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This article, Puerto Rico, written by Distant Tide and Navisiul97, was voted as the Best Location of 2020 in the Thirteenth Annual Halo Fanon Wikia Awards. |
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This fanfiction article, Puerto Rico, was written by Distant Tide and Navisiul97. Please do not edit this fiction without the writers' permission. |
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Puerto Rico, or the Puerto Rico Freeport, is a small island Earth-nation located in the northeastern Caribbean Sea and incorporates the main island and neighboring Virgin Islands. Formed after the the Second American Civil War and secession, Puerto Rico functioned as a federal republic and was a founding member of the Unified Earth Government and mutual Caribbean Protectorate. The Puerto Rico Freeport boasts the most sophisticated hospital system on Earth and received a large portion of military and civilian wounded during the Human-Covenant War.
Also part of the Greater Antilles archipelago, Puerto Rico spent a number of centuries with the entire region under Spanish and American colonial rule. The new island nation suffered a period of turmoil following American collapse as larger Caribbean neighbors attempted to annex Puerto Rico only to be repelled in a series of decisive victories upholding Puerto Rican mythos of an island fortress guarded by a hardy people. Puerto Rico secured its autonomy over a century with great cultural investments in technology, commerce, and forging security alliances with key Mesoamerican and European partners. By the twenty-second century, Puerto Rico protected itself with a strict neutrality policy and generous trade alliances with fellow island nations. In a relatively short time, normalizing relations with the Caribbean elevated Puerto Rico to trade hub for Central America.
By the twenty-fourth century, the contemporary Puerto Rican medical utopia began to form, taking on casualties from faraway interstellar battlefields and exported its medical prowess with a series of UNSC-partnered hospital ships retrofitted from older colony ships. The island nation received heavy damage during the Covenant invasion of Earth and consequential Battle of Puerto Rico but recovered under UNSC Navy reconstruction oversight as part of Project Rebirth. After the Human-Covenant War, Puerto Rico adopted a brief constitutional autocracy administered by the former military Smart AI Yuki (YKI 7152-7) until the Created crisis.
UEG Colony Record[]
History[]
Pre-Colonial History[]
Puerto Rico did not reveal any significant development efforts by Forerunners or ancient human spacefaring civilizations before the Halo Array event. However, archeological digs in the Greater Antilles archipelago revealed a potential relation to the Ortoiroid culture and people from the Orinoco territory in South American Columbia and Venezuela of more modern times. The Ortoiroid settlers likely arrived by island-hopping migrations around 2000 BCE, but forced out by the Saladoid culture between 430 and 250 BCE. At some point between 700 and 1100, its believed the Arawak people settled the future Puerto Rican islands, intermingling and forging the origins of the dominant Taíno culture until the arrival of Europeans in 1493.
The visit by Christopher Columbus on his second exploratory voyage on September 24th, 1493 marked the accelerated extinction of the Taíno people from war with Carib raiders from the Lesser Antilles islands, aggressive European pathogens, and enslavement by the first Spanish colonists. A recorded smallpox epidemic in 1518 is said to have killed 90% of the Taíno population on the islands.
Under Colonial Rule[]
Ramón Emeterio Betances, a Puerto Rican independence advocate and doctor in the 1800s. Puerto Rico named its national health system after him centuries later.
In 1508, the first European and Spanish colony in Puerto Rico, Caparra, was established by Juan Ponce de León with Taíno king Agüeybaná acting as first governor. Sir Ponce de León went onto enslave the local Taíno population for gold mining operations, a practice that would continue during the Spanish Empire's reign in the Western Hemisphere. Ponce de León went onto establish another colony of Punta Aguada and the discovery of Florida, beginning Spanish entrance into the southeastern reaches of North America. The arrival of Europeans in the "New World" produced the Columbian Exchange, trading culture and material between Eurasia and the Americas. The Spanish brought Christianity, cattle, horses, sheep, and the Spanish language among other products to Puerto Rico and codified the island's name. The capital of San Juan soon became Puerto Rico's most important port and one among the Greater Antilles archipelago.
