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Jacob Driscoll
Professor Raymond
UWRT 1103
October 7, 2015
Mi Familia es de Puerto Rico
My family is from Puerto Rico. My mom, her sister, her brother, and my grandparents
were born in Puerto Rico; however, my grandparents were the only ones born and raised there.
My mom and her siblings along with my grandparents moved to the U.S. when my mom was
young. More to the point, my family is from Puerto Rico and they can trace their roots back to
several places in Europe and immigrants who came to the U.S. and Puerto Rico. The Puerto
Rican flag is made up of five horizontal stripes, three of them red and two of them white, and a
blue triangle turned on its side with a white star in the middle. The three red stripes stand for the
three branches of government and the two white stripes stand for individual liberty and the rights
of man. The white star stands for the commonwealth and the blue triangle is a symbol for the
blue sky and ocean(Puerto Rico Flags and Symbols). The flag was presented on December 22,
1895 at Chimney Hall New York by Juan de Mata Terreforte to a group of fifty-nine Puerto
Rican exiles who made up the Puerto Rican section of the Cuban Revolutionary Party(The Flag
of Puerto Rico).
The national anthem of Puerto Rico is called the La Borinquena (Puerto Rico
Nationalanthems). The word Borinquena is a reference to the original inhabitants of Puerto
Rico and is their word for the island Boriken or Borinquen. The music was first made in
1867 and was actually a song for dance, with romantic lyrics. Lola Rodriguez de Tio, who was a
revolutionary during that time, wrote the lyrics for the anthem, but were denied by the

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government. The next set of lyrics were written by Manuel Fernandez Juncos, and were adopted
in 1952 when Puerto Rico was accepted as a commonwealth nation of the U.S. The anthem
wasnt made totally official until 1977.

Works Cited

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The Flag of Puerto Rico." The Flag of Puerto Rico. United States District Court of Puerto
Rico, n.d. Web. 07 Oct. 2015.
"Puerto Rico." Nationalanthems.info. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Oct. 2015.
"Puerto Rico." Flags and Symbols and National Anthem. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Oct. 2015.