On January 2, 1949, Luis Muñoz Marín became Puerto Rico’s first independently-elected governor. Puerto Rico had been governed by Spain for more than three centuries before it was annexed to the United States in 1898. For the next fifty years, its governor was appointed by America’s President. In 1946, President Harry S. Truman appointed the island’s first full-time Puerto Rican governor – Jesús T. Piñero. However, twice previously a Puerto Rican had temporarily served as governor. The first time was in 1579, when Juan Ponce de León II, the grandson of explorer Ponce de León, served as interim governor until the arrival of Spanish Governor Jerónimo De Aguero Campuzano. Also, in 1923, Juan Bernardo Huyke temporarily held the position in between the administrations of Americans Emmet Montgomery Reily and Horace Mann Towner.