Puerto Rico Land Of Wonder S

$4-5

MR. HANSON has participated in this
adventure since 1935. In 1955 he wrote
his first book about it, Transformation;
but so dynamic has the social revolution
been, so fast the pace of change, so
thrilling ^hc progress 1 , that five years
later another and Jt.rgely new book is
i?oet j^iirv. A small part ?t the historical
iiar/ative has been taken from the ear-
lier book, so that this new one in itself
completely covers the modern history
DI the island its political revolution, its
eccnor-iy, its industrialization., its agri-
(coriinued on back flap)

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BOOKS BY

Earl Parker Hanson

PUERTO Rico: Land of Wonders (1960)
TRANSFORMATION : The Story of Modern Puerto Rico

NEW WORLDS EMERGING (1950)

NEW WORLD GUIDES TO THE LATIN AMERICAN REPUBLICS

(1944, i946> ^950)
CHILE: LAND OF PROGRESS (1941)
STEFANSSON: PROPHET OF THE NORTH (1941)
JOURNEY TO MANAOS (1938)

PUERTO RICO

Land of Wonders

PUERTO RICO

Land
of Wonders

B Y

EARL PARKER HANSON

ALFRED-A-KNOPF : NEW YORK

L. C. catalog card number: 60-7299

EARL PARKER HANSON, 1955, *96o

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK,
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.

Copyright 1955, 1960 by EARL PARKER HANSON. AH
rights reserved. No part of this book may be repro-
duced in any form without permission in writing from
the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote
brief passages and reproduce not more than three illus-
trations in a review to be printed in a magazine or
newspaper. Manufactured in the United States of
America. Published simultaneously in Canada by Mc-
Clelland & Stewart, Ltd.

PUBLISHED APRIL II, 1960
SECOND PRINTING, SEPTEMBER 1 960

Certain historical chapters in this book have been
drawn from Transformation, Earl Parker Hanson's
previous book about Puerto Rico, now out of print.

for

Don & Muriel

FRIENDS

STAUNCH AND DEPENDABLE

Foreword

MY EAKLIER BOOK on Puerto Rico, Transformation: the
Story of Modern Puerto Rico, published in 1955 by Simon
and Schuster, told the story of a new society reshaping it-
self and rising from the anguish of its former colonialism.
Many such societies are found in the world today, and my
intention was to present Puerto Rico as an example of prin-
ciples and techniques that are important to the entire
modern world. The book's reception was varied. In the
United States it was widely regarded as a kind of "Believe it
or Not" story, giving odd facts about an odd but lively so-
ciety. Abroad, among the people who are trying to achieve
for themselves something of what the Puerto Ricans have
achieved and are achieving, its universal implications were
understood much better. Kwame Nkrumah, for instance,
wrote me from Accra, even before the Gold Coast achieved
its independence as Ghana, that my book had persuaded
him that Puerto Rico had much to offer his country by way
of example and that he intended to send a number of his
people to this Caribbean island to pick up ideas. In 1958,
after Transformation was out of print, Lord John Boyd-Orr
wrote me, urging that a new edition be published soon, as a

viii c Foreword

rebuke and a prod to those many Europeans who seemed
unable to shed their long-standing but outmoded imperial-
istic habits of thought. Whatever influence Transformation
may or may not have had in Europe, I know that it was
widely distributed and read in the changing and "emerging"
countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

A number of foreign editions helped to stimulate interest
in Puerto Rico, A full-length Spanish edition was published
in Mexico. Condensed versions of the book have to date
appeared in Arabic, Burmese, and Hindi.

Late in 1957 the book's American edition was out of
print, and the problem of getting out a new edition became
acute. In this case it also involved finding a new title and a
new publisher. My profound thanks and wholesome respect
go to the firm of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., and to its editor-in-
chief, Mr. Harold Strauss, for being willing to go along with
the venture.

Now that I have completed the job of preparing the pres-
ent version, and have finally decided on the difficult ques-
tion of a new title, I can assure readers, librarians, and
reviewers that it is not at all a mere revised edition of Trans-
formation updated and somewhat shortened. Well over half
of the text had to be completely rewritten, and the present
version is a "new" book in at least one important basic as-
pect.

The formulation of the policies described in Transformer
tion was, for the Puerto Ricans, a heroic but relatively
simple matter. The glaring evils of colonialismunemploy-
ment, bad distribution of the land, hunger, illiteracy, dis-
ease suggested and even dictated their own curative
programs and policies. But now Puerto Rico has reached a
new and even more difficult stage in its development and is
confronted by a brand-new set of dilemmas. The Puerto
Rican effort has matured and become sophisticated; Puerto
Rico has emerged from its former status as a museum piece
of colonial evils and is to an ever increasing extent a func-
tioning member of the modern industrial world; by the same

Foreword c Ix

token, it has taken on many of the most difficult problems
of today's capitalist nations.

The need for redistributing the land, which was so ap-
parent twenty ears ago, now begins to give way in im-
portance to the need for making the land produce its
maximum in economic benefits; the two needs are often in
conflict. The need for creating more jobs is at times in
conflict with the pressing need for improving industrial
efficiency, with its attendant technological unemployment.
The labor force is itself becoming more sophisticated in its
demands and activities, but in any one situation the demands
for higher wages and better conditions is often in conflict
with the society's desperate need to create more jobs,
thereby reducing unemployment.

Such are the conditions that make 1960 a turning point
in Puerto Rico's affairs which may eventually prove to be
every bit as important as the year 1940. A brilliant job was
done in twenty short years, but the changes of two decades
now demand a re-examination of all the policies under
which that job was done, a reformulation of policies, a re-
shaping of programs. When I wrote Transformation, I
didn't dream of such imminent needs; when I wrote Puerto
Rico: Land of Wonders, they became clearer to me daily.

My thanks also go to the government of Puerto Rico and
my many friends in it for having permitted me, since 1955,
again to play a personal role in the ferment that goes on
here unceasingly. A manumitted professor of geography, I
continue to be stimulated in my present role of consultant
and technician, of planner and writer. A former friend of
Puerto Rico, I am now a Puerto Rican, a citizen and affiliate
of the Commonwealth, as well as a citizen of the United
States.

In this foreword I could go on endlessly, giving thanks to
the many people to whom I owe them. But the list of such
people has grown immeasurably since I acknowledged my
indebtedness in the foreword to Transformation. Let that
foreword stand; the friends I mentioned in it will forgive

x Foreword

me for not repeating their names in the present book. I do,
however, want to beg special indulgence of Dr. Rafael Pic6
and Mr. Chester Bowles for not repeating here their valiant
personal contributions to Transformation. I appreciated and
still appreciate those contributions immeasurably. But with
the present volume I feel the need to go it alone, without
introductory pats on the back from others.

EARL PAH.KEK HANSON

San Juan, Puerto Rico
December 1959

CONTENTS

1 Transformation 3

2 The World and Puerto Rico 6

3 New York and Puerto Rico 2,4

4 The Anguish of Colonialism 44

5 Colonialism Bankrupt 63

6 The Breaker of the Cake 82,

7 Climax and Disintegration joi

8 Faith in Ourselves ji8

9 Tug-well 133

10 Neither Radical nor Conservative 150

11 Agriculture 167

12 The Battle for Production 189

13 Labor 215

14 Public Health 231

15 Education 2,48

1 6 Ciz;ic Employment 265

17 Culture Changes 281

1 8 WTiere Ncra>? 301
Index follows page 320

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PUERTO RICO

Land of Wonders

1

Transformation

THE turning point was 1940. Before that year Puerto Rico
was a run-down colony, starving and lethargic. One didn't
read or hear much about the island, except when some vo-
cal observer discovered its woes or when somebody shot
somebody. A few liberal-minded people were interested in
the Puerto Rican "problem" more or less as a case study, but
nobody knew how to solve that problem, and few people
except, of course, the Puerto Ricans cared very deeply
about it.

Then in 1940 the Puerto Ricans staged their own brand
of revolution. That year's election was a social explosion that
freed the human spirit, substituted hope for despair, and re-
leased tremendous human energies for creative effort.

The world began to notice the results of that effort about
1948. The vocal observers who once, occasionally, discov-
ered Puerto Rico's misery now discover and rediscover its
phenomenal progress. Every year one reads and hears more
about the progressive, democratic society the Puerto Ricans
are creating for themselves.

In its own way Puerto Rico has become important in the

4 c PUERTO Rico

modern world and has made the influence of Its example felt
throughout the non-Communist societies. How can that be,
as the land is small, as islands go, and incredibly poor in nat-
ural resources?

About i, 600 miles south of New York, Puerto Rico is ap-
proximately one hundred miles long and thirty-five miles
wide about as large as Long Island. Its climate is tropical,
which, according to some observers 9 is supposed to rob its
bustling people of energy. Topographically Puerto Rico
consists of a complex of mountains surrounded by a coastal
plain; the amount of land suited for the orthodox kinds of
agriculture is limited. The original stands of virgin timber
have long since been cut down; not enough trees remain to
support a lumber industry of any consequence, or even to
prevent soil erosion. There are no commercial deposits of
iron, copper, manganese, gold, silver, or any other metals
at least none that anybody knows about. There are no known
fuel deposits coal or petroleum. Clay for making bricks,
tiles, and tableware; marble; limestone for making cement;
phosphates for making fertilizer these constitute the total
exploitable mineral wealth discovered to date.

The rivers that tumble down from the mountains provide
water that can be and has been harnessed to produce elec-
tricity.

The excellent climate and unsurpassed scenic beauty are,
of course, also natural resources. They are being sold to
thousands of tourists and other visitors. But that more or less
finishes the list of material wealth.

The Puerto Ricans themselves are the island's greatest as-
set, but some say that there axe too many of them, Two mil-
lion, three hundred thousand of them divide into 650 per
square mile and make Puerto Rico one of the most crowded
countries on earth. And it has one of the highest birth rates*
If aE the world's people all the whites, blacks, yellows,
browns, all the Caucasians, Mongolians, Indians, all the
Christians, Mohammedans, Hindus, Communists, and Capi-

Transformation c 5

talists, all the people of China, the Soviet Union, India, Eu-
rope, Africa, Latin America were to move into the United
States tomorrow, our density of population would also be
about 650 per square mile or about the same as Puerto
Rico's, not counting the million or so Puerto Ricans who
have moved to the United States.

And now people flock to the island from all over the world
to see for themselves what so many people have achieved
with so few natural resources.

Of course, they discover one more resource in many
ways the most important of them all. That resource is Puerto
Rico's relationship with the United States, its proximity to
the United States, the political system it has worked out
jointly with the United States, its position within the U.S.
tariff wall, its access to U.S. capital and markets, and its
financial position under which it enjoys federal bounty on a
basis of equality with the fifty states without contributing to
the federal treasury.

That relationship compensates for the dearth of material
resources; it is of inestimable value to Puerto Rico's aV& mil-
lion people and incidentally also to the United States. It
has made possible, though not caused, the tremendous im-
provements that are now attracting world attention. It has
provided channels for the human energies that were re-
leased in the explosion of 1940.

After more than four centuries of lethargy, the people of
Puerto Rico finally took hold of their own destiny and began
to make the most of their resources, including the tremen-
dous wealth of good relations with a powerful and friendly
United States.

That is the story of modern Puerto Rico.

The present book is an attempt to deal with the questions
of why that story is important, what Puerto Rico was before
1940, why and how the explosion of 1940 took place, what
Puerto Rico has achieved since then, and where the island
seems to be headed today.

2

The World and
Puerto Rico

THE present will go down In history as man's great age of
anguish and creation, as by far the most sweeping of his
fearful, recurring periods of "renaissance/' That age was
ushered in by the world depression.

The creative social force called capitalism seemed to col-
lapse during the depression, but was not destroyed. It saved
itself through an internal "revolution/* In the broadest sense,
it saved itself through the incipient abolition of the complex
and many-faceted institution known as colonialism inter-
nal, and external, political and economic* The many new na-
tions that arose and are arising in Asia, Africa, and Oceania
since World War xx, the revolutionary changes being wit-
nessed today in Latin America, did not owe their origins to
the war; they were foreordained by the world depression,

The depression caught our world with the embarrassing
condition known as overproduction, by which the industrial
nations generated goods more rapidly than they created cus-
tomers with the wherewithal to purchase them, and capital-
ism was threatened with destruction as a result. The crea-
tion of millions of new customers, through the abolition of

The World and Puerto Rico c 7

colonialism hand in hand with economic development to
multiply purchasing power, seemed obviously desirable.

The depression intensified what looked like a life and
death struggle between capitalism and communism. Re-
gardless of the armaments race, it seems obvious today that
in that struggle the decisive factor will not be some secret
weapon of unprecedented destructive power; it will be noth-
ing more complex than the loyalty, as given to this side or
that, of hundreds of millions of God's creatures who are
tired of the agonies, the lack of hope, and the hungers of
various kinds which they have hitherto suffered under colo-
nialism.

Dramatically, the depression exposed the dangers and
fallacies of capitalism's racist thinking, by which dark-
skinned peoples are postulated as having been created for
roles in life no better than those of colonial subjects. That
those people did not believe the pseudoscientific arguments
that "proved" their inferiority to the ruling whites, and that
they were needed as customers for capitalism's goods and as
allies against communism, pointed to the need for abolishing
colonialism in our own South and in Latin America, as well
as in Asia and in Africa.

The depression, during which the United States was itself
overpopulated by about 15,000,000 unemployed and their
families, led to the temporary popularity of the vicious sys-
tem of thought known as neo-Malthusianism. Its adherents
maintained that the main trouble with today's world is that it
is too full of foreigners who refuse to practice birth control
for the purpose of safeguarding our high American stand-
ards of living, which they have never had a chance to enjoy.
But today it is apparent that "it is never a land that is over-
populated in terms of inhabitants per square mile, it is al-
ways an economy, in terms of inhabitants per square meal."
If the economy is expanded, and people are enabled to direct
their energies toward creative ends other than mere procrea-
tion, then through education and the sense of responsibil-

8 c PUERTO Rico

ity that grows with improved standards of living birth rates
decrease.

The general abolition of colonialism, with all its repressive
institutions, cannot go forward without friction and turmoil,
as indicated in Indochina, Algeria, and Kenya. Even World
War n, which was instigated by Hitler in part as a naive ef-
fort to regain Germany's former colonial possessions in Af-
rica, was in essence a violent delaying action. But colonial-
ism is being abolished, must be abolished, in the modern
world.

As a result, hundreds of millions of colonialism's former
victims now find themselves with new and cherished free-
doms, with new opportunities, but also with new responsibili-
ties and terrible new problems. They have set out to develop
and reshape their lands, but they have little capital and less
experience for the task. They are driven by urgency, but re-
tarded by lack of skills. The people who benefit directly from
today's ubiquitous social revolution now roam the earth in
search of help, knowledge, ideas, fellow workers, and sym-
pathizers in their long uphill struggle to create a new world.

Among them, in January 1957, was Ghana's Minister of
Finance, the Honorable Kohla Agbeli Gbedcmah, who came
to Puerto Rico while his country was still a British West Afri-
can colony caUed "Gold Coast"

During a dinner conversation, I said; "So you get your in-
dependence on March 6 of this year,"

"Yes," he answered. "That is when our troubles will be-
gin."

"It seems to me that you've had troubles before/*

"That is quite true. But until March 6 we can still blame
them on the British. Now we will have to face them our-
selves,* 7

He spoke for millions. The winning of hard-bought free-
doms is one matter; the prospect of having to translate them
into a national way of life, with scant means for the job, can
be terrifying.

The World and Puerto Rico c 9

The fact that Gbedemah told me this in Puerto Rico was
no mere accident. A large and growing number of the pil-
grims who are today in search of techniques and tools for
their new tasks have discovered that relatively small Carib-
bean Island formerly a colony of the United States, but
now its enthusiastic voluntary partner. They have discov-
ered that Puerto Rico in recent decades has done an aston-
ishing job of transforming itself. Between May 1950 and
June 30, 1959, 10,136 official visitors, observers, students,
and technicians visited the island. They came from 118
countries in Latin America, the Caribbean area, Africa,
the Near East, the Middle East, the Far East, Oceania, Eu-
rope, and the United States. The first year, when the pro-
gram was inaugurated, there were 146 of them. Year by year
the number grew as Puerto Rico's fame spread. In 1958-9
there were 1,362. In the beginning those visitors were sent
to the island by the United States government partly because
Puerto Rico was beginning to give Uncle Sam a fine reputa-
tion, partly because those from the so-called underdeveloped
countries, as well as U, S. technicians, could learn much
there. Eventually, as the island became known, the United
Nations also began to send people there, as did private com-
panies and organizations. Governments in Latin America,
Africa, and Asia began to send observers to Puerto Rico.
Such governments have no interest in propaganda to im-
prove the United States's reputation; they send their repre-
sentatives because Puerto Rico is doing a job, because the
Puerto Ricans have rolled up their sleeves and are making
their island over, because much can be learned from such a
job, and because the island's psychological climate is today
as creative as that of Israel and certain parts of India.

Even New York City is now sending observers to Puerto
Rico.

In less than a decade Puerto Rico has become a showcase
for U.S. decency in handling one of the world's former out-
standing colonial problems, as well as a laboratory, a train-

io PUERTO Rico

ing ground where the world's people can acquire attitudes
and techniques for improving their lives.

What is it that those thousands of visitors want in Puerto
Rico?

Some seek specific skills by which they can later help to
improve the economies of their own countries. Many, how-
ever, seek more than these skills. If they want to learn agri-
cultural techniques or the technical and psychological intri-
cacies of co-operation, they can do better in Denmark. If
they are interested in soil conservation, Denmark and Ger-
many provide excellent examples, Norway and the United
States are good study areas for hydroelectric development.
Puerto Rico is forging ahead in industrial techniques, sani-
tary engineering, city planning, budgetary practices, and
many other things, but the student from Africa could ob-
viously learn such specialties better in the United States or
one of the other highly developed countries. But still they
come in increasing numbers from Africa, Asia, and other
regions. Why?

What they want and many have told me is not some
specialty, but the integrated picture. They want to learn
how it is that one small society, a land dramatically poor in
natural resources, a land that a few short decades previ-
ously had been all but hopeless in its lethargy its illness, its
lack of financial resources, its lack of technical knowledge
could suddenly take hold of its own affairs, embark on an
"Operation Bootstrap/* and become world-famous in no time
at all, as human affairs go.

They want to know how the Mf e expectancy of the average
Puerto Rican, which was 46 years in 1940, could shoot up to
68 years by 1958, and how the death rate, which in 1940 was
1 8, 2 per i ,000, could drop in the same period to a point
lower than that of the United States proper.

Most of the visitors come from countries that know the
agony of an average life span made short by a high death
rate. They know the desperation of illness, of high birth

The World and Puerto Rico * n

rates in social structures of low economic opportunity, of
ceaseless, hopeless, grinding toil for wages of pennies per
day, of wresting crops from worn-out soils. They come from
countries that may not have gathered and memorized their
statistics, but that have experienced the full, living impact
of those statistics. To us, who live on Park Avenue, or teach
or study in universities, an increase of twenty-two years in
average life expectancy may be only a somewhat interesting
fact if that. To the man from Thailand or West Africa it
is the living symbol of the revolution he is trying to further
when he includes Puerto Rico in the itinerary of his world
peregrinations.

He is interested in revolutions because that f orty-srx-yeax
life expectancy found in Puerto Rico in 1940 denoted the
same conditions grinding toil, high birth rates and death
rates, high morbidity in various devitalizing illnesses, gnaw-
ing hunger, wretched clothing and housing, low standards
in education, denuded soils, lack of economic opportunity,
lack of political freedom for improving economic opportu-
nity, and the loss of human dignity the visitor knows in his
own country. He feels at home in Puerto Rico. He is inter-
ested in the island because there he finds a small society
that has obviously succeeded in shaking off the anguish of
its former colonialism and is busily and successfully reshap-
ing itself.

Before 1940 Puerto Rico was a colony, an "agrarian" so-
ciety, as badly off as any on earth, and worse off than most.
It was bankrupt financially and, to all appearances, psycho-
logically and spiritually as well. Everybody could see and feel
the suffering; nobody seemed to know how to reverse the
downward spiral toward imminent destruction. Then "the
man" appeared. He stirred his people out of their lethargy,
taught them political awareness and morality, and promised
to set them on the tortuous upward road to their own salva-
tion. He said, in effect: 'If we are to be saved, we must stop
asking the ruling country to save us. The job is up to us, to do

12 c PUERTO Rico

through our own indigenous power, pride, and responsibil-
ity."

That was revolutionary talk, and the resulting election,
which brought Luis Munoz Marin to political power in Puerto
Rico, was a revolution, pure and simple. For when a colonial
leader says "We will do this and that, regardless of what the
ruling country says/' he is preaching revolution because he
promises to usurp power from the ruling country. When
his people elect him to office on the strength of that promise,
they are carrying out a revolution. But, when the ruling
country then says "It is a fine idea and we will help you all
we can/' then, miraculously, that is the end of colonialism.
From that point on, the course of events is foreordained.

That is precisely what happened in Puerto Rico, and that
is why the United States is today pleased to send thousands
of foreign visitors to San Juan. Incidentally, it is also the rea-
son why France is not always happy to have its Algerians go
to the Caribbean island, or the Union of South Africa its
Liberals, or the governor of Arkansas Ms Negro colonial sub-
jects.

Since the revolutionary election of 1940, Puerto Rico has,
among other things ;

Greatly expanded its power network and launched a re-
markable program of industrialization to give employment
and to strengthen and diversify the economy;

Made strong headway in the diversification, moderniza-
tion, and augmented production of its agricultural plant;

More than doubled its per capita annual income in term$
of purchasing power and made strides in the improved dis-
tribution of that income;

Created one of the Hemisphere's best public-health serv-
ices and reduced its death rate to a figure lower than that of
the continental United States;

Greatly expanded its educational system and taken drastic
steps toward reshaping it to fit modern needs;

Extended that great impetus to aU classes of Puerto Ri-

The World and Puerto Rico c 13

cans to the point where thousands are today "civically em-
ployed" and are giving their thoughts and labors to the task
of effectively improving their lives, instead of expecting their
government to do everything for them;

Created social and economic conditions under which its
former "explosive" birth rate has turned the corner and is de-
clining rapidly, thus bringing the society ever nearer the
point where population will finally be in balance with the
productive effort;

Abolished its former colonial status and created new forms
of political relationships by which it is today a self-governing
country within the framework of the United States, sharing
the broader independence of the latter.

The list can be expanded and detailed indefinitely. No-
body, however, claims that Puerto Rico has solved a single
one of its problems for all time, or that such an effective and
vitally important program can be carried forward without
friction and opposition. There is friction in Puerto Rico; there
is opposition. But there is also an improvement so marked
that it attracts observers from all the world's areas, and a
spirit of creation so dynamic and vital that it is felt immedi-
ately by virtually all visitors.

Puerto Rico's progress is precisely what Nehru and his fel-
low workers are striving for in India, Kwame Nkrumah in
Ghana. It is what Israel is working for, as well as Thailand,
Iraq, Jordan, and Indonesia. Now that democracy is invad-
ing Latin America, dictators are falling, and the medieval
feudalism imported by the conquistadors is collapsing, it is
what the great masses of Latin Americans have begun to ex-
pect and attempt. Hence, people come to Puerto Rico from
everywhere west of the Iron Curtain, though some also come
from Yugoslavia.

Nevertheless, those visitors don't go home believing that
they can achieve the same results with the same techniques.
No two countries on earth are the same; each demands its
own techniques for salvation. If foreign visitors lament

14 PUERTO Rico

Puerto Rico's lack of natural resources, they also envy its
privileged position in the world's greatest marketthe
United States. Puerto Rico sells goods freely in the United
States and draws so freely on U.S. capital that it has become
known as "a new American industrial frontier/' It enjoys
nearly all the advantages of American citizenship and re-
ceives financial help from Washington comparable to that
given to the various states. Unlike the states, however, it
does not contribute to the federal government's expenses.

Such conditions, within the framework of which Puerto
Rico is today achieving its remarkable progress, are unique
and not exportable. But the idea of a society taking the ini-
tiative and making the major effort for its own progress is
exportable* To Latin Americans the basic concept of im-
proved relations with the United States even though it is a
two-way concept that demands something of Washington-
is also exportable. Many of the techniques used to improve
public health are exportable, as are the social techniques by
which Puerto Rico builds thousands of sturdy, sanitary,
concrete rural homes for $300 each. Innovations in educa-
tion, in agriculture, in land distribution, in labor relations,
and in government organization are not only exportable, but
are being transported to many parts of the world.

In a basic sense the most important exportable idea is
that only in a functioning, true democracy can progress
such as Puerto Rico's occur. That leads to varied reactions*

Governor Munoz Marin is a Latin American, and the
Hemisphere's few remaining dictators, who fear democracy
above all else, hate him venomously; they spend thousands
of dollars to disseminate the misinformation that he and his
colleagues are Communists, or are under communism's in-
fluence.

Fatayi WiUiams, from western Nigeria, reacted differ-
ently to the same democracy. He had spent some months in
the United States, studying race relations, and told me that
it was inconceivable to him that Puerto Rico could be under

The World and Puerto Rico t 15

the same flag as Little Rock and Harlem. 'This is the only
place under the American flag," he said, "where I can for-
get that I am a Negro. Look out on the street. When twenty
Puerto Ricans go past, the first may be white and the last
black, but the rest are all colors in between. That is why you
can make such progress. You don't waste energy on sense-
less racial strife."

If Puerto Rico's modern phase began with the election of
1940, its functions as a laboratory began with what many
still regard as the most important statement made by a
world leader since World War n. Truman was elected Presi-
dent in 1948, and his inaugural address included the sensa-
tional "Point IV" statement. "We must embark/' he said, "ou
a bold new program for making the benefits of our scien>
tific advances and industrial progress available for the im-
provement and growth of underdeveloped areas. More than
half the people of the world are living in conditions ap-
proaching misery. Their food is inadequate. They are vic-
tims of disease. Their economic life is primitive and stag-
nant. Their poverty is a handicap and a threat both to them
and to more prosperous areas."

Shortly after saying those things, Truman was visited by
Puerto Rico's governor the first ever to be elected by the is-
land's people. There is no written record of the conversation
between the two. In general, however, it went as follows :

The President said: "What can I do for you?"

"Nothing," Munoz Marin answered. "During the past ten
years we have changed from "Operation Lament' to 'Opera-
tion Bootstrap.' We have begun to do the things that you call
for in your Point IV. We have worked out techniques for
doing them and are well on the way to solving our basic
problems. Within the framework of the American scheme
of things we have also strengthened and widened our de-
mocracy immeasurably. Now we want to do what we can to
help you implement Point IV.

"We believe that we have something to show and teach

16 PUERTO Rico

the so-called underdeveloped regions and their people. If
you will send us their representatives and your technicians,
we will gladly show and teach them whatever we can as a
result of our past ten years of experience. We believe that
we will thereby also help to strengthen the good reputation
of the United States throughout the world, because what we
have done, and are doing, is to a large extent a result of
American fairness, co-operation, and democracy/"

Truman sent a commission, which reported favorably on
possibilities for carrying out the governor's proposal. Munoz
talked to his legislature, asking that Puerto Rico still a
colony in the technical sense appropriate funds for the
program. These funds were voted even before the U. S. Con-
gress had passed the legislation that made a small reality
out of Point IV. They have been voted every year since then
and have in recent years been increased considerably. Lit-
tle Puerto Rico, struggling to solve its own problems with
inadequate means, poorer by fax then our poorest state, is
the only part of the American Union that contributes to the
world-wide federal Point IV effort

Appropriate government machinery was set up in San
Juan and in Washington, and foreign visitors at first
largely from Latin America began to arrive in 1950, Since
then the procedure has been changed considerably, with
Puerto Rico itself taking on more responsibility and paying
more of the cost than formerly. Today Puerto Rico's Depart-
ment of State is perhaps the most cosmopolitan spot in the
Caribbean area. A constant stream of visitors from all parts
of the world fan out from the department to visit other gov-
ernment agencies, inspect the work done in the field, talk to
Puerto Ricans of all classes, and absorb the atmosphere in
what has been called "America's answer to communism;**

One visitor in 1957 was a newspaper publisher from In-
donesia. He told me that he had come to the island because
in his own country the politically strong Communists were
constantly pointing to Puerto Rico as a suffering, starving,

The World and Puerto Rico c 17

demoralized victim of the United States's imperialistic
greed. He wanted to see for himself, and he did see. He saw
many poor people, but he also saw them striving with hope
and in freedom to improve their lives. When he returned to
Indonesia, he published articles in his paper refuting the
Communists' claims. Such articles, pointing to Puerto Rico
as the refutation of imperialistic charges against the United!
States, are beginning to appear by the dozens in Latin
America, in Africa, in Asia, and in Europe. Many Puerto Hi-
cans regard these articles as a partial repayment of their
great indebtedness to the United States. In today's strife-
torn world, where reputation is at least as important as tech-
nical advance in armaments, they and the spirit behind
them may well be worth every penny of financial help and
advantage the United States gives Puerto Rico.

Dr. Arturo Morales Carrion, erstwhile professor of his-
tory at the University of Puerto Rico, and now Undersecre-
tary of State in charge of the Commonwealth's several for-
eign-visitors programs, is a busy man. His department's
"Program of Technical Co-operation," directed by Senor Jose
Luis Colom, formerly of the Pan American Union, is carried
out in full co-operation with the United States International
Co-operation Administration, although it also receives and
handles many visitors sent by other bodies, public and pri-
vate, or by their own governments. The program includes
the granting of hundreds of scholarships to students from
the Caribbean area, and specializes in training in specific
fields. It accounted for 6,484 of the total number of official
visitors through June 1959, and these came from 118 coun-
tries. Today it is attracting visitors at a rate of well over
1,000 per year.

The Program of Educational Exchange, carried out with
the co-operation of the International Exchange Service of
the U. S. Department of State, is headed in San Juan by
Senor Jos6 Ramon Pineiro, Master in Political Science from
the University of Chicago. It was started in 1955 and has

i8 PUERTO Rico

since then, through June 1959, attracted 1,444 official visi-
tors from seventy-five countries. Unlike the Technical Co-
operation Program, it offers no training in specific fields; It
does, however, attract a large number of eminent men and
women. Sir Arkuh Korsa, Chief Justice of Ghana's Supreme
Court, Dr. Hussein Bushnaq, Jordan's Director of Public
Welfare, and the charming Madame Ella Koblo Gulama
Sierra Leone's only woman Paramount Chief, member of
Sierra Leone's legislature, a leader for her country's even-
tual independence, and a hereditary African queen in her
own right are examples of the type of people attracted. Im-
portant, also, are the many foreign journalists who come
under "educational exchange." These include Individuals
like my Indonesian friend, as well as groups of journalists
who periodically visit Puerto Rico from Latin America*
When Asian Communists use Puerto Rico for attacking
American imperialism, when die-hard Latin Americans re-
furbish the old, dogmatic line of "dollar diplomacy/* despite
its rapidly waning validity, when mobs attack the Vice-Presi-
dent of the United States as a symbol of America's 111 will to-
ward lesser peoples, these journalists are m a positionas a
result of their Puerto Rican experiences to refute much
outmoded thinking still current in the Hemisphere.

In the Latin-American field, especially, such leadership Is
vitaUy important. Outstanding Latin-American leaders for
democracy, such as President Betancourt of Venezuela, and
ex-President Figueres of Costa Rica, acknowledge their in-
debtedness to Puerto Rico for their present Ideas on the
possibilities of strengthened relations with the United
States sustained mutually and in good faith, to the advan-
tage of both. In Washington 1958 was a turning point; a
number of important voices were raised In favor of a "hard
new look** at our relations with Latin America. Vice-Presi-
dent Nixon, for instance, raised such a cry after Ms disas-
trous South American visit but also after he had spent the

The World and Puerto Rico n 19

better part of a night talking to Mufioz Marin in San Juan
about the lessons to be learned from his sobering experi-
ences in Peru and Venezuela.

The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations invited
Munoz Marin to Washington in 1958 to give advice. He out-
lined a broad new policy toward Latin America, which was
reported to be taken very seriously at the time, and to be
taken even more seriously after the Nixon debacle.

Another important activity of Puerto Rico's Department
of State is that of sponsoring and arranging international
conferences and seminars. Twenty years ago, when Puerto
Rico was still a starving, stricken colony with nothing to
teach except woe, and when the needed hotel and other fa-
cilities were lacking, nobody would have dreamed of such
conferences being held on the island. Since 1953 more than
twenty have been held, under favorable coauspices, attract-
ing 2,500 official delegates from a large number of coun-
tries. Naturally these also broaden the Puerto Ricans* hori-
zons. There have been large international conferences on
such diverse subjects as: health problems in the Americas;
the exchange of persons as a means of strengthening inter-
national good will; social service in the Hemisphere; the
plantation system; Caribbean problems. There have been
seminars, well attended by people from many nations, on:
the teaching of history; education for planning; the history
of ideas in the Americas; industrial development; and sev-
eral other subjects.

