Thirteen years providing the missing context of islands

In most buildings, the elevator skips the 13th floor. The number is omitted, passed over quietly, as if it does not exist. For the United States territories of Puerto Rico, Guam, the US Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands, that skip of the context of islands is political. Editorial. Systemic. And it has been happening for far longer than thirteen years.

Pasquines does not skip.

Thirteen years ago today, this organization launched with a mission to end the insularity between the United States and its territories—to bring local issues to national attention and national affairs to local consideration. The context of islands was never decorative language. It was a declaration of method: that for these five jurisdictions, context is the story.

Year thirteen made that argument for us.

When the governor of the Northern Mariana Islands died, without a single national outlet marking his passing, Pasquines was there. A head of government of a United States territory, gone from the public record of American journalism as though the islands themselves do not exist. We covered it because someone had to.

When American Samoans in Alaska found themselves facing felony charges over ballot confusion, we reported it. The story reaches into what happens when citizenship is ambiguous by design, when the political arrangements of the territories follow their residents across the country and complicate the most basic acts of civic participation.

When Guam’s long-unresolved question of self-determination moved again, we followed it with the depth that a wire dispatch cannot provide, the decades of history, the legal contradictions, and the voices of people whose political future remains unsettled.

When Congress advanced legislation with consequences for the US Virgin Islands buried deep in its text, we pulled those consequences into view. The territories have no voting representation in Congress. They depend on organizations like Pasquines to translate federal action into local reality.

And when Bad Bunny planted himself in Puerto Rico and broke records the music industry had not seen, we covered the significance alongside the spectacle, what the moment means for the islands culturally, economically, and in terms of how Puerto Rico sees itself on a global stage.

Quiet and defiant. That is what thirteen years of this work looks like. Just the work, year after year, producing the context that transforms a headline into a story worth understanding.

The number thirteen is the one skipped. The territories are the ones often skipped. Pasquines has spent thirteen years refusing to. And we have you, our incredible supporters, to thank for your help along the way.

The context of islands was always there. We just made sure it wasn’t missing.