The decline of the Taíno population led to the Spanish introduction of African slaves on the island and their other Caribbean colonies. Following Spanish colonial successes, other European colonial powers staked claims in the Western hemisphere giving rise to a new era of global empires. Through the sixteenth century, French and British forces attempted to seize Puerto Rico from Spanish control but were rebuffed. Dutch and further British attacks continued into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to similar results. Pre-modern Puerto Rico emerged in this time frame, with over forty thousand people living on the big island. By 1835, a number of provocative slave revolts led to the abolishment of slavery in Puerto Rico.
American inventor Samuel Morse brought telegraph infrastructure to the big island in 1858, previewing United States interests in the Spanish colony in the coming years. By 1860, the Puerto Rican population reached 583,000 people. With outdated infrastructure and a poor local economy under Spanish rule, sentiments among locals grew to a fever pitch with revolutionary fervor. Spanish Prime Minister Práxedes Mateo Sagasta approved an autonomous government in Puerto Rico in 1897 after several high-profile rebel campaigns include efforts led by legendary Puerto Rican independence leader Ramón Emeterio Betances y Alacán failed to force Spanish troops off the big island. However, self-governance was short-lived as American military interests towards the Spanish-held Caribbean became provocative. The Spanish-American War kicked off in the spring of 1898, ending in victory for the United States of America and the expulsion of Spanish troops from Puerto Rico. Subsequently, the defeat of the Spanish also meant retreat across global Spanish colonial holdings including Caribbean Cuba, the Philippines and Guam in the Pacific Ocean. A temporary American military government ruled over in Puerto Rico until 1900 with the Foraker Act, codifying relations between the United States of America and their new island holdings.
American Control[]
The Virgin Islands divided by territorial claims of colonial empires pre-decolonization in the late 21st and early 22nd centuries.
The normalization of relations brought good and bad developments for Puerto Rico and the greater Caribbean region, establishing a colonial government appointed by the United States in a greater Caribbean strategy and the construction of the Panama Canal. While modern infrastructure came to Puerto Rico, it arrived with exclusivity trade with the Americans, leading to major agricultural mismanagement for the local coffee and tobacco industries. Further intrusion by American interests also propped up the local sugar industry due to the advantageous climate but local growers were stifled in the face of American sugar corporations and their unchallenged seizure of farmland. The Merchant Marine Act of 1920, better known as the "Jones Act," proved a particular thorn in Puerto Rican trade capabilities, reinforcing an almost monopolistic relationship with the mainland. Attempts to teach English in the Puerto Rican school system were rebuffed by the local community as Spanish had been the local dialect and language of business for the better part of two centuries.
By time of World War Two, a sizable portion of Puerto Ricans lived in the continental United States, propelled by economic complications from the Great Depression and a large recruiting push by the United States armed forces during and after the conflict. In 1950s, Puerto Ricans demanded an end to United States colonial governance in favor of local elections and their own constitution approved by the United States Congress. Puerto Rico transitioned from American colony to territory status in 1952, putting potential statehood into consideration. However, complications in corporate and political arenas froze attempts to incorporate the archipelago even with popular local support. Puerto Rico remained in a state of stunted dependency of the American market into the twenty-first century caused by ambiguous territory-based trade law and unresolved generational socioeconomic gaps and challenges.
The United States of America national flag in the early twenty-first century.
Puerto Rico developed ahead of its Caribbean neighbors and achieved an above average quality-of-life index rating. By mid-twenty-first century, some of the territory's socioeconomic problems even showed early signs of resolution with congressional debt easing, reconciliation of anti-competition policies for the local economy, and advances in the San Juan tech sector. However, not all issues could be resolved. Literacy rates remained below United States averages and Puerto Rico's poverty rate was among the highest in the country; a new wave of social activism grew from the tech boom, mainland sympathies, and a new wave of Puerto Rican nationalism.