The fifty-first annual conference of United States gov-
ernors, held in San Juan in August 1959, was by far the
most important and the best-arranged conference ever held
in Puerto Rico. It was also the first meeting of state gov-
ernors to be held outside of the continental United States,
and resulted in a large number of governors obtaining an in-
timate view of Puerto Rico's progress and problems social,
economic, and political.

so PUERTO Rico

Such activities focus attention on modern Puerto Rico as
a seed bed for ideas that are important to the modern world,
where many new worlds are emerging.

Many Puerto Rican technicians and advisers have gone
to other countries in recent years to lend help to those
countries* efforts; and they continue to go in a swelling
stream. Meanwhile, the United States has been using Puerto
Ricans in yet another of its international activities. The
Caribbean commission grew out of wartime co-operation in
the Caribbean area by the United States and Great Britain, It
developed into a commission of the imperial powers the
United States, Great Britain, France, and the Netherlands-
though the United States included Puerto Ricans among its
delegates from the first. Though glad to help, Puerto Rico
would have preferred to represent its own country, rather
than the United States; after 1952 they said so, openly and
officially. It was in 1952 that Puerto Rico attained its pres-
ent Commonwealth status, under which the United States
ceased being an imperial power in its relations with the is-
land. Imperialism, said the Puerto Rican delegates of the
United States, was rapidly being liquidated in the area; the
imperial commission should therefore also liquidate itself
and thus make room for a new body that would represent the
Caribbean's people and societies, rather than their metro-
politan present and former rulers.

The United States backed the proposal immediately; the
other powers followed suit in the ensuing years, with France
hesitating somewhat. Developments in the Caribbean area,
following the granting of Commonwealth status to Puerto
Rico, gave ever increasing validity to the Puerto Ricans* pro-
posal. The "statute" under which the former Dutch colonies
now enjoy full autonomy went into force December 29
1954. On March 25, 1958, the new, self-governing British
West Indian Federation held its first election and began to
tackle its own problems with its own nascent powers. Ear-
lier, perhaps in an effort to stave off more drastic measures.

The World and Puerto Rico c 21

France had made the gesture of redesignating the former
colonies of Guadalupe and Martinique as Departments of
Greater France; there is some doubt, however, as to whether
the inhabitants of those Departments feel as free in their
present roles as "full citizens" as do the people of Paris.

The Puerto Rican delegates worked year after year to-
ward the voluntary liquidation of the Caribbean commission
and the substitution of a new body that would truly repre-
sent the region's people. In August 1959, at the meetings in
the Virgin Islands, their efforts came to fruition. At the time
of the present writing, only a certain amount of technical
paper work remains to be done before the new organization
becomes a working reality. The four former imperial powers
have agreed to abolish their commission, and a new body,
the "Caribbean Organization/' is about to take its place. In
that body the former American, British, Dutch, and French
colonial subjects will now work for themselves, as self-gov-
erning peoples, toward collaboration in social and economic
matters, and especially in tackling problems of economic
development, industrialization, agriculture, fisheries, edu-
cation, health, and the like. A truly regional body would, of
course, also include the three Caribbean sovereign countries
Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican "Republic." Although
someday they may be invited to join, it is at present unthink-
able that a place can be found in an international, demo-
cratic organization for the "well-ordered graveyard" Gen-
eralissimo Trujillo rules with an iron hand from the ancient
city he has modestly renamed after himself.

The secretariat of the defunct Caribbean commission is
now to be reorganized to serve the new body, and to be
moved from Trinidad to San Juan. With it will come its li-
brary of about 35,000 items the world's largest on the
Caribbean. In the future that library will attract scholars to
Puerto Rico from all parts of the world.

The American educational system is also, though too
slowly, becoming aware of Puerto Rico. The so-called crisis

22 PUERTO Rico

in U.S. education, about which much is being said and writ-
ten today, stems from the growing realization that our mod-
ern education fails to condition its students to play their full
roles in a rapidly changing world. Old educational concepts
and compartmentalizations, inherited from a former world
now doomed, fail to meet the problems of the new* World
realities have outgrown the "social sciences" that were de-
signed to train people to deal with those realities. Hence
there is increasing emphasis in American universities on
field studies, area studies, work among people, rather than
texts, and laboratory work abroad to check the class work at
home. But universities cannot send students everywhere;
time, money, and travel facilities don't permit it. Then, why
not send them to Puerto Rico, where American students can
meet other students and observers, from all the free world's
countries, in search of the same world realities the Ameri-
cans will need?

In 1952 the University of Delaware's Department of Geog-
raphy sent a class to San Juan for a summer-school course,
the subject of which was not geography, sociology, history,
education, or any other specialty, but Puerto Rico, as an
emerging society that must draw on all these fields in an in*
tegrated manner. Haverford College and Sarah Lawrence
College are among those that have in recent years, with the
full support and co-operation of the Commonwealth Depart-
ment of State, sent groups to Puerto Rico for similar pur-
poses. A few years ago Colgate University developed an im-
aginative scheme by which a number of students would
spend their entire senior year in Puerto Rico, working in
various government departments, hearing lectures, discuss-
ing what they saw and heard, writing term papers. Unfortu-
nately that important experiment in modern education was
thwarted by the last-minute death of the professor who had
organized it.

But the idea did not die. It is important that American
education play an effective, realistic role in training stu-

The World and Puerto Rico c 23

dents for the world leadership the forces of history have
thrust on the United States. Puerto Rico is itself proof that
the world in which we must exercise that leadership is
changing with a speed so dizzying that the academic pre-
cepts of our various compartmentalized social sciences
hardly fit it any longer. Increasingly American education is
turning to Puerto Rico for help in its large tasks of reor-
ganization and reorientation.

3

New York and
Puerto Rico

""IF THEY got it so good down there/' says the New York taxi
driver, "what are they all coming up here for? The Puerto
Eicans are taking over the city, and it's bad. They conn? here
without any money, and bingo, the next clay they're on rdiof .
We ought to give them independence, that's what we ought
to do. Then they can't come flocking in by the thousands,
This used to be a nice, quiet, peaceful town, but it's getting
so now that you can't hardly walk down the street without
some Puerto Rican comes and tries to stick a shiv into you,
And you know the movement to the suburbs. Know who
started it? It's them Puerto Means, that's who. They're chas-
ing everybody out of town. They join gangs and take dope,
and they can't even speak English most of them. It's not
right, I'm telling you."

One gathers, on visiting New York, that the city's "aver-
age" taxi driver and even the "average" New Yorker regard
Puerto Rico and the Puerto Ricans with somewhat less affec-
tion than do the visitors to San Juan from Brazil, Ghana, In-
donesia, or Jamaica. When Puerto Rico is mentioned to the
average New Yorker, he is likely to conjure up a fantastic

New York and Puerto Rico c 25

picture of burglaries and murders, teen-age troubles, mug-
gings, housing shortages, dope, and other Ills. That the pic-
ture is greatly exaggerated Is less important than the fact
that it exists and gives rise to much hostility against the
New York Puerto Ricans.

While it is true that many Puerto Ricans inhabit New
York and that Spanish is by now the second language of
Times Square, their numbers are often exaggerated usu-
ally for budgetary purposes. When the departments of hous-
ing or hospitals want money, they talk at budget time about
the three quarters of a million Puerto Ricans now in New
York and the 50,000 per year who are supposed to be
streaming in, all of them equally indigent, bewildered, and
in need of help. The same kind of talk is now being heard in
Chicago, Philadelphia, Hartford, Youngstown, Bridgeport,
and Cleveland, as Puerto Ricans spread to the rest of the
country.

Actually the "net migration" the difference between the
Puerto Ricans leaving the island and those who return to it
varies widely. In 1956 it was almost 62,000, though not
entirely into New York's slums. By 1958 it had decreased to
nearly 26,000.

Such variations follow the pattern of general economic
trends in the States; during a good year the stream of mi-
grants increases; during a bad year it tends to decrease,
while the number who return to Puerto Rico grows larger.
Every improvement of economic opportunity on the island
also serves to slow down the out-migration. The United
States has seen similar variations before, as, for instance, in
relation to Iceland. During the iSyo's when that sub-arctic
island had fewer than 100,000 people, but no economic de-
velopment to speak of, there was a flood of Icelanders to
America, escaping from poverty at home. Meanwhile, how-
ever, the Icelanders have accomplished wonders in develop-
ing their homeland and in improving their standards of liv-
ing. Today, despite the fact that Iceland's population has

26 c PUERTO Rico

risen to over 150,000, it is almost impossible to lure an Ice-
lander to America's fleshpots. A reversal of the migration
trend is already in sight in Puerto Rico. Very few Puerto Ri-
cans would choose to move to New York if they could find at
home, in their own hills and valleys, the opportunities New
York now seems to offer, while retaining the human dignity
too often withheld from them by the New York taxi driver,
landlord, labor racketeer, dope peddler, and the like.

The Puerto Ricans, however, have in recent years be-
come New York's greatest single topic of conversation, as
well as the theme for an ever increasing number of books,
articles, learned studies, doctoral dissertations, and term
papers written by earnest students. As subjects for socio-
logical and pseudosociological studies of various kinds, the
Puerto Ricans have managed to usurp the supreme position
once held by Minsky's burlesque shows,

New York receives the greatest number of Puerto Rican
migrants for the simple reason that the city is and has al-
ways been America's principal port of entry. New Yorkers
have therefore had similar "troubles" before. The same
Gothamites who today resent the Puerto Ricans, yesterday
resented the Italians, the Russian Jews, the Poles, the South
Carolinians or Alabamans with dark skins, New York has
had that kind of problem since the earliest days when the
original inhabitants of Manhattan had their own Dutch
"problem" and moved to the suburbs because of the many
palefaces flocking in, The city has received wave after wave
of migrants, has housed them though inadequately, to
judge from the lot of today's Puerto Ricans has given them
much work for little pay, and has begun the task of teaching
them English, "Americanizing'' them, blending them with
their predecessors in the great melting pot that is the United
States.

And today the taxi driver asks: "If they got it so good
down there, why do they come here?"

Well may he ask. The current mass out-migration is a

New York and Puerto Rico c 27

new phenomenon in Puerto Rico's life and culture. Its sud-
den rise marks a decided culture change. Previously,
throughout four centuries, the island's people had been
homebodies, clinging to their beautiful but poor land with a
desperate love that may have been mixed with a certain
amount of fear. True, after learning of the dramatic news
of Pizarro's conquest of Peru, Puerto Rico's early settlers
wanted to leave in order to get in on the loot; at that time
their governor thought it best to threaten the death penalty
for anybody so unpatriotic as to want to abandon an impor-
tant strategic position. Succeeding governors and the Catho-
lic Church also did what they could to discourage the kind of
exodus that didn't begin until about the turn of the twenti-
eth century and then very slowly. The Puerto Ricans de-
veloped into a provincial lot, with no seafaring tradition;
during their first two centuries most of them saw "for-
eigners" only in the shapes of Spanish administrators and
businessmen, or in those of the even less popular pirates,
soldiers, invaders from northern Europe. Many Puerto Ri-
cans may well have been afraid to leave "lest the Dutchman
catch them" once they got on the high seas. Staying at home
became a definite culture trait.

Especially during the early nineteenth century the
Puerto Ricans had their own immigrant problem. At the
beginning of the nineteenth century, when the French be-
gan to have serious troubles with their Haitian slaves, a
number of Frenchmen left Haiti to establish themselves in
Spain's peaceful colony of Puerto Rico. After the Louisiana
Purchase in 1803 many Creoles, Frenchmen, and Span-
iards left the affected territory and moved to Puerto Rico
to escape being ruled by the Protestant, Republican United
States. For decades after the outbreak of the Latin-Ameri-
can revolutionary wars, beginning with Miranda's ill-fated
expedition from New York to Venezuela in 1806 and end-
ing with the establishment of the various Latin-American
republics in the 1820*3, thousands of royalists left the col-

28 c PUERTO Rico

onies and sought refuge in royalist Puerto Rico. Many
Corsicans came after Napoleon's fall.

The flow of people in those days was into Puerto Rico,
The island's population grew dramatically. Not until the
iSgo's was there a recorded outward movement of any
appreciable size. The Puerto Rican sugar culture had been
ruined by the imposition of a U.S. tariff. Thousands of
Puerto Ricans were left, not only poor and unemployed^
but landless as well. But Hawaii, about to be joined to the
United States, needed field hands because it had already
received large amounts of American capital to mechanize
its agriculture. Puerto Ricans were recruited to go to Ha-
waii, where their colony today numbers about 10,000,

During the early years of American rule a number of
Puerto Ricans were sporadically recruited for agricultural
labor in the United States. Most of them were unhappy-
especially the dark-skinned. Coming from their patriarchal
society, where a man's color was hardly noticed and where
he was respected no matter how poor, it was difficult for
them to adjust to their treatment by American employers:
to be abused and treated as second-class, colored cheap
labor speaking a foreign language. However, some did come
to find new homes in the United States, of which all Puerto
Ricans became citizens in 1917. The 1930 census reported
Puerto Ricans in all of the forty-eight states, By 1940 their
number had become appreciable. New York then had 63,000
Puerto Ricans, But it was not until after 1945 that the
stream of migrants became so large that it began to have a
considerable effect on Puerto Rico's population problem,

Why? Why that sudden exodus at precisely the time
when Puerto Rico itself was turning the corner toward a
better life? There are those who accuse the Puerto Rican
government of encouraging and even financing migration,
with the idea of easing unemployment at home. That is
not true* The Commonwealth government is scrupulous
neither to encourage nor discourage migration, though it

New York and Puerto Rico c 29

takes a responsible attitude toward those who want to leave,
and does everything possible to help them. As will be seen
later, it also helps the migrant laborers, those who bring in
the sugar harvest in Puerto Rico and then go north to bring
in various other crops in such states as New Jersey and
Connecticut, returning home when that chore is done to
bring in the next home sugar crop.

There are many explanations for the present exodus, and
one of the most important is undoubtedly to be found in
the significant psychological changes that resulted from
the 1940 turnabout. Previously the great masses of Puerto
Ricans had been all but hopeless in their miseries; now,
almost for the first time in their history, they began to re-
alize that they themselves, by their own efforts, could do
something to ease their lives. Many pitched in at home
to do what was possible; many others, with new faith in
themselves, migrated to where the pay checks were higher
than in Puerto Rico, the opportunities still greater. That
their hardships also became greater was and is self-evi-
dent; even those who complain about the New York Puerto
Ricans cannot claim that their life is a bed of roses. They
are beset by thousands of enemies, from the cockroaches
and rats that too often infest their miserable quarters to
the more vicious two-legged swindlers who prey on them.
But they see more immediate opportunities ahead for their
children, and so they face their numberless tribulations.
In many ways the Puerto Ricans who move to New York are
more courageous as pioneers than those who stay at home.

There are other and related reasons for the exodus. In
many subtle ways the 1940 election turned the United
States in the thinking of many Puerto Ricans from a
covert enemy into an open friend. Then, too, thousands of
Puerto Ricans served in the U.S. armed forces during
World War n, in Europe and in the Pacific Theater; they
came back with new ideas about the formerly hostile alien
world and its people. In line with such psychological

30 PUERTO Rico

changes, Puerto Rico suddenly changed itself from a
haven of refuge surrounded by enemies, into a crowded
place surrounded by frontiers of opportunity. The very
word "opportunity" was all but coined, as far as the masses
of Puerto Ricans were concerned, after the 1940 election.

Then came the airplane, with its rapid and inexpensive
transportation. It did much to accelerate migrations to the
mainland.

Meanwhile the economic pressure not only remained,
but paradoxically grew greater. Though today's Puerto
Rican is much better off, he is under far greater pressure
to improve his life than was his father, who accepted his
abject poverty, his gnawing hunger, the deaths of his chil-
dren, with a hopeless fatalism. Faith in oneself also breeds
Impatience.

There is also the matter of geographical distribution of
progress. The statistics on modern Puerto Rico reflect a
tremendous achievement, but it would be wrong to believe
that the social progress they indicate is evenly distributed
throughout the island. Puerto Rico's progress is concen-
trated in certain well-defined regions; some of the others
remain virtually as stricken as they were twenty years ago;
some have quite possibly retrogressed* People move from
these into the more prosperous areas, as they have been
doing for a number of decades. Today, however, they also
have the airplane and a new culture traitrestlessness
which permit them to move to New York if they wish.
Eventually, when the island's progress becomes more
evenly distributed, the exodus will slow down, and may
even be reversed.

By means of its program of economic development,
Puerto Rico is today creating thousands of new jobs every
year. Health conditions and indices improve dramatically,
but also complicate the task. A modern birth rate that has
fallen to 31.8 per 1,000 per year and a death rate that has
sunk to 7.2 indicate sound social health; they also mean

New York and Puerto Rico c 31

that for every seven Puerto Ricans who die, thirty-two are
born, to demand education and health services, jobs when
they come of age, decent opportunities for themselves and
their families. Those thirty-two formerly had a life span
of forty-six years. Now they live sixty-eight years and hence
demand that much more of their society.

Puerto Rican officials are frank to admit that migration
helps them in their work. Not only does it tend to keep
the island's total labor force at a more or less constant
level, so that every new job created means a reduction by
that much in unemployment, but the money sent back
from Puerto Ricans in the States to their relatives at home
has become a real contribution to the island's economy.

A number of hostile New Yorkers realize some of those
things and increase their hostility as a result. Many of
them use the cause of "freedom" as a means of retalia-
tion. Like the taxi driver previously quoted above and he
was a real taxi driver whose number is legion they ad-
vocate the island's political independence as a means of
keeping Puerto Ricans out of New York. Indeed, when
Congressman Morgan H. Moulder, of Missouri, in January
1959 presented a bill for Puerto Rican independence, he
gave as one of his reasons the fact that a great number of
Puerto Ricans, being citizens of the United States, were
flowing freely into New York and other centers.

The Missouri legislator and the many New Yorkers who
think as he does need to consider realities. Citizenship in
the United States cannot be taken away by the simple ex-
pedient of an independence law. If the island were to be-
come a republic tomorrow, every Puerto Rican would be
required to step before a magistrate and choose for him-
self whether he wanted to retain the status and the rights
of his United States citizenship or become a citizen of the
newly formed sovereign country. And which way would a
large proportion in all probability choose to go, as it is self-
evident that independence would rob the Puerto Ricans of

32 PUERTO Rico

their greatest resource their present relations with the
world's greatest industrial nation? Which way would they
go when confronted with the prospect of factories shutting
down for loss of markets, schools closing for lack of funds,
health services being shut off? It is safe to say that perhaps
three quarters of them would choose to retain their U.S.
citizenship, and that most of thosevirtually all who had
the airplane fare would catch the first available planes for
New York,

It is a safe guess that in the event that Puerto Rico be-
came a soverign republic, a million or more Puerto Eicans
would almost immediately descend on New York.

And what would happen to New York if all its Puerto
Ricans were suddenly to leave the city? It is not true that
most of them go on relief. The number of those who clo
varies from five to about ten per cent, according to the
methods used in computing and the attitudes of the com-
puters. The testimony of a large number of employers
praises them as steady, earnest, hard workers. What would
happen to the needlework industry, to building mainte-
nance, to the hotels and restaurants, to the toy, novelty, and
plastic plants, and to many other branches of the city's
economy if the Puerto Ricans who now virtually support
those branches with their labor decided to go somewhere
else? Some other ethnic group would have to be brought in
to take their places. As somebody has to do the work, New
York would simply exchange its Puerto Rican "problem"
for a Haitian, Jamaican, British West Indian, Polish, Hun-
garian, or Mexican "problem/*

Virtually all lower-class Puerto Ricans who migrate to
the States do so for the purpose of improving their eco-
nomic conditions more rapidly than they can at home,
where there is still a pressing unemployment problem. The
aim is laudable, but the wrench is often terrible.

A man wakes up and has breakfast in the beautiful hills
of Ms beloved ^Borinquen.'* (the old Indian name for Puerto

New York and Puerto Rico c 33

Rico, still often used as a term of affection). He is poor and
lives in a small, dilapidated, but immaculately clean, shack,
However, he is a man, respected as such regardless of his
color or economic condition. In his easygoing, paternalistic
society he is among equals. If he has troubles or problems,
he seeks help from his patron or from his relatives in a
society that is characterized by strong family ties. The cli-
mate is mild, and it makes little difference if his children
wear few clothes or no clothes at all. He is the undisputed
head of the family; his word is law. His language is Span-
ish, and despite his lack of formal schooling, he may be
extremely eloquent in that language. It is not a bad life, ex-
cept for hungers of various kinds. Don Luis in San Juan is
doing everything that any man possibly can; he is creating
factories where none had existed before, schools by the
dozens, new hospitals and health units, and electric light
in the homes. Nevertheless, this man's needs and his chil-
dren's needs are growing even more rapidly than are the
facilities Don Luis is providing for meeting them. The man
has had letters, some of them with money orders, from rela-
tives in New York. He has decided to migrate.

That afternoon, after a brief six-hour hop, he is dropped
into the seething human mess of Idlewild Airport. The
weather is cold to an extent that he had never before
thought possible. He and his wife and children must sud-
denly be bundled up; God knows if they have the clothes
for it. His native language marks him as an alien. A hop of
only six hours, just between meals, has brought him from
his own easygoing society into the world's most bustling
and sophisticated metropolitan center.

Immediately he becomes the victim, not the creator, of a
desperate housing shortage. Often he is also the victim of a
chiseling landlord who has discovered that low-rental hous-
ing is the world's most profitable, and has therefore re-
modeled a one-family apartment to accommodate three,
four, or five families. The Puerto Rican, who may even have

34 PUERTO Rico

his mother or aunt with him, as well as his wife and chil-
dren, must make do in. one room, often with a leaky ceillng 7
plaster falling off in chunks, no heat, infested with rats,
cockroaches, and other vermin. After a while he may start
complaining to the landlord, who mayand usually does-
tell him to leave if he doesn't like it.

The man starts looking for a job, but the fact that he
knows little or no English imposes difficulties. But his old-
est daughter has learned some English in the Puerto Rican
school, and goes along to help him. It is a humiliating thing,
and from that point on he loses some of the respect he en-
joyed as a man and as the head of his home. Mis wife, who
is a skilled needleworker, gets a job before he docs, and
he loses more of his former position. His children arc sent
to school, where they may or may not learn English, read-
ing, and writing, The children, learning new "American*
ways, depart from the Puerto Rican rules of strict conduct
by which they had been raised. They may want to go to
school parties unchaperoned, or do other "awful" things,
There is conflict in the home, but the children take their
Americanization into their own hands and use various
dodges to get around the parental authority, However, the
children, too, are subjected to the erosive processes of ab-
ject poverty and lack of human dignity. Their world is often
hostile to them because they axe Puerto Kicans, Some of
the boys may join gangs and even take to dope -as addicts
or as peddlers. Some of the girls may become prostitutes,
not because they are Puerto Ricans, but for the same rea-
sons for which millions of other girls, from time immemo-
rial, have become prostitutes.

Meanwhile the parents axe preyed upon by labor racket-
eers and political ward heelers, while also being subjected
to a special and bewildering kind of racial discrimination,
In most communities in the United States anyone who is
known to have a drop of Negro blood in his veins is con-
sidered a Negro and receives special treatment as such.

New York and Puerto Rico c 35

In Puerto Rico, at the social level of the hypothetical man
I am talking about, there is no discrimination, no special
treatment reserved for Negroes. However, there is a special
kind of classification, just as valid as ours : anybody with a
drop of white blood is a white man. The effects of such
differences in attitudes are apt to be traumatic, and our
hypothetical Puerto Rican may make one of three well-
known adjustments. If he is very dark, he may merge with
the Harlem Negroes, though claiming to be from some part
of the West Indies other than Puerto Rico. If he is very
light, he may in self-protection disown his Puerto Rican
heritage, claiming to be Spanish. If he is trigueno, as the
people somewhere in-between are called in Puerto Rico, he
may well cling to his Puerto Rican nature and origin with
a fierce passion that is generated in part for expediency; he
may associate almost exclusively with other Puerto Ricans
and may even refuse to learn or speak English, in order to
set himself apart from the American Negroes of all colors
who live in Harlem.

There are bewilderments; there are troubles; there is
much unhappiness; but there is always also that airplane
that takes only six hours less than the time between sup-
per and breakfast to span the distance between this terri-
ble new world and the more peaceful and understandable
old one. Having all my adult life been interested in the
world's frontier regions, I was once convinced that only one
thing is needed to make a man a good pioneer: he must
not be able to return to where he came from. Now I am not
sure. I believe that the presence of that airplane, its speed,
and its low fares sustain many Puerto Ricans through their
first terrible years in New York.

I have chosen and possibly exaggerated a hypothetical
case, but it is precisely that case that creates the Puerto
Rican "problem." Thousands of Puerto Ricans slip quietly
into New York or some other United States city and man-
age almost immediately to establish themselves as good

36 c PUERTO Rico

citizens. But it is not fashionable to talk about them. What
is fashionable is to talk in round numbers of perhaps 700,-
ooo Puerto Ricans in New York and to lump them all as
"they," with no idea of how many of them actually create
civic problems.

In 1959 a number of teen-age murders in which Puerto
Rican children were involved led to a new wave of anti-
Puerto Rican feeling, caused the city to rccxamine its juve-
nile delinquency problem drastically, and gave rise to sev-
eral statements to the effect that Puerto Ricans should
thenceforth be barred from the city. The situation resulted
in accelerated activity among the many civic groups work-
ing with and for the resident Puerto Ricans. One hundred
and sixty-two of them published a full-page advertisement
in the papers, informing the New Yorkersmany of them
skeptical that Puerto Ricans are essentially decent and
law-abiding citizens, that they have produced many nota-
ble men and women, and that they are doing all in their
power to combat lawlessness. The question of whether the
situation was created by "'the Puerto Ricans f> or by condi-
tions in New York was debated far and wide.

In that debate the city's own ceaseless activities" -pro-
viding decent municipal housing for thousands of indigent
families, hiring a large number of Spanish-speaking teach-
ers, reforming the school system in a mad scramble to
meet overwhelming needs were apparently given scant
consideration. Obviously, the wave of crimeregardless
of whether committed primarily by Puerto Ricans or by
othersshowed the city's efforts to have been "too little
and too late," though how a harassed city official is to an-
ticipate such a condition is not known,

New York has had such crime waves before, and always
there have been resentments against the latest immigrants
who participated in them. Many a sociological study has
established, almost as dogma, that the true assimilation of
migrants from other shores and other cultures requires

New York and Puerto Rico c 37

three generations; the average New Yorker seems to de-
mand that the Puerto Rican migrants achieve that read-
justment in six hours' flying time.

The airplane sets the Puerto Rican migrants apart from
all other ethnic groups that have left their homes in Sicily,
Poland, Russia, Germany, Ireland to seek new lives in the
great United States, usually via New York. Another impor-
tant matter that sets them apart is the continued realistic in-
terest of their home government in their welfare even after
they have left Puerto Rico. Let us grant that in the old days
Sicily, Germany, Poland, or Russia could not have been ex-
pected to send agents to New York or other American cities
to help their migrant nationals there. Let us grant that
Puerto Rico is under the American flag, that the Puerto
Ricans are United States citizens, and that the movement
of Puerto Ricans northward is merely a part of the well-
established general larger northward movement within the
United States proper. Let us realize in that connection that
the northward movement of Puerto Ricans, no matter what
is said about it, is proportionally smaller than that from the
southern states, which have for decades been sending so
great a stream of migrants to the north that they are known
as the nation's seed beds of people. Nevertheless, it is still
remarkable that little Puerto Rico, far poorer than Missis-
sippi, should spend thousands of dollars annually out of its
inadequate budget to help the Puerto Ricans who have left
home in search of greener pastures. Imagine Governor Fau-
bus or Governor Jimmy Byrnes spending money for the wel-
fare of the thousands of citizens of Arkansas or South Car-
olina who have chosen to move to Harlem 1

But the Puerto Rican Department of Labor, headed by
Secretary Fernando Sierra Berdecia, has long maintained
a busy office in New York to help the Puerto Ricans there,
and now has similar offices in Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit,
Harrisburg, Camden, Hartford, and Boston. Indeed, the
"Migration Division" of the Commonwealth's Department

38 c PUERTO Rico

of Labor, headed by the former social worker Petroam^rlca
Pagan de Colon, is one of the liveliest and most vital of all
of Puerto Rico's governmental organizations. "Pctro" is an
embattled fighter for her people, whose tenacity, ready wit,
and biting sarcasm are well known to many a mainland
employer or landlord. Her superior, cabinet member Si-
erra, has on a number of occasions roamed incognito
through such Puerto Rican slums as Spanish Harlem, talk-
ing to his people and learning about their problems.

The New York office of the Migration Division is run by
Mr. Joseph Monserrat, who fights for his people with the
same enthusiasm he gives to fighting for Latin-American
democracy and against dictators.

In Puerto Rico the Migration Division helps all those
who need and ask help, primarily through orientation. It
tells them about United States realities in terms of
weather, housing, jobs, and racial discrimination. It at-
tempts to convince them now with increasing success
that New York is not the mainland's only city, so that the
migrants may settle in other areas. Workers in the Divi-
sion talk to would-be migrants about the need for job skills
and about the differences that often exist between such
skills in Puerto Rico and in the States. A man may, for in-
stance, believe that he is a skilled construction worker and
should therefore be able to get a job without too much
trouble. But he knows nothing about plastering walls be-
cause that is not done on his island; when he goes north he
may find that construction jobs are open only to plasterers. A
man may be an expert radio mechanic in Puerto Rico, but
not in New York, because the city uses only the newest gadg-
ets, which have not yet made their appearance on the is-
land. Through vocational-school training, either in San
Juan or in New York, the Division helps such a man to
round out his skills to fit the city's needs. In New York he
may have to work for a while as a dishwasher in the Wai-

New York and Puerto Rico c 39

dorf Hotel, but he is encouraged to go to night school to
improve himself and his employment possibilities.

Before leaving Puerto Rico, prospective migrants axe
urged and helped to attend adult classes in English, which
have now been organized even in the island's rural areas.
In New York, too, they are helped to attend such classes.

The New York office does not run an employment bu-
reau, but it is militant in demanding protection for the
Puerto Ricans against labor racketeers. By means of its
program of community organization the office helps Puerto
Ricans to organize themselves and their neighbors for pro-
tection against, let us say, chiseling landlords. The tenants
in a block of filthy, crumbling tenements may be Italians,
Poles, Negroes, etc., all mixed together; when they do man-
age to get together for the purpose of presenting their com-
plaints to the city, it is nearly always the Puerto Ricans
among them who take the lead, partly because their own
government backs them.

Through its offices in various cities the Migration Divi-
sion keeps after the Puerto Rican migrants, encouraging
them to vote, to join the parties of their choice, to join
good labor unions, to identify with the union movement
and with the life around them. Many are timid about such
things, clinging to each other because of fear. The New
York office also encourages and helps various civic groups
composed of Puerto Ricans and non-Puerto Ricans and de-
voted to improving the city's life.

Constantly, too, the Division scouts the United States
for new opportunities for Puerto Rican workers, trying to
get them out of their clannish lives in New York and to
scatter them throughout the country. An experiment of
some years ago, under which 500 Puerto Ricans were
placed as workers in the steel mills of Gary, Indiana,
worked so well from the point of view of both the work-
ers and the employers that Puerto Ricans are now mov-

4O c PUERTO Rico

ing to that part of the Middle West in increasing numbers.
Many a prospective employer in Connecticut, in the Dela-
ware River Valley, in Massachusetts, and elsewhere has
been afraid of Puerto Ricans because of what he had heard
about them, but, after being persuaded to hire them., has
been delighted with them as adaptable and reliable work-
ers. True, even in their new locations the new workers
often have housing problems because these problems ex-
isted before they came. They also have adjustment prob-
lems, but they do adjust, thereby easing the problem in
New York considerably.

With the help of Dr. Clarence Senior, the New York of-
fice sponsors scholarly studies of the Puerto Rican "prob-
lem" and issues circulars aimed at solving it through
knowledge.

In San Juan the Migration Division strives to orient not
only the Puerto Ricans who intend to migrate, but also the
people who have contact with them in the States. Orienta-
tion, according to the Division's norms, is only partly a
matter of attempting to improve the readiness of a person
to adjust to conditions new to him; it is also an effort to
improve the readiness of the northern community to re-
ceive him.

Every summer Puerto Rico is invaded by "workshops" of
teachers, principals, and social workers from the States,
who go through an intensive course of training in the
home culture of the Puerto Ricans with whom they deal in
their own communities. The Commonwealth pays for their
room and board. They return after six weeks or so with far
more informed and sympathetic attitudes than they had
had before. The Department of Labor has also organized
intensive seminars in San Juan for a number of New
York's highest city officials in order to discuss the Puerto
Rican problems and the various means by which New
York and Puerto Rico can help solve them. Puerto Rican
government officials are included in those seminars. Re-

New York and Puerto Rico c 41

cently groups of policemen from various mainland cities
have begun to be brought to Puerto Rico so that their un-
derstanding of the Puerto Ricans in their home towns,
might be increased.

Another important activity of the Migration Division is
the protection and preparation of the Puerto Ricans who go
north on contract for seasonal work. Shortly after World
War ii a number of unscrupulous agents, working hand in
glove with new, small airlines, opened offices in San Juan.
They painted glowing pictures of life in the United States,
talked about jobs on the mainland, arranged for the ship-
ment of whole planeloads, and charged fees for their serv-
ices. On several occasions the second-hand planes fell into
the ocean, and dozens of Puerto Ricans were killed. At times
the agents shipped their clients to places on the continent
where no work existed for them; then arose the problem of
how to care for the penniless newcomers.

