Is Puerto Rico Considered A Caribbean Island

Is Puerto Rico more like the USA or the Caribbean Islands/Central America?

Well, when you think commercial, it's very U.S. We have most of the stores, restaurants and companies that are in the continental U.S. Clothing styles and apparel, for that matter, are also very U.S.Highways and streets are a miniature semblance of those in the states with the exception of Interstates (miniature because they are not as wide or long). We don't have dirt roads unless you count those that are used for off-roading pass times.Buildings and homes also have a semblance of those in the states (give or take construction materials). About 80% of the homes in P.R. are fully cement built both inside and out. A large amount of wood homes have actually started being built under U.S. influence in recent years.Climate and geography are similar to that of Caribbean islands. Almost all of P.R. is mountainous and driving through flat lands is usually no longer than 2 or 3 miles long at a time. Our climate is Tropical. We basically have a 50-50 chance of rain every day.

Why are Dominicans and Puerto Ricans considered Latino if they are in the Caribbean, and not in Latin America?

Latín America was constructed term by the French to separate Latinize nations that spoke Spanish, Portuguese, and French and gain favor for themselves over the “Germanic People” Except there is a flaw to this back in those times Genetics didn’t exist as a science so know now it’s was flawed reasoning on the part of the French.We will stick to the American interpretation of the term or Label.The U.S. Census Bureau defines the ethnonym Hispanic or Latino to refer to "a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race" and states that Hispanics or Latinos can be of any race, any ancestry, any ethnicity.Latin America is composed of the core races Whites, Blacks, Native Americans, and Asians. Mixed Races include Mestizos, Zambos, and Mulattos, there is also Mestizo/Asian admixtures so those would be Multiracial.*The European Immigrants that came to Latin American are all not Spanish, Portuguese, and French. There are Irish, Welsh, British, Scottish, German, Flemish, Italians, Eastern Europeans and Central Europeans.* This is something else to note.There is also this misconception that people of Spanish/Iberian ancestry are not the same as there Anglo counter part this is false and I will allow science to prove my point.When it comes to Dominicans according to scholar Silvio Saillant, "today.' Blacks and mulattos make up nearly 90 percent of the contemporary Dominican population." Dominican Republic is one of the few countries in the world where the majority of the population is made up of multiraciales predominately European and African.These people who are mostly African are part of Latin America just as Haiti because of the Languages they speak French Creole and Spanish are Romanized languages aka Latin base languages there is no ethnic or cultural tie that brings together the 32 Latin American Nations.

How many islands make up the Caribbean?

There are at least 28 island nations and more than 7,000 individual islands in the Caribbean, which includes islands off the coasts of South and Central America as well as those in the Leeward and Windward Islands and the major islands of Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola (home to Haiti and the Dominican Republic), and Puerto Rico.Source:How Many Islands are In the Caribbean?

Why are Puerto Ricans considered Latinos if they’re not a country? I know that they’re in Latin America and they have Latino culture, but still they’re not a country, so why are they Latinos?

Some others who’ve already answer your question make some good points.Here’s some food for thought as an aside:Puerto Rico isn’t physically located in Latin America. Puerto Rico resides in the West Indies, also know as, the Caribbean or Antilles Islands — a region that’s undoubtedly part of the North American continent. Many people mistake Puerto Rico as being part of South America. Essentially, it’s a common implicit bias to mentally locate or attach Puerto Rico to a different continent just because Spanish is its dominate language. This same misconception is true about Mexico. Many believe Mexico is part of South America, but it is actually in North America. Central America bridges North and South America.To get even more technical, North and South America aren’t even two separate continents. It’s really only one continent. A continent is a large mass of land fully surrounded by ocean water (like a giant island). However, there’s no ocean waterway that separates “North America” and “South America.” They are bridged by Central America. This is also the case with Europe and Asia. Today, they aren’t considered two separate continents anymore. It’s now just “Eurasia.”I provide this commentary to add some context in response to your statement, “I know that they’re in Latin America…,” and like others have mentioned Latinx cultures aren’t geographically fixed, and there are MANY cultures of Spanish Speaking origin. Lastly, Puerto Rico IS a country. It just happens to still be colonized by the United States government. A colonized country doesn’t stop being a country, it (not so simply) becomes a country that’s oppressed and dominated by another.