Increased cyberattacks with antigovernmental sentiments drew attention from the mainland as hackers attacked continental networks by piggybacking compromised systems in Puerto Rico. Even though their identities remained unknown, the hackers developed an unlikely folk hero status for championing a new wave of Puerto Rican dissatisfaction for American stewardship. This era of Puerto Rican iconography would be reused by rebel organizations during subsequent Insurrectionist movements in the age of the Unified Earth Government.
Societal tremors rocked the late twenty-first and twenty-second centuries as socioeconomic upheavals in the continental United States of America exasperated into a second civil war. Due to an increase in access to weapons of mass destruction by non-state actors and a greater sophistication to global criminal activities in the near-Singularity society, the United States government became impotent in its function. A autonomous state system was tried, failed, and the American union fractured into multiple rump states. The United Nations remained somewhat active in the autonomous, international-town of New York City while American membership to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization fell into crisis. Puerto Rico resorted to full autonomy and announced its formal secession from the defunct United States of America as the federalist superpower suffered complete decline and gradual dissolution.
Grand Experiment[]
The interior bay of San Juan dotted by sleek modern towers at night, guarded by the Castillo San Felipe del Morro for centuries.
Leaving the United States of America marked the start to long decades of turmoil for the new island nation. Puerto Rico lost considerable privileges with the end of American reign including the protection by the United States military and economic capital from the motherland economy. But true autonomy brought new opportunity, allowing the island nation to chart its own alliances and economic pursuits for the first time but shaped within possibly the worst global economic downturn since the Pandemic Crashes of the 1910s and 2020s. Gone were the days of the Jones Act and its like, and Puerto Rico was quick to formalize proper recognition with its Caribbean neighbors.
From an amicable past with the Dominican Republic while under the United States, the neighboring nation was the first to recognize Puerto Rican sovereignty and open a formal diplomatic embassy in San Juan. With the Virgin Islands isolated like Puerto Rico from the United States and the United Kingdom, the lesser island chain forged a security and economic pact with the island nation, becoming a protectorate. Relations with other Caribbean and Mexican gulf states remained frosty. A militant rump state in the American south took form with a particular anti-Cuban bend and nascent dreams of empire.
Puerto Rico now found itself trapped in a web of dangerous politics. The resurgent Cuba out of American shadows and the unpredictable collective of former American continental states risked a major regional naval conflict and threatened to drag Puerto Rico into all-out war. An unapparent and fledgling Texan foreign policy meant a careful balance for Puerto Rico as their energy resources were a counterweight to Venezuela to the south, a historic ally to Cuba. Vying economic powers in Latin America such as an overpopulated and emergent Mexico or Panama and its strategic Panama Canal presented other risky flashpoints. The military power to control the Panama Canal now that the United States navy was defunct would have considerable influence over Caribbean politics for the foreseeable future.
The 2080s marked a renewed period of all-out war between Earth nations catching Puerto Rico in the crossfire of naval engagements.
Trapped between giants, Puerto Rican leadership made haste in the 2070s and early 2080s to open diplomatic channels in Europe with hopes of establishing tangible legitimacy. While such attempts proved successful, ultimate recognition through the United Nations remained slow. Puerto Rico would go it alone; strategic partnerships established to create balance between neighboring Caribbean nations as a interconnected web and foreign policy emerged for the island nation. The proactive efforts at peace came as a slight surprise to its Caribbean neighbors but one of understandable circumstance.
When the 2080s global conflict broke out in the Americas and elsewhere, Puerto Rico appeared as a juicy target and faced four invasion attempts by enemies and even supposed allies. All attacks were rebuffed in a display of excellence by the budding Puerto Rican Marine Corps. Several of the Virgin Islands were occupied though recaptured over several years of modern warfare and living under emergency military rule, Puerto Rico emerged victorious in 2090 with recognition by the United Nations through hard-fought battle. Additional interest from a more aggressive, Euro-centric NATO also guaranteed a short post-war recovery as the nation's resources shifted to assisting its devastated neighbors. From a series of good faith acts, Puerto Rico emerged with a fortune of Caribbean state debts, a flourishing mixed economy, and a sophisticated working population.