A Puerto Rican law of 1947, however, changed all that.
It prohibited all fee-charging agencies in Puerto Rico and
stipulated that all contracts for workers on the island must
be approved by the Secretary of Labor. Moreover, today no
Puerto Rican worker can be recruited for the continent un-
less a labor shortage is certified at his place of destination
by the responsible local, state, and federal officials. After a
number of labor scouts had been arrested, tried, and
jailed, the 1947 law began to work fairly well. Fee-charg-
ing, racketeering agents are still caught occasionally.
White slavers at times go to the island to recruit "servant
girls"; Spanish-speaking agents, possibly Puerto Ricans
themselves, have been known to meet bewildered, newly
arrived migrants at Idlewild Airport, hustle them into sta-
tion wagons, and drive them to agricultural jobs that re-
quire them to labor under conditions of peonage. But the
Commonwealth government is alert to such practices and
does everything in its power to combat them.

The Labor Department's employment service in San

42 C PtJEBTORlCO

Juan now supervises contracts for work in the States. Oc-
casionally it sends needleworkers, but usually it sends
seasonal agricultural workers, more than 17,000 of them
per year. These are sent on contract with the employers;
the latter pay the transportation costs, which are subse-
quently taken out of wages.

As a result of Secretary Sierra's labors, the Puerto Rican
employment service is affiliated with that of the United
States government, and Puerto Rican workers are now offi-
cially a part of the U.S. labor force. Thus, employers who
contract for their services cannot get them at a lower rate,
as 'West Indians," They must pay the full wage prevailing
in their neighborhoods at the time, and they don't always
like it. Also, no "West Indians" or other noncitizens may
be brought in to do the work as long as Puerto Rican work-
ers are available. Under U.S. law the supply of available
citizens must be exhausted before aliens can be imported.

Finally, the Commonwealth's Department of Labor does
not negotiate contracts for Puerto Rican agricultural work-
ers in the South, where they might get the full, degrading
racial treatment. The Commonwealth's constitution bars
discrimination or selection on the basis of race or color.

After the farm workers have been oriented and shipped
north, their government continues to take an interest In
them. It is always ready to step into disputes about wages,
living quarters, food, and general working conditions. The
employers don't always like it, but they can do little; the
Puerto Rican government representatives know the law
very well. Eventually the employers often develop a re-
spect bordering on a cross between love and awe for Petxo-
america and her several co-workers.

However, not all Puerto Rican seasonal workers go
north under the aegis of their government. A large number
have made their own contacts, have developed good work-
ing relations with specific farmers, and have gone back to
the same farms year after year to bring in the harvests in

New York and Puerto Rico c 43

Delaware, New Jersey, Connecticut, etc., after completing
the sugar harvest on their island. Others, perhaps 3,000 of
them, go on their own to join the annual migratory stream
of workers who move southward from New Jersey to Flor-
ida, harvesting as they go.

In one way or another, the ferment is on. Through many
direct means, some of them painful, but all of them in-
structive, many thousands of Puerto Ricans are learning to
know the United States and are slowly beginning to feel at
home there.

American industry has begun to flow into Puerto Rico,
and Puerto Rican labor has invaded the United States. The
trade is not always fair; the industry generally earns more
money than does the labor. But, nevertheless, the ties be-
tween Puerto Rico and the United States become stronger
daily.

4

Anguish of
Colonialism

THIS was Puerto Rico in the early seventeenth century, as
described by Dr. Arturo Morales Carrion: "In the country,
under the most primitive conditions, a people which seeks
its elemental sustenance from the earth, and lives by
clandestine commerce is slowly forging itself. A social
dichotomy arises between the city and the country, be-
tween the fortress and the hinterland. These are two
worlds, obeying different motivations. The walled city is a
creation of imperialism, bulwark of a political structure
which embraces vast territories. It is a stronghold in seas
of enemies and heretics. Hence it develops a psychology of
suspicion, and its citizens do not venture on the surround-
ing waters lest the Dutchman catch them. Within its walls
the predominant elements of its society are at each other's
throats: the bishops and the governors, the governors and
the councils. The country, on the other hand, produces a
much more homogeneous rustic society, which lives in a
primitive manner and develops its own norms and cus-
toms, alien to the great metropolitan conflicts and disdain-
ful of the rigid metropolitan commands. So Puerto Rico

The Anguish of Colonialism c 45

develops during the seventeenth century: a land largely
virgin, exuberant and forested, with a small pauperized
population, which does not succeed in creating a planta-
tion economy with a wide base of slavery, like that which
is beginning to appear in the neighboring British and
French colonies/'

The city was characterized by its fortifications, the most
massive in the Caribbean except for those of Barranquilla,
Colombia. To build El Castillo del Morro and Fort San
Cristobal, money was diverted from Mexico, and coolies
from China. When the latter had completed their work
they were loaded on ships for the long haul home, but
were soon dumped overboard on the high seas to save
time, travail, and cash. Again and again the English, the
French, and the Dutch tried to storm the forts and wrest
Puerto Rico from Spain; again and again they were re-
pulsed. Once I showed the forts to a visiting Englishman,
but the sight only saddened him because they represented
one of "Sir Francis Drake's great failures." Drake attacked
San Juan in 1595 in an unsuccessful attempt to capture a
treasure ship that had put in on the way to Spain. The Eng-
lish took the city three years later, but had to abandon it
after three months of occupation because of illness among
their troops.

During the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth cen-
turies the recorded history of Puerto Rico's people was far
less one of internal growth and development than of tribu-
lations suffered in the defense of somebody else's empire.
The North Europeans didn't concentrate exclusively on
San Juan. Other, and defenseless towns and settlements
were repeatedly sacked and burned by the French during
the 1500*5, rebuilt, and burned again. Raids and attacks
by French and English privateers occurred periodically until
the advent of the nineteenth century. And during those dis-
mal years various hurricanes ravaged the island even more
than did Spain's human enemies.

46 c PUERTO Rico

The last attack on San Juan, before Admiral Sampson
finally managed to take the city during the Spanish-Ameri-
can War, was made by the English in 1797. By that time,
however, efforts had already been made to substitute
horse trading for military action. England desperately
wanted Puerto Rico because of its strategic location; that
the attempted trades came to nothing enhances the fascin-
ation of speculating on "what might have been" had Puerto
Rico become a British colony.

This was the sequence :

In 1704 the British and the Dutch stole Gibraltar from
Spain, and the British immediately stole it from the Dutch.
After the American Revolution, Britain offered to swap
Gibraltar back to Spain in return for Puerto Rico, The
Spanish held out for a better deal, wanting West Florida
in addition. Later they changed their minds, decided to
keep Puerto Rico after all, and offered to exchange Span-
ish Santo Domingo for Gibraltar and West Florida. Nothing
came of that, either. Today Britain still has Gibraltar, Puerto
Rico has Commonwealth status, Spanish Santo Domingo has
its benefactor, Generalissimo Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Mo-
lina, and retired U.S. farmers and executives have West
Florida as a pitching ground for horseshoes.

While such things were going on, the Puerto Ricans
proper, as opposed to the Spanish elements in their society
clung to their beautiful island and got along as well as they
could. Because they had to manage in abject poverty,
they did so in the democratic fraternity that is still one of
their distinct culture traits; nothing welds people together
more closely than does poverty enforced by political op-
pression.

The fact that their poverty prevented them from "creat-
ing a plantation economy with a wide base of slavery**
saved them a good many headaches later. It meant that the
imported Negroes were relatively few, treated well, and
not feared as a social menace. Shortly after the U. S. Civil

The Anguish of Colonialism c 47

War a group of Puerto Rican slave owners petitioned Spain
on their own initiative to abolish slavery on the island,
with or without compensation. The racial attitudes result-
ing today from the long-standing, easygoing relations be-
tween Negroes and whites were felt recently by a liberal-
minded, though dogmatic and embattled, North American
woman who had a job in one of the island's government de-
partments. She was indignant because she saw no Negro
employees in the office; she thought that a decent govern-
ment would take pains to hire people of both races. But her
chief, a power in modern Puerto Rican affairs, said to her:
"Just look around you. Look at me and all the rest of us. I
doubt if you will see a single one who might not be classed
as a Negro in the United States."

Under Madrid's trade monopoly the Puerto Ricans could
trade with nobody but Spain, shipping their cargoes in
Spanish ships and dealing with the middlemen imported
from Spain. The modern counterparts of these middlemen,
known as "Spanish merchants," still powerful in the whole-
sale and retail trade, have their own exclusive, Fascist-
minded social club and often today mutter darkly about
"all this democracy that has hit the island and is ruining
it." But to believe that the Puerto Ricans obeyed the trade
decrees would be as naive as to believe that there was no
drinking in the United States during Prohibition, or that
the thirteen North American colonies that preceded the
United States obeyed Britain's commercial regulations. An
exuberant trade of smuggling developed most of it be-
tween Puerto Rico and those thirteen colonies.

Since early in their history the people of Puerto Rico
have needed free trade with the United States for their eco-
nomic survival. Today they need it more than ever. That
inescapable fact has shaped the island's modern develop-
ment, as well as its political thinking. What is bad for the
Puerto Ricans economically is also bad for them po-
litically; out of bilateral recognition of that basic fact has

48 c PUERTO Rico

grown a new political status and a close, ever strengthen-
ing relationship between the island and its former impe-
rial rulers.

During the nineteenth century, after losing most of its
former colonies in the New World, Spain read the hand-
writing on the wall and began gradually to lighten her rule
in Puerto Rico. Freedom of the press was established, mili-
tary powers were separated from the civil, and the Puerto
Ricans were permitted to create two cultural societies for
the purpose of stimulating their intellectual life. They
were also permitted, legally, to trade with the United States
and with the colonial possessions in the Caribbean, with
whom they had long enjoyed a thriving illicit commerce.
The plantations on the coastal plain developed a good bus-
iness, selling sugar to the United States. But American
farmers began to plant beet sugar, and in 1870 they man-
aged to protect their infant industry with a tariff. Puerto
Rican planters went bankrupt and clamored for the free
trade the United States could not grant to a Spanish colony
without incurring the wrath of its own farm lobby. Much
of their fertile, level sugar land reverted to the raising of
tick-infested scrub cattle. Not until after the Spanish-
American War did Puerto Rico achieve that free trade.
But then it discovered that its industrial plant for process-
ing sugar, to say nothing of its agricultural techniques,
was so antiquated and inefficient that it could not take ad-
vantage of the situation. American capital and American
technology poured in and forced many Puerto Ricans out
of business. As long as the island retained a ^one-crop"
sugar economy, the major benefits of its inclusion within
the United States's tariff structure were reaped by Ameri-
can, rather than Puerto Rican, interests.

That the United States should take over Puerto Rico was
a foregone conclusion the day it was decided that we would
build the Panama Canal and would therefore need Carib-
bean bases from which to protect it. Then somebody con-

The Anguish of Colonialism c 49

veniently sank the battleship Maine. We went to war with
Spain in solidarity with Cuba's revolting elements and ac-
quired Puerto Rico through the Treaty of Paris, December
10, 1898. Our General Miles, marching across the island
with his troops, was hailed as a liberator, and gave lavish
promises of cordial, democratic relations with the United
States. However, the cordiality of those relations began to
deteriorate after the "Colossus of the North" took over the
island's government.

In Puerto Rico Luis Mufioz Rivera, father of the present
governor, had earlier become one of the island's outstand-
ing leaders and patriots. In 1897 he had been instrumental
in obtaining from Spain Puerto Rico's first real constitu-
tion, its first charter for home rule. Hailed with jubilation
at the time, that constitution was in effect less than a year.
During the years immediately following our assumption of
power in San Juan when "alien" American governors
clashed repeatedly with the Puerto Ricans, who were fran-
tically determined to preserve what few political and civil
liberties they had won after four centuries as Spanish sub-
jects the idea arose in the United States that the Puerto
Ricans were an unruly lot, ungrateful, and unfit for self-
government. Most of the rights and freedoms they had ac-
quired from Spain in 1897 were abrogated during the first
year of American occupation. Many of the Puerto Ricans
had once hailed us as liberators began to change their
minds.

Nevertheless, despite much classical Latin-American
clamor to the contrary, and despite such inhumanities as
the Little Rock troubles, we Americans were and are a de-
cent people with kind intentions toward colonial under-
dogs. No matter what we succeeded in doing, and no mat-
ter what the island's hotheads accused us of wanting, we
never intended to grind the Puerto Ricans into abject mis-
ery.

Our greatest trouble was our inexperience in matters of

50 PUERTO Rico

colonial administration, coupled with our naive belief that
whafs good for American business is good for everybody.
We made fiscal and other arrangements that were notable
as colonial matters went, and outstanding in contrast to
Spain's earlier ruthless exploitation. However, while giv-
ing the Puerto Ricans a measure of "autonomy" in the
management of their internal affairs, we kept the ultimate
control always in our own hands under the pretext of guid-
ing a "lesser" people toward eventual self-government,
thereby draining the form of autonomy of all real sub-
stance. What we didn't know and what the free world is
only now discovering is that government is much too com-
plex and vitally important a matter to be left in the hands
of experts.

With admirable energy and good will we began to clean
house on the island immediately after the Spanish-Amer-
ican War. Roads, schools, and public-health programs at-
tested to that energy and good will. The armed forces,
which in Spanish days had been a drain on the economy,
now began to contribute to it. Military and naval construc-
tions, pay and pensions for Puerto Rican soldiers, benefits
for their families all these and many more, mounting
steadily in volume through World Wars I and n, through
the Korean Police Action, and into the present era of fear-
ful alert, have poured millions of dollars into Puerto Rico.

While Puerto Rico was given free entry into the tariff-
protected American market, it was also stipulated that
customs receipts on foreign cargoes landed in insulai ports
be turned over to the island's government instead of into
the federal treasury.

The Puerto Ricans have never paid taxes to Washington.
Even today their income taxes are paid exclusively to their
own government, and excise taxes on such goods as rum
and cigars, manufactured locally, remain in Puerto Rico.
The principle involved is the old American one of no taxa-
tion without representation. Since the early years of its

The Anguish of Colonialism c 51

relations with the United States, Puerto Rico has been rep-
resented in the U. S. Congress only by a Resident Commis-
sioner who has a voice, but no vote, who can prepare bills
and argue for or against legislation related to Puerto Rico,
but cannot vote on such legislation. Residents of Washing-
ton, D. C., who also have no representation in Congress and
lack all vestiges of self-government, would like to see that
old American principle invoked for their own benefit to re-
lieve them of federal taxation.

The fiscal arrangements were stipulated in Puerto Rico's
first "organic act," the Foraker Act of 1900, unilaterally
drafted and passed by Congress. Today they form the solid
foundation on which the island's present political status
rests. "Patriots" may cry for either sovereign independence
or statehood on emotional grounds, with the choice between
the two depending on their personal orientations. The hard,
practical questions are still: (i) Could an independent
Republic of Puerto Rico survive the loss of free markets in
the United States, as well as that of federal contributions
to the island's economy? (2) Could a "State of Puerto Rico"
afford to make the contributions to the expenses of the
federal government which would be demanded under that
status?

The principal trouble with those admirable fiscal ar-
rangements was that they failed to benefit the great ma-
jority of the Puerto Rican people the laborers, the men in
the hills and soon began to lean more toward United
States interests.

The Spanish-American War had marked a turning point
in American affairs, the point at which we became a world
power in the financial as well as the military sense, turning
from a debtor into a creditor nation. The nineteenth cen-
tury had seen the industrial development of the United
States with the help of European, mostly British, capital.
By the century's end we had generated sufficient capital of
our own to want to export some of it. Hence, when Puerto

52 c PUERTO Rico

Rico came under the American flag, it also became a fertile
field for millions of American investment dollars, which
poured into the island and came to dominate its entire life.

That capital poured primarily into the sugar industry.
Great new mills were erected; industrial efficiency was in-
troduced in the sleepy, poverty-stricken former Spanish
colony. Puerto Rico's sugar production of 70,000 tons in
1897 grew to over 1,000,000 by 1934. The acreage planted
to sugar cane trebled during the first thirty-five years of the
century, but the tonnage produced multiplied tenfold.

All that looked fine on paper. The main trouble was that
too much of the acreage involved came to be owned or con-
trolled by the powerful absentee corporations, under rules
of "good management," which had a certain amount of
validity in those days. The owners of expensive mills felt
that they had to protect their investments of millions, had
to assure efficient agricultural production, by acquiring
control of the lands surrounding those mills. Too many
Puerto Ricans thus lost their lands and were thrown either
into destitution or into employment at miserable wages by
the sugar companies. Meanwhile, the birth rate and the
population increased.

Four great U.S. sugar companies came to control 166,-
100 acres of the island's best lands, though working only
75,900 acres. The remainder was left idle held in reserve
or, at the most, used for pasturing oxen, while starving,
landless Puerto Ricans looked on.

The grabs for land continued until the depression's ad-
vent, despite the fact that such acquisitions were illegal
under the federal Foraker Act. That first organic document
included a provision that is still in effect the Five-Hun-
dred-Acre Law under which no corporation is permitted
to own or control more than 500 acres on the island. Sena-
tor Foraker had ostensibly added the provision to his act in
order to protect Puerto Rico from the inroads of large main-
land corporations. There are those, however, who claim

The Anguish of Colonialism c 53

that he was influenced by the farm lobby, which wanted to
protect the U.S. beet-sugar industry against the growth of
a new cane-sugar rival in our newly acquired territory.
Whatever Foraker's motivations, the fact is that he put no
teeth into his law, no penalties for ignoring it. Therefore it
was ignored; one of the "big four" U, S. Corporations, the
Eastern Puerto Rico Sugar Company, came to control 54,-
700 acres, or more than a hundred times its legal limit.

Not until 1940 were the legal battles won, permitting the
enforcement of the Five-Hundred-Acre Law; then that en-
forcement, if only in part and for about half the total acre-
age involved, became the solid foundation for Puerto Rico's
present enormous progress.

Independent Puerto Rican sugar plants could not hold
out against the inroads of the corporations. A number, of
course, sold their land voluntarily and thus also their
means of livelihood. Others, among those who tried to con-
tinue to grow cane for sale to the company-controlled mills,
had to sell at corporation prices, with no power either to-
bargain or to audit accounts. Often they were squeezed out
of the picture entirely. Credit for their operations was avail-
able to them only from the sugar companies; the banks
would not grant it. Interest rates were high. When the plant-
ers borrowed, they later often lost their lands through
mortgage foreclosures. It was these colonos, independent
sugar growers, who came to be the first supporters of
Munoz Marin in the struggles that led to the revolutionary
election of 1940.

That is not saying that all Puerto Rican planters were
ruthlessly weeded out. Like the Firestone Rubber Company
in Liberia and the United Fruit Company in Central Amer-
ica, the absentee sugar companies took care to surround
themselves by a kind of reverse cordon sanitaire of in-
fluential native planters who were encouraged and helped
to become rich. A few fortunes were made; Puerto Rico's
first native millionaires appeared on the scene after World

54 fl PUERTO Rico

Wax i, during the early 1920*8. Today they are among the
most ardent advocates of Puerto Rican statehood, as a sure
hedge against the possible independence that would cost
them their free American market. But the creation of pau-
pers was much more rapid than was that of tycoons.

By 1930 the island's social, economic, and political
system was geared almost exclusively to sugar. Transpor-
tation by highway or railroad was constructed to serve
sugar; agricultural credit the first essential for growth
and development was available only in sugar; with the
exception of needlework a sweatshop industry dominated
by New York jobbers and based on the cheap labor of a
stricken society nearly all existing industries served
sugar; business depended largely on sugar for its well-be-
ing; politics was dominated almost completely by the ab-
sentee-controlled sugar industry.

Not only were the various U.S.-appointed governors con-
cerned with protecting U.S. interests, which meant sugar,
but sugar also permeated the island's internal political life.
The political parties that received financial donations from
sugar and its associated interests could survive; the rest
could not. The governor had veto power over local legisla-
tion and he also controlled government patronage. If a
party were to pass local legislation to enforce the Five-
Hundred-Acre Law, the governor would veto it, and even
the threat, even the power of such veto was enough to make
any party think twice. If the law was passed again, over the
governor's disapproval, the veto power passed into the
hands of the President of the United States; no president
was ever known to fail to back up his governor in such a
matter. The fact that the governor controlled patronage
meant that he also had the power to punish any recalcitrant
party by withholding from its members the jobs they
needed so desperately. Without either financial contribu-
tions or patronage no party could survive. As political pax-
ties don't like to be destroyed, they behaved themselves, if

The Anguish of Colonialism c 55

only because the United States, as the imperial nation, had
the power to destroy them if they didn't behave.

During the late twenties Luis Mufioz Marfn was living in
self-imposed exile in New York. His reputation among the
San Juan elite was that of a Bohemian, a wastrel, who did
nothing but write an occasional poem and a rare article for
the liberal and avant-garde press. But the things he did
write were among the most penetrating analyses of Puerto
Rico's ills being produced anywhere. In an article in The
Nation in 1929 he pointed out that no local steps had ever
been taken to enforce the Five-Hundred-Acre Law because
no governor had ever announced that such steps, far from
drawing reprisals from him, would enlist his co-operation.

The sugar interests controlled the island's political life,
not only indirectly through the workings of the colonial
government, but also directly by the controlling of
elections. Thousands of laborers in the sugar industry voted
as they were told lest they lose their paltry jobs, with no
others in sight. Other thousands of workers and small
farmers in the hills sold their votes because they needed
the money for buying beans and rice for their gaunt fam-
ilies. For such vote buying the sugar companies donated
lavishly to the parties that could be trusted not to displease
the industry when in power. The legislature came to be
composed largely of Puerto Rican sugar lawyers.

Sugar, on the other hand, paid the major part of the is-
land's taxes, employed the major part of its workers,
created the major part of its business, and supported seven-
teen of Puerto Rico's twenty seaports by giving them ship-
ping.

In 1935 sugar employed some 100,000 workers, or about
twenty per cent of all who worked for wages. About 93,000
of these were farm laborers, most of whom worked four or
five months a year during the harvest season and were idle
the rest of the time. Most of the sugar workers lived in com-
pany houses, which were often better than were other rural

56 c PUERTO Rico

living quarters; they traded in company stores at prices that
were generally lower than those in other stores; they had
credit at some of the company stores, which helped to tide
them over the long dead season; their wages were usually
somewhat higher than those they could receive elsewhere.
Nevertheless, Esteban Bird accused sugar of gross injus-
tices in its treatment of labor while reaping impressive divi-
dends for its absentee stockholders.

Bird's report on the sugar industry was prepared in 1936
at the request of the U. S. Puerto Rico Reconstruction Ad-
ministration. However, it was kept under cover until 1941,
when the Puerto Rican government published it. It read:
"After making allowance for seasonality of employment,
for supplemental labor of women and children, for the
average number of idle days during the week, various
agencies have estimated that the typical wage income of
sugar laborers is around $170 per year." That was, of
course, a tragic wage on which to raise and support a fam-
ily, clothe it, educate it, and feed it largely on imported
foods at prices higher than those paid in the continental
United States. Bird goes on to cite the earlier study made in
1929 by the Brookings Institution, according to which the
average weekly wage of a Puerto Rican working-class fam-
ily was "$6,47 per family, $3.49 per worker, and $0.85 per
person approximately $0.12 per day to cover all their
daily requirements. These families spend 94 per cent of
their weekly earnings for food, the largest single item being
polished rice a coolie's diet."

"Twelve cents per person per day/' writes Bird indig-
nantly "is only four cents more than the food expense re-
quired for feeding a hog in the United States! No wonder
these laborers have even lost combativeness to do what
was witnessed in the United States during the recent de-
pression farmers in the West holding up trucks in transit
laden with food, picket lines formed by a harassed and em-
battled farm group ready to combat by any means the des-

The Anguish of Colonialism <r 57

perate situation created by a social structure on the verge of
collapse. Twelve cents per person per day explains why
birth, sickness, accident, and death are suffered with a
helpless fatalism.

"Twelve cents per person per day is the root of all evil; it
ought to dispel the brutal contempt for this laborer held by
many defenders of the present state of affairs who accuse
him of laziness. Twelve cents per person per day plays a
prominent part in a death rate of 575 (per 100,000) for en-
teritis and diarrhea, 237 for tuberculosis, and 221 for ma-
laria in the sugar cane areas of Puerto Rico/*

To Bird's statement should be added that tens of thou-
sands of Puerto Ricans were totally unemployed during the
depression and had no land on which to grow subsistence
crops, and that thousands of women were working at home
for the needlework industry, for pay that began in New
York at sweatshop rates and was divided and fractioned by
various contractors and subcontractors until at times,
when it finally reached the workers, it amounted to three
cents per dozen for hand embroidering and hemming hand-
kerchiefs.

Twelve cents per person per day, no cents at all for
150,000 unemployed, and three cents per dozen handker-
chiefs go far to explain the lethargy and spiritual corrup-
tion of Puerto Rican politics before 1940. The man who
earned that twelve cents voted as he was told lest he lose
it. The man who didn't earn it voted as he was told because
somebody paid him two dollars for so doing. From the
United States, progressively lightening its political control
through the decades, Puerto Rico had achieved a measure
of home rule that was on paper notable as colonial affairs
go. At twelve cents per person per day it tended to be a
sham, operating largely for the perpetuation of evils and
for the benefit of the entrenched interests that could afford
to pay two dollars every four years for the vote, instead of
two dollars daily for the work.

58 c PUERTO Rico

While such conditions were tragic, and while the absentee
sugar corporations dominated the island's political, as well
as economic, life, it must be recognized that those corpora-
tions were not the only devils on the scene. They were,
however, the symbols of American "imperialism," just as
similar absentee corporations, in copper, petroleum, ba-
nanas, and the like, were symbols of "Yanquf imperialism
throughout Latin America. Like the latter, the sugar cor-
porations defended themselves by pointing out, quite cor-
rectly, that their wages and their treatment of labor were
better than those that had prevailed during Spanish days,
and also better than those in the branches of Puerto Rico's
agriculture which had remained in Puerto Rican hands.
That phenomenon was common throughout Latin America.
To be sure, United States corporate interests have ex-
ploited Latin America by North American and world stand-
ards, but they have not exploited the people of Latin Amer-
ica nearly as much as have the Latin-American feudal
barons themselves. The kind of exploitation with which we
"Yanquis" have so often been charged could not exist ex-
cept in the setting of even greater local exploitation by in-
trenched indigenous feudalism.

In Puerto Rico the tobacco- and citrus-fruit industries
began to flourish after the Spanish-American War, though
they were of minor importance when compared with sugar.
There, too, however, U.S. capital poured in to improve
conditions somewhat, but also to drain off a large share of
the profits. The only part of the economy that remained ex-
clusively in Puerto Rican hands was the production of cof-
fee in the island's western hills. That crop, which had once
commanded top luxury prices in Europe, had been Puerto
Rico's economic mainstay until the advent of the twentieth
century and had done relatively well until it was ruined by
a disastrous hurricane and the disruptions caused by
World War I. It survives today, but as a "sick" crop, and
Jiving conditions in the coffee hills are today the worst in

The Anguish of Colonialism c 59

Puerto Rico. That they were even worse six decades ago,
when the coffee business was relatively prosperous, is at-
tested by Dr. Bailey Ashford, who served in Puerto Rico as a
Major in the Medical Corps of the U.S. army. Bailey writes:

'Hose, Director of the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission,
saw the poor mud-stained laborer degraded by his disease
and literally submerged in the monotonous routine of cof-
fee culture, living from hand to mouth; his children starv-
ing and sick; and his wife, no better off than he, working a
bit in the coffee grove and a listless bit in the bare shack.
He saw the exquisite beauty of these tropical mountains
with their sheer ravines and their limpid streams. He felt
the cool damp of the coffee grove under the feathery shade
of the guava tree. He talked with the plantation owners
and found that only a tittle of his workmen were worth
their salt, and that they were held on as laborers with a
wage pitifully low, it is true because the owner hadn't the
heart to turn his half -starved people off, sick as they were.
He personally verified their ragged clothes, their lack of
shoes, and their docile, animal-like constancy in the work
of the amo, or master. He talked with the jibaros and found
a man who had descended almost if not quite to the level of
the beasts, stumbling about by day over the slippery mud of
the coffee plantation, sleeping cold and wet at night with-
out bed or bed covering, eating what he could get, a fare
limited principally to a mess of rice and beans, with codfish
and tubers and procreating, with no thought of the mor-
row, no thought of the hereafter, no thought of the future
of his sons and daughters, not even a thought of a freer,
better life; only a monotonous repetition of today, yester^
day, and of the other yesterdays before/' 1

Ashford wrote about conditions early in the century,
shortly after the end of the Spanish regime. But in 1929

1 From a Soldier in Science, by Bailey K. Ashford (New York: Wil-
liam Morrow and Company; 1934). Copyright 1934 by William Mor-
row and Company. Quoted with permission of the publisher.

6o PUERTO Rico

Governor Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. described the island's
country people in much the same language. The Puerto
Ricans were truly a stricken people. As everywhere in Latin
America, although those who worked for the absentee cor-
porations were somewhat better off than the rest, there was
still justice in charging the North American corporations
with exploitative imperialism because they mixed in poli-
tics and did what they could to perpetuate the local feud-
alism under which they could thrive.

From the beginning of American rule until the grim
1930*8 Puerto Rico's official statistics showed steady gains
in trade, education, public health, road construction, and
virtually all other matters to which such figures arc de-
voted. The external trade grew from $19,789,000 in 1899
to $183,285,000 in 1930. We began to point with pride to
the fact that under the American flag Puerto Rico had ac-
quired more telephones per inhabitant, more miles of roads,
more seats in schools, more hospital beds, more of almost
everything imaginable than many another country in the
Americas whichever happened to be convenient for com-
parison. There were more jobs than formerly, and certainly
the per-capita income, calculated on the basis of total in-
come divided by total population, was higher than it had
even been before. Since 1903 there had been a University
of Puerto Rico, and some of its graduates had been able to
find jobs in the insular scheme of things in government,
in the professions, in public services, and the like.

The only difficulty about all that was that it didn't benefit
the people. Writing in New York in 1929, Mufioz Marin
called Puerto Rico "a land of flattering statistics and dis-
tressing realities. "

The illness of the island's colonial economy became ap-
parent during the late twenties, even before the onset of the
depression, when the Brookings Institution published its
survey and Bailey Diffie and his wife Justine produced

The Anguish of Colonialism c 61

their Porto Rico, a Broken Pledge. 2 The book was extremely
important as the first passionate though at times exag-
gerated attack on the evils of Puerto Rico's colonial econ-
omy to be made by a non-Puerto Rican scholar. The Diffies
pointed out that although Puerto Rico usually enjoyed a
favorable balance of trade in which the value of exports ex-
ceeded that of imports by about $10,000,000 annually, the
balance of payments was seldom, if ever, taken into ac-
count.

The profits drained from Puerto Rico by absentee in-
vestors, the freight paid on goods exported from Puerto
Rico or imported to the island from the mainland, rents on
absentee-owned properties, and various other items came,
according to the Diffies and to Jack De Golia's later study of
the tariff and trade situation, to somewhere around $2,0,-
000,000. That meant that the economy as a whole grew
poorer by about $10,000,000 per year except for federal
expenditures and the new capital investments that stopped
about the time the Diffies wrote their book.

Munoz Marin pointed out in one of his articles that
Puerto Rico's "favorable" balance of trade resembled that
of a burglarized house, in which exports also exceed im-
ports.

After 1930 Puerto Rico headed rapidly toward complete
bankruptcy. Municipality after municipality could not pay
its obligations in wages and salaries; the bonded indebted-
ness, as well as private mortgages, rose to unprecedented
heights; personal suffering amounting to near starvation
permeated the population.

Under the aegis of the United States and in line with a

2 Note : The island's official name during the first three decades of
American rule was Porto Rico, a matter which caused many Puerto
Ricans to complain that we had robbed them even of the correct
spelling of their name. It was changed to Puerto Rico during the
early years of the Roosevelt regime.

62 c PUERTO Rico

common colonial phenomenon that demographers have
never been able to explain satisfactorily, the birth rate also
began to go up. Poverty and hunger are often themselves
contributors to a downward social spiral, to which a high
and growing birth rate is another contributor. In 1900 the
population was about 900,000; by 1940 it had risen to
nearly 2,000,000. To be sure, the economy expanded dur-
ing the century's early decades, but it was an artificial econ-
omy as far as Puerto Rico was concerned, devoted in too
great a measure to other people's enrichment. Moreover, it
didn't expand as rapidly as did the population, and stopped
expanding about 1929, when new capital stopped flowing
into the island.

Throughout the first four decades under the United
States, Puerto Rico remained a stricken land, disease-in-
fested, hungry, beset by poverty, unable to help itself
through political action, virtually without hope.

