OLD LAND: PUERTO RICO 243 



reduced the death rate from approximately 37 persons per 1,000 in 1910 to 

 less than 20 per 1,000 in 1935. The population has doubled in the 40 years 

 since American occupation. 2 



The people, as a whole, responded quickly to these improvements and 

 were awarded American citizenship in 1917. But the injections of modern 

 civilization have completely modernized neither the land nor the people. 

 The island still retains innumerable reminders of its four centuries under the 

 Spanish Flag. Spanish architecture prevails. The ancient military road con- 

 necting San Juan and Ponce is still the most travelled. Many present-day 

 farmers still turn their furrows with an ox and a crude plow. The people, 

 in the main, still cling to folklore and traditions, to the quiet pastoral life 

 with its swishing machetes and rumbling cane mills, to the warm earth with 

 its smell of cane fields, citrus groves, and ripening tobacco. 



San Juan, the island's capital, does show some exterior signs of American 

 influence. Thousands of autos with a proportional number of filling stations, 

 American-style department stores, office buildings, and apartment houses, 

 indicate the influence of "Yankee ideas." But out on the island, back in the 

 hills, the people have changed little. Here the forces that have molded 

 their lives go back beyond the time of American occupation. They are 

 forces as old as the mountains that divide the island, as old as the rivers and 

 wind and rain that created the land — a land of extremes. 



The land is of mixed volcanic and sedimentary origin. Soil composition 

 varies by the acre, from the coral sands of the coast to tenacious clays in the 

 interior. Rock formations range from weather-resisting granites on mountain 

 tops to soft, yielding limestones on the north-central coast. And each soil 

 dictates the crop to be grown. Coconuts along the seashore, pineapples and 

 citrus fruit a little farther inland, sugarcane on the intermediate coastal 

 plains, tobacco in the high valleys, coffee and bananas, pasture, and brush- 

 land in the hills proper — thus, generally, the soil determines its crop through- 

 out the island. 



The Cordillera Central Range, rising to 4,400 feet, divides the island 



2 This rapid growth has resulted from an increased birth rate as well as a decreased 

 death rate. Births are 40 per 1,000, more than twice the birth rate of the United States. 