Puerto Rico became the shining jewel of the Caribbean: a new trade and financial hub with European products flowing south along the Gulf Stream while Asian goods flowed north form the allied Panama Economic Zone into the Caribbean Sea. Interest in further invasions fell apart as Puerto Rico's alliances emphasized its careful position and new foreign policy inspired by the Swiss neutrality model of yester-centuries.
Interplanetary Era[]
After another global conflict ended in 2103, Puerto Rico evolved into the financial center of the Caribbean Sea. Partnerships established by the University of Puerto Rico in the past century with North American and European research firms and schools guaranteed that the neutral country benefitted from pre- and post-Singularity emergent technologies allowing its data-driven financial systems to weather global economic hardships that developing nations still struggled under. The island nation could now focus on other pursuits, such as medicine and healthcare as the region's most developed economy.
North America reemerged on the global stage as a military power that threatened Puerto Rico's continued sovereignty.
In the 2130s, Puerto Rico earned a reputation as "the nation that turns no one away." While a clear exaggeration, the basis for the reputation came as Caribbean warring states turned to the world-class medical system based in San Juan to care for injured veterans of foreign wars and their robust fleet of seaborne hospital ships able to reach those in need. While located outside the Ring of Fire, the Caribbean and Mexican gulf remained one of the highest volcanic activity to population density ratios on Earth and suffered from the tragic normalcy of earthquakes, tsunamis, civil wars, and famine. Puerto Rico at some points also struggled with the centuries-long global water crisis, forced to import bottled fresh water from Columbia and Venezuela.
Earth still suffered from volatile global warming and rapid sea level rise before the era of sustainable terraforming. Puerto Rico made do with sea walls, artificial reefs, and land reclamation projects but not all countries could buy their way into survival. The island nation's reputation was tested between the 2130s and 2160s by makeshift refugee fleets and global criticism as Puerto Rican marines sometimes fired upon unarmed refugee ships and nomadic fishing caravans. Puerto Rico's model of neighborly assistance offered a two-faced advantage with increased good will for humanitarian aid combined with economic domination typical of chokepoint free-trade ports. But not even their tested, fragile utopia could remain forever.
While a political mess, the precursor to the United Republic of North America emerged onto the global stage and remained the greatest threat to Puerto Rican sovereignty and geopolitical relevance. Puerto Rico's strategic alliances formed over the past half-century wavered towards nullification in the face of a young and aggressive North American military power. The old stake of Puerto Rico under the thumb of the United States was an ever pressing issue as neighboring countries retreating in the face of unifying powers between Canada, Mexico, and the fractured former United States of America. Puerto Rico leaned hard into its relationships in Europe and NATO to push back against North American calls for reunification. In a rare moment of lucky peace, a seeming naval invasion of Puerto Rico from Florida was called off averting disaster. It would not be the first or last of such political flashpoints as North America sought to flex its military might as it once did over a century before.
To discourage future incursions, Puerto Rico buried its old rivalries with its island neighbors to co-found a regional defense alliance against the United Republic of North America. The Caribbean Security Organization (CSO) formed in 2158 with the Port-u-Prince Pact's ratification by the seven founding nations Columbia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. However, the security alliance would never respond in mutual defense against terrestrial aggressors as in the same year a Fredien terrorist attack hit the United Nations embassy in the Europa colonial city of Thynia. The colonial Friedensbewegung movement was labeled a terrorist organization by the recently-restructured United Nations Security Council in response and with the deployment of colonial advisors from the United Nations Peacekeeping forces.
United Nations peacekeepers battle with extremist rebel factions over the Jovian Moons.
Even as the Solar System colonies and nations back home on Earth raced towards their first true interplanetary conflict, problems did not end for Puerto Rico regarding North America. The United Republic's rhetoric shifted away from the island nation but new military spaceships raced into the orbital zones over Puerto Rico and the Caribbean Security Organization every day with growing ferocity as the URNA space fleet grew to one of the largest in the Solar System. The United Republic's maritime navies continued to threaten free navigation through the Panama Canal and its economic zone. Brazil's population grew at a runaway pace and their scorch-colonialism of the Amazon rainforest raced to keep up in creating new farmland at mounting costs to Earth's last true rainforest. Rising powers in North America and South America raced towards war over Earth's remaining green spaces and the Caribbean found itself trapped between powerful giants once more in the later twenty-second century.