5

Colonialism Bankrupt

WITH the universal fertility of the poor the Puerto Ricans
kept shooting children like cannon balls at the rigid walls
of their economy. That the economy stopped expanding
with the advent of the world depression and actually began
to contract increased the emotional need for the bombard-
ment. Children kept coming; the population continued to
grow; the means for supporting the population diminished.
Drawn into that vicious downward spiral, Puerto Rico be-
gan to reflect the general unrest that gripped the entire
Caribbean area during the 1930*3. Tensions mounted; anti-
American feelings increased noticeably; the desire for
independence spread far and wide, not always because na-
tional sovereignty was regarded as being in itself a good
thing, but because to some almost anything looked better
than the prevailing inexorable destruction of human life
and values. Others yearned for independence and "free-
dom" as symbols of human dignity and pride.

As everywhere else, the world depression proved colo-
nialism to be bankrupt. All Puerto Ricans knew that they
had come to the ends of their ropes as colonial subjects,

64 PUERTO Rico

though the native tycoons, their bread buttered lavishly on
the sugar side, either refrained from saying so or screamed
for statehood as the same people still do. But it was one
thing to know that colonialism was bankrupt and finished;
it was quite another to know what to do about the matter
in a situation in which the ultimate political power for
making changes rested with the federal government, and
local leaders must be careful not to offend Washington lest
they themselves be finished as leaders. The arts of tempor-
izing with authority, of knuckling under, of seeking results
only through sly political maneuvering may assure the sur-
vival of politicians, but they do not create revolutionists.
They create demagogues instead rural and urban ward
heelers on large or small scales.

Toynbee has generalized on such situations, which have
existed before in human history and which have usually
led to eventual explosions. But Toynbee has pointed out
that the explosion demands the leadership and unifying in-
fluence of "a powerful personality a breaker of the cake of
custom." That breaker of the cake was on the political
scene during the depression and was very busy: shaping
his own thinking, winning followers among the poor,
among the colonos, and among a few dedicated intellec-
tuals, but also making himself increasingly feared, first by
the sugar interests and later by the federal government-
through the men who had been appointed as local repre-
sentatives of Roosevelt's liberal New Deal. However, he
was not yet quite ready to break established traditions.

Meanwhile, the Puerto Rican people and voters flocked
to hear the speeches made by their established leaders; that
was one of their principal forms of entertainment. But, al-
though they were "politically-minded" to a high degree,
they were also cynical about politics as a means of solving
their basic problems. They knew that their leaders were
ultimately controlled by Washington and therefore lacked
the personal power to carry out most of their promises.

Colonialism Bankrupt c 65

Just as they had been excluded from high positions in
American firms as a matter of U.S. business policy, Puerto
Ricans were also excluded, during the first two decades of
our rule, from high positions in theix own government. Not
until 1917 were they able to secure such positions, though
still for the purpose of carrying out policies that had been
formulated in Washington; not until 1952 were the island's
people entirely free to determine their own policies, within
the framework of the American Constitution as interpreted
by the U. S. Supreme Court, and to elect their own leaders
for the purpose of fulfilling those policies.

Puerto Rico's insular politics struggled always in the
black shadow of abject poverty, dominated by that poverty
and the resulting struggle for twelve cents. Men at the
bottom of the social scale voted as they were told because
they needed their mean wages; men and women higher up
found that the greatest single employer of white-collar
workers was the government. There were virtually no in-
dustries to absorb the energies of those the university was
turning out. When the economy stopped expanding in 1930,
government became almost the only possible employer of
the ever swelling stream of maturing, educated Puerto Ri-
cans who had to make their livings in one way or another.

Hence, although it was always carried along by glowing
phrases devoted to high ideals, Puerto Rican politics be-
came largely a partisan struggle for control of the budget
and thus also of patronage. A man's living, his very life,
the living and the lives of his children, often depended on
whether or not his party came to power or at least won a
few crumbs of patronage. Neighbors were set against
neighbors, ostensibly over matters of principle, but, in real-
ity, over the question of jobs. Tradesmen, druggists, and
haberdashers in the various towns were patronized or
shunned according to their political affiliations.

As politics was largely a struggle for bread and butter, it
also came to dominate the entire insular scene. Everybody

66 c PUERTO Rico

was politically-minded, down to the lowliest street sweeper,
who, though he might have been all for Puerto Rico's in-
dependence, gladly proclaimed to his party boss his loyalty
to the party, as well as his passionate love for the United
States, in order to get and hold his job and to be able to
recommend his friends for other jobs.

Under such circumstances, it is surprising to find that
Puerto Rico's politicians have always been among the most
honest to be found anywhere, as far as money is con-
cerned. Virtually all of them, during and since the Spanish
regime, maintained high moral standards in financial mat-
ters involving their personal integrity; every one of them
died poor. The island has never experienced great scandals
involving large-scale graft as opposed to petty pilfering;
the Cuban and Mexican patterns of graft-ridden large or
small government offices has never developed in Puerto
Rico.

Nevertheless, before Munoz Marin changed matters in
1940, elections were riotous displays of cynical dis-
honesty. Votes were bought openly and shamelessly and al]
the more easily because the men who sold them needed the
money for their hungry families. All the tricks known to
crooked politicians false registration, the use of floaters,
the enlistment of the dead were employed by the various
parties with enthusiasm, A friend of mine went to the polls
rather late in the 1932 elections only to be told that he had
already voted no fewer than twenty times. As all the
watchers there were his personal friends, they allowed him
to cast the twenty-first vote. Another friend voted in eleven
different polling places in the same election* In some
towns, in several elections, the number of votes cast ex-
ceeded the total populations of men, women, and children.

There was the typical story of a group of political
workers who had spent a day driving about in a car, dis-
tributing campaign literature. They were driving home late
in the evening, with several hundred undistributed hand-

Colonialism Bankrupt c 67

bills still in their car. As they passed a cemetery one of them
threw all these bills over the wall to the gravestones. A
companion protested. "Stop that," he cried. "Paper and
printing cost money."

"Why not?" was the answer. "Those fellows vote, don't
they?"

Cultural anthropologists might well speculate on
whether or not the Haitian institution of the Zombie had
its origins in politics, where it has existed for a long time.

The one outstanding political issue to which all parties
gave lip service was that of ultimate status. While the up-
per classes tended to advocate eventual statehood, the ma-*
jority, for one reason or another, leaned toward independ-
ence. Both were known to be beset by perils, but no other
emergence from colonialism was preached as an active po-
litical tenet. Other solutions to the status problem were ad-
vanced from time to time, but not by the island's politicians
addressing their constituents. Even they, however, had to
keep their eyes always on Washington.

During the early years of American rule the various
Washington-appointed chief executives governed with the
help of the island's Republican party, which, although for
statehood and therefore undoubtedly loyal, was also by far
the minority party. Then Wilson was elected President, and
he appointed Arthur Yager governor of Puerto Rico. Yager
was a liberal-minded man who showed great respect to-
ward local feelings on political status and did not believe
that the desire for independence amounted to disloyalty to
the United States. Yager was the first to co-operate with the
majority party Munoz Rivera's Unionist party which
had strong leanings toward independence and had actually
been in power since 1903. He also began the practice of
placing Puerto Ricans in important executive positions that
had previously been filled almost exclusively by continental
Americans. As a result, relations between Washington and
the island showed marked improvement.

68 c PUERTO Rico

Governor Yager also endeavored to have the original or-
ganic act, the Foraker Act, replaced by a more liberal basic
law. The resulting Jones Act was a marked step in advance,
but did not, however, please all the Puerto Ricans. Some of
those who advocated independence objected to the fact that
this act offered U.S. citizenship to the Puerto Ricans, who
had until then under the Foraker Act been citizens of Puerto
Rico, but not of the United States. They felt that the issue
of eventual status would be clouded by that citizenship.
Others objected with good reason to the fact that the Jones
Act, as had the Foraker Act, stipulated that the curricula
and policies of the island's school system be shaped by a
Washington-appointed Commissioner of Education respon-
sible to Washington and devoting his efforts largely to
something that was vaguely and erroneously called "Ameri-
canization." They wanted school curricula to be determined
by a Puerto Rican Commissioner of Education responsible
to the insular legislature and permitted to devote his efforts
toward shaping an educational system designed to meet the
needs and problems of Puerto Rico's people.

But the Jones Act was passed in 1917, despite such ob-
jections. Both it and Yager's liberal and enlightened rule
strengthened good will toward the United States immeas-
urably until Harding succeeded Wilson as President, and
Yager was succeeded in Puerto Rico by a new governor of
the go-getter type.

This was J. Montgomery Reily, apparently appointed by
Harding to wave the flag, shout hurrah, and stand for no
nonsense. His inaugural ceremony on July 30, 1921, was
one of the most splendid and impressive the island had
ever seen, being designed to show the Puerto Ricans who
was boss, and to celebrate the return of Republican sanity
to national affairs. At his first meeting with leaders of the
Unionist party, which had helped Yager to govern, Reily
delivered a blast against the idea of independence, which

Colonialism Bankrupt c 6g

he regarded as amounting to disloyalty to the United States,
and announced that he would govern only with the help of
men who were its avowed enemies. He would appoint Un-
ionists to office only if Antonio R. Barcelo, the party's presi-
dent, publicly renounced his earlier stand on political sta-
tus. Then the governor went on a barnstorming tour to all
parts of the island, in which, in town halls, schools, village
greens, he violently denounced the idea of independence.

That kind of thing did nothing to endear the United
States to the Puerto Ricans, or to give them faith in their
own political power and stability. There could be little con-
tinuity in political development as long as the island was
at the mercy of changing governors with varying sets of
official and personal ideas. It was dangerous to be too close
to any governor, even a good one, lest he be succeeded by
somebody who might feel otherwise and practice recrimi-
nations.

Under these circumstances of uncertainty, which char-
acterized the 1920*3, a leader" arose who won much atten-
tion, attracted large crowds to his speeches, for a time
enjoyed enthusiastic popular applause, but fizzled out tragi-
cally because his thinking had been bankrupt and outmoded
from the start.

The classical, dogmatic answer to colonialism is nation-
alism and national sovereignty, only too often defined as
being synonymous with individual freedom. The classical
means of achieving that sovereignty is through violence of
one kind or another be it via George Washington or Si-
mon Bolivar. The classical patriotic attitude toward the
ruling country is one of bitter hatred expressed through
constant denunciation of the grasping tyrant.

Those were the emotional ingredients of the various
American revolutions. In many parts of Latin America,
where nations had emerged with Spanish, Catholic cultures
and with oligarchic Spanish concepts of liberty, the United

7 PUERTO Rico

States had come, during the nineteenth and twentieth cen-
turies, to be the classical culture enemy the materialistic,
Protestant Colossus of the North.

Stir all those ingredients together in the person of a fiery
orator, and you are likely to have an explosive mixture with
a strong appeal to a certain number of poverty-stricken ado-
lescents of various ages, bewildered and hurt by their sec-
ond-class citizenship. Pedro Albizu Campos was the leader
who for a time had an enormous appeal for that segment of
the island's population. He used an emotional patriotism,
coupled with fanatical hatred of the United States, almost
as a smoke screen to hide the details and real nature of
Puerto Rico's ills.

Nevertheless, at a critical time, though in a tragic, nega-
tive manner, he exercised a powerful influence on Puerto
Rico's history. By exploding into terrorism, he and his fol-
lowers focused attention on the fact that things were seri-
ously wrong on the island; their very terrorism forced an
earnest striving toward sane and effective means of right-
ing those wrongs.

Pedro Albizu Campos was and is a bitter man who hates
the United States venomously. That he was an Illegitimate
child and dark in skin are said to have added to his bitter-
ness. Certainly in all his political speeches he ceaselessly
and relentlessly attacked the United States on the one point
in which we are weakest in human relations the race is-
sue.

He attended Harvard University and graduated in 1917
with a bachelor's degree in law. During World War I he
registered for the draft in Cambridge, but was allowed to
transfer to Puerto Rico, where he was sure that no color
line would be drawn. He was wrong. The U.S. army had
introduced the color line where it had not existed before.
Today it no longer practices racial segregation, at least in
Puerto Rico; in those days it did. Albizu was assigned to the
375th Regiment, a Negro regiment whose activities were

Colonialism Bankrupt c 71

confined to doing degrading manual labor and garrison
duty in Puerto Rico and Panama. Later he was admitted to
an officers' training camp, came out with a commission,
and was a lieutenant in the 375th when he was discharged
in January 1919.

Acutely sensitive to the many snubs he had received as a
Negro, he now began to devote his life to the cause of Puerto
Rico's independence, in the beginning as a journalist. He
argued that the United States was a usurper with no legal
standing on the island, as the section of the Treaty of Paris
by which Puerto Rico was turned over to the United States
had never been ratified by the island's people. In 1927 and
1928 he visited eleven Latin-American countries, preach-
ing Puerto Rico's right to be a republic and doing his best to
stimulate South American hatred and suspicion of el coloso
del norte. The South Americans of that era were inclined to
listen to him. He became widely known and respected as a
kind of Latin Gandhi. To some Latin Americans he is still
so regarded, though their number is decreasing rapidly.
Many groups of varying kinds gave him official support.
They included Catholics and Communists, as well as a wide
variety of revolutionists.

Albizu's idea in those days was to gain international sup-
port for his cause of independence by pleading before the
League of Nations, and his apparent success in South
America was encouraging. However, one thing was still
lacking to make his case complete: popular support from
Puerto Rico itself. He sought it through the election of
1932.

In 1930 he had been elected President of the Nationalist
party, and set about immediately to prepare for the voting.
People loved his fiery speeches, in which he attacked the
United States relentlessly as a ruthless enemy desirous only
of exterminating the Puerto Rican people by means of the
birth control that seemed so mandatory to many. At one
time he even claimed that he had discovered a diabolical

72 PUERTO Rico

plot on the part of the United States to kill off all Puerto
Ricans through the injection, in their veins, of the (proba-
bly nonexistent) cancer virus. But he offered no economic
program through which existing evils were to be cured.

The enthusiasm with which he was greeted everywhere
raised his hopes to high pitch. But when the election re-
turns were in it was found that he had won only five per
cent of the total vote in his personal race for the office of
Senator-at-Large, and his party had polled less than two per
cent. That killed the Nationalists as a political "party," as
the law stipulated that they had to win a minimum of ten
per cent in order to go to the next election without a pre-
liminary petition inscription of the same size. Since then
their membership has shrunk to a mere 300 or so, and only
the future can reveal whether or not those few are still de-
voted to the terrorism to which their political rout had re-
duced them.

Some claimed that independence couldn't possibly win
in a colonial polling because the weapons of economic ter-
rorism would later be used against those who voted for it;
but whatever the election's meaning, Albizu could not, with
a two per cent vote for his platform, go before the League of
Nations in Geneva to claim popular support for Puerto Ri-
co's independence.

Defeated in their efforts to create a real Republic of
Puerto Rico, the Nationalists now built a sham one in a
play-acting fashion. Many of them, especially the younger
ones, were deadly serious about it as within the existing
climate of stagnation there were no other outlets for their
creative, patriotic impulses. Albizu Campos was President,
with a number of busy ministers to conduct the affairs of
state, with the foreign representation he had built up in
eleven Latin-American republics, with an "Army of Libera-
tion" uniformed in white pants and black shirts and armed,
if at all, largely with wooden guns.

Colonialism Bankrupt c 73

Politically, the Nationalists seemed to content themselves
with making speeches during the first few years after the
disastrous 1932 election. They harangued the Puerto Rican
people everywhere on the streets, in the plazas, in halls,
and over the radio with a message of unceasing, bitter
hatred for the United States and everything North Ameri-
can. President Roosevelt and Mrs. Roosevelt, Secretary
Ickes, and other federal officials, the institution of colonial-
ism, America's intentions toward Puerto Rico, the island's
own officials and leaders, especially Mufioz Marin, the ab-
sentee ownership of land, and the morals of various promi-
nent ladies all these and many more things were blasted
indiscriminately and venomously for years.

The students at the university canonized Albizu, but he
came to talk himself out of that honor in several vitupera-
tive speeches in which he accused the university boys of
effeminacy and lack of patriotism, and implied that the
girls, because they were departing from traditional Spanish
patterns of behavior and dress and were taking on freer
American ways, were immoral. In 1935 many of the stu-
dents therefore decided to defend themselves, and arranged
for an assembly of censure to be held on October 24. Feel-
ing ran so high that it was agreed that all students attend-
ing the meeting would have to check their revolvers at the
door before entering. Determined to break up the meeting,
armed Nationalists drove to the university in cars. They
were stopped by the police, and in the ensuing exchange of
shots a policeman was seriously wounded, a spectator and
four Nationalists were killed, and one Nationalist was in-
jured. That was the beginning of Puerto Rico's recurring
bath of blood. Two days later, at the funeral of his four
"martyrs," Albizu preached a violent sermon of hate
against everything American and against the police as tools
of Yankee imperialism, calling on his listeners to avenge
the deaths of their four heroic comrades in arms.

74 PUERTO Rico

Colonel E. Francis Riggs, the Washington-appointed
chief of the island's police force, was the first to be singled
out for that revenge. He was a decent man, tolerant, well-
liked, liberal in his political views, who favored Puerto Ri-
co's independence in the sense that he favored the principle
of self-determination. He was also an ardent Catholic who
went to Mass regularly. On Sunday, February 23, 1936, on
his return from San Juan Cathedral, he was waylaid by two
young Nationalists and shot to death. They were immedi-
ately arrested and taken to the police station, and there the
police lost their heads. Behind the station's closed doors,
their prisoners disarmed, they reached for their guns and
riddled the two Nationalists with bullets.

The tragic chain of events set off by that senseless lynch-
ing is described in Chapter 6. Suffice it here to say that Al-
bizu created a situation in which all the Puerto Ricans
seemed officially to be blamed by Washington for the ac-
tions of a few fanatics, and all Puerto Rico was punished
accordingly. He and seven of his associates were tried in
the federal court, and sentenced to relatively brief terms
in Atlanta Penitentiary. On his return to Puerto Rico in
December 1947, he again began to urge his fanatical fol-
lowers to commit murder in Puerto Rico's holy cause.

The Nationalists made news again in 1950, when they
staged a widespread and bloody upheaval in many parts of
Puerto Rico while trying to assassinate President Truman
in Washington and Governor Munoz Marin in San Juan. On
March i, 1954, the day of the opening of the Tenth Con-
ference on Inter-American Affairs in Caracas, four of them
stood in the gallery of Washington's House of Representa-
tives, uttered a cry for Puerto Rico's freedom, and sprayed
the House with bullets, indiscriminately wounding five con-
gressmen. They did it in an attempt to embarrass the United
States at the Caracas conference. However, by the time
of those two terroristic actions the government of the

Colonialism Bankrupt c 75

United States, the press, the American people, had grown
more realistic in their concepts of Puerto Rico and had be-
gun to abandon the senseless former habit of lumping all
Puerto Ricans under the vicious term "they/' No longer
were all the island's people blamed for the acts of a few
crazy terrorists seeking martyrdom in a chimerical cause.

Two years before the 1950 outbreak the people of Puerto
Rico had elected their own governor for the first time in
their history. The island's colonialism had been modified
drastically and Washington's officials no longer thought it
necessary to take charge of every major move in its affairs.
Albizu was this time tried in a Puerto Rican court, which
convicted him of inciting to murder and sentenced him for
eighty years. But again he managed to win a certain inter-
national audience, this time by inventing a fantastic mar-
tyrdom.

While in prison he complained ceaselessly and bitterly,
writing letters to the Pan-American Union and to various
Latin-American republics about the evil United States. Day
and night he kept wet towels on his head, his chest, and his
genitals as protection against the atomic radiation with
which, according to his claims, the United States was in-
efficiently trying to kill him. He accused Washington of
keeping three machinery-laden ships anchored off Puerto
Rico's coast to send a steady stream of radiations against
his poor, frail body, and believed that those ships contained
radar equipment to keep track of his precise whereabouts
just in case the Puerto Rican authorities tried to move
him out of the bombardment's way.

Governor Mufioz Marin pardoned Albizu in 1953, one
reason being that he was obviously a sick man, whose
"martyrdom" won him a certain amount of sympathetic
attention in non-Puerto Rican circles. One result of that
official clemency was the shooting in Congress on March i,
1954. Today Albizu is back in prison for life. He can receive

76 c PUERTO Rico

visitors; he still complains of U.S. efforts to kill him with
atomic radiations; but he receives the best care, medical
and other, the Puerto Rican government can give him.

Governor Mufioz Marin spoke not only for himself, but
expressed Puerto Rico's general view, when he told Con-
gress, the President, Washington officialdom, and the
press, immediately after the fateful shooting of March i,
1954, that Pedro Albizu Campos is in fact a bitter enemy of
the Puerto Rican people rather than of the United States.
The governor is also known for the statement that "never
in history has one leader exercised so strong an influence
over so few people."

The Nationalists are today aging and rapidly diminish-
ing in numbers. Nationalist cells may still exist, especially
in New York and Chicago, where Puerto Ricans are widely
regarded as an alien group, with second-class citizenship
akin to that of Negroes. One thing, however, has been defi-
nitely established by the history of recent decades : the mo-
tivations of these terrorists must not be sought in the realm
of reason, but in that of abnormal psychology.

While the Nationalists were coming to prominence dur-
ing the depression, the U.S. government tried to face
Puerto Rico's ills in its own way.

Throughout the first three decades of American rule vir-
tually all the governors had filled their official reports and
public statements with statistics on mounting trade, favor-
able balances, increasing numbers of schools, telephones,
and miles of roads constructed; they waved the flag with
varying degrees of enthusiasm and played with varying de-
grees of skill on the "here we are and watch us grow"
theme. Hoover's governor, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. was the
first to look at people, instead of statistics, and to say: "This
is awful." A decent man, profoundly shocked, he wrote arti-
cles in the U. S. Press about the conditions he saw, and did
his best, as governor, to ease the people's misery. In 1929,
in an article in the New York Herald Tribune called "Chil-

Colonialism Bankrupt c 77

dren of Famine," he wrote as follows about island condi-
tions :

"Riding through the hills, I have stopped at farm after
farm, where lean, underfed women and sickly men re-
peated again and again the same story little food and no
opportunity to get more. From these hills the people have
streamed into the coastal towns, increasing the already se-
vere unemployment situation there. Housing facilities, of
course, are woefully inadequate. Besides, the lack of funds
and the increased work have rendered it impossible for our
Health Department to cope satisfactorily with our increas-
ing problem."

This article was published before the stock-market crash.
When the world depression finally became officially recog-
nized as such, conditions in Puerto Rico were infinitely
worse than anywhere in the United States. Slow, and some-
times rapid, starvation was found everywhere. Health con-
ditions were awful: malaria, tuberculosis, and gastrointes-
tinal diseases took a staggering toll. If one drove a car over
the country roads, one was delayed again and again by sor-
rowing funeral processions carrying the caskets of dead in-
fants.

Most of the cities were infested by "wolf gangs" of chil-
dren ranging in ages from six to sixteen, many of whom
had no idea of who their parents were. They pilfered and
robbed; they "protected" parked automobiles, and if the
drivers didn't want to pay for such protection, they si-
phoned gasoline out of tanks, stole hub caps, slashed tires.
They slept where they could in parks, in hallways, in al-
leys. The authorities could not cope with them. Not enough
jails or other institutions were available, and if there had
been, the children would have been only too delighted to go
where they could obtain free board and lodging.

Teenagers were for a time successful in a special racket.
They entered post offices and smashed boxes always be-
fore witnesses. As mailboxes were federal property, they

78 PUERTO Rico

were then tried in the federal court and sentenced to the
federal reform school in Chillicothe, Ohio, When one of
them was sentenced, his family called in all the neighbors
for a celebration that could not have been more joyful if he
had won an appointment to West Point. The boy had made
good! He was going to a place where, for a number of years,
he would get an education, learn English, learn a trade, and
enjoy free food, clothing, and housing. The crime wave
stopped when the federal judge caught on to what was hap-
pening and stopped sending Puerto Rican boys to Chilli-
cothe.

Grown men, workers in the cane fields, committed honor-
able crimes to be able to hold their jobs. Many of them be-
came so weak and emaciated during the seven months'
"dead season" between harvests that they were in danger of
not being able to bring in the harvest at all. A month before
the cane-cutting season began they stole things out of stores
again always before witnesses in order to be sent to
prison, where society would build up their strength with
adequate food and treatment for malaria and other wasting
diseases.

Colonialism's bankruptcy was piled on top of the world
depression. Early in the New Deal days, in August 1933,
Washington sent its Emergency Relief Administration to
Puerto Rico, where it became known first as the Puerto
Rico Relief Administration, or PRERA, and later as the
Federal Relief Administration, or FERA. Headed locally by
James Bourne, now of Rhinebeck, New York, and Ms wife,
Dorothy Bourne, an able social worker who is now Dean of
Bard College, it became a tremendous, organized effort to
spend a million dollars a month where the money would do
the most good, in accordance with the rules that had been
formulated in Washington. Its primary purpose was to keep
people alive by providing millions of meals to the starving.

The need for relief was even greater in Puerto Rico than

Colonialism Bankrupt c 79

on the mainland. It was increased considerably in 1934,
when the Costigan-Jones Act put sugar production on a
quota basis, reduced the island's production of sugar, paid
bonuses to the proprietors for not growing cane, but made
no provision for the thousands of agricultural workers who
were thereby deprived of their jobs.

The PRERA was a vast, sprawling organization, harassed
by Washington's rules, according to which relief was to re-
main essentially relief and not a plan for changing the basic
economy. The organization frantically trained social work-
ers to tackle the insuperable job of evaluating the human
needs that were only too devastatingly obvious. It began its
enormous task with direct relief, but soon branched into
work relief, bending its efforts toward economic recon-
struction and developing plans for future steps in that di-
rection. White-collar projects included research, investi-
gation, and planning in many branches of the island's life.
Those activities were to prove invaluable; they focused at-
tention on the detailed nature of prevailing ills as nothing
before them, had ever done. Many a Puerto Rican who was
later, after the election of 1940, to play a role in his coun-
try's reshaping had his or her first stimulation in that direc-
tion from James and Dorothy Bourne; it was their activi-
ties, too, that were responsible for the first rough draft of
the program that was to be carried out after the people of
Puerto Rico had gained control of their own destiny.

There were, of course, thousands of dole payments in
money, meals, clothing, and other necessities. A program
of public works created badly needed new schools, hospi-
tals, bridges, and the like. In its agricultural program the
PRERA fostered home truck gardens, provided seed beds
and nurseries for the coffee belt which couldn't sell its
crop in any event and gave facilities and instruction for
the establishment of canning centers in which women
could preserve their crops. The co-operative movement

8o c PUERTO Rico

that is today beginning to gather real strength had some of
its earliest beginnings in the PRERA co-operatives for bar-
ter and exchange, and for the production and marketing of
hand-made arts and crafts. There were projects in fisheries
and shoemaking, and 5,000 women were kept reasonably
"busy" in needlework shops where they were constantly
cautioned to slow down because Washington, instigated by
private industry, had issued a fiat on the total expenditures
that must go, relatively, for wages and for materials.

The PRERA instituted and maintained many public-wel-
fare activities, among the most famous of which was the
maternal-health program. This was Puerto Rico's first or-
ganized public attempt at birth control. In a number of free
clinics women for whom it was mortally dangerous to have
more children obtained advice and contraceptives. The
clinics were swamped with clients. Later, when the relief
organization was replaced by the Puerto Rico Reconstruc-
tion Administration, the maternal-health clinics were
taken over by the latter as being among the most important
federal activities on the island. Just before the election of
1936, however, they were closed on peremptory orders
from Washington, resulting from political pressure on
Roosevelt.

The Catholic women in a Catholic society avidly ac-
cepted help for the limitation of their families. It was not
they who objected to the dissemination of birth-control in-
formation; it was politicians in the Protestant ruling coun-
try!

All that and much more amounted to the ruling country's
declaration of colonialism's bankruptcy. It was an an-
guished time, but also though few realized it a time of
creation. The Relief Administration demonstrated the need
for some kind of economic reshaping to eliminate some of
the basic causes of suffering. Out of relief, by tortuous
means, was to come the Reconstruction Administration;
emerging from that, again with much friction and agony,

Colonialism Bankrupt c 81

was the modern, progressive Puerto Rico. That did not hap-
pen gradually through the slow processes of evolution. It
happened suddenly, explosively, between the elections of
1936 and 1940.

6

The Breaker of the Cake

ALBIZIJ CAMPOS and the fanatics among his followers were
and are dogmatically "'Latin American" in thought and ori-
entations. The troubles they caused, once widely applauded
throughout Latin America, are symptomatic of the gulf
that still exists between the Latin-American and Anglo-
American cultures. That the gulf is narrowing rapidly in
Puerto Rico is not a unique phenomenon; it is narrowing,
though too slowly ? everywhere down to Cape Horn. How-
ever, Puerto Rico could not play an important role had not
its modern leader, Munoz Marin, first bridged the gulf be-
tween the two cultures in his own person, his own thinking
and orientations. His followers call him "our first twen-
tieth-century leader."

At the beginning of the century the cultural gulf between
the two Americas and also between Puerto Rico and the
United States was far wider than it is today. The ceding
of their island to the United States demanded a traumatic
readjustment of the Puerto Ricans. Descent from the feu-
dal conquistadors four centuries of living in and with a
Spanish cultural environment while virtually isolated from

The Breaker of the Cake c 83

the rest of the world could hardly prepare these people to
deal successfully as colonial subjects with those who had
descended from the freedom-seeking Pilgrims, from Roger
Williams and Calvin. In those days, moreover, the United
States, just beginning to emerge from its own classic isola-
tion, was even more lusty and all-knowing than it is today,
cocky about its sudden assumption of a new role as a world
power, sure of itself, not given to philosophic speculations.

Puerto Rico's political leaders during the island's first
three decades under American rule were essentially Span-
ish in their philosophy and orientations. Their language,
their thinking, their sense of social values and of human
dignity often clashed with the American go-getter spirit.
Their traditional, oligarchic sense of liberty and justice and
their cultural demand for intellectual and philosophical
consistency were often sharply at variance with America's
exuberant, youthful faith in the superiority of everything
American.

Even Luis Mufioz Rivera, one of the greatest of them all,
found it difficult to cope with the American Congress after
he had coped successfully with the Spanish Cortes. When
he first went to Washington as the island's Resident Com-
missioner, he knew almost no English; it is said of him with
admiration that he became eloquent in the language
through only one year of hard study. Nevertheless, his lan-
guage differed radically from that of Congress. He could
hardly be expected to grasp the semantics involved in the
sudden, overwhelming outrush of American corporate en-
terprise, with all its political ramifications, with its smug
assumption that Puerto Ricans of all classes stood to gain
most from the maximum gains of those branches of Amer-
ican business which had early established themselves on
the island.

Known as Puerto Rico's George Washington, Munoz Ri-
vera was the man who had obtained from Spain the short-
lived charter of home rule which had been set aside when

84 PUERTO Rico

the United States stepped in. He was the founder and editor-
owner of La Democracia, a crusading newspaper, and was
one of the group of men who, during the nineteenth century
strove to awaken Puerto Rico's people to their own dignity,
problems, and powers. The idol of the island's country peo-
ple, he stood politically for Puerto Rico's autonomy.

His son, Luis Mufioz Marin, was born in San Juan in
1898, but was reared mostly in New York and in Washing-
ton. For some years his father published a crusading maga-
zine in New York, exposing Puerto Rico's woes as a colony.
Later he became the island's Resident Commissioner in
Washington. The son early became acclimatized to U.S.
ways of thinking, and came to be intimately acquainted
with the workings and psychology of the American govern-
ment. The great problem of adjustment the century pre-
sented to his people was and is no personal problem to
Munoz Marin. Not only is he a master of English and a bril-
liant conversationalist in either English or Spanish, but he
seems never to have been torn between the Latin and
Anglo cultures; he is as much at home in the one as in the
other.

Like many Latins, young Munoz was greatly and in his
case bilingually interested in poetry. He didn't write
much, but what he did produce showed a deep identifica-
tion with Puerto Rico's poor, whose idol he was to become
later in life. One fragment about the submerged sugar la-
borers is worth repeating here. Its English version is from
the poem "Pamphlet," found in the Anthology of Contem-
porary Latin-American Poetry, edited by Dudley Fitts.

I have drowned my dreams

in order to glut the dreams that sleep for me in

the veins

of men who sweated and wept and raged
to season my coffee. . . .

The Breaker of the Cake c 85

The dream that sleeps in breasts stifled by tubercu-
losis

(A little air, a little sunshine)
the dreams that dream in stomachs strangled by

hunger

(A bit of bread a bit of white bread)
the dream of bare feet

(Fewer stones on the road. Lord, fewer broken

bottles)
the dream of calloused hands

(Moss . . . clean cambric , . . things smooth,

soft, soothing I
the dream of trampled hearts

(Love . . . life . . . life!)

In 1919 Luis married Muna Lee, originally from Missis-
sippi. For a time they lived on Staten Island, as friends and
neighbors of Edwin Markham. There young Munoz wrote a
famous and still standard Spanish translation of "The Man
with the Hoe." Earlier he had read a book on socialism and
had come to regard himself as a Socialist. In 1920 he went
to Puerto Rico, became associated with the island's Social-
ist party, made speeches for the party, and had his first
taste of active political campaigning. Though Munoz Ri-
vera had died in 1917, many people were shocked that the
son should depart from his father's Union party and associ-
ate with the political Left. Despite its name, however, the
Socialist party was not particularly radical; in effect, it was
a labor party identified with the A. F. of L. on the main-
land. Nevertheless, his open associations with it indicated
young Munoz's political leanings; they also showed that he
had no intention of riding into politics on the coattails of
his famous father : he intended to make his own way in his
own manner.

