Lares
The only place Puerto Rico ever declared itself a republic in 1868; the Grito de Lares flag became the island's first banner.
On September 23, 1868, four to six hundred rebels gathered at Manuel Rojas's hacienda near Lares. By midnight, they had seized the town hall and declared the Republic of Puerto Rico—the only time in the island's history such a republic was proclaimed. The Grito de Lares (Cry of Lares) lasted mere days before Spanish forces crushed the rebellion, but it established Puerto Rico's most powerful symbol of independence.
The uprising emerged from the coffee economy. Between 1828 and 1868, material conditions for Lares's non-propertied classes deteriorated while economic and juridical pressures intensified. The conspiracy united physician Ramón Emeterio Betances, lawyer Segundo Ruíz Belvis, and a dozen coffee planters who sought to end both slavery and the peonage that kept free laborers in virtual servitude. The Grito de Lares flag became Puerto Rico's first national banner.
Today, Lares's economy remains primarily agricultural—coffee, bananas, oranges, tomatoes—supplemented by independence-movement tourism. In 2016, USDA-funded housing for farmers at Alturas de Castañer brought 24 families to work coffee and banana cultivation. The Grito de Lares 2024 commemorations continue to draw the diaspora community home each September.
The town occupies a peculiar position: its entire identity rests on an event that failed militarily but succeeded culturally. For 2026, Lares faces the question of whether symbolic capital can translate into economic sustainability, or whether the birthplace of Puerto Rican independence remains primarily a pilgrimage site sustained by coffee production and nationalist memory.