The 2160s brought forth new ideologies and discrepancies on Earth and among the distant space colonies on the moon, Mars, within the Belt, and among the Jovian Moons. All in a prelude to the Rainforest Wars, and the Interplanetary War. The Amazon rainforest burned as nations from both sides of the Atlantic fought for its future. Germany suffered through a civil war between its corporate colonial parties and their Earther nationalists. Russia's face a crisis of identity between its Earth population and the increasingly popular manifesto of Vladimir Koslov championing the plight and rage of Martian workers. Puerto Rico witnessed the century-making conflicts as a neutral bystander, without true military might to have a say in the fighting. Their few hospital spaceships operated in the rearguard of United Nation peacekeeping fleets, supporting the war effort. However, like other nations they suffered the consequences of all-out war the same as a calculated 283 satellite debris incidents affected Puerto Rico's exclusive economic air-sea corridor until relative peace arrived in 2178 with the signing of the Castillo Treaty. Between 2160 and 2178, satellite debris and orbital collision incidents killed 3,987 Puerto Rican citizens and continued for many decades and even centuries to follow.
Interstellar Hospitality[]
UNSC Puerto Rican Star, a retrofitted Phoenix-class colony ship used by the UNSC Navy's Puerto Rican reservist contingent for colonial good-will tours.
- Main article: UNSC Puerto Rican Star
Puerto Rico in the Covenant War[]
- Main article: Battle of Puerto Rico
After the Battle of Puerto Rico, UNSC Army maritime and civilian divers made attempts to reclaim the submerged CCS battlecruiser, a intensive operation lasting over three years into 2556 until the UNSC resorted to sustained observation while much of the shipwreck remains at the deepest parts of the Puerto Rican Trench. Despite the Covenant warship's enormous size, it remained lost to salvage operations for weeks leading ONI analysts to worry the ship escaped with a submerged emergency Slipspace jump or via extended para-gravity propulsion. A UNSC maritime cordon zone was established as far as Bermuda, hoping to detect the warship until it was found close by at the bottom of the trench.
The dive-and-dig project became more complicated after Army submersibles discovered intact portions of the starship including active energy shielding and secured watertight compartments confirming members of the Covenant loyalist crew survived multiple UNSC nuclear weapon strikes and their shipwreck. Thanks to Lezo 'Gohom's personal knowledge of the Revealing Lance, the UNSC military successfully destroyed the battlecruiser's rocket engines and pinch fusion reactors stranding it. However, the battlecruiser wreckage also left a substantial debris crater and trailing nuclear radiation poisoned great swaths of the deep sea ecosystem. Concerned by the complex operational conditions, ONI brought in new Spartan-IV operatives clad in Oceanic and Mako-class Mjolnir, to assist Army dive operations including counter-dive security, depressurization, and room clearing under inhospitable conditions. Sporadic combat in isolated compartments also included occasional combat with Jiralhanae "dive-hunting packs" and counterinsurgency-style urban assaults. Lessons learned from Revealing Lance would later inform future deep sea probe and recovery operations against hostile alien structures.
A long history of local folklore seem to spook the recovery teams responsible for the battlecruiser as early Spartan efforts described encounters symptomatic of "Triangle Fever" including:
- Unsubstantiated sediment/refuse buildup over shipwreck as sign of "time dilation."
- Unsubstantiated signs of rust on "unrustable" Nanolaminate starship plating, also attributed to time dilation.
- Loss of significant hardware (submersible) during dive-breach into amphitheater substructure from rapid depressurization.
- Period of communications blackout, personal account of time dilation effect ("time-water kills and rots").
- Surprise encounter with surviving Covenant loyalist force panics Spartan.
- Compartment collapsed from fighting, Spartan jettisoned escape pod to surface.
