Irish immigration to Puerto Rico
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In the 19th century, there was considerable Irish immigration to Puerto Rico, for a number of reasons.
In Ireland during the 1840s, potato fungus created the Irish Potato Famine which killed nearly one million Irish people and created nearly two million refugees. These refugees went to the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and, among other places, the Caribbean. One of the islands that many Irish emigrated to in large numbers was Puerto Rico. Being a Spanish colony, the island had a primarily Roman Catholic population, as opposed to the Protestant majorities of most of the colonies of the British Empire and the United States at the time.
The famine in Ireland came at a time when concern in Spain was growing about the possibility of rebellion in her Caribbean possessions. In the decades prior, Spain had lost almost the entirety of her territory in South and Central America, and sought measures of preventing a repeat of this in the Caribbean. One of these measures was the revival of the Royal Decree of Graces of 1815 under which Spain offered free land to Europeans of non-Spanish origin in exchange of a sworn loyalty to the Spanish Crown and allegiance to the Roman Catholic Church. Upon swearing their loyalty, they were awarded a "Letter of Domicile" and after five years a "Letter of Naturalization" which made them Spanish subjects. Therefore, an influx of Catholic immigrants (primarily from Ireland, Italy, Corsica, Germany and mainland France) settled the island. Unlike their counterparts who settled in the United States and formed their own small communities, the Irish in Puerto Rico soon adopted the language and customs of the island and intermarried with the local Puerto Ricans.
The diaspora following the famine was not the first instance of emigration from Ireland; during the gradual English conquest of Ireland from the 12th to 17th centuries, many Irishmen abandoned the country for Catholic Europe. Though some found themselves in the Spanish empire overseas (a handful even rose to administrative positions in Cuba), there was no significant Irish community in the Caribbean outside Montserrat and Barbados until the 19th century. Puerto Rico became a possession of the United States as an outcome of the Spanish-American War of 1898. In 1917, Puerto Ricans were given U.S. citizenship, however, those Puerto Ricans of Irish descent, like their counterparts the Corsicans, Germans and French, consider themselves Puerto Ricans. Today, the Irish element of Puerto Rico is very much in evidence. Surnames, such as O'Neill, O'Ferral (O'Farrell), Murphy (Morfi) and Sullivan (Sólivan), are common.
[edit] Examples of famous Puerto Ricans with Irish surnames
- Hiram Bithorn - baseball player
- Deborah Carthy-Deu - Miss Universe 1985
- Jose Miguel Class - singer
- Judith Ortiz Cofer - author
- Ivonne Coll - actress
- Ana María O'Neill - women's rights activist
- Hector O'Neill Garcia - Mayor of Guaynabo, Puerto Rico since 1993
- Mike Lowell - MLB player
