Puerto Rico has halted a $422m debt payment due on Monday, May 2 after talks to ease the U.S. territory's crisis ended without a deal, BBC News reports.
Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla said in a televised speech he had issued an executive order suspending payments.
He described it as a "painful decision", but had been warning since last year that the island's public debt of more than $70bn was unpayable.
The U.S. Congress has tried without success to agree a solution.
"Let me be very clear, this was a painful decision," Mr Garcia said in a speech. "We would have preferred to have had a legal framework to restructure our debts in an orderly manner."
He acknowledged before the weekend that if the payment was not made, it was likely to spark legal action from creditors. A further debt payment of $1.9bn is due in July.