Returning to New York, he resumed the life that Rex-

86 c PUERTO Rico

ford Tugwell in his The Art of Politics describes as a wast-
rel's dilettante existence, as aimless loafing. But Tugwell
was wrong. In terms of wordage Munoz's literary output
was small; in terms of content it was enormous. As a free-
lancer, he began to write articles on Puerto Rico for such
periodicals as The Nation, The New Republic, and H. L.
Mencken's The American Mercury, By far the most brilliant
and daring analyses ever written of Puerto Rico's ills and
its relations with the United States, they created a sensa-
tion on the island, though they were also resented by the
superpatriots as being radical and even revolutionary in na-
ture. As a New York writer, Munoz became a new voice in
Puerto Rican affairs; he set new patterns of thought and
captured a small but important following of intellectuals.

Through and with Muna Lee, Munoz came to have close
contacts with a number of outstanding American intellectu-
als, with prominent Latin Americans, and with young and
ardent Americans Anglo as well as Latin who were
later to become prominent. Composed of poets, singers,
novelists, engineers, journalists, philosophers, politicians,
that heterogeneous group met at his home every Sunday
evening for the sole purpose of stimulating each other. The
"Sunday evenings at home" became a famous New York
institution. There almost any week one was likely to meet
such people as Edward Arlington Robinson, Sara Teasdale,
William Rose Benet, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, George Hubert
(later Sir Hubert) Wilkins, Horace and Marya Gregory,
Constance Lindsay Skinner, and many others of New York's
famous, near-famous, or about-to-be famous.

In midsummer 1926 Luis and Muna and their two chil-
dren, Luisito and Munita, moved to San Juan, where he be-
came editor of his father's old newspaper, La Democracia.
The paper was financially in bad straits. Getting it out was
a daily struggle and problem, but editing it gave Munoz an-
other platform from which to talk to his people. He talked
plainly and bluntly, and often he was every bit as embarrass-

The Breaker of the Cake c 87

ing to the cautious politicians on one side as on the other.
He pounded away at Puerto Rico's ills, called on both U.S.
and Puerto Rican leaders to do something about them,,
strengthened his hold on the island's intellectuals, fright-
ened the politicians, and was written off by the blase and re-
spectable as a mere dilettante and an incurable Bohemian.

In 1928 the island politicians got together to get him out
of the way. They sent him on an "industrial mission" to
New York, charged with finding capital for new Puerto Ri-
can industries. But in those days there was hardly a chance
of finding such capital; Munoz must have known it, and the
politicians also. The aim of sending him on that wild goose
chase could have been only his removal from the Puerto Ri-
can scene.

It was undoubtedly during this time that Munoz's politi-
cal thinking began to jell. Up to this point he had analyzed
his country's ills and had repeatedly made passionate ap-
peals to Puerto Rico's political leaders, as well as to the
United States' authorities, to do something about those iRs.
Except for his own exile to New York, the results of those
efforts were hardly spectacular. The two sides in the politi-
cal lineup were stalemated, politically bankrupt. It must
have been increasingly evident to Munoz in those days that
if ever anything was to be done to save Puerto Rico from
destruction, the people of Puerto Rico would themselves
have to take the initiative. The psychologically devastating
institution of colonialism stood in the way of such action;
salvation from colonialism was deterred by the lethargy it
created. Statehood was no possible way out; among other
things, it could well result in more, rather than less, dom-
ination by corporate United States interests, as well as in
the kind of destructive cultural humiliation that had been
suffered by the once proud Latin Americans in Texas, New
Mexico, and California.

No political solution seemed possible except Puerto Ri-
co's eventual independence, In 1931 in San Juan I once ar-

88 PUERTO Rico

gued the question with him, pointing out the economic and
other dangers involved in a struggle for sovereignty.
"Damn it," he answered, "we are the ones who have to save
ourselves, and we can't do it under the present system. Our
hands are tied. And besides, I want my people to want inde-
pendence. It is degrading for a lot of colonial subjects not
to want to be free. They don't assert themselves. They can't.
Let them once want independence, and they will begin to
assert themselves. Then we can cross the next bridge when
we come to it. Let them once assert themselves, and they
may not need independence. Perhaps we can then find
something better. But, as of now, independence is the only
solution/'

The money for his "industrial mission" soon ran out.
While Muna Lee worked for the University of Puerto Rico
and later for the National Women's Party in Washington,
Munoz wandered about the United States in an old car he
had acquired for the purpose, writing weekly articles for the
Baltimore Sun, occasional articles at space rates for other
papers, and living as best he could largely on bananas and
hamburgers. Some years later, when Fortune interviewed
him about his dramatic victory in the 1940 election, he
mentioned that foot-loose period and said: "When I found
I could do that, I knew I was a free man." Wherever he was,
however, all the time he was roaming he kept writing ar-
dent letters to his friends in Puerto Rico and to Puerto Ri-
can political leaders who may or may not have been his
friends, trying to arouse them to action, pounding away at
the one central message: "independence is the only pos-
sible solution."

Those years were in no way a wastrel's "loafing." As I
look back on my own contacts with him in those days, and
as I read the bits of history and memory others have writ-
ten since, it seems clear that he was driven by one force,
and one only: a profound, if at times unrecognized, sense

The Breaker of the Cake c 89

of destiny, of complete personal identification with Puerto
Rico's future.

For some years he was bracketed with the fanatical
Albizu Campos as one of the island's two outstanding lead-
ers for national sovereignty; in the thinking of many super-
patriotic Puerto Ricans and of some continental Americans
he was therefore branded as an enemy of the United States.
Today, at a time when his island has found a new way of
living and working with the United States for the benefit
of both countries, his political opposition still points out
that he started his political life as such an "enemy." The op-
position uses the argument to cast doubt on the integrity of
his current leadership.

But, while it was true that Munoz and Albizu were for a
time the two outstanding strivers for their island's inde-
pendence, their basic motivations were poles apart. The
one hated the United States bitterly; the other cherished it.
"I want independence," Munoz said, "as a matter of mutual
convenience to the people of Puerto Rico and those of the
United States." The one advocated violence and death as a
means for achieving his end; the other insisted on working
out differences by friendly and peaceful means. In later
years, when he was heckled by a congressional committee
for his views on independence and the terroristic actions
of the Nationalist had by that time succeeded in identifying
a desire for independence with hatred and murder he
startled the congressmen by saying: "Gentlemen, with-
out in the least wanting to belittle the memory -of George
Washington, I must still say that I am unalterably opposed
to the achievement of independence by force of arms."

Albizu had no economic program, he stood for "dignity 7 '
and "patriotism" and avoided the word "starvation." During
the depression years, when Munoz saw a liberal Uncle Sam
pouring many millions of dollars of relief money into his
island, he said: "Puerto Rico is a lean and hungry cow,

go c PUERTO Rico

which must be fed by the American taxpayers, only to be
milked by four great sugar corporations."

The structure of his thinking on independence came to
have a complex base of apparently solid practicality. Puerto
Rico needed to enforce the federal Five-Hundred-Acre Law;
apparently that could not be done under either statehood or
colonialism. Independence seemed the only answer.
The Puerto Ricans needed to create and protect the infant
industries that were impossible in those days in part be-
cause of the constant threat of dumping from the main-
land. Under statehood, such protection was impossible. In-
dependence seemed the only answer. They needed low-cost
shipping. Under colonialism, as well as statehood, they
would be tied to the U. S. Coastwise Shipping Law and to
U.S. shipping, which is the world's most expensive. To be
sure, they enjoyed a free market within the structure of the
U.S. tariff. But within that structure they also had to buy in
the U.S. market the world's most expensive. Under inde-
pendence they would be able to buy in low-priced markets
meat in the Dominican Republic, rice in Brazil, instead
of codfish in Gloucester and rice in Louisiana.

To Munoz, independence was not a mere emotional, pa-
triotic matter, but a means toward the dignified survival of
people and the human spirit. The "solution" was the poet's
solution, in the sense in which a poet is one who at all times
identifies with people rather than with established dogmas
with the problems, fears, and aspirations of live human
beings instead of with life's ideological distillates.

For these reasons and others, including the fact that he
had a deep affection for the United States, there was noth-
ing in his thinking to preclude his working with Washing-
ton's more liberal elements toward ultimate solutions to
Puerto Rico's more pressing problems. Moreover, regard-
less of whether or not he realized the fact, his task of edu-
cating Washington and the American people was every bit

The Breaker of the Cake c 91

as great as was that of educating the San Juan politicians
and the people of Puerto Rico.

During the terrible depression year of 1931 he felt ready
to return to his country and get back into political life. He
drove his rattling old automobile to New York, gave it to a
friend a famous, embattled leader for women's suffrage
and spent the better part of a night drinking innumerable
cups of coffee with a struggling Latin-American novelist.
This was Romulo Gallegos, who was soon, through his
Dona Barbara, to become world-famous as one of South
America's greatest writers, Later, in 1948, Gallegos became
Venezuela's first democratically elected President, only to be
deposed after a few months by the reactionary military
junta that was to lead to General Perez Jimenez's unspeak-
ably despotic rule.

The next day Munoz sailed for Puerto Rico. The son of
the beloved Munoz Rivera, a brilliant speaker in his own
right, a man with independent ideas and unassailable intel-
lectual integrity, he had no trouble in establishing himself
as a person to be reckoned with politically. His ability to at-
tract votes was undeniable. The question of which party
would get the benefit of those votes remained to be an-
swered.

The Socialists with whom he had once worked were now
out of the question. For the 1932 election they had entered
into an alliance that seems fantastic to North Americans,
but was understandable in Puerto Rico's atmosphere of
political expediency. By way of making a united front
against the powerful Liberal party, the Socialists had en-
tered into a coalition with the reactionary Republican
party, which stood for statehood and "Americanism" of the
200 per cent kind. The Liberal party, which had been get-
ting the majority of votes, had strong leanings toward inde-
pendence, and was the lineal descendant of Munoz Rivera's
former Union party with its dedication to "autonomy."

g2 c PUERTO Rico

Munoz Marin joined the Liberal party, ran for Senator-at-
Large, and came to office in the same electoral upheaval
that brought Franklin D. Roosevelt to the Presidency in the
United States. The Liberal party did not "win" that election.
It polled more votes than did any other, but not more
than did the Coalition of Republicans and Socialists, which
gained official control of the insular government. At the
Liberal party's convention, Munoz had forced it to come
out officially on the question of political status, with inde-
pendence the most important single plank in its platform.
The party's head, Antonio Barcelo, lived to regret having
taken in the stormy young man whose subsequent career
was to destroy the party. Washington was suddenly to find a
new kind of Puerto Rican on its doorsteps and in its offices,
one who worked toward a new kind of psychological rela-
tionship between the federal government and the island, an
earnest, persuasive young man who nevertheless had a tre-
mendous lust for life, was a trencherman of the first order,
and spent long nights on end in the various hotel tap-
rooms, in brilliant conversation with a wide variety of
friends.

Going to Washington was not his business. His business
was to prepare and vote on local legislation, within the lo-
cal, colonial scheme of things. Relations with Washington
were officially in the hands of the Resident Commissioner,
Munoz's former friend, Santiago Iglesias, founder and head
of Puerto Rico's Socialist party. Nevertheless, after succeed-
ing in putting through legislation by which slot machines
are still barred in Puerto Rico, the young senator trans-
ferred most of his activities to the national capital, where
Ms successes were to drive the Coalition politicians wild
with anger, frustration, and apprehension. Indeed, those
successes were eventually to spell the death, also, of the
Socialist party in that they led to entirely new political line-
ups in Puerto Rico, based on new sets of ideas.

The Breaker of the Cake c 93

A considerable part of his success as a lobbyist and of his
strength as a leader on the island owed to his resuming the
editorship of La Democracia, which gave him a newspaper
platform, and to his arranging for the services of a remark-
able woman as the paper's Washington correspondent. She
was an old friend of Muna Lee, named Ruby Black. Ruby
was intensely interested in Puerto Rico's cause, ran a news
agency of her own, and was one of those several women
journalists who were friends of Mrs. Roosevelt and at times
enjoyed almost a family relationship with both her and the
President.

Ruby came to be Munoz's indefatigable co-worker in
Washington during the four years following his election. As
a journalist she had access to much information and gos-
sip, which she passed on in a steady stream of letters. In
part through her, whether he was in Washington or in San
Juan, Munoz seemed to know much more about what was
going on in the capital than did the official Resident Com-
missioner. When he was in San Juan and wanted to send
confidential messages to various people in Washington, he
could rely on her to do the job. When he wanted informa-
tion, she got it for him at times through discreet snoop-
ing, at others by interviewing people. La Democracia came
to have much better coverage of the Washington scene, un-
der Ruby's by-line, than did any of the more powerful and
successful papers.

Munoz's political enemies, of course, unused to that kind
of relationship, accused her variously of being his mis-
tress, his half-sister, or a nonexistent figment of his diaboli-
cal imagination. But his Puerto Rican friends came to know
her well. Ruby's Alexandria home became a salon for any
and all Munocistas who came to Washington, and the latter
talked jokingly about hauling down the statue of Columbus
in San Juan and putting Ruby Black in his place as a twen-
tieth-century discoverer of Puerto Rico.

94 PUERTO Rico

The case of Robert H. Gore was Munoz's first dramatic
political triumph, as well as his first resounding victory
against the hocus-pocus of colonialism.

Precisely as Puerto Rico had long been a dumping
ground for shoddy American goods, so it was also at times
convenient as a dumping ground for shoddy, third-rate poli-
ticians for whom the powers in Washington could find no
other place. Now, after Roosevelt's election the Democratic
party demanded its pound of flesh. Gore, a Florida politician
with money, who had helped to start and finance the Roose-
velt boom, wanted his just reward, and the President thought-
lessly appointed him Governor of Puerto Rico. In 1953 Jos6
Padin, then and now the island's honored Elder Statesman,
wrote rne: "Gore defeated himself through his own appall-
ing incompetence. I believe that the appointment of this
man as governor ... is the most disgraceful act commit-
ted by any President against Puerto Rico. . . . Roosevelt
was a very irresponsible man at times. Of course, he cor-
rected his error, because he was a great man."

Getting Gore in was Jim Farley's doing; getting him out
again was Munoz's.

Shortly after the new governor's arrival in San Juan,
Munoz and Barcel6 called on him as representatives of the
party that had polled the most votes, bringing with them a
list of the Liberal party members whom they wanted Gore
to appoint to various positions. They soon discovered that
( i ) the governor was going to work with the Coalition and
intended to give nothing at all to the Liberals, whom he re-
garded as being anti-American because of their stand for
independence; (2) he made it a condition of appointment
that the incumbent give the governor his resignation, with
date left blank, on the day he took office. They hastily with-
drew their entire list and were in the happy position of hav-
ing the Republicans and Socialists almost as indignant
against the governor (over the insult of the undated resig-
nations) as they were themselves.

The Breaker of the Cake c 95

In La Democracia Muiioz now began to publish a series of
fiery editorials attacking Gore, who foolishly denied that he
had ever demanded the resignations as conditions for ap-
pointment to office. The most famous of them appeared un-
der the English headline. GOVERNOR GORE, You ARE A DAMN
LIAR and dared the island's chief executive to sue the editor.
The latter didn't, but Puerto Rico had the example of a
leader who dared to stand up openly against the representa-
tive of the United States.

Gore regarded the university as a hotbed of anti-Ameri-
canism, principally because the majority of its students
were for Puerto Rico's independence. To its Board of Trus-
tees he appointed a man whose Americanism was unques-
tioned, but who was otherwise all but illiterate. The stu-
dents went on strike against the appointment. Tensions
mounted throughout the island. A small, harmless bomb
perhaps a stick of dynamite, perhaps a firecracker made a
noise and thus created newspaper copy when it exploded
harmlessly at Jajome Alto, the governor's official country
residence. Munoz Maxin caught the first steamer for the
continent. In Washington Ruby Black arranged for him an
unofficial appointment with Roosevelt, over a cup of tea.

Munoz complained to the President about the mess that
Gore had made in Puerto Rico, the tensions he had created,
the unnecessary but dangerous resentments against the
United States that he was stirring up. But Roosevelt was
thinking of the students' strike, being perhaps appre-
hensively aware of the bloody role that Cuban university
students had a little earlier played in the ABC uprisings
that had brought the army sergeant Fulgencio Batista to
power as President of Cuba. He objected to students, "im-
mature children," mixing into political matters. "They
ought to be spanked," he said, wishing that they would stick
to sports and studies.

"Mr. President/' Munoz, answered, "I mentioned the stu-
dent strike only to show that the opposition to Gore is non-

96 PUERTO Rico

partisan. The students belong to all parties. Besides, the
alumni passed a resolution backing up the students, and
you must admit that most of them are probably over twenty-
one."

The President admitted that they probably were.

"Not only that, but the parents passed a resolution back-
ing up their striking sons and daughters which almost
never happens when our students go on a rampage."

With that Roosevelt let out one of his characteristic guf-
faws. 'Til admit that they are over twenty-one. They must
be over twenty-one."

Alike in many ways, the two men understood each other
at their first meeting. Later Roosevelt was to become in-
creasingly annoyed with Munoz, but at that meeting he
gave his promise that Gore would resign. There was some
delay because Roosevelt didn't like to withdraw one of his
appointees under fire. Munoz sent a "cease fire" cable to San
Juan, and the storm abated. But he waited in Washington,
getting acquainted with various New Deal officials, until
the resignation was announced. Then he took the first
steamer home.

When he landed, he found thousands of people waiting
to welcome him at the dock, as the triumphant conqueror.
The spontaneous parade they gave him was one of the most
enthusiastic in the city's history; it was all the more dra-
matic because Gore had himself returned a few weeks be-
fore and had been met by a crowd that had gathered to boo
and hiss him.

Munoz was definitely established as a popular leader.
The only fly that was to appear in the ointment was that
Gore's successor, though not appointed for the cynical pur-
pose of repaying a political debt, was even more inept than
Gore had been.

General Blanton Winship was a handsome, correct,
southern gentleman who had formerly been the army's
Judge Advocate General and had once gone to Liberia on a

The Breaker of the Cake c 97

legal mission. He didn't look offensive and he didn't say
much, partly because he didn't have much to say, partly be-
cause he was elderly and tired, and said openly that he
wanted no headaches and planned to devote his governor-
ship to resting amid pleasant surroundings. They were to
become less pleasant as time went on; the uproar against
him was to grow even greater than had been that against
Gore; but Roosevelt was tired of sending governors to
Puerto Rico only to have their recall demanded almost im-
mediately.

What was only vaguely apparent was that in those days
the institution of colonialism had itself already run its full
course and was due to be scrapped, along with the device of
a Washington-appointed governor regardless of whether
he happened to be a good governor or a bad one.

Sometime after the Gore affair, Mrs. Roosevelt and Rex-
ford Tugwell, then Washington's Undersecretary of Agri-
culture, visited Puerto Rico. Muiioz had meanwhile organ-
ized a discussion group, which met on occasional Sundays
in the home of Dr. Carlos Chardon, chancellor of the uni-
versity, to discuss the island's plight and its possible reme-
dies. He invited the two distinguished visitors to meet with
this group; they were so impressed that Chardon and two
others, Rafael Fernandez Garcia, a professor at the univer-
sity, and Menendez Ramos, the island's Commissioner of
Agriculture, were eventually invited to Washington as a
commission to draft a comprehensive, workable plan for
the island's economic reconstruction. Muiioz was asked to
go along as an unofficial member.

Unprecedented in the island's history, this step stirred
high hopes and higher enthusiasm. Not only was the com-
mission a sign that Washington really cared about the plight
of the Puerto Ricans, but it was also the first group of
Puerto Rican technicians ever to be called in officially to
advise the ruling country on the island's problems and their
possible solutions. Previously virtually all the wisdom for

98 c PUERTO Rico

managing Puerto Rican affairs had come from Washing-
ton, from the office of the War Department, and, directly or
indirectly, from the mouths of congressmen.

Hastily drafted, and at times almost naive by modern
standards, the report of the Chardon commission recom-
mended a number of steps and programs through which
Puerto Rico's economy was to be reshaped to function more
effectively than previously for the benefit of the Puerto Ri-
can people. It called for the enforcement of the Five-Hun-
dred-Acre Law, for the redistribution of land, for rural re-
settlement, for the governmental purchase and operation
of at least one sugar mill to be operated as a yardstick for
regulating future relations between grinders and growers,
for certain kinds of relief (including hurricane insurance)
in the coffee regions, for a program of co-operatives, for the
extension of rural electrification, for the beginnings of
Puerto Rican industrialization through the construction of
a local cement plant, and for the construction of various
university laboratories to aid in the training of Puerto Ri-
can technicians.

The plan included a number of matters which had long
been considered essential for Puerto Rico's salvation, but
had come to be regarded as impossible as long as Puerto
Rico was a colony. By the same token, many regarded its
adoption by the federal government as an obvious step to-
ward independence. In part because of Munoz's energetic
lobbying, the plan was accepted by Washington and became
the basic program of a new federal agency, the Puerto Rico
Reconstruction Administration, which was to replace the
existing Relief Administration at the earliest possible time.

The agency was provided with a "revolving" operating
fund of $40,000,000, set up in such a way that there would
be no need to ask for more money every fiscal year. Puerto
Rico was transferred from the War Department to the De-
partment of the Interior because the latter could be better
trusted to do a good job of social and economic reform

The Breaker of the Cake c 99

than could the army. Dr. Ernest Gruening was appointed
Director of Territories and Administrator of the PRRA. His
record as a crusading liberal, an ardent anti-imperialist
and a friend of Latin America, was well known in Puerto
Rico, where his appointment was hailed with jubilation.
Dr. Carlos Chardon took leave of absence as chancellor of
the university, and accepted the post of Regional Adminis-
trator to take charge of the PRRA work in Puerto Rico under
the general direction of Gruening. Those two and Munoz,
who refused to take a job in the PRRA, were regarded on the
island as a triumvirate of saviors, as the true heroes of the
Puerto Rican people.

The sugar interests, however were deeply apprehensive,
and in the ensuing years they hired publicists to brand the
entire PRRA effort as creeping socialism and worse. Inevi-
tably, the Chardon plan and the creation of the PRRA had
powerful political repercussions in Puerto Rico. The Coali-
tion, which held the government, played the sugar game
and opposed the entire matter violently, thus putting itself
in the position of opposing the federal government, which
it had once set out to defend against dangerous radicals
like Munoz. The Coalition didn't help itself when the Puerto
Rican legislature in 1935 passed a resolution that roundly
attacked the Chardon plan and presented a hastily drafted,
"respectable" alternative to the President and Congress.
Such antics lost the insular government much popular sup-
port, which at best had always been tenuous.

With the creation of the PRRA, which came to be a kind
of government within the government, probably as dis-
tasteful to the appointed governor as to the Coalition, the
Liberal party had stolen a march on its opponents in the
matter of patronage. Munoz had worked hard to keep poli-
tics out of the PRRA operations, but he could not stem the
tide in job-starved Puerto Rico with its job-slanted politics.
More and more the PRRA came to be infested with mem-
bers of the Liberal party; their appointments were some-

ioo c PUERTO Rico

what condoned by the fact that the Coalition had come out
openly against the Chardon plan and therefore could not be
trusted to carry it out.

The defeat of 1932, the setback of the Liberals when Gore
had refused them any part of the patronage, had now been
transformed into a resounding victory. Despite himself
Munoz was regarded as a political wizard who produced
jobs and political plums for his party where none had ex-
isted before. He and the Liberal party seemed invincible,
and unmistakably had the election of 1936 in their pockets.
However, they, like everybody else, reckoned without the
terrible chain reaction that was to be set off by the shots
that killed Colonel Riggs in February of that year.

After a stormy but effective start, backed by popular en-
thusiasm, the PRRA settled down to a long existence as a
federal agency for spending federal funds. In 1954 it was
liquidated as such. It accomplished much, but it failed to
fulfill its great promise largely because it was at best an-
other phase of imperialism. Nevertheless, it was tremen-
dously important. Enlightened imperialism is better than
unenlightened, and very surely, though by anguished and
tortuous routes, the PRRA paved the way for Munoz's later
triumphs and for modern Puerto Rico's emergence from de-
spair.

7

Climax and Disintegration

LIKE the New Deal in the States, the Reconstruction Ad-
ministration started as a crusade on behalf of the common
man. Mufioz refused to accept an official post in it, but he
became its unofficial representative in the political field.
He kept in close touch with the administration's officers,
ceaselessly trying to shape policies in the manner he con-
sidered best. He also waged an unending campaign to
arouse and maintain his people's enthusiastic support for
the great effort. His message was that the PRRA, though a
federal effort in the administrative sense, was actually a
Puerto Rican effort, designed and carried on by Puerto Ri~
cans for the benefit of Puerto Rico. He did not see it as de-
terring the independence that was his ultimate goal; on the
contrary, he regarded the PRRA as a preparation for inde-
pendence, reshaping the economy in such a manner that an
eventual Republic of Puerto Rico could survive.

As part of the federal program a new attorney general
was appointed, with instructions to begin legal actions to-
ward enforcement of the Five-Hundred-Acre Law. This was
Benigno Fernindez Garcia, brother of the Rafael who had

102 c PUERTO Rico

collaborated in drafting the basic Chardon plan. He was lo-
cally famous or notorious as a labor leader who had
been active in strikes aimed at improving the terrible lot of
the agricultural workers. As was to be expected, the ruling
Coalition opposed both his appointment and his program
vehemently. In Puerto Rico one saw the curious spectacle
of one branch of the federal government upholding the re-
actionary Coalition by means of its governor, and another
branch fighting it tooth and nail by means of the Depart-
ment of the Interior and the PRRA.

On January 28, 1936, Fernandez Garcia filed a complaint
in the Puerto Rican Supreme Court against the Puerto Ri-
can firm of Rubert Hermanos, Inc., charging that this cor-
poration held approximately 12,000 acres of land in viola-
tion of its charter and of the organic act, and asking the
court to impose a fine and order the corporation's dissolu-
tion. All the sugar interests rallied to the firm's defense; all
of Puerto Rico's liberal elements rallied behind their attor-
ney general. The sugar lawyers claimed that the Five-Hun-
dred-Acre Law, having no teeth for enforcement, was never
meant to be enforced; having been ignored for decades, was
a dead letter. Nevertheless, on July 30, 1938, the Puerto Ri-
can Supreme Court ruled in favor of the insular govern-
ment.

But sugar kept up the fight. On September 27, 1939, the
District Court of Appeals in Boston set aside the Puerto Ri-
can decision. The insular government, in league with the
federal, also kept up the fight, On March 25, 1940, the Su-
preme Court of the United States upheld Puerto Rico and
irrevocably gave the insular government the right to en-
force the Five-Hundred-Acre Law. That same year was to
be the "y ear of revolution," the great turning point in Puerto
Rico's history, the year when Munoz Marin won the elec-
tion with and for his newly founded Popular Democratic
party. The legally established right to enforce the Five-Hun-

Climax and Disintegration c 103

dred-Acre Law was to become a powerful weapon in the
arsenal with which he fought the old order of things.

While the legal battle was being prepared and fought, the
Reconstruction Administration began its important work
with programs of aid to Puerto Rican farmers in coffee,
tobacco, cattle, coconuts, sugar, and all other branches of
the stricken agriculture, The aid was never enough to meet
the existing desperate needs, but it was still sufficient for
gaining experience, making mistakes, and building up a
body of knowledge. The PRRA program of low-cost housing
greatly stimulated the slum-clearance effort for which
Puerto Rico is today world-famous. Its financial aid to vari-
ous branches of the insular government as in education
and public health helped the virtually bankrupt govern-
ment to keep functioning in some of its important activities.

The PRRA bought land in several parts of the island,
divided it into homestead plots, built houses, stores, hospi-
tals, and research stations, settled indigent farmers on the
land against long-term repayments, organized them into co-
operatives, and thus gave further impetus beyond that of
the PRERA and the FERA in earlier years to Puerto Rico's
co-operative movement.

In southern Puerto Rico the PRRA bought a sugar mill
and its plantation of 10,000 acres. This was the French-
owned Central Lafayette. The farmers who were settled on
the land were given the opportunity to buy their farms as
well as the mill, out of future earnings. Later the PRRA
bought another mill and plantation, Los Canos, on the
north coast. The two mills are today famous as the two
best-managed sugar co-operatives to be found anywhere;
their debts to the federal government have been paid long
ago, their operations have served as a yardstick by which
relations between other mills and the independent planters
can be regulated.

The PRRA formed a Self-Help Corporation to organize

104 PUERTO Rico

and finance co-operatives. It did valiant work, and some of
its co-operatives have since those years grown powerful
while others died in the natural course of events. The PRRA
gave assistance to the insular government toward the crea-
tion of more hydroelectric facilities for providing low-cost
power and spreading the benefits of rural electrification.
It started Puerto Rico's industrialization program by build-
ing a cement plant with federal funds. This was later
turned over to the Puerto Rican government, which paid
for it very soon out of profits and in turn sold it to a private
operator in 1948.

I became identified with the Reconstruction Administra-
tion as a consultant on planning, loaned to Puerto Rico by
the National Resources Committee. We organized a Plan-
ning Division within the PRRA, with Rafael Gonzalez as
chairman and myself as secretary. We raided the university
for young economists and others to give us their spare time,
preparing reports, and planning future economic action.
Two of them told me that they liked the work, but that I
was crazy just the same. They said that it was impossible
to plan in a capitalistic society, and especially in a colony.
My stand was that they were the ones who were crazy; they
were not talking about planning, which could be done any-
where, at any time, in any society, and was at the very
least a good way of evaluating problems. They were merely
afraid that their plans could not be carried out under capi-
talism and colonialism. The two worked well with us de-
spite their misgivings. Their names are Rafael Pic6 and
Sol Luis Descartes, and both of them are today famous in
the world^ planning circles.

In a sense, however, they were right in that the plans we
drafted could not then be carried out. In any event, most of
them were not carried out, and some, with their somewhat
devastating reports on conditions in Puerto Rico, were
eventually suppressed by federal officials who had been
frightened into conservatism by the shots that killed Colo-

Climax and Disintegration 105

nel Riggs. But in those days nobody could know that Munoz
would capture the Puerto Rican government in 1940 and
would embark on a Puerto Rican, as opposed to federal,
program of reconstruction. Then the men who had worked
in the PRRA, in the planning division and elsewhere, be-
came the principal organizers and administrators of
Munoz's daring new program. A number of the specific
plans drafted within the PRRA under federal aegis were
taken off the shelves, dusted off, and used to buttress the
new program. The planning we had begun as a federal
activity was revived in 1942 by Governor Tugwell as an in-
tegral activity of the Puerto Rican government. The Plan-
ning Board today plays a major role in the Common-
wealth's work; it advises the governor and the legislature,
shapes efforts and policies for the future, guides urban de-
velopment, and integrates the activities of the govern-
ment's many branches.

Sugar and its friends were not idle while all that and
much more was going on. The sugar interests hired public-
relations men and at one time two reputable economists
to defend them against so radical a movement. The
sugar corporations also began an unofficial though powerful
line of talk, an obvious threat, to the effect that they were
on the verge of withdrawing from Puerto Rico entirely. Such
talk, plus the campaign against the sugar monopoly, plus
the depression, sent the value of sugar stocks tumbling. A
number of Puerto Ricans, apparently not intimidated, then
bought thousands of shares of those stocks as investments,
which they have never since regretted. Absentee ownership
in sugar came in such fashion to be reduced materially.

Attacks from sugar did the PRRA no great harm. They
were expected, and Washington officials recognized their
source and meaning. Internally, however, the PRRA had
serious weaknesses, which were to contribute heavily to its
collapse as the embodiment of a great Puerto Rican ideal
and effort. Those weaknesses stemmed from the rigid con-

io6 c PUERTO Rico

trol that was exercised by Washington over all its activities
and policies and that convinced its Puerto Rican officials
that they were merely hired men.

The agency was dominated by a corps of eager young law-
yers shipped down by Washington. All of them were gradu-
ates of Felix Frankfurter's Harvard Law School, and were
convinced that one could not be a socially conscious law-
yer unless one had graduated from that school. They were
crusaders for social welfare, but nevertheless were igno-
rant of the Puerto Rico whose welfare they had set out to im-
prove. The continental lawyers were everywhere; they
mixed into every operation, large or small; they altered
policies and contracts at will; they overrode high Puerto
Rican officials again and again. In a great new organization
dedicated to the pious principle of giving all positions of re-
sponsibility to Puerto Ricans ? the young lawyers held all the
ultimate power as Washington's representatives on the
PRRA's administrative scene.

That situation contributed materially to the debacle of
1936, which changed the PRRA back to being a mere fed-
eral money-spending agency, without intellectual appeal to
the Puerto Ricans, There can be no doubt, either, that it
greatly strengthened Munoz Marin's conviction that
only the Puerto Ricans, acting as such, could save Puerto
Rico. The lawyers may well, also, have contributed to the
resurgence, in 1936, of the demand for independence as
presumably the only status under which the Puerto Ricans
could do things for themselves without interference from
a lot of idealistic but meddlesome continental Americans.

