Slavery in Puerto Rico formed part of the wider history of slavery in the Spanish Caribbean. Enslaved Africans and their descendants were used in agriculture, households, towns, and skilled work. Plantation expansion, particularly in sugar, linked the island to Atlantic markets, although Puerto Rico's slave economy differed in scale and composition from those of Cuba and Saint-Domingue.

Puerto Rico remained under Spanish rule after most mainland Spanish American colonies became independent. Its abolition therefore followed a different political chronology from the earlier emancipation measures adopted by many of the new republics. Spain abolished slavery in Puerto Rico in 1873, thirteen years before the final end of slavery and the patronato transition in Cuba.

The 1873 law was an important legal break, but emancipation was not simply instantaneous freedom in practice. The measure compensated former owners and imposed a labor transition on freed people, limiting immediate control over work and movement. Puerto Rico thus illustrates a recurring distinction in the abolition of slavery: ending legal ownership did not by itself remove plantation power, economic dependency, or racial inequality.