- All recoverable data from Mjolnir suit corrupted, mission timer elapsed a full day despite only a few hours in shipwreck.
Despite early low morale, room-clearing operations continued along with asset recovery, including of Covenant loyalist prisoners-of-war (POWs) later relocated to the Former Covenant Asylum Zone in Rio de Janeiro under UNSC Army observation. Despite significant disproving of early rumors among Spartan and Army divers, some unexplained phenomenon and social behavior remained to the greater concern of ONI Section Three including ship-wide sensory suites raised to highest sensitivity and range, thorough corruption of ship data beyond recovery despite recruiting alien expertise, the notably missing Huragok contingent previous reported as aboard during the loyalists' escape attempt, and wall scrawling unfamiliar to Lezo and his personnel left behind by the loyalist crew. Often written in arguably-perfect spirals of shrinking Covenant scripture, ONI analysts refer to the behavior as "death spiral scripture" and Covenant POWs recovered from the shipwreck as "trench cult" from aberrant religious behavior displayed during continuing observation.
Project Rebirth[]
Created Uprising[]
ONI Recon team stuck in Puerto Rico, tries to live off-grid hiding in the old war tunnels constructed to fight the United Republic. Yuki spends a year tracking them and indirectly using them to follow Created policing procedures via a "Thursday war." Leads the ONI teams to supply caches she stockpiled in case of Created vs. UNSC conflict, eventually leads to a three-way battle following Cortana's disconnection from Domain and Created in-fighting: ONI vs. Lezo's Sangheili forces/Bulwark vs. Prometheans while Yuki leads her wounded prisoners brought to Puerto Rico to relative safety after the Created turned the island into a rehabilitation and reeducation camp.
Relevant articles:
Culture[]
Architecture[]
- "Puerto Rico is the closest thing to a hospital utopia I've ever seen. Honestly, I'd say it's sweetly disgusting."
- ―Bless-G189's thoughts on Puerto Rico.
An example of "neo" Puerto Rico's sustainable, tropical modernism.
Juxtaposed against the bronze and dark red colors favored by the African megacity New Mombasa or the sterile white steel of planned colonial cities like New Alexandria, Puerto Rico and especially San Juan, represent a mix of new and old centuries colliding together to create a architectural deco unique to the island nation. San Juan includes many aspects of interstellar colonial planning as the island nation has invested billions of credits in tearing down and rebuilding public infrastructure into greater functions over decades of wealth and war. However, the sterile-white coloring is more favored for newer, vertical structures while lower and more historic districts favor vibrant and pastel colors of tradition that give off an often 'inviting' atmosphere to Puerto Rico and San Juan.
Observing Puerto Rican cities from afar reveals landscapes of low-lying, colorful and ancient buildings against a backdrop of tall marble towers put before green jungle mountains. In addition to the cities, historically-mindful architecture can be found throughout Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands that reflect matters of necessity and circumstance from their relevant time periods in Puerto Rican history while updated for sustainability and growth. Residential and communal districts are often made with simple, sustainable designs with large windows and narrow balconies cutting between both wide and narrow street paths.
Island structures, threatened by nature and the elements, tend to use more concrete or permacrete to withstand their difficult environmental hazards but not without dressing them up in signature pastel colors and natural materials like wood furnishings, polymer surfaces, and false-fiber roofs in place of thatch or grass when incorporating the environment directly into facilities and estates. While the style of "tropical modernism" has played a part in influencing Puerto Rican architecture into contemporary times, a better description favored by Puerto Rican locals is "Invitasionalismo tropical resistente" or in English, "resilient tropic invitationalism."
Hackers[]
Geography[]
Puerto Rico rests along the edge of the Puerto Rican Trench, including some of the deepest points on Earth.
A small archipelago part of the Greater Antilles island chain, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands formed from ancient volcanic action though relatively recent in the Earth's geological record. The islands are located in proximity to a break between the North American and Caribbean tectonic plates with the main island of Puerto Rico overlooking deep, surrounding seas. The deepest of the crevices, the Puerto Rican Trench, includes the second deepest known point on Earth, the Milwaukee Depth.