The break between the federal government, as repre-
sented by the PRRA, and the Puerto Rican people, as repre-
sented by that vague thing called public opinion, was pre-
cipitated by the Nationalists' assassination of Colonel Riggs.
A wild, irresponsible act, that killing had offended most
Puerto Ricans, who regardless of whether they were for or
against their island's independence, were decidedly against

Climax and Disintegration c 107

murder. In the chain of events that followed, the people
and their leaders became utterly bewildered by a federal
course of action that was apparently designed to punish all
Puerto Ricans for the fanatical action of a few misguided
terrorists.

In the prevailing tense atmosphere the senseless police
action of lynching the assassins of Biggs did much to widen
the rift between Puerto Ricans and the United States.

Mufioz Maxin was in Washington at the time, and Dr,
Gruening asked him to make a public statement condem-
ning the Riggs assassination in order to show that the
Puerto Ricans as a whole were not behind it. Munoz refused
to make such a statement on the ground that he would also
have to condemn the lynching of the two Nationalists, and
such condemnation would, in effect, be an attack on the
federal government. He did not believe that any purpose
could at the time be served by attacking Washington.
Gruening accused him of putting his own political destiny
ahead of his people's welfare. Munoz is reported to have an-
swered that his personal destiny was that of his people.
Quite probably Gruening regarded the answer as arrogant
and egotistical. At any rate, there was a violent quarrel.

One of the side results of that quarrel and the ensuing,
widening rift between the two men was that Munoz began
to lose his influence with President Roosevelt, who was a
friend and a staunch supporter of Gruening. Secretary
Ickes followed Roosevelt. From the day of that one quarrel
with Gruening, Munoz began to lose his personal power as
a Washington lobbyist. In Puerto Rico, too, he began slowly
but surely, to lose influence. His hold on the Puerto Rican
people, on the jibaros, the poor, was undeniable. But the
San Juan intelligentsia were not at all sure that it was wise
to go along with a man who was persona non grata in the
ruling capital.

Now, on April 23, 1936, news came like a thunderclap
from Washington that Senator Millard Tydings of Maryland

io8 c PUERTO Rico

had introduced a bill in Congress providing for the island's
independence. Locally it was regarded as an administra-
tion bill. That was denied by administration spokes-
men, but confirmed years later when Secretary Ickes' dia-
ries were published. Gruening and Ickes had conceived of
it and planned it; Gruening had taken charge of drafting it;
Roosevelt had suggested that Tydings be asked to introduce
it. Its aim had been to scare the Puerto Ricans out of all de-
sire for independence. Ickes wrote in his diary that "such
agitation as has been going on in Puerto Rico recently
would be put to an end for probably twenty years." He was
due for a series of major surprises.

To be sure, the bill was nicely worded as a liberal docu-
ment in that it provided for a plebiscite by which the people
of Puerto Rico should be permitted to vote on whether or
not they wanted independence. It added a joker, however,
by defining the kind of independence on which they would
be allowed to vote in such a manner as to spell certain star-
vation for the island if achieved. The bill gave the island
almost no time in which to readjust its economy from the
colonial to the independent. It threatened, within a few
short years, to turn Puerto Rico out from behind the Amer-
ican tariff structure, without providing sufficient time or
means for creating an economy that could function out-
side of that structure. Munoz summarized the resulting in-
dignation when he said that the bill was a return to the old
Mexican ley de fuga, or law of flight, under which the Mexi-
can police used to arrest people, then tell them magnani-
mously to run away, and then shoot them in the back for
trying to escape.

At best, the bill was regarded as an insult to Puerto
Rican dignidad, intelligence, and integrity. At worst, it
clouded and confused the issue of status by wilfully defin-
ing independence in the worst possible terms. The en-
lightened and liberal Washington administration, which
more than any other had repeatedly assured the Puerto Rl*

Climax and Disintegration 109

cans of their right to independence if they wanted it,
seemed now to be showing its hand by ill-naturedly telling
the island that it could damn well starve, too, if it did hap-
pen to want it.

The result was electrifying. In Puerto Rico one began to
hear even ardent Republicans, advocates of statehood, 150
per cent Americans, say: "If that is the best we can expect
from Washington, we have no choice but to be for inde-
pendence at any costr The newspaper La Correspondencia
accurately expressed public sentiment when it said:
"... if the American government is in an angry mood
and imposed it as an act of vengeance, let independence
come, even if it costs our lives.'* El Pais editorialized: "The
displacing of the American flag ought not to be a disorderly
act, but should be done respectfully and following a friendly
understanding/'

Why, the question was widely asked, had no Puerto Ri-
can been consulted on the terms of a bill that so vitally af-
fected the island's destiny?

In Washington the Resident Commissioner, Santiago
Iglesias, attacked the bill bitterly on the floor of the House
of Representatives. The Tydings bill failed to pass, but it
did much to undermine Puerto Rican faith in the United
States. Several subsequent bills providing for statehood,
and one aimed at making Puerto Rico an incorporated terri-
tory of the United States, failed equally to pass. All that un-
doubtedly served as a valuable political education for
Munoz Marin, modifying his stand on independence.

About this time Dr. Gruening became concerned with
political activities within the PRRA, which were forbidden
to federal employees under the Hatch Act. He instigated a
series of rather high-handed inquiries into such alleged
activities, some of which he headed himself. As a result,
some of the outstanding Puerto Ricans in the organization
all of them supporters of Munoz Marin were separated
from the federal payroll; one of them, Rafael Fernandez

no Q PUERTO Rico

Garcia, one of the three drafters of the original Chardon
plan, was discharged ^vith prejudice.

Late in 1936 the situation flared into violent explosion.
Dr. Carlos Chardon, one of Puerto Rico's heroes, resigned as
regional administrator, unable to function any longer in his
impossible position between Puerto Rico and the federal
government. A group of us sent a cable to Gruening,
signed by fifty respected men, urging the doctor not to ac-
cept Chardon's resignation, but to come to Puerto Rico to
discover the real grievances that had prompted it. Instead,
he sent a pair of lawyers and a small-time politician, ap-
parently instructed "to break up the Puerto Rican conspir-
acy/' which I, as a "renegade American/' was accused of
having organized.

A stench of fear arose within the PRRA and smothered
all enthusiasm and creative effort. Many employees whose
bread and butter depended on Gruening were afraid to be
seen with Munoz. If for one reason or another they felt im-
pelled to discuss something with him, they parked their
cars blocks from, his house and sneaked in the back way. A
number of Puerto Rican officials who had been indignant
until that moment now changed their tunes and began to
sing the praises of Gruening, who controlled the jobs. Sev-
eral dozen others resigned in a body, in sympathy with
Chardon, even though most of them had no other jobs to
turn to. Some of them moved to New York; some found
whatever they could in Puerto Rico; some managed to re-
turn to their old jobs in the university. But all who stayed
went underground in the sense of thereafter keeping quiet
about Washington, until Munoz won the 1940 election and
pulled them out of hiding again.

While all that was going on, Albizu Campos and a num-
ber of his followers were arrested and brought to trial on
charges of conspiring against the United States. On those
charges they had to be tried in the federal court, under a
federal judge, and again there was much indignation.

Climax and Disintegration in

Many Puerto Ricans felt that the Nationalists should have
been tried on murder charges in a Puerto Rican court, and
that their trial in the federal court not only showed an in-
sulting lack of confidence in Puerto Rican justice, but also
injected serious language difficulties. There were also many
who wholeheartedly condemned murder, but could not un-
derstand how and why the striving for independence, no
matter what the means, could be fairly construed and pun-
ished as conspiracy in a situation in which Puerto Rico had
repeatedly been told by Washington that it was entitled to
independence if it wanted it.

The Nationalists had two trials. The first resulted in a
hung jury, composed largely of Puerto Ricans. The second,
before a jury composed of two Puerto Ricans and ten Amer-
icans several of whom knew virtually no Spanish re-
sulted in the conviction of Albizu and seven others. The
leader and one other, Luis Velazquez, were sentenced to six
years in Atlanta Penitentiary, to be followed by four years
of probation. The rest were sentenced to four and in one
case five years in Atlanta, also followed by four years of
probation. The trials created a certain amount of public
sympathy for the Nationalists as martyrs and patriotic
Puerto Ricans which they would not have enjoyed as mur-
derers. That, however, was blown away the following year
when two Nationalists tried unsuccessfully to assassinate
Governor Winship and thus established the "party" as being
definitely dedicated to a program of terrorism.

Governor Blanton Winship, a correct and gracious
southern gentleman who was bewildered by the New Deal
and all it stood for, handled popular unrest in true military
manner by enlarging the police force, buying it tear gas, ma-
chine guns, cars, and sending it to summer camps for in-
tensive training. Whatever his reasons, he came to be
widely accused of militarizing and brutalizing the force
and turning it from an arm of the insular government into
a tool of the federal government's most reactionary officials.

ii2 c PUERTO Rico

Because tensions were mounting, people everywhere
wanted to meet and discuss the situation. On several occa-
sions groups in various towns not Nationalists, but ordi-
nary, peaceful Puerto Ricans asked permission to hold
meetings; the permission was granted by the local mayors
whose business it was, but eventually it was rescinded by
the governor, who sent his police to enforce his decree.

The net result of such bungling was that the United
States was accused of running a police-state government
in Puerto Rico; in turn, the desire for independence spread
far and wide. A people who have painfully throughout four
centuries labored and struggled for civil rights, for a meas-
ure of self-government, for the right of free speech and free
assembly, are bound to be sensitive in such matters and to
be indignant about apparent infringements by the ranking
representative of the ruling country.

A number of incidents fed that sense of indignation and
lowered the United States's prestige still more. Fear, resent-
ment, and indignation came to a head as a result of the
shameful Palm Sunday affair of 1937. The Nationalists re-
quested and received official permission to hold a parade in
Ponce on that day. They began flocking to the city from all
parts of the island, but so did the police, heavily armed
with revolvers, tear gas, and machine guns.

About a hundred Nationalists, with their wives and
sweethearts in the Women's Auxiliary, assembled for the
parade, surrounded by the police and watched by a large
group of curious spectators. At the last minute, after they
had assembled for the start, they were told that permission
for the parade had been revoked.

They started marching despite the police order, and im-
mediately a fusillade of shots rang out, which kept on, ac-
cording to the testimony of conflicting witnesses, for a per-
iod of up to half an hour. In the melee, fifteen Nationalists,
one bystander, and two policemen were killed, the latter

Climax and Disintegration c 113

probably by their own cross fixe. Fifty-five people were
wounded.

Governor Winship immediately ordered a government
investigation, but there was little popular faith in it, not
only because the government itself, which would do the in-
vestigating, was considered by many as being one of the
parties responsible for the shootings, but also because the
governor had already made a public statement in which he
definitely justified the conduct of all the police and other
government officials who had been involved. As expected,
the governor's investigation disclosed that the Nationalists
had fired the first shot and all others thereafter that had hit
policemen, and cleared the police of all blame in the matter
lauding them, in fact, for their exceUent behavior.

But then the American Civil Liberties Union of New
York was persuaded to send Arthur Garfield Hays to Puerto
Rico to organize a commission of inquiry into the Ponce
affair and into the question of civil liberties in general. The
commission held extensive hearings and announced its
findings in a public meeting in San Juan, permission for
which had been granted only after Hays's defiant insistence.
These findings were that despite the governor's public state-
ment that the Nationalists had fired the first shot, there
was no evidence that any of them had been armed; the
police had undoubtedly fired first and killed each other with
their own cross fire, and the whole thing amounted to a
brutal, bloody, and unpardonable massacre, even though it
was recognized that the Nationalist party contained the ele-
ments of fanatical Fascist gangsterism.

It was further concluded by the Hays committee that
civil liberties had been seriously and arbitrarily curtailed
in Puerto Rico during the preceding year.

The Ines Mendoza affair was a by-product of the Hays
investigation. Miss Mendoza had for years been a capable
teacher in the island's high schools; she now appeared vol-

ii4 PUERTO Rico

untarily before the commission to testify that in her opin-
ion the old Washington-initiated custom of doing all the
teaching in English was bad because it served mainly to
confuse the children. Virtually all Puerto Rican teachers
felt that way, but she was the only one who had the courage
to testify in public. When her contract was thereafter not
renewed and she was thrown out of the public-school sys-
tem, there was again much indignation. Apparently, Puerto
Rican professionals were not permitted to criticize policies
that had been arbitrarily handed down from Washington.

Some years after the 1940 elections, when Puerto Rico
had a new lease on life and started energetically to set its
own house in order, all the island's teachers openly con-
demned the old attitudes toward English as the language
of instruction, and the educational system was changed to
correspond. By that time Ines Mendoza was the wife of
Munoz Marin. Today she is highly respected as the first
lady of Puerto Rico, but largely forgotten as one of the is-
land's earlier fearless fighters for civil rights.

The Tydings bill had given rise to the United Front, a
group of earnest intellectuals who held meetings in all
parts of the island to explain to the people that independ-
ence was not necessarily as terrible as the Maryland sena-
tor had pictured it, and that the issue must under no cir-
cumstances be discarded.

Munoz went to Washington late in 1936, where he
drafted what he considered a workable independence bill.
He wanted first to have the people of Puerto Rico vote on
the idea of independence; then, if the vote were favorable,
to have the terms worked out jointly by Puerto Rican and
federal leaders, and then to have another plebiscite on the
specific independence developed. In effect, he proposd the
development of a political compact between Puerto Rico
and the United States. His object was to educate Congress
in the meanings of various kinds of independence to
teach Congress that political sovereignty need not mean

Climax and Disintegration c 115

economic ruin, either for sugar or for the Puerto Bican peo-
ple. He persuaded a congressman to introduce the bill, but
it never got out of committee. However, it did result in
further political education for Mufioz. It started the
thought processes that eventually led to his disavowal of
the "separate-independence" formula for political freedom.
It began to dawn on him that Puerto Rico's possibility for
economic well-being depended solidly on the continuance
of free markets within the American tariff structure; that
no Congress, no matter how well disposed, could possibly
grant anything better than most-favored-nations status to
an independent Puerto Rico; that Puerto Rican sugar could
not possibly compete with Cuban if it had to pay duty in the
American market; that the collapse of the sugar industry,,
with nothing on hand to take its place, would mean ruin
for the island.

But it was to take time and much effective effort before
these suspicions grew to the full convictions the governor
of Puerto Rico displays today. The postwar granting of in-
dependence to the Philippines seems to have been the
clinching argument. Mufioz realized that Puerto Rico, hav-
ing no geographic frontier, no industries except sugar, no
natural resources to speak of except limited areas of land,
climate, and too many people, would be ruined by the kind
of independence that had been granted to the Philippines.
He began to think of something new of political freedom
within the American economic and political structure.

In Puerto Rico in 1936 and 1937 Mufioz precipitated a
bitter political struggle within his own Liberal party. He
wanted the party to boycott the 1936 election on the ground
that the Tydings bill had clouded the independence issue.
Antonio Barcelo, the party's president, objected. He felt
sure of victory because the Liberales had, after all, brought
the PRRA to Puerto Rico. The party went to the election,
and was again defeated by the Coalition. Barcelo blamed
Mufioz.

n6 PUERTO Rico

The latter organized a splinter group, called the "Au-
thentic Liberal party," tried to use it for capturing control,
and demanded that Barcelo resign and hand over to him
the insignia of his leadership. Barcelo wrote him a long
and sorrowful public letter, addressed to "My Young Fellow
Patriot," advising him that if he wanted to be a real politi-
cal leader he ought to go out and scratch for followers as
others had done before him, accusing him of having been
a disruptive influence and expelling him.

There were rumors how correct they were I have no
way of judging of a private deal between Barcel6 and
Washington, in which the Puerto Rican had been promised
much federal patronage for his organization, despite its de-
feat, if he ousted Muiioz, but had also been told that no
Liberal could get a federal job if the stormy senator stayed
in the party.

Whatever the truth of those rumors, it is true that
Munoz's political fortunes had hit rock bottom. The rocket
that had soared so brilliantly was now a dead stick in the
opinion of the political analysts, who had no inkling of the
enormous prestige the son of Munoz Rivera still enjoyed
among the jibaros. The jibaros didn't count politically in
any event. Their votes were bought, and Munoz had no
money no matter what his prestige. The consensus, both
in San Juan and in Washington circles interested in Puerto
Rico, was: "Munoz is through. No respectable party will
take him now, and there is nothing left for him except to
join the Nationalists and try to take control of them while
Albizu is in jail. And that definitely is political suicide F

Arturo Morales Carrion, writing in the present tense
about the events of 1936-7, expressed himself as follows:
^The island now suffers days of intense political reaction.
Albizu's extremism not only prejudices the evolution of the
independence thesis, but also confuses and disperses the
groups devoted to economic and social reforms. Without
the energetic popular support which Munoz had aroused in

Climax and Disintegration 117

the beginning, federal aid degenerates into a bureaucratic
activity with sparse results. Psychological fatigue, disillu-
sionment, and disorientation spread in the urban centers.
Mufioz, who for a moment had been the great promise, dis-
appears from the urban scene. His star is in deep eclipse,
and he is now seen only as the leader of a routed faction, a
political bohemian who had pilfered the treasure of a name
and an illustrious tradition/'

8

Faith in Ourselves

REGARDLESS of circumstances, it was probably inevitable
that Mufioz should eventually be ousted by any party that
had taken him in no matter how brilliant his record. Po-
litical parties need money to survive, and in the Puerto Rico
of those days money came largely, directly or indirectly,
from the sugar interests, which didn't mind a man talking
about enforcement of the Five-Hundred-Acre law and other
reforms as long as he could be trusted to do nothing realistic
about the matter. But Munoz was a dangerous man in that
he was no lip-service politician. He meant what he said.

In 1936, when the present governor was still a senator,
I talked to his chauffeur. "Sefior," he said, "I have driven for
nearly all the big political figures on the island, but I never
again want to drive for anybody but Munoz Marin. He is
the only political leader here who always says exactly the
same things to people who ride in his car with him that he
says in his public speeches." Such a man, who made no pri-
vate political deals of any kind, could not stay long in an
organized political party that depended for its survival on

Faith in Ourselves c ng

the generosity of the sugar interests and the good will of the
federal government.

It was, of course, known that Munoz enjoyed great popu-
larity among the hill people, who could numerically swing
an election, But it was also a truism that they would not
vote unless they were paid. Some would vote as directed, in
return for two dollars; some would accept money only from
the party of their choice and allegiance; most would refrain
from voting unless they received their money. That attitude
was an integral, firmly established part of the Puerto Rican
way of life, a deep-rooted culture trait that could not (as
people then thought) be eradicated in one campaign by a
discredited, penniless politician.

Rejected by Washington and his own party, written off
by the politically wise as being politically dead beyond hope
of resurrection, without a cent for purchasing votes, with
hardly a dollar with which to support himself and his fam-
ily, Munoz now addressed himself to the submerged rural
poor. Crisis had narrowed down his open friends to a small
nucleus of those who were held to him by the qualities of
integrity and personal dedication which are the essence of
leadership, as well as to a few who in one way or another
felt that they could afford to continue working with him.
Among them were a few fanatics who valued integrity above
financial security, a handful of men who were financially
more or less secure, and some who had previously worked
with Albizu Campos, had no jobs to speak of or to lose, and
were captured by Munoz's ideas. He was also backed by a
few colonos independent sugar growers who sold their cane
to the mills, were squeezed by the big corporations, and saw
in Munoz some hope for emancipation.

These men and women now organized the new Popular
Democratic party. Their official slogan was "Bread, Land,
and Liberty/' and their emblem was the profile of a country-
man wearing the traditional Puerto Rican straw hat, the

120 c PUERTO Rico

pava. In the beginning they were derided by the sophisti-
cated; the Popular Democratic party was considered a bit
of political play-acting, almost as foolish and unrealistic as
Albizu's Army of Liberation had been. Most of the island's
newspapers, with the exception of Munoz's La Democracia,
referred to it, if at all, with quotation marks around the
word "party."

The platform of the Popular Democratic party was unique
in that it said nothing about ultimate political status. In-
deed, It was stressed throughout the campaign that status
independence, statehood, or dominion status was in no way
a campaign issue. The Partido Popular bid for the vote en-
tirely on the issues of such social-economic reforms as could
be endorsed by anybody who was hungry enough to see the
need for them, regardless of his ideas on ultimate political
status. Munoz and his followers campaigned for the enforce-
ment of the Five-Hundred-Acre Law, for legislative steps
toward making sugar a public utility and thereby assuring
independent cane growers fair prices for their crops, for the
improvement of the banking system to liberalize credits to
farmers and businessmen, for land to be given free to land-
less agricultural workers, for the promotion of local indus-
tries , for social legislation to protect the island's workers, for
slum clearance, for reforms in the school system and the
extension of education.

Other parties, to be sure, also advocated social reform and
improved social justice, but it was widely recognized that the
only party that was in a position to carry out its promises
when and if elected was the one that had no commitments
to the enemies of social reform, no financial ties of any
kind, and was indebted to nobody except the people who
voted for it. Its only great difficulty seemed to be that it had
no chance whatever for precisely those reasons of being
voted into power.

The Popular Democratic party's small group of loyal work-
ers labored feverishly, reproducing its symbol as often and

Faith in Ourselves e 121

as widely as their small means permitted, and running off
thousands of petition forms on the presses of La Demo-
cracia.

Meanwhile, in the hills, in the small towns, in the village
meeting places, in small meetings in private homes, Munoz
began his tremendous work of campaigning, talking to the
peasants, appealing to their natural common sense, winning
friends and followers. Finally, on July 22, 1938, he was able
to announce that sufficient signatures had been obtained in
Barranquitas and Luquillo to register the party in those two
municipalities. Barranquitas had been his father's birthplace
and is still revered as his shrine; it was a dramatic place in
which to begin.

Eventually the party obtained twice as many signatures
on its registration petitions as it needed to function as a
party on an island-wide basis. But still it was not considered
as having a chance in the election. In 1932 Albizu Campos
had also received many registration signatures, but had
failed miserably when it came to getting the vote. Besides,
it was known or suspected that the other three parties
actually urged their constituents to sign Munoz's petitions.
As he couldn't win, it could do no harm to see to it that he
went to the elections; every old-line rural ward heeler felt
so sure of his personal following that he thought that any
votes Munoz might win must necessarily be taken from the
ranks of the opposing old-line rural ward heelers; the Liber-
ales felt that he could take votes away only from the Social-
ists and Republicans, and vice versa. Most of them, while
laughing at him, therefore also welcomed him in the field
and did what they could to assure his actually going to the
election.

Not being able to pay the driver who had served him so
faithfully in Ms more prosperous days, Munoz had lost him.
But he had to have a driver, and when he asked his friends
to find him one, he gave these specifications: a man who
needed no salary, didn't have to eat, and could drive a car

122 PUERTO Rico

without gasoline. Somehow, he seems to have found such a
paragon.

He had made a speech and was due for another in an-
other part of the island. He said to his driver: "How much
money do you have?"

"I have seventeen cents/*

"Good. I have nine cents. Get all the gasoline the money
will buy and drive as far as it will take us. Maybe somebody
will help us at the other end."

The driver said: "When do we eat? And on what?"

His employer, who is famous as a trencherman, an-
swered : "Somebody will feed us."

In various parts of the island friends and admirers with
modest homes gave food and lodging to Munoz and his
driver. He took up collections among the poverty-stricken
country people five cents here, a few pennies there, a quar-
ter from some particularly rich jibaro but the money re-
ceived was never used for his own expenses. It was a con-
tribution to the party treasury, however small. He wanted
to establish the principle that the Partido Popular was the
people's own party, to be supported by them, and not the
usual organization of questionable largesse that carne out
of the cities at every election to distribute political bribes.

Starting with countless meetings and discussions with the
jibaros, in their little homes and on village greens, with small
groups and in an informal, nonoratorical manner, and build-
ing up to larger and larger audiences as he came back again
and again to every corner of the island's mountains, by car,
or horseback, on foot, Munoz received attention from the
beginning, not only because of his reputation, not only be-
cause he was the son of Munoz Rivera, not only because of
his clear and simple logic, but also because his naturalness
set him off from other political leaders and their dignidad.

At one political meeting when he felt thirsty, he reached
for a bottle of Coca-Cola and began to drink. A man said:
'This man is different. Another politician would be wearing

Faith in Ourselves c 123

a coat, necktie, and hat, and would try to impress us by hav-
ing the Coca-Cola brought to him on a tray, with a glass,
and by drinking from the glass. This man leaves off the
coat, hat, and necktie; his clothes are wrinkled and full of
sweat because he has come far and worked hard; he drinks
his Coca-Cola from the bottle. He acts like one of us, and
I am for him/'

But Munoz said: "Just a minute. I appreciate your sup-
port, but I happen to drink out of a bottle only because it is
convenient and there doesn't seem to be a glass around here.
But if you people supported me for that reason, if you voted
for candidates because they drink out of bottles instead of
glasses, every political son of a bitch on the island would
run around sucking on a bottle all the time. But that is not
the way you vote. You vote for principles that I will explain
to you, and that is why we will win this election."

Beginning with all the small towns and settlements in the
island's interior and descending to the coastal cities only
near the end of his long campaign when he felt fairly sure
of the mountain areas, he explained Puerto Rico's plight in
simple, intelligent terms. He talked about his party's deter-
mination to redistribute the lands of the sugar estates by
legal means under the Five-Hundred-Acre Law. He talked
about the need for social reform to protect the workers' in-
terests, for minimum-wage laws, for slum clearance and
low-cost housing. He wrote and distributed a pamphlet, now
famous El Catecismo del Pueblo, The People's Catechism
explaining not only the issues at stake, but also the power
of the vote when used correctly for the improvement of one's
personal life. Again and again at meetings he would pick out
an older man and ask him: "How many times have you
voted?"

"Eight times, Don Luis."

"Did you ever see any change in your life as a result?"

"Never, except that things grew worse."

"Then, for heaven's sake, give us a chance. Lend me your

124 PUERTO Rico

vote, just once. You can take it back later and give it to
your old party if you don't like what we do with it."

"Give us a chance just one chance to show what we can
do!" became almost a campaign slogan, repeated in hun-
dreds upon hundreds of meetings, to tens of thousands of
men and women, in private and in public, verbally and in
print, in homes, town squares, and village greens. "All we
ask is this one chance T

He talked at great length about the practice of selling
votes. "Nobody can really blame you for selling your vote,"
he told his listeners. 'Two dollars is extraordinarily hard to
come by and will buy a lot of beans and rice for yourselves
and your starving families. Who can blame you for wanting
to provide for your children? But, you must look at this
thing clearly. Do you want two dollars or do you want jus-
tice? You can't have two dollars and justice, and this time
you have to make a choice. Forego the two dollars and vote
for us, just this once, and see what happens T

"If you sell your votes," he explained, "somebody has to
put up the money with which to buy them. After that, who-
ever wins the election is tied to the fellows who gave him the
money to buy your votes. That is why you have seen many
political parties win while you have never won. The only way
in which your votes can count to diminish your hardships
is by not being sold, so that the party that triumphs shall not
owe anyone except you."

"You can't have two dollars and justice r was repeated
again and again to all who would listen and some who would
not, to those who nodded their heads in solemn agreement
as well as those who sneered. Throughout his campaign
Munoz pounded away at complete honesty; he also con-
tinued to preach against taking two dollars from sugar and
then voting for him anyway. It is not known today how
many, when the voting took place in November 1940, fol-
lowed his advice in that matter. What is known is that votes
are no longer bought in Puerto Rico today simply because

Faith in Ourselves c 125

the poor have discovered their dignity and political power
and now refuse to sell their votes with the same tenacity with
which they once refused to vote without pay.

The results of the 1940 election were to prove so over-
whelmingly beneficial that by the next election of 1944, vote
selling had become almost universally recognized as a social
evil, to be suppressed, if it appeared at all, by community
disapproval.

There are those who say that Munoz's greatest political
achievement was the education of his people in the matter
of vote selling. It was to have far-reaching results, not only
in the general field of democracy, but also in Puerto Rico's
entire politico-economic structure. One of many explana-
tions for the island's famous successes since 1940 is the fact
that the political power has been taken away from the great
monied interests and has been given to the people, the
voters, where it belonged in the first place. That shift was
made through the simplest means imaginable by merely
convincing the voters that they couldn't have two dollars
and justice, and had to choose between the two. Had the
shift not been made, however, Operation Bootstrap could
today not exist; the program of industrialization would be
impossible; Puerto Rico would still be a run-down sugar
colony.

Carefully, in meeting after meeting, in village after vil-
lage, Munoz explained the meanings of politics to his people,
He told them that they had heard politicians talk before,
year after year, in campaign after campaign, and that it
never meant anything real. "Don't ever trust a politician,'' he
said. "Not even me. How do you know that I won't swindle
you out of taking somebody else's two dollars and then sad-
dle you with just another gang sold out against you? You
don't, and there is nothing that I can say to convince you.
Nevertheless, if you give us the one chance that I ask for, if
you now throw out the rascals in San Juan and vote us in,
and if we then prove to be every bit as great a set of rascals,

126 c PUERTO Rico

you will have learned how to use your vote for the purpose
of tossing rascals out of office, and you can toss us out in
turn in the next election. Can you sell such power for two
dollars?

"Always politicians have made you vague promises as I
do here when I talk about justice. What do they mean? This
time we want you to know what they mean. We are not cam-
paigning for a set of loose and rattling planks in a platform.
We are campaigning for specific things, even for specific
bills. We have drafted our bills for land reform and other
things even before you elect us. Read them, discuss them,
amend them by writing to us now, before you vote us into
power. They are your personal bills, designed to change your
personal lives. You are entitled to know exactly what you are
voting for."

Munoz was getting results in that he was being talked
about in the hills, where it counted. But one man couldn't
work fast enough; the island's radio facilities were not avail-
able to him; he had to devise other ways of spreading his
voice. Somehow he acquired a recording machine. Whenever
he made a speech thereafter, it was recorded, and thirty or
more records were hurriedly pressed from the master and
played in thirty or more villages throughout the island.

He founded a rural newspaper, El Batey, published for
free distribution whenever he had the time to write an issue.
In this he hammered away incessantly at the issue involved
land reform, social legislation, industrialization, health
and education preaching incessantly, too, against the old
vice of selling the vote. There was so great a demand for the
paper that it soon grew from a two-page affair to one of four
pages; the demand and the consequent circulation grew dra-
matically until there was one issue with a million copies.
That was more than the circulation of all the other Puerto
Rican papers combined. The island's ultraconservative busi-
nessmen, who knew well that Munoz had no chance of win-
ning the election, and who would have shivered in their

Faith in Ourselves c 127

boots had they for a moment thought that there might be
such a chance after all, knew a good advertising medium
when they saw it. In no time at all El Batey was amply sup-
ported, through advertising, by the political enemies of the
Popular Democratic party.

All this time, too, Munoz was perforce also building up a
political machine. The old leaders, the Creole caciques, the
rural ward heelers, numbered about 400 belonging to all
the parties. Before he was through, Munoz had a machine
composed of nearly 4,000 local leaders, men whom he had
picked in all the small and large places, men who had caught
his ideas and whom he could lead by those ideas, unpur-
chasable men who could not purchase anybody else either,
jibaros themselves who could work among their fellows as
jibaros.

Revolutionary in the sense of promising to do things that
were administratively in Washington's hands and not in
Puerto Rico's at all, Munoz's campaign was by the same
token also a great and adventurous gamble. How could he
know that if he won the election and came to control the in-
sular legislature, his enemies in Washington would not send
him another reactionary Governor Winship who would play
the sugar game and veto the bills as fast as the legislature
passed them?

On September 15, therefore, the party held a mass meet-
ing in Santurce, a borough of San Juan, at which were ap-
proved all the bills to be passed in case the party won at the
polls. Before a crowd of more than 15,000 persons, each
Popular candidate for the insular legislature took an oath to
vote for the bills, regardless of what the federal government
might say.

When election time came, Munoz was helped immeasur-
ably by the new election law that had perforce been passed
by the Coalition in 1936 as a result of popular insistence
arising from recurring scandals. Under that law, first tested
in 1940, there is now one polling place for approximately

128 PUEETO RlCO

every 150 voters. These may assemble at the school, or what-
ever building serves for the purpose, at any time before two
o'clock; after that time no others are admitted, and the
voting begins. The names of the registered voters are read off
in alphabetical order, and they go one by one to the curtained
booth to cast their secret ballots. Each man or woman steps
out of the assembled group in full sight of all the rest, in a
situation in which everybody watches everybody else. People
may leave after they have voted, but nobody may enter the
polling place until all the voting is over. By that system all
floaters, repeaters, and ghosts are rigidly excluded.

On election night, November 5, 1940, Munoz sat at home
with his old friend and loyal supporter, Jorge Font Saldana.
The latter had been one of those who had resigned their
PRRA jobs in 1936 in indignation and in support of Munoz.
Since then he had had four terrible years, at times barely
eking out an existence for himself and his family, but never
for an instant diminishing his support of the leader. Now the
two were waiting for the returns to come in. They came first
from Bayamon, which was traditionally Republican. But this
time the Republican vote had been reduced considerably,
while the Populares had made a real showing.

