José Julián Acosta founded El Progreso in 1870 to advance Puerto Rican society through intellectual rigor, moral clarity, and the free emission of thought. One hundred and fifty-six years later, that mission is unfinished. We continue it here.
"Para las sociedades no existen mas que dos caminos, dos sistemas: ó el régimen del silencio con todos sus dolores, ó el de la libre emisión del pensamiento con toda su virilidad. In servitute dolor, in libertate labor."— José Julián Acosta, El Progreso, September 7, 1870
Born in San Juan on May 11, 1825, José Julián Acosta y Calbo was one of the most consequential intellectual and political figures in Puerto Rican history. He was a reformer, an abolitionist, an educator, a historian, and a journalist. He was not primarily a reporter. He was a builder of institutions and a defender of the idea that Puerto Rican society deserved, and was capable of, full participation in civilized political life.
Acosta studied in Spain, where he became immersed in the liberal philosophical currents of the time, including the writings on natural rights and human dignity that would ground his later work. He returned to Puerto Rico and dedicated his life to its advancement through two instruments he trusted above all others: education and the press.
He founded El Progreso as a vehicle for the kind of political education he believed Puerto Rico desperately needed. Not partisan agitation. Not sensationalism. The patient, rigorous work of helping a people understand the structures that governed their lives, so that they might act intelligently within them and eventually transform them.
He wrote in the first article published in El Progreso: "When a people begin their political education, it is of the greatest importance to correct many of the mistaken judgments that habit and custom have formed." This sentence remains the editorial mandate of this publication.
The following principles are drawn directly from Acosta's original writings in El Progreso (1870–1875), adapted for 2026. They govern every editorial decision made by this publication.
Sensationalism. Crime-focused narratives divorced from systemic context. Clickbait framing. Fear-based storytelling. Partisan agitation. Content designed to provoke reaction rather than thought. These are the tools of the regime of silence, dressed in the clothes of liberty. El Progreso does not use them.
A living intelligence system. A running record of structural patterns across Puerto Rico's economy, education, governance, healthcare, and diaspora. A place where the island's most important conversations happen with the rigor they deserve. A platform that treats its readers as citizens, not consumers. A bridge between the island and its six million-strong diaspora. A lantern. Not just a mirror.
"El Progreso is not here to report what is broken. It is here to help fix it."— Editorial Mission, 2026
In 2026, a copy of Los Partidos Políticos — Acosta's collected articles from El Progreso, published in 1875 by Imprenta y Librería de Sancérrit at Fortaleza 21, San Juan — was recovered from the Library of Congress. These articles, originally published in September and October of 1870, constitute the founding intellectual document of this publication. They are archived in full in El Archivo.
The fact that Acosta printed from Fortaleza Street, steps from the seat of colonial power, is not incidental. He was not writing from the margins. He was writing from the center of his city, trusting in the power of printed argument to do what force could not. That posture is inherited.