languages Act

In 1902, the United States passed the Official Languages Act, placing English and Spanish as co-official languages in Puerto Rico [Alvarez-Gonzalez, 1999]. Critics saw the Act as “Americanization” of the island, intended to minimize Puerto Ricans’ Spanish language and culture, while supporters argued that it was a necessary step for the government to function in relation to the United States government. The Official Languages Act was revoked by Gov. Rafael Hernandez Colon in 1991, in favor for a Spanish-only law [Glass, 1991]. As almost all Puerto Ricans were speaking Spanish at the time anyway, this was seen by critics as an attempt to quell a rising desire to make Puerto Rico the 51^st state. Two years later, in 1993, the Law of the Official Languages ​​of the Government of Puerto Rico went into effect, and once again placed Spanish and English as co-official languages of the island [Alvarez-Gonzalez, 1999]. In 2015, the Puerto Rican senate overwhelmingly backed a bill that promoted Spanish to “first” official language and demoted English to “second” [EFE, 2015].