"They are doing itP cried Munoz. "They are doing itl They
have refused to sell their votes r

Returns came in from one of the mountain districts. The
Popular Democratic party had won there.

Profoundly moved, Munoz began to cry. "They are doing
it, Jorge! Those wonderful people. They are starving and
they haven't let me down. They haven't sold their votes!"

A few more returns came in. "We needn't wait for the
whole picture. We're in! We've won! Tlie jibaros aren't sell-
ing their votes, and there is not a chance in the world of our
not winning the election."

That, of course, called for celebration, but Munoz had
only a very little wine in the house and no money with which
to buy more.

Faith in Ourselves c 129

listen, Jorge. Do you have any whisky at home?"

"I have about half a bottle."

"Go get it. Telephone your house and ask your wife to
bring it. Tell her to hurry. We have to celebrate."

Jorge telephoned his home and got the cook. "Please ask
Dona Carmen to come down here and bring that half-bottle
of whisky that's in the pantry P

"The whisky! The whisky! Praise be to GodP The cook
knew immediately what the order meant. "We've won!" She
ran to the window. "Listen, everybody out in the street. We've
won. The Populares have won the election."

Long before all the returns were in, there was jubilation
in all parts of the island. "The jibaros didn't sell their vote I
We have won the election. Don Luis has won!"

When the final count was completed, it was found that
the Populares had received ten of the nineteen Senate seats,
a majority of one. They received eighteen seats in. the House,
as against another eighteen that went to the Coalition. But
there was another group, the Unification, which had won
three seats in the House. With some judicious trading to line
up this group on his side, and with constant use of the cau-
cus to make sure that all his party members voted as a bloc,
Munoz, who became President of the Senate and the island's
political leader, could expect to swing the legislature.

It was no overwhelming victory; the Populares had won
thirty-eight per cent of the total vote and had barely man-
aged to gain control of the legislature. But it paved the way
for future overwhelming victories; in 1944 they were to re-
ceive sixty-four per cent of the total vote, and their strong
hold on the island's electorate has never diminished. The
victory of 1940 also paved the way for future reforms and
programs so drastic that today's Puerto Rico bears only slight
resemblance to that of twenty years ago.

The 1940 campaign, when political status was not a party
issue, intensified Munoz's serious questioning of his former
ideas on Puerto Rico's independence. Whatever one said

130 t PUERTO Rico

about ultimate political arrangements, it was clear that the
poor would be at the receiving end of whatever status might
emerge from Puerto Rico's turmoil. Muiloz now discovered
that the various ideas about status that had been so ardently
discussed for so many years by the intellectuals meant little
to the rural poor except as something the politicians talked
about. What was it these people wanted? They wanted the
same things that all other people want the world over. They
were hungry and they wanted food. They were sick and they
wanted medical care. They wanted education and opportu-
nity for their children. They wanted the human dignity that
was too often denied them. Most of them would be content
to take such things from any government that would pro-
vide them, no matter where it might be centered.

Mufioz discovered that there was among the jibaros very
little of the hatred for the United States which had been
preached by Albizu. Those people might hate their boss at
the sugar mill if he was a son of a bitch, but they hated him
for that reason and not because he was an American or drew
his power from the American regime. In fact, they were
often, and simply, proud of their American citizenship, of
the fact that they could go to the States without passport
whenever they wanted and had the means, that they were,
through that citizenship, one with the world's most powerful
democracy. Moreover, even though the sugar boss might be
a scoundrel (more often a Puerto Rican than a continental),
they sensed that most Americans were not scoundrels. If
they had a real complaint against the sugar boss, they might
even go to court and win the case; and what poor man could
do a thing like that, for instance, in the sovereign Dominican
Republic? They knew that the United States had given them
roads, schools, hospitals, and health programs- not enough,
to be sure, but certainly more than Spain had given them
during four centuries. The United States had given them the
PRERA, the FERA, and the PRRA in their hour of greatest

Faith in Ourselves c 131

need which were again not enough, but were far more
than they could expect, under independence, from their own
politicians.

Muiioz also began to realize that in the event that he did
achieve the island's independence, well over half of Puerto
Rico's men and women might easily want to retain their U.S.
citizenship of which nobody would be able to rob them.
What would he do with that tremendous body of "for-
eigners"?

So, slowly began the mental process that eventually led to
the new idea of a permanent tie with the United States as
defined by existing realities, rather than by any political doc-
trine. Ten years later, still led by Mufioz, the Puerto Rican
people were to vote in a plebiscite for a compact with the
United States whereby they would become self-governing
under a constitution written by themselves and for a form of
political relationship (devised in the colony) that was un-
precedented in world affairs, unheard of and undreamed of
by political scientists.

The deep love between Muiioz Marin and the jibaros,
which began to manifest itself during the 1940 campaign,
has never diminished. In 1948, when Muiioz ran for the of-
fice of the first governor ever to be elected, there was an old
jibaro in the Isabela region who promised the Virgin that if
Don Luis was elected, he would make a pttgrimage to kneel
at his feet. Don Luis was elected, overwhelmingly. Then for
a time, and because the politicians in San Juan were driving
him mad, he retreated to Ellsworth's Treasure Island resort
in the mountains, where he gave instructions to his guards
that they were to admit nobody except members of his family
and any jibaro who might want to see him.

The old jibaro at Isabela sold his last two chickens to raise
forty-five cents for bus fare. He arrived at Treasure Island
barefoot. When he told the governor-elect about his promise
to the Virgin, Muiioz said: "A man must keep his promises,

132 c PUERTO Rico

and you must kneel. But I have made no promises one way
or the other, and there is no reason why I should not kneel,
too. Let us both kneel."

And then after the poet had knelt with the peasant and
when the latter was ready to leave, Mufioz's family told him
about the chickens and the forty-five cents.

"He sold his last two chickens," they said. "He doesn't have
return fare. The least you can do is to give him ninety cents
for his transportation."

But Munoz's answer was: "When a man offers you his
soul, do you give him change?" He refused to give him
money, but there was no reason why he shouldn't give him
transportation. He sent the old man home in his own car.

In 1951 I attended a political rally and stood at the edge
of the crowd while Munoz talked. Next to me stood a jibaro,
a fine old man, in worn but immaculate blue denims, a pava
on his head, a snow-white, bushy mustache adorning his
weatherbeaten, seamed face.

"Eso es/'he said repeatedly as the governor addressed the
crowd. "Eso es" he said, nodding his head. "That's it."

When the meeting was over, he turned to me and said:
"Do you know why we love that man? It is because he has
given us faith in ourselves."

And with those few words he revealed the secret, not only
of Munoz's outstanding political success in Puerto Rico, but
also of his present growing world reputation.

9

Tugwell

THE audacity with which Puerto Rico's colonial voters had
handed the ruling capital a package program for their own
salvation carefully worked out, widely discussed, sworn to
by all the winning party's candidates, voted upon by the peo-
ple in what could be interpreted only as a mandate to Munoz
is probably unparalleled in modern colonial history.

In effect, the 1940 election had informed Washington that
the Puerto Ricans were now ready and determined to take
matters into their own hands, to create for themselves the re-
forms for which they had in vain begged the United States
during the preceding decades, and to do this even as colonial
subjects. There must have been men in Washington in those
days to whom the entire matter proved again that Munoz
was essentially an irresponsible political adventurer.

Mufioz's first gesture toward the federal government was
to write Roosevelt a letter of congratulations on his third
election to the Presidency, in which he also mentioned his
own victory and outlined the aims and policies of the Popu-
lar Democratic party.

Roosevelt answered in part: "The purposes of the Popular

134 PUERTO Rico

Democratic Party as you have outlined them are highly
praiseworthy and should result in vastly improved social
and economic conditions for the island. I particularly appre-
ciate your pledge of co-operation and assure you that this
administration stands ready to do all in its power to assist in
finding a solution for the problems of Puerto Rico."

Secretary of the Interior Ickes, however, was the man to
do the assisting pledged by Roosevelt; the extent of his hap-
piness is not known. The stubborn, autocratic curmudgeon
was a decent and honest man who had Puerto Rico's well-
being at heart and had to endorse the Popular Democratic
party's platform in principle. Nevertheless, whatever Munoz
might say or do, Ickes still had the ultimate responsibility
for Puerto Rico's well-being. He could in no way wash his
hands of that responsibility.

The Secretary was acutely aware of Puerto Rico's political
tensions, though far from understanding them. The troubles
and violence of the preceding four years had convinced him
largely that the Puerto Ricans were a volatile lot, undepend-
able, ungrateful for the blessings Ickes's Reconstruction Ad-
ministration had brought them. He sensed a rising wave of
anti-Americanism in the island that had been placed in his
care, and did not want it to grow stronger. If he now ap-
peared to oppose the New Deal program that had been
handed to him on the silver platter of a successful election,
he might well increase the anti-American feelings by con-
vincing Munoz's followers that Washington did not, after all
despite the fine talk have their well-being at heart.

But Ickes was also a bureaucrat who liked to keep power
in his own hands. What had Munoz meant by making cam-
paign promises without first clearing with the man in Wash-
ington who had the responsibility? What had he meant when
he promised things to his people, his voters things he
lacked the power to deliver under the prevailing colonial sys-
tem? Who was to carry out the land reforms that had been
promised so freely in the campaign speeches? The reforms

Tugwell c 135

in education? The regulation of the sugar companies? The
industrialization program? Such matters were the federal
government's job, to be handled by the Interior Department.
After the PRRA's moral fiasco, would Mufioz Marin, as Presi-
dent of the Senate and as Puerto Rico's undisputed political
leader, be willing to give his program back to the federal
government, where, by all the game's rules, it belonged?

Whatever Ickes may at one time have thought of Munoz's
brilliance and integrity, it now seems clear from his post-
humously published diaries that the Secretary of the Interior
had come to write him off if only because his ideas on inde-
pendence "proved" him to be against the United States.

Specifically, Ickes's immediate problem boiled down to the
question of whether the governor of Puerto Rico by this
time Admiral Leahy had succeeded Winship, and Guy J.
Swope had succeeded Leahy should sign Munoz's drastic
bills or veto them. If he did veto them, what would happen
to American prestige on the island? Who could draft a fed-
eral alternative to Munoz's program, which had raised such
hopes? Would such an alternative, originating in Washing-
ton, be accepted by the Puerto Rican voters after their expe-
riences with the PRRA?

Moreover, Ickes no longer had Dr. Gruening, who had re-
signed as Director of Territories and had become Governor
of Alaska on Roosevelt's insistence.

The Secretary therefore borrowed Rexf ord Tugwell from
New York, where the latter had been engaged in city plan-
ning, and sent him to Puerto Rico to investigate the entire
business and advise the United States on what to do espe-
cially about the land law, which provided for the breaking
up of the great corporate sugar estates. A political scientist,
a brilliant and distinguished academician in his field, Tug-
well had previously, until 1937, been one of the outstanding
New Deal leaders and intellectuals. As Assistant Secretary,
and later Undersecretary of Agriculture, he had had much
to do with problems of land tenure. He was known to be

136 c PUERTO Rico

friendly to Puerto Rico's aspirations, had indeed been the
one federal official who had in 1934 made it possible for the
Chardon commission to go to Washington. As a man of firm
and even arrogant convictions, however, as one of the most
irreconcilable New Deal philosophers, he was cordially hated
by a great many men in the government.

TugwelTs reaction to Munoz's land law was curiously re-
vealing. He seemed astonished that the law's main features
showed signs of real intelligence. He seems to have regarded
the law as a sudden flash of inspiration on Munoz's part, not
as something with which the latter had lived through twenty
years of struggle and thought. He disliked certain other fea-
tures, but could do little about them in dealing with a bill
which had in toto been submitted to the electorate even be-
fore the election, and which every incumbent of the Popular
party had sworn publicly to uphold if voted into office. To
his credit be it said that he recommended that the governor
sign the bill. Swope did sign it and several others; the great
Puerto Rican revolution was legally under way.

Tugwell had gone to Puerto Rico as an investigator. Even-
tually he was made chancellor of the university; a little later
he became the island's last continental American governor.
In San Juan he is today regarded almost universally as by
far the greatest non-Puerto Rican governor in the island's
history. His regime was one of great turmoil, great tensions,
but still greater achievements. If the latter were primarily
those of Munoz and his followers, Tugwell nevertheless
backed to the hilt a program that was in those days revolu-
tionary. No governor before had ever given so much of him-
self, so freely, for the furtherance of a great idea.

Nevertheless, judging from his writings during and im-
mediately after his governorship, Tugwell seems not to have
realized that he was not the designer of Puerto Rico's new
program, was not the great leader whose task it was to de-
fine, explore, and chart new paths for the island's salvation.
Formulation of the program had been begun by Munoz

Tugwell c 137

Marln in 1920, when he was a free-lance journalist in New
York. It had been buffeted, shaped, and reshaped during the
succeeding two decades, through the lessons taught by the
PRERA, the FERA, and the PRRA. Puerto Rican profession-
als and intellectuals, trained analysts, had modified it
through careful studies. It had been further modified again
and again for reasons of expediency. Now, no matter how
he saw himself, Tugwell was in the governor's mansion pri-
marily to lend his sturdy help and administrative experience
to the task of following paths that had long since been
charted by others.

Outside of the strong moral backing that he gave Munoz,
TugwelFs really great personal contribution to Puerto Rico's
reshaping was that of the political scientist who could take
a revolutionary philosophy and program and translate them
into definite government structures and actions. He knew
how to create and run a government machine to accomplish
great things. Munoz and his followers did not until Tug-
well taught them.

Who were these men whom Munoz now pulled out of their
various exiles and entrusted with the job of forming a new
government? They were eager, incorruptible young men
dedicated to a great idea, but they were also poets like their
leader. They may never have written verse, but they were
poets, nevertheless, in their various fields of economics, law,
sociology, and geography. They could make their way
through scholarly essays peppered with footnotes and graphs,
but what did such men know about creating and running a
stable and effective government? Tugwell taught them. He
could not teach them anything about decency and honesty
in government: those things were already inherent in the
quality of the officials themselves. But the complex and yet
efficient working structure of Puerto Rico's present govern-
ment, one of the most socially beneficial found anywhere
on earth, is Rexford Tugwell's great achievement.

One of his greatest mistakes was to write a book while he

138 PUERTO Rico

was fighting his battle. The book was published shortly after
his departure from Puerto Rico, under the title The Stricken
Land; with some justice, a number of Puerto Ricans said
that it should have been called The Stricken Rexford. The
book indicates his discovery of what many a continental had
discovered before him : that the Puerto Rican road is rough
for the non-Puerto Rican Man of Destiny. Throughout some
700 pages it records less the struggle of Puerto Rico than the
minutiae of the struggles, the agonies, the rationalizations
of Rexford Tugwell, and the clashes between Tugwell, the
highly trained political scientist, and Munoz, the poet, both
of whom were driving at exactly the same goal.

The war created tremendous problems for the island,
which was of special interest to the enemy because of its
strategic location. Submarines sank dozens of ships loaded
with the necessities of life. The importation of foods was
drastically curtailed, and prices rose sharply. The ghastly
spectacle of air-raid alarms and in one case of hurricane
warning dispersing long bread lines as was all too com-
mon. On the mainland the war created conditions of unprec-
edented employment and prosperity for the civilian popula-
tion; in Puerto Rico, lacking industries and partly isolated
by the submarine campaign, it did the opposite. The needle-
work industry collapsed because of transportation difficul-
ties, as did the citrus-fruit industry, while most of the other
branches of the economy were seriously impaired. Unem-
ployment rose even higher than it had during the depression;
mounting relief was an imperative necessity.

At the same time, however, the island's rum industry en-
joyed a prosperity it has never even approached since V-J
Day. On the mainland the production of whisky and other
liquors was cut down because the alcohol was needed for the
war effort; Puerto Rican rum the manufacture of which
had got under way about 1936 came largely to take their
places.

Tug-well c 139

The excise taxes on rum soared; Puerto Rico's budget,
which before 1940 had been around $22 million, shot up to
as high as $150 million. With such funds the government
could build factories, purchase lands held in excess of five
hundred acres by the sugar corporations, provide machinery
for the working and distribution of those lands, stimulate
its public-health service, implement its new social legisla-
tion, foster co-operatives, and engage in all the multiple
activities of a stricken society reshaping itself, while also
contributing to wartime relief. The war and the resulting
prosperity of the rum industry got Puerto Rico's "Operation
Bootstrap" off to a flying start during those first four turbu-
lent years of the Tugwell regime.

Morally, too, the war contributed to Mufioz's great effort.
Whatever was said and plenty was about the socialistic
and un-American nature of his program, military men knew
that a large unemployed, discontented civilian population is
a serious military problem in a location of strategic impor-
tance. Munoz's leadership and his effective program of re-
form and economic improvement held the island's people
together despite their wartime hardships, and greatly
strengthened their loyalty to the ruling country.

In his inaugural address Tugwell had expressed his basic
philosophy as governor, which differed in no respect from
that of Munoz as political leader, in the following words ; "In
bettering public health, in educating children, in bringing
power, light, sanitation into people's homes, in building
more homes for the underprivileged, in providing all kinds
of needed work, in the conservation of soil and other re-
sources, in the use and tenure of the land, in the search for
higher wages and greater social security in all these we
shall find work enough crowding in upon us in the years to
come."

The Planning Board was created for the purpose of chart-
ing the island's progress and of integrating all government

140 PUERTO Rico

functions. That organization is today becoming world-fa-
mous for the effectiveness of its operations, which, among
many other things, prevent wasteful duplication.

The task of carrying out the new land policies, arising
from the enforcement of the Five-Hundred-Acre Law, was
entrusted to the newly created Land Authority. As funds be-
came available, the government now began to condemn
lands held in excess of the legal limit, to purchase them from
the sugar companies, and to work them in such a way that
the companies could stay in the manufacturing business of
operating mills. The administration of those holdings, their
partial redistribution to small farmers, planters, and squat-
ters, the active program of social services and community
improvement which is carried on as part of the Land Au-
thority's work, are the fruits of a social inventiveness that
today promises to have its repercussions in India, Pakistan,
Indonesia, Africa, and the Latin-American republics in all
the lands that are sending observers to Puerto Rico.

Munoz knew well that industrialization was essential to
Puerto Rico's continued growth and development, yet appar-
ently was impossible under existing conditions, as it required
the investment of large sums of private capital, which were
not forthcoming. Puerto Rico's economic climate was not
conducive to investment. Nevertheless, factories had to be
built if the society were to survive. Hence, the government
created the Development Company, modeled after Chile's
Corporation de Fomento, and the Development Bank for the
purpose of making industrial credit available. The govern-
ment's aim in creating those institutions were similar to
those of the Chilean organization. Knowing that industrial-
ization was essential, the government took the stand that
private capital should at all times be favored, but that when
and where private capital did not come forward for building
and operating factories, government would do the job. The
government, too, would pave the way for private enterprise,
would make investigations through which private industry

Tug-well c 141

might be encouraged; under certain circumstances it would
give various kinds of direct and indirect financial aid to po-
tential private investors.

From the PRRA the insular government had already ac-
quired the cement plant that was to provide the building ma-
terials so badly needed for all kinds of constructions, and a
private company in Ponce had built another cement plant.
Now, under the leadership of Teodoro Moscoso, the Develop-
ment Company, constantly hampered by the fact that ma-
chinery and materials were hard to obtain during the war,
enlarged the cement plant and set out to create more indus-
tries.

The rum industry needed bottles; the government built
and managed a glass factory, which started operations in
January 1945, two and a half years after the creation of the
Development Company.

A factory for the manufacture of pulp board and paper
from waste paper and begasse (the fibrous end product of
sugar-cane grinding) was built adjacent to the glass factory
justified for construction during the war because its opera-
tion would cut down considerably the amount of shipping
needed for supplying Puerto Rico with essential materials.

A clay-products factory was built, turning out glazed tiles
in the beginning, but later producing washbowls and toilet
bowls for the government's enormous program of slum clear-
ance and low-cost housing.

Because it was evident that the tourist industry could
someday be built up to contribute materially to the island's
economy, the Development Company participated in the
founding of the Puerto Rico Travel Association to promote
the interests of turismo.

A shoe factory was built by the government in the south-
ern part of the island.

Meanwhile, the government collaborated with the univer-
sity in arranging for research toward further industrializa-
tion, especially in the utilization of the sugar industry's by-

142 c PUERTO Rico

products, while the Development Company also promoted
the training of Puerto Rican technicians in such mainland
institutions as M.I.T. The improvement of labor relations,
through the education of both labor and management, be-
came a special concern of the Development Company; it was
discovered early that government-operated enterprises in a
democracy in which a number of legislators may well be
labor leaders on the side are particularly vulnerable to strikes
and feather-bedding demands.

Although not created during Tugwell's administration, the
Water Resources Authority completed its final organization
during that period. Its purpose was to provide cheaper elec-
tricity, hydrogenerated wherever possible to reduce the im-
portation of fuels. It flung a single great network of distribu-
tion lines over all the island. In T.V.A. style that agency, by
means of its low-cost power, has by now become effective in
attracting a number of privately financed industries to
Puerto Rico. It is also, however, intimately concerned with
the conservation of water and soil resources, having been
created for the purposes of "conserving, developing, and
utilizing, and aiding in the conservation, development, and
utilization of water and energy resources of Puerto Rico, for
the purpose of making available to the inhabitants of the is-
land, in the widest economic manner, the benefits thereof,
and by this means to promote the general welfare and in-
crease commerce and prosperity. . . ."

A Transportation Authority and a Housing Authority to
work toward the substitution of decent dwellings for the evil,
unsanitary slums were among the other government agen-
cies set up by Tugwell and Munoz for the purpose of carry-
ing out the mandate of the people for an improved life.

The United States was by then becoming accustomed to
such innovations. In Puerto Rico, where the most reaction-
ary elements had held the government for eighteen years be-
fore 1940, they seemed revolutionary. Charges of statism
and socialism were made unceasingly for the purpose of em-

Tug-well c 143

barrassing Tugwell and Mufioz, and were echoed by reac-
tionary elements in the States. Munoz's often repeated
answer to those charges was : "We are neither radical nor
conservative. We are merely realistic." Puerto Rico discov-
ered what Chile had discovered earlier and what many
emerging societies such as India and Pakistan are discover-
ing today that a modern, underdeveloped society cannot
find salvation by following doctrinaire patterns.

Through four centuries the Puerto Ricans had been a
stricken people starving, disorganized, not permitted by the
rulers to take effective steps toward the improvement of their
lives, lethargic and fatalistic as a result. Now in 1941 they
resolutely set out on new paths of achievement; during the
eight ensuing short years they laid the solid foundation for
the great eff ort that is today attracting visitors and students
by the hundreds from aU parts of the world; their greatest
gain during those years was, however, psychological. New
energies were released for new creative enterprises; the for-
mer lethargy gave way to new hopes for some two million
men, women, and children; the exhilaration of a hard uphill
struggle with great rewards in sight took hold of the island's
people; Munoz and the Popular Democratic party gained
daily in popularity bordering on adulation among the lower
classes, that is, which comprised well over eighty per cent
of the population.

The upper classes the wealthy landowners, the ultracon-
servative businessmen were in a turmoil of fear and tried
their best, supported by the Coalition, to hamper the Puerto
Rican government at every turn. At one point they sent a
delegation to Washington, composed of the island's most
powerful businessmen, to demand that Puerto Rico be given
a strong military government because, as they claimed, the
island was being led straight into un-American socialism.

In the 1940 election the Coalition had won the office of
Resident Commissioner, Puerto Rico's official representative
in Congress. That man was Bolivar Pagan, and he did every-

144 PUERTO Rico

thing in Ms power to hinder Munoz and discredit him in the
eyes of Congress. At one congressional hearing in Washing-
ton he tried to embarrass Munoz by asking him, before a
number of congressmen, if his program did not amount to
socialism and thus was against the American way of life.
Munoz answered that he didn't know whether or not it was
socialism; he did know that it was badly needed and was
proving effective for dealing with Puerto Rico's ills. As for
socialism, however, he wanted to refer the assembled con-
gressmen to the Honorable Bolivar Pagan himself, to the
man who had asked him the question, because the Resident
Commissioner was the head of Puerto Rico's Socialist party.

The embattled 150 per cent Americans also used the F.B.L
for the purpose of confusing and hindering the government
program. Agents of that organization were, of course, every-
where, investigating everything constantly. When they asked
questions about a candidate for some job, they usually went
first to the superpatriots of whose loyalty and respectability
they were certain. These superpatriots then told them that
the candidate was, or had been, an advocate of Puerto Rico's
eventual independence and must therefore be regarded as
being un-American and a poor security risk. As a large per-
centage of Munoz's following at the upper level was, or had
once been, in favor of independence, as the F.B.I, investi-
gators could not be expected to understand that such senti-
ments did not necessarily mean that the people who held
them were anti-American, and as it did not seem to be clearly
recognized that a large number of independent countries
and peoples were wholeheartedly on the side of the United
States during the war, that practice gave rise to a number of
irritations. At the lowest political level such use of the F.B.L
seemed a device for having Republicans appointed to jobs
in a government devoted to carrying out tasks and programs
that were anathema to the Republicans.

Shortly before the 1944 election, which was to test Mu-
noz's popular strength after four years of political domina-

Tug-well c 145

tion, the island's Republican opposition made its prize mis-
take, which proved also to be its dying gasp as a political
force. Stocks of food had run perilously low; people were
starving, and continued government relief was imperative.
However, the funds designated for relief were running out;
new funds were delayed by the opposition's political tricks.
Confronted by that dilemma and feeling that it could not
stand idly by while people starved, the government began to
use other funds, which, according to the Republicans, could
not legally be used for the purpose. In a grandiose gesture of
righteous indignation, a Republican judge then ordered Tug-
well's entire Executive Council, his cabinet, to be arrested
and put into j ail for contempt.

One suspects that the Puerto Rican people took the gesture
with a hearty laugh; certainly the cabinet members did not
seem perturbed over their sudden acquisition of jail records.
They telephoned their wives and asked them to come to the
jail with playing cards, pajamas, possibly a spot or two of
liquor, and, above all, photographers. Certainly with photog-
raphers !

In commenting on the incident, Tugwell wrote : "Never in
all my political experience have I seen a campaign document
so effective as the picture of those commissioners looking
out determinedly from behind the bars of La Princessa. To
the jibaro and obrero (worker) it was plain that the mem-
bers of his government, all Populares but one, had suffered
the humiliations of prison in order to protect his right to an
income during unemployment. The whole effort of the Popu-
lares to redistribute social benefits in Puerto Rico was thus
symbolized. It seemed not unlikely, after this incident, that
the Popular victory might be so great as to be embarrassing.
It was difficult to see how the Coalicion could win anywhere
at all/'

As predicted, the election proved a clean sweep for Munoz's
party. In Tugwell's words, the Coalitionists "ended not only
with an infinitesimal representation in the legislature but

146 c PUERTO Rico

also without any adequate explanation of their political in-
sanity. They were completely bankrupt/*

There is room for doubt, however, whether, as Tugwell
seemed to think, the foolish action of a judge and the picture
of a cabinet in jail had much to do with the landslide. In
1940 Munoz had said to the electorate: "Lend me your votes
only once, unless you like what we do with them." During
the succeeding four years he had done many dramatic things
with those votes and for the voters. Every election since then
has been a landslide for him and his party. The Puerto
Ricans have loaned him their votes again and again, in ever
increasing numbers. Evidently they did and do like what he
has done with them. In view of that tremendous and deep-
rooted human reality, shallow, mechanistic interpretations
of election results seem out of place.

Incidentally, the judge who in 1944 gave his party's elec-
tion prospects the coup de grace, was the same Marcelino
Romany who was later, in 1952, to win momentary interna-
tional fame by breaking the tensions of the Republican con-
vention in Chicago with his earnest parliamentary efforts.
Today, however, he is a staunch supporter of Munoz Marin
and the Popular Democratic party.

TugwelTs book is full of accounts of how his enemies in
Congress, encouraged by Puerto Rico's reactionaries, tried
their best at all times to attack him by hindering and embar-
rassing the Puerto Rican program. That was important then;
it is no longer important now, when Congress has co-oper-
ated wholeheartedly in the program's political evolution. In-
deed, the opposition of those days by a congressional minor-
ity, seems on the whole to have benefitted Puerto Rico in that
it served to bring the island's plight to the attention of con-
gressmen. Two congressional committees visited Puerto Rico
in a spirit of bitter hostility to Tugwell; once there, their
members were awed by the spectacle of all but universal
poverty sick, hungry people and reeking slums. Munoz
gave them eloquent expositions on the problems to be solved,

Tug-well 147

the many difficulties encountered, and the goals to be
achieved.

One letter, which is today a historic document in Puerto
Rico, attests to the congressional education regarding the is-
land. Senator Robert A. Taft had gone to the island as a
member of a committee presumably hostile to Tugwell. As a
man of real integrity, he eventually gave the Puerto Rican
program what was considering its source its greatest
boost.

The glass factory, designed, financed, and owned by the
Puerto Rican government, was being built during Taf t's visit,
but was having trouble under wartime regulations in obtain-
ing machinery from the continent. The island's superpatri-
otic Republicans pointed it out to him as one more instance
of state socialism, of government going into the manufactur-
ing business. So well had he come to realize Puerto Rico's
desperate needs, however, that he surprised everybody by
coming out strongly in favor of the project. On his return to
Washington, on March 12, 1943, he wrote a letter to Donald
M. Nelson, Chairman of the War Production Board.

Dear Mr. Nelson:

I understand that the Puerto Rico Glass Cor-
poration, in part financed by the government-
owned Puerto Rico Development Company, has ap-
plied for priorities on glassmaking machinery.

I have just been in Puerto Rico with the Sub-
committee of the Senate Territories Committee, in-
vestigating social and economic conditions there.
In view of the number of people crowded into a
small island, I believe that the only possibility of
a decent standard of living lies in the industrializa-
tion of the island. The construction of a glass fac-
tory will not only give employment, but it will
maie it possible to continue other industries now
shut down for lack of glass containers and cans.

148 c PUERTO Rico

The rum industry and the canning industry must
have some assistance, and glass containers can no
longer be shipped from the United States because
of the shortage of shipping.

The situation in Puerto Rico is not like that
in the United States because there is no war work
to which the employees of these industries can
turn. Furthermore, in view of the shortage of food,
canning is essential to provide more food for the
people themselves. I have never been very strong
for government-supported industry, but the situa-
tion in Puerto Rico is such that I believe the gov-
ernment has a proper function in promoting the
development of new industry.

I hope that every consideration will be given
to the application of the Puerto Rico Glass Corpo-
ration.

Sincerely yours,
ROBERT A. TAFT

Tugwell resigned in 1946, one reason being that his con-
tinued presence as governor in the face of the bitter con-
gressional opposition to him proved embarrassing and harm-
ful to Puerto Rico. It had been his hope to have Congress
pass a bill under which the people of Puerto Rico could there-
after elect their own governor instead of having to put up
with any more in the long line of appointed executives from
beyond the island. The bill, however, had no chance of pass-
ing at that time. Tugwell did persuade Truman to appoint
a Puerto Rican as his successor. Jesus Pinero, a sugar planter
who had been an ardent supporter of Munoz, became the is-
land's first native governor.

Pifiero had been Resident Commissioner in Washington,
elected in 1944 to replace Bolivar Pagdn. On his appoint-
ment to the governorship, he was replaced in Congress by
the able, astute, and energetic Antonio Fern6s Iserh, who

Tug-well c 149

had during the preceding four years done wonders as Puerto
Rico's Commissioner of Health. Fernos managed to get a bill
through Congress providing for the popular election of fu-
ture governors.

In the election of 1948 Munoz ran for the governorship.
He promised no wonders in his campaign; he promised his
people only increasing opportunity to struggle the long,
stony, difficult uphill road on which they had started to
1941. Four other candidates ran against him; the island's
entire press was solidly against him; his own La Democracia
was long since dead, and he had no newspapers until the last
few weeks of the campaign, when one was started by his
friends. The opposition controlled the entire press and made
full use of the radio facilities for a ceaseless, vituperative
campaign, some of it slanderous and aimed directly at
Munoz in person. When the returns were in, it was found
that he had won over sixty per cent of the total vote. Unmis-
takably he had another mandate from the people.

His inaugural parade and ceremony on January 2, 1949,
was the greatest, most enthusiastic celebration in Puerto
Rico's history.

10

Neither Radical nor
Conservative

DURING the Tugwell regime Puerto Rico's leaders often
groped fearfully in the dark. They had a job to do in a
hurry and a long-range program to get under way, and
they discovered early that they could do neither by following
doctrinaire patterns. Four centuries of Puerto Rico's past,
while resulting in traditions and culture patterns that could
not be brushed aside, offered few positive precedents and
taught largely how the pressing tasks could not be accom-
plished. The present was clamorous in its urgent demands,
the future clouded by fearful uncertainties. Everything that
was done in those days would itself eventually become a
precedent that might either strengthen or wreck the pro-
gram's future.