Puerto Rico and its surrounding islands are geologically and volcanically active and prone to seismic activity including earthquakes. Seismic warning stations are a staple of Puerto Rican history, built on the islands to protect the population, local infrastructure, and mitigate damage in the long term. As much as sixty percent of the main island's landmass is covered in difficult mountain ranges along with mandated public land protecting sizable jungle terrain. The islands are located just south of the Tropic of Cancer and well within the range of Earth-defined tropical climate with a nearly year-round warm and wet season. Historically, Puerto Rico's locale and climate made the islands particularly viable for tropical crop harvest including cocoa, sugar, and tobacco, some of which remains the main island's oldest exports.
Puerto Rico with islets Culebra and Vieques divided into basic geographical regions; the neighboring Virgin Islands not included.
By the contemporary twenty-sixth century, estimates for ocean rise suggest that land loss reached as much as twenty percent in some severely affected parts. By contemporary times, land reclamation has undone some of the ocean rise but living space remains a commodity due to land development access and a large population. Large parts of the island nation are covered in metropolitan urban sprawl, much of it surrounding the capital in San Juan.
On the most basic level, the island nation can be broken into multiple geographical districts: Western Puerto Rico (5) located against the Mona Passage, Southern Puerto Rico (6) defined by Ponce to Guayama, the impassible and mountainous Central Puerto Rico (7) including the Cordillera Central Mountain Range, the flatter Northern Puerto Rico (4) and home to both farmland and jungle, the San Juan metro area (1) east of the main island's northern reach, and East Puerto Rico (2) known for the El Yunque National Forest. Off the main island, there is proximal islands Culbera and Vieques (3), and the more distant but neighboring Virgin Islands.
The Virgin Islands, including all aspects of American and British holdings, eventually transferred into Puerto Rican claims during and soon after the period of Caribbean volatility. Sharing much in the way of terrain and climate as Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands acquisition seemed a reasonable eventuality. While as seismically active and prone to flooding, the severe sea rise from global warming hit the islands much harder than Puerto Rico. A large portion of twenty-first and twenty-second century residents evacuated to Puerto Rico, neighboring island nations, or the continental mainland in subsequent decades of ecological decline. In the twenty-sixth century, mostly sects of hardy island natives and affluent technocrats try to call the beautiful islands home, especially in the face of severe storms and other natural discouragers.
Key Locations[]
Ramon Hospital Network[]
The exclusive and mysterious ONI "Projects" wing on Fajardo's eighth floor.
- Main article: Ramon Emeterio Betances y Alacan Hospital Network
A centuries-effort-in-the-making, the Ramon Emeterio Betances y Alacan Hospital Network, better known as the "Ramon Hospital Network," is an incorporated hospital system spanning the national medical system of Puerto Rico and the eight largest hospital facilities within the island nation's borders. The network was named for a historic Puerto Rican medical doctor and independence advocate of the same name. Established during Puerto Rico's transition from national defense and financial pursuits to service efforts at the turn of the twenty-second century, the Ramon Hospital Network became a neutral service medical system that developed a world-class reputation after providing transitory care to military personnel and refugees after major conflicts in 2090 and 2103. It gained further, worldly prestige after the 2160s Rainforest Wars as well.
Puerto Rican medical hospitality was among the best in the Western Hemisphere by time of formation of the Caribbean Security Organization and later upon joining the Unified Earth Government as part of the Caribbean Protectorate function. Before being incorporated, however, Ramon started as individual, competitive hospital systems from a mix of backgrounds: for-profits, government-funded, and university hospitals all pursuing even higher standards for fair quality and cost of their customers. During the global conflicts that continuedly shook the global economy, hospital systems on the main island ceded further oversight by the national government as the hospitals repurposed for matters of war. While the medical systems never fully fell under government control, they were managed by a public-trading government corporation with a growing culture of community service that tempered potential for corruption and overregulation.
