In 1937, Puerto Rico enacted Law 116, the last eugenics sterilization law passed under United States territorial jurisdiction. It was not repealed until 1960. Yet the conditions for, and outcomes of, eugenics in Puerto Rico were established and assured not merely by Law 116, but by US colonialism. By 1925, owing to the 1898 US invasion and the subsequent devaluation of the peso and the dispossession of ranchers and farmers by US sugar interests, 70% of the Puerto Rican population was landless with 2% of the population owning 80% of the land. As they had elsewhere, US eugenicists seized on the resulting poverty, blaming overpopulation, and targeting poor women for sterilization and pharmaceutical experimentation. In 1976, the U.S Department of Health, Education, and Welfare reported that over 37% of women of childbearing age in Puerto Rico had been sterilized. The vast majority were in their twenties.