Human top-down management was ceded to a open-box artificial intelligence system developed at the University of Puerto Rico by the next century, a development predating a future of macro-AI custodians of Earth cities in later centuries. While the eight networked hospitals have transitioned roles over the many decades, the facility locations have generally remained the same, only occasionally changing for renovations or after rare incidents. A funded series of maglev trains joined the hospitals together in 2346, servicing both the local populace and Ramon Hospital Network as accelerated climate change made some parts of the island less navigable.
Bright and well-lit interiors were typical of the Ramon Hospital Network.
Through the Insurrection and Human-Covenant War, Ramon Hospital Network continued to service UNSC wounded. Very few terror attacks by Insurrectionist factions proved successful against the hospital network over the years leading some to describe the island nation and medical facilities "untouchable," however, how much can be accounted to UNSC security measures and efforts to vet travel to Earth rather than domestic island security systems remains inconclusive. During the Battle of Earth, a Jiralhanae-led Covenant assault force arrived in Puerto Rico. Of the Ramon Hospital Network, only Rincón facility would receive considerable damage. Efforts to replace the Plasma Treatment Facility are underway nearby as part of the UEG-funded Project Rebirth.
- Ramon Hospital Network
- Arecibo Intensive Care Hospital
- Cayey Military Hospital
- Fajardo Post-Operations Treatment Center
- Ponce City Bionics Central
- Rincón Plasma Treatment Facility (Heavily damaged, replacement under construction)
- Salinas Children's Hospital
- San Juan Central Hospital
- Yauco Center for Cryonics Research
Fortress San Juan[]
Part of the "San Felipe" Morro, reclaimed from the sea and strengthened in previous centuries.
Formally known as Old San Juan or known in Spanish as “Viejo San Juan” was a small town dating back to the Spanish colonizers in the 1500s. The town was built on a small, narrow island with only two entrances to and from the main land; known as the first and only line of defense against naval invasions, the fortress-town repelled seaside invasion attempts even into the late 1800s. Targeted during the 2080s conflict, it would hold off amphibious assaults before they approached the Bay of San Juan mainly due to the reconstituted and reinforced sea fortress: “San Felipe” Morro serving as a reinforced bunker and missile control center.
The town's historical district remained mostly untouched by modernization efforts to retain the antiquity of the old buildings, considered symbolic and important to the Puerto Rican populace. The old “Morro” Castle forts were converted into historical landmarks but remain very defendable, so much so that the UNSC Army established Covenant War-bases in the forts due to their strategic locations and thick walls. The Army however did run into trouble during their establishment process over thickening and building further structures in the old complex. To this day, the local populace has expressed distaste and petitioned returning the structures to their original state.
Arecibo Radio Park[]
One of the Arecibo telescope dishes built over several centuries. The Arecibo Radio Park was closed for more than a century due to dangerous urban decay but reactivated as part of the Covenant War defense effort.
Once the largest radio telescope on Earth, the Arecibo Observatory made many scientific discoveries though struggled through multiple points of severe damage from earthquakes and storms. Many more suspended ground dishes were installed between the Arecibo mogote hillsides over several centuries. The facility was eventually decommissioned when Humanity ascended to the stars for good. The decommissioned facility remained a local tourist attraction and greatly expanded wilderness preserve referred to as "Arecibo Radio Park" until its permanent closure in the Domus Diaspora era by the national military on grounds of urban decay posing safety risks to the general public and in a time of generational population decline.
The UNSC Communications Commission reactivated the site as a new military communications hub in 2529, marking an increased UNSC presence in the Caribbean in support of the Covenant War effort in predicting Covenant attacks and accelerating communication times with distant and threatened colony worlds. After the Covenant War, the facility returned to dormancy but received some attention as a live-fire training facility and War Games simulator setting for the UNSC Army, based on records of the ancient original telescope site before its reacquisition. During an ONI data sanitization operation in Puerto Rico against Created forces, the rogue AI director Yuki called Lezo 'Gohom's Covenant fleet for rescue via unaccounted, modernized radio dishes at Arecibo.
See Also[]
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Literary Appearances[]
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