Technically Puerto Rico was still a colony, and Tugwell's
unpopularity in Congress was a terrifying threat. What if
Washington sent down a successor who, partly in retaliation
against Tugwell, set out to undo the entire program by re-
shaping it along authoritarian lines dictated and controlled
by Washington? The legal power to do so obviously existed,
and called for an active political program designed to in-

Neither Radical nor Conservative c 151

crease and strengthen Puerto Rico's autonomy in the matter
of making decisions and shaping internal policies. Such po-
litical evolution visible, vital, and effective was needed to
nourish the nascent flame of self-confidence which energized
the entire transformation. However, Puerto Rico could ex-
pect little help from private investors unless its great effort
led to continuity and was not subject, as had been the is-
land's past life, to sudden changes as governor succeeded
governor on the island and political administrations replaced
each other in Washington.

However, while the march toward political emancipation
had got an excellent start in 1940, the details of its route
could not be announced, if only because an announcement
could strengthen the hands of its enemies and might well
lead it into the morass of mere acrimonious debate. In his
book The Art of Politics Tugwell repeatedly complains that
as governor he didn't know what Munoz as political leader
was driving at. Of course he didn't. As governor good, bad,
or indifferent he represented Washington, and Munoz was
much too astute a leader to tip his hand in advance, to move
in any manner except step by step, taken when and if and
only when and if Congress and the Washington authorities
seemed ready for that particular step.

The appointment of Jesus Pinero as Puerto Rico's first
Puerto Rican governor was a decided step in advance, even
though as a federal appointee he was still administratively
responsible to Washington. But he had been the first of the
colono class to back Munoz and was one of the founders of
the Popular Democratic party. He had lived with the program
from its earliest beginnings, and could be expected not to
oppose any parts of it on doctrinaire grounds. The interim
of his regime, from 1946 to 1948 when the island was at
long last able to elect its own governor and chose Munoz
Maria was devoted in part to the task of revising old poli-
cies and shaping new ones for the long pull of the future. It
was now necessary to take stock, to develop a basic social,,

152 c PUERTO Rico

political, and economic philosophy, a creed to live by that
would be no less American for being essentially Puerto
Rican, growing out of the island's needs.

The present "Commonwealth" status was achieved in
1952. In agreeing to that status, Congress ceded to Puerto
Rico most of its power over the island's internal affairs. Only
the U.S. Supreme Court only on grounds of constitution-
ality can today revoke laws passed by the Puerto Rican leg-
islature. No longer can an appointed governor, whose ap-
pointment must be confirmed by the Senate, veto such laws.

The evolution of political thought which led to the estab-
lishment of Commonwealth status was a part of the general
shaping of new creeds and new policies, which had so great
an impulse during the Piiiero regime. Then it was also pos-
sible to go ahead with some of the things Tugwell had pre-
viously blocked through his veto power, one of which was the
use of tax exemption to stimulate industrial growth.

The first "Socialist" stage of industrialization by means of
government investment and management could not long en-
dure within the American scheme of things. Not only was it
counter to American mores, but it tended to cut the island
off from many financial resources that might otherwise be
available. It was plainly evident, moreover, that the Puerto
Rican government would not be able, through socialism, to
keep pace with the rising tide of demands made upon it.
Budgets were higher than ever before, but the demands on
those budgets grew more rapidly than did the monies avail-
able. More money than had ever been imagined during the
days of sugar colonialism was needed for education, public
health, public works, communications, and the like. The
growth of population alone made it apparent that a govern-
ment that created new industries out of its own limited funds
would never have sufficient capital available to come any-
where near the mounting need for more new industries.

Puerto Rico, therefore, wanted its share of private capital
that was piling up in the United States, ready and eager to

Neither Radical nor Conservative c 153

invest itself in productive American enterprises. Much of
the former indignant preoccupation against the absentee
ownership of means of production began to give way to the
realization that absentee monopoly, rather than absentee
ownership, had been the great curse ten years previously.

^ The island's leaders began to realize that with expansion,
diversification, and adequate government control to assure
optimum social benefits the new economy could be healthy
even though financed largely, in the beginning, by absentee
capital as the early development of the United States had
been financed largely by British capital and guided in its
technical phases by British skills. The development of such
an economy would undoubtedly raise wages and therefore
the standard of living, which was the first goal of the Puerto
Rican government.

A new policy was therefore adopted in 1948, by which the
government could offer certain inducements to attract new
capital for investment in the Puerto Rican effort, including
tax exemption for some years and various kinds of technical
and social co-operation and help. This worked so well and
was so much more effective than the former industrializa-
tion program under government ownership and manage-
ment that the government eventually in 1950 sold its own
factories for $10,000,000 to the island's leading industrialist.
He was Luis Ferre, whose family had long managed a large
iron works in Ponce, making and repairing machinery for
the sugar industry. Active in the Republican party, he was,
and is, moreover, one of Muiioz Marines strongest and most
outspoken political enemies. For those reasons the sale nat-
urally stirred up a certain amount of local criticism. The
governor, however, said that the plants had been sold to
Ferre because the latter's record proved him to have much
more sense as an industrialist capable of managing impor-
tant enterprises than as a politician.

In the midst of shifts and changes, progress and setbacks,
the task of providing a badly needed, integrated philosoph-

154 PUERTO Rico

ical framework for the guidance and unification of the is-
land's many new departures in its life, for the information
and guidance of continental congressmen, editors, and po-
tential investors in the Puerto Rican effort, naturally fell to
Munoz Marin. As a result, he is becoming much better
known throughout the world as a vocal philosopher with
something important to say to today's bewildered people,
than as an able administrator, the leader of a party, and an
astute political maneuverer able to win elections and achieve
results between them.

In the course of years the famous slogan "We are neither
radical nor conservative, we are merely realistic" had to be
interpreted, translated, and transmuted into many specific
forms, all of which added up to the truism that if a people
wish to be saved they must save themselves according to
their own mores and realities. For instance, in addressing
the American Legion Convention in Chicago, September 4,
1958, Munoz said: 'The U.S. did not insist that Puerto
Ricans become carbon copies of people in the States." That
was, of course, part of the constant struggle to maintain cul-
tural integrity, to remain Puerto Ricans with a Puerto Rican
cultural heritage that must be honored and respected as a
source of pride and strength, though it is constantly shaped,
reshaped, and strengthened by culture borrowings from else-
where.

For such sentiments, those of his political enemies who
clamor for statehood often accuse him of nationalism, while
those who want independence accuse him of precisely the
opposite. He takes pains to be clear on that point. On October
14, 1958, at the opening session of the important interna-
tional Conference on the Inter-American Exchange of Per-
sons, held in San Juan, he described "extreme nationalism*'
as "fertile soil for the harvest of prejudices, distorted images,
myths about peoples and cultures." He said that nationalism
is not "in harmony with man's deepest and noblest aspira-
tions" and that it "cannot contribute much to the future, if

Neither Radical nor Conservative c 155

the future is to be a good one/' He went on to say that "of
nationalism only cultures will remain not the static but the
dynamic aspects of cultures their diversity, their creative
powers, their profound sources of individual expression, lan-
guages, arts, concepts of good and evil, manners of express-
ing beauty and unraveling mysteries." Full recognition of
and respect for such cultural autonomy, he said, can lead
to "a crusade of understanding, a crusade against the false
collective image that we often have of each other, against
resistance to the adoption of good ideas and the valuable
techniques which we can share, a crusade, in other words,
through which every one can, without losing his identity,
without denying his tradition or language, enrich himself
from what his neighbor can offer, and exchange with that
neighbor the fruits of his labor and his thought."

All that, of course, implies freedom of every people to
choose the specific paths and policies for its own salvation.
In his American Legion speech he referred to the new Puerto
Rico's early days of government ownership of industries. '1
suppose/' he said, "that's socialism, although we didn't care
much what tag was on it, so long as it was carried out in
terms of freedom and unfaltering respect for the dignity of
the individual." In tribute to the United States he added that
"Nobody in the United States denounced us for it. Nobody
chose to ostracize us and by so doing create confusion and
bewilderment as to the meaning of free, democratic choice.**

Again and again Munoz has talked, and continues to talk,
against the widespread attitude that demands that those
whom capitalism helps in their emergence from poverty and
in capitalism's battle against communism must accept cap-
italism's purest doctrines, must avoid whatever may be
tagged "socialism." Referring to Puerto Rico on September
23, 1954, in a speech to the annual convention of the A. F.
of L., he said: "We do not worship either public ownership
or private enterprise. We believe that each in its place and
every people will have different places for them are good

156 c PUERTO Rico

and useful tools of the democratic way of life. So long as you
don't hold either of them sacrosanct, they can both be very
respectable means to the ends of economic freedom. Ifs a
dangerous thing to be religious about anything except reli-
gion/'

On March 10, 1958, he urged the United States, through
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to incorporate a
similar tolerance of varying economic philosophies into its
official policies toward Latin America. Drawing on Puerto
Rico for examples, he said: ". . . We did not make private
enterprise a sacred cow, but a productive and contented
one."

In his first inaugural speech, on January 2, 1949, he dealt
at some length with the problem of Puerto Rico's ultimate
political status. But, as always, he came back to the place of
status in the general scheme of things. "A political status, of
course, does not exist in an economic vacuum. Thinking on
a political status cannot be developed in a vacuum of eco-
nomic or cultural thought. Ways of living and working; the
forward-looking habits in a community; the religious vision;
the land and its crops, and the factories, and the tools, and
the techniques, and the raising of children, and the cultiva-
tion of the understanding, and science, and art, and recrea-
tion, and health habits, and sustenance, and clothes, and
sheltering roof, and justice, and light, and generosity,
and serenity, all these together, and their political status,
and more, are the life of a people. The manner of expressing
all these together in harmony is the ideal of life of a people.
And the spontaneity and dynamism with which they are
expressed constitute the people's integral liberty.

"Of course, certain aspects of integral liberty are closely
related to the possibility or impossibility of other aspects. If
a community does not develop an economy which is founded,
or has hopes of being founded, on a victorious productive
effort, it will see other forms of its life and liberty impeded,
or decayed, or destroyed. From this comes our great dedica-

Neither Radical nor Conservative c 157

tion, which we should further strengthen on this day, to the
task of constantly increasing production in Puerto Rico
more rapidly than the growth of population; more rapidly
still to absorb unemployment; more rapidly still to go on
raising the standard of living and security; and more rapidly
still so that the present imperative need for aid shall not be-
come permanent."

Through the years he has become increasingly preoccu-
pied with the social and individual evils of too great a dedi-
cation to mere acquisition, to the frenetic American demand
for a new and better car every year, new and "improved"
goods of all kinds acquired through installment buying,
more and more material things as marks of social distinc-
tion. In his legislative message of 1949 he called for "more
of the good life within reach of more people every day, and
education as to what is meant by the good life. Good living
does not always mean the good life. Frequently it is far from
being so. And the evil life of misery and insecurity is never
the good life, although many good people live that life. Bent
as we are on production, we must ask ourselves : production
for what? Economic production for its own sake, without a
life objective to guide it, only leads modern man to gluttony
for worldly goods and to spiritual confusion. We produce so
that people will have more of the good life, and here it is well
to make clear whether we understand by this the mere mul-
tiplication in the consumption of trivial objects which titil-
late our appetite for acquisition, or whether we are to apply
this term to the creative ideal of abolishing extreme poverty
and broadening security and liberty in the lives of all men. I
believe that in an economy based on high production there
can be a good minimum standard of living for all, as well as
a high level for those who can legitimately attain it."

On June 16, 1955, at Harvard University and on the occa-
sion of receiving an honorary degree, he asked: "Are the at-
titudes and habits that are associated with modern high
productivity inexorably interwoven with the attitudes and

158 PUERTO Rico

manners of relentless material consumption? Can a culture
be efficient in production and at the same time wise and
modest in consumption? Can it be feverish in output and
serene in intake? I say we are getting to the time in which
it must and if it must, it probably can. Economists could
tell us that a higher rate of multiple consumption is neces-
sary to a high rate of production, and therefore of employ-
ment and of income, and that what I am talking about would
bring economies tumbling down on our heads. It need not be
so, because of the evident possibility of re-gearing high pro-
ductivity to higher ends. If it were so it would most certainly
be time to ponder what to do about a situation in which se-
renity could bring about catastrophe.

"In the Declaration of Independence of the United States
the young republic was dedicated to the rights of life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness. In Puerto Rico we are trying
in our modest setting to bring to a harmonious success, for
the good of our souls and bodies and for the observation of
our fellow citizens and of such parts of the world as may
care to look, Operation Bootstrap the right to life; Opera-
tion Commonwealth the right of liberty; and Operation Se-
renity the pursuit of happiness with some hope of really
catching up with her/*

While talking in that vein, Mufioz also set himself the
task of teaching his administrators and politicians the mean-
ing of true democracy. It is no easy matter to teach a ward
heeler to give up demagogy, or an employee to put the com-
mon good ahead of his own. On many occasions the task
has required the exercise of firm, disciplinary control, and
Mufioz has often been accused by his political opposition
in Puerto Rico, and especially in the ceaseless stream of vi-
tuperative propaganda that emanates from the offices of
Dictator Trujillo of the Dominican Republic of being a
dictator.

In his first legislative message as governor, on February
23, 1949, he referred to the momentous political and eco-

Neither Radical nor Conservative c 159

nomic implications of the island's new directions toward a
more abundant life, and of the new demands the island's
people made, not only on the conscience of all branches of
the government, but on the "conscience which is well in-
formed." "This country," he informed his legislators, his
politicians, "does not need a government which is merely less
bad than another; what it needs, and what from the elo-
quence of its action it has shown itself to deserve, is a gov-
ernment that is a good government. It does not expect per-
fection, for that is not a human possibility, but it does expect
devotion. . . .

"The people expect of you and me at this propitious mo-
ment the ultimate degree of the most enlightened good faith.
The first condition of this good faith is the absence of per-
sonal motives in public life, arising as they may from greed
or pride, ambition or vanity. . . . There is nothing more
censurable in the eyes of the people than to take a public
action or to assume a public attitude because of motives con-
nected with careers or ambition or personal position. That is
the great sin against the spirit of the people. This is true be-
cause it leads irrevocably to demagogy, which in its turn
arouses irrational passions of group against group, be they
economic, or racial, or religious, or groups which contribute
one type of knowledge necessary to the work of government
against groups which contribute another type. . . . Certain
it is that the votes of the people do not authorize this, nor
will they authorize it at any time the people be consulted.
You know that personal interests play absolutely no part in
my public life. And I can tell you that my life would be of no
use to our people if day after day I were forced to be on the
watch for demagogy."

Such affirmations as this draw charges of dictatorship. At
the same time, however, they have by now made Puerto Rico
famous in many Latin-American circles as by far the most
democratic and vital of all Latin-American societies.

In the governor's preoccupation with a "conscience which

160 c PUERTO Rico

is well informed/' in his constant, restless demand for infor-
mation lies one explanation for an outstanding character-
istic of modern Puerto Rican life.

The systematic investigation of the island's social and eco-
nomic problems is, of course, not new in Puerto Rico. It be-
gan during the nineteenth century with the establishment
of the island's several cultural societies. However, during the
Tugwell regime, and especially since the beginning of Mu-
noz's governorship, Puerto Rico has become a veritable re-
searcher's paradise. The Planning Board carries on a large
number of projects designed as guidance for specific actions;
the university's Social Science Research Center and other
units delve with varying degrees of judgment and success
into a number of aspects and problems of the island's life;
the Economic Development Administration employs a staff
of research experts to probe special economic problems.

In that feverish activity continental Americans have be-
gun to play a new role. Where they had once assumed most
or all of the high policy-making positions in government and

private enterprise, they are now hired by the Puerto Ricans

whenever their specialized and technical qualifications for a
given task seem better than those of available Puerto Ricans
f or the purposes of research and fact-finding.

The American consultants receive salaries somewhat com-
mensurate with those they would have earned on the main-
land, which are higher than those paid to Puerto Ricans. But
many of them stay on the island, identified with its affairs,
year after year, doing exceUent work and making valuable
contributions, while wondering increasingly as time passes
why they can never achieve true integration into the Puerto
Rican society and government to which they are devoting a
large part of their lives and energies. Whether they like it or
not, nearly all of them remain "consultants," which means
that they have only temporary status in the government.

"We are mistresses/' said one such consultant who had

Neither Radical nor Conservative e 161

done Invaluable work for the Commonwealth and was pre-
pared to spend his life in Puerto Rico. "We enjoy good pay
and much affection, but we can never hope to be fully ac-
cepted in the official family/'

The government's various guiding policies, discussed in
succeeding chapters, have been formulated and enunciated
by Munoz Marfn again and again. For instance, it is not
Puerto Rico's policy to industrialize on an economic founda-
tion of permanent cheap labor, to subscribe to the long-es-
tablished, though usually unspoken, doctrine that "wealth
must paradoxically be founded on hunger ." The policy is to
raise wages, and with them standards of living, as rapidly
as circumstances permit, and to aim at 1975 as the year
when the latter will correspond to those that prevailed in the
United States in 1955. It is not Puerto Rico's policy to open
new factories at the expense of old ones in the States, to de-
prive U.S. workers of jobs in order to create payrolls for
Puerto Ricans. In his legislative message of 1952 he said:
*The economy of the United States generates more than
twenty-five billion dollars of new capital each year. Out of
this new and enormous capital wealth Puerto Rico is legit-
imately seeking an investment of thirty or forty million dol-
lars of new capital a year I repeat, of new capital, not
transferred capital. The American citizens living in Puerto
Rico comprise one and one-half per cent of the population of
the United States. And our industrial plan calls for less than
one fifth of one per cent of the new capital generated, not
without the modest collaboration of Puerto Rico, by the
American economic system every year. It would seem clear
that, as good citizens, we need have no fear that the indus-
trial system of the United States is in danger of destruction
at the hands of Puerto Rico,"

Addressing himself to those who maintain that Puerto
Rico's current successes are due solely to unprecedented
showers of federal gold and to the system under which the

162 c PUERTO Rico

island makes no financial contributions to the federal treas-
ury, he said in 1952 that federal grants in aid on the island
are relatively small and are not "the decisive factor in the
economic struggle of our people/' In the same speech he be-
gan to discuss the possibility of soon contributing more than
formerly to the treasury of the United States. "A large factor
[in the economic struggle] is that Puerto Rico is a part of the
American Union and does not contribute to the Federal
Treasury and to the running expenses of the Union. Ob-
viously the right to be a part of a union of peoples and states
without paying a proportionate share of the common ex-
penses involved cannot be maintained as a principle. The
respectable principle is that those who can pay should pay
their share into the common treasury. There is also the prin-
ciple that great associations help, during the period when
help is required, those members of the association that can-
not at the time pay their proportionate share. This is a great
principle, a profoundly Christian and civilized principle,
which in our case is based on common citizenship. There is
another great principle that no taxes should be collected
from people who do not have adequate representation in the
bodies levying the taxes.

"If we take these three principles together, the possible
future development of our people emerges rather clearly.
Puerto Rico ought to pay its share into the Federal Treasury
as soon as it is in an economic position to do so, in the same
way that it is now contributing morally to the good demo-
cratic reputation of the Union. It would, however, be un-
Christian, uneconomic, un-American, and extremely foolish
to exact such a contribution to the Federal Treasury if that
were to mean aggravating instead of ameliorating poverty,
surrendering health to disease, closing instead of opening
schools, lowering instead of improving standards of living,
increasing instead of decreasing unemployment, and aban-
doning hope to desperation. But a day will come when this

Neither Radical nor Conservative 163

will not be so. And when that day arrives we ought not to
wait until we are asked to share in the expense; we should
rather be the ones to propose the sharing and to pay for it
ourselves in the exercise of our own democratic authority
and our own great responsibility as members, in a new way,
of a great Union."

Such statements and sentiments form the guiding phi-
losophy of a society that is now becoming so famous through-
out Latin America that President Prado of Peru, when I in-
troduced myself to him in 1958 as having come from Puerto
Rico, exclaimed almost involuntarily: "Que pais de mara-
-villas! What a land of wonders!" But it is in the political
field that Munoz is today becoming even better known every-
where south of the Rio Grande. He is widely regarded, and
often acts as the head of a Latin-American state, rather than
as the governor of a part of the North American Union,
which is insignificant in area as well as population. While
many Latin Americans still cling doggedly to the old idea
that Puerto Rico, not being a sovereign nation, must still be
an exploited colony, the significance of the island's present
relationship with Washington has begun to dawn on an in-
creasing number. Indeed, more and more Latin Americans
are coining to recognize the governor of Puerto Rico as a
truly Latin-American leader and as one of the three out-
standing such leaders for a democratic, prosperous future
Hemisphere. The others are Romulo Betancourt, Venezuela's
present President, and Jose Figueres, former President of
Costa Rica, both of whom are close friends of Munoz.

United States policy in Latin America is now beginning to
show Puerto Rico's influence. On March 10, 1958, in re-
sponse to an official invitation, Munoz Marin addressed the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He mentioned the fact
that extreme nationalism is today waning in Latin America,
though also kept alive by the dictators. ". . . The more au-
thoritarian the government/' he said, "the more nationalistic

164 c PUERTO Rico

its behavior/' He talked about the "natural spirit of democ-
racy and freedom that all Hispanic and Iberian people pos-
sess/' lamented the fact that too often "it is throttled into
temporary voicelessness by ambitious and unscrupulous
leaders/* and rejoiced that "recently it has been very much
in the ascendancy," He urged the United States "to encour-
age this inherent will toward free institutions" and to become
cooler than they were formerly toward dictators, and warmer
than they were formerly toward the Latin peoples' current
titanic struggle for democracy. "I do not mean/' he said, "that
the United States should intervene in the internal affairs of
any Latin-American country, or that it should decide for its
neighbors what form of government they shall have. This,
of course, would not be proper, nor be to the best interests of
the United States. It is a matter of degree, and the degree is
most important. Nobody can deny this country the right to
exercise its own freedom to determine and demonstrate what
neighbors it feels enthusiastic about and what neighbors are
subject to a minimum amenity. When you give equal con-
sideration to dictators and tyrants as to proven democrats
you cannot help but discourage democracy."

In the same talk he urged a stepping up of economic aid
in the Hemisphere for the purpose of "reasonably diminish-
ing the tremendous gap between the standards of living in
the United States and those prevailing over enormous areas
of Latin America/* Such a program, he said, would be im-
portant even if the Soviet Union did not exist. He pointed
out the dangers in taking Latin America so for granted that
much more United States aid is given to countries near the
Soviet Union than to those near the United States. He urged
the further lowering of trade barriers within the Western
Hemisphere, and said that "the great and difficult idea of a
Latin-American common market or of regional common
markets leaping as many political boundaries as possible de-
serves and needs greater support from the United States/*

Neither Radical nor Conservative e 165

He also urged the United States not to tie too many strings
on the economic aid it may give others, not to insist too
strongly that the development resulting from such aid fol-
low doctrinaire capitalistic patterns. "Don't declare either
public or private initiative sacred, but only freedom. Every
society has its own convictions, conditions, prejudices and
conclusions about what type of development belongs in each
sphere, or what individual undertakings belong in each.
. . . It is of paramount importance that the United States
or the developed Western powers avoid seeming to try to ram
a doctrine down the throats of those who wish to receive
their aid."

Similar sentiments, especially the one about being cooler
to dictators and friendlier to democracy, were voiced in 1958
by Vice-President Nixon on his return from his all but disas-
trous tour of South America, and by Dr. Milton Eisenhower
after his fact-finding tour of Central America. It was no
mere accident, however, that after he left Venezuela and be-
fore he returned to Washington, Nixon spent the better part
of a night talking to Governor Munoz Marln in San Juan.
Nor can the fact that Milton Eisenhower's official recom-
mendations closely paralleled Munoz's expressed thoughts
be dissociated entirely from the fact that the President's
brother, before returning to the States from his Central
American tour, was an honored guest of the Commonwealth
of Puerto Rico at the July 25 celebration of 1958, and spent
some days as a house guest in San Juan's executive mansion.

It would be too much to claim that Munoz Marfn and
Puerto Rico are actually leading" Latin America in the pres-
ent struggle for democracy, a better material life, and closer
hemispheral unity. That struggle is a regional part of the
entire world's momentous modern renaissance, and would
take place even if Puerto Rico had never existed. What is
true is that Puerto Rico's current transformation is part and
symptom of that struggle, that an understanding of Puerto

i66 c PUERTO Rico

Rico leads to an understanding of the aspirations of people
everywhere, including Latin America, and that Puerto Rico
has a leader and a governor who, as a literate, vocal, sensi-
tive poet, expresses those aspirations perhaps as well as any
man in today's world.

11

Agriculture

THE problem of latifundia, too much land in the hands of
too few people, has played a powerful role in most modern
revolutions. Henry VIII faced the problem in his own way,
as did Mexico's Juarez. Latifundia was the basic motivation
for the uprisings of Haitian slaves and Irish rebels, and for
Denmark's social reconstruction of a century ago. It eased
the way of the Chinese Communists when they finally took
over their country, and is today one of Fidel Castro's press-
ing problems in Cuba.

Puerto Rico's agrarian problem of large, absentee-owned
sugar estates was in 1940 regarded as the most urgent faced
by the Popular Democratic party, and the enforcement of
the Five-Hundred-Acre Law was said to be the sine qua non
for effective social reform.

Forty years after the passage of that federal law, fifty-one
corporations were operating 249,000 acres of the island's
best lands an average of 5,000 acres each. One corporation,
the Eastern Puerto Rico Sugar Company, held almost 55,000
acres, or more than a hundred times its legal limits.

Congress had added the Five-Hundred-Acre Law to the

i68 c PUERTO Ptico

first organic act to the tune of oratory, expressing the fear
that U.S. corporations might otherwise come to own all the
valuable land on our newly acquired island, reducing the
condition of the population to one of "absolute servitude.'"
It seems, however, as stated in Chapter 13, that the farm
lobby also had something to do with the matter, hoping that
the Five-Hundred-Acre Law would protect the American beet-
sugar industry against the rise of a new cane-sugar rival in
Puerto Rico. Whatever its real aims, the law failed to achieve
them. Having no teeth, providing no penalties for infrac-
tions, it was ignored for four decades. A powerful cane-sugar
business did grow up in Puerto Rico; the island's population
was reduced to absolute servitude; the first job of the Popular
Democratic party after achieving power was to remedy that
condition by breaking up the large estates. More difficult,
however, was the task of deciding what to do with the land
after that.

The modern dilemma in land tenure encountered espe-
cially in sugar is this : social justice may seem to demand
that the available land be divided as equitably as possible,,
among as many people as possible which means in small
lots. Industrial efficiency, however, the use of heavy ma*
chinery and of expensive mills, demands that it be worked
in large parcels. That, in a nutshell, is the basic agricultural
problem of all "crowded" countries. A landed peasantry with
small holdings, smaller capital resources, and no credit at
the bank might for a time be able to eke out a bare sub-
sistence, but this "Haitianization" would degenerate into
utter misery as the population grew, the land became poorer,
and the peasants, at the mercy of more powerful economic
forces, eventually again lost even what little land they had.

A co-operative movement similar to those in Denmark and
Mexico would seem to be the answer. But the creation of a
strong, smoothly running co-operative movement requires
years of hard and patient work, with many dangerous set-
backs. In 1941 the co-operative idea had not yet been suffi-

Agriculture c 169

ciently entrenched in Puerto Rico to be trusted with the task
of taking over an important share of the main branch of the
island's economy. The failure of only one crop would have
spelled disaster. Hence Munoz's ingenious land law provided
for acquisition of land by the government itself, to be used
in various ways. Some of the land was to be incorporated in
proportional profit farms owned and worked by the govern-
ment to produce sugar cane and perhaps other cash crops;
some was to be sold to small farmers in lots of up to twenty-
five acres; more, while owned by the government, was to be
given in usufruct, in small home parcels, to landless agricul-
tural laborers who might, as a result, become identified with
the soil. Areas that were relatively useless for other purposes
were to be turned over to the insular forestry or conservation
services. In addition, the Land Authority was given the
power to acquire swampy and barren lands and to engage
in reclamation projects for the purpose of adding to the
island's arable areas.

At present (1959) the Land Authority holds 86,000 acres
of land, of which about 9,000 are, for topographic and other
reasons, not suited for cultivation, and of which 50,000 are
under intense cultivation, largely in sugar cane. The govern-
ment also operates two sugar mills. There has been no press-
ing need to condemn and buy all the sugar lands held in
violation of the Five-Hundred-Acre Law. The fact that the
government has demonstrated its power to acquire such land
when necessary, and to work it efficiently, is enough to as-
sure both workers and planters a fair deal in the industry
and to keep the sugar industry out of Puerto Rican politics.
Under those conditions the government can use its available
funds for purposes other, and more pressing, than that of
acquiring more land.

There are today seventy-one government farms, operated
on a profit-sharing basis. Their managers share in the profits
and also receive wages. The thousands of workers receive
basic wages as prescribed by law, plus shares of the profits,

170 c PUERTO Rico

distributed in proportion to the hours worked during any one
season; at times and on some farms, these profit bonuses
have amounted to more than 15 per cent of the wages
earned. But the scheme has not always worked in a Utopian
fashion.

The Land Authority, for instance, has never had an easy
time in its labor relations. Its system of sharing profits is just
and is socially advanced, but the fact remains that govern-
ment-operated enterprises are peculiarly susceptible to labor
troubles. Moreover, the Authority was plagued from the
start by the modern dilemma between creating more jobs
and achieving the kind of efficiency that results in techno-
logical unemployment. In the social revolution's early days
labor regarded the proportional profit farms as a means for
taking up the unemployment slack; all steps toward the
mechanization that is essential if Puerto Rico's sugar indus-
try is to survive in competition with the world's were re-
sented bitterly and were often fought by strikes in the fields
or in the mills. There are indications that some of those
strikes were financed by the private sugar interests, whose
mills were sure to get the business when the government's
were idle.

The situation will be eased as Puerto Rico succeeds in
creating more jobs in all the branches of its economy. Mean-
while, labor education is being pushed as rapidly as possible,
and Puerto Rico has attracted world attention for its efforts
to create a body of agrarian workers, rooted to the soil and
replacing the former landless, sporadic day laborers.

Since the program's inception, under Title VI of the land
law, over 900 farms have been sold on easy terms for a total
of $1,500,000 to small farmers who receive help from vari-
ous insular agencies for the purpose of getting on their feet
as independent agricultural producers. At the same time,
under Title V no fewer than 50,000 small parcels of land,
now used by a total population of more than 300,000, have
been given in usufruct as home plots to formerly landless

Agriculture c 171

agricultural wage earners; the former company towns are
being replaced as rapidly as possible by communities of

rooted home owners. These axe the famous agregados

squatters. They own their houses indeed, they must have
such houses and live in them within four months after ac-
quiring the plots but title to the land is retained by the gov-
ernment in order to prevent the program's defeat through
a wave of real-estate speculation.

The settlers are grouped in well-planned villages to facili-
tate the provision of electricity, water, and education, and
the fostering, by means of co-operatives and community pro-
grams, of an integrated community spirit. Once the village
has been laid out and planned, the land being divided into
parcels of about half an acre, with plenty of room for rec-
reation grounds, churches (both Catholic and Protestant),
a school, a co-operative store, and the like, all those eligible
to receive lots acquire their specific plots of ground by draw-
ing numbers out of a hat, after listening for some hours to
justified and extremely convincing speeches about what a
fine government they have. What happens next, however,
is often the creation of a new rural slum, as the poor don't
have money for building good houses.

However, after the slum has existed long enough for its
inhabitants to have shaken together for group decisions and
group action, the government, by means of Agriculture's
"Social Programs Administration,'' proposes that it rebuild
itself through the famous program of aided-self-help hous-
ing, which creates new rural homes of concrete attractive,
hurricane-proof, fire-proof, vermin-proof, and speculator-
proof at a cost of about $300 each. Other communities, not
created by the government, can also at their request receive
aid toward the construction of such houses. The government
provides construction materials at cost, plus forms, plans,
cement mixers, and technical supervision. The future owner,
his family, his neighbors, and their families and some-
times even neighbors who are themselves not eligible for

172 c PUERTO Rico

such housing, but who want the right to use the new house
as a shelter in case of hurricane then build the house them-
selves at no pay.

An example of this group action is the '"William Fuertes"
community on the north coast, which was inaugurated April
10, 1959. It was the isoth such community to be created
through the aided-self-help program, and brought the total
number of houses up to 4,593, with 1,566 still under
construction. The cost per house in that community was
$348,24; the home owners paid down $20 each and are
paying off the remainder without interest at the rate of
$2.74 monthly.

After the new settlers have moved into their homes, the
Social Programs Administration works with them constantly
to foster mutual aid and self-help.

Co-operative stores spring up, replacing the company
stores at which the sugar workers had formerly done most
of their trading; credit unions provide lasting power over
the dead season; where formerly the sugar companies had
discharged workers for daring to plant even a few miserable
stalks of corn in their front yards, individual or community
subsistence gardens axe encouraged, planned, planted, and
worked with the best technical help available from the De-
partment of Agriculture. Home handicrafts are fostered, for
extra income, often in collaboration with continental indus-
tries. If the community lacks a road, it is encouraged to build
one by community action and with government help. Some
of these new settlements have built community centers,
school lunchrooms for their children, milk stations, and
rural libraries.

The Social Programs Administration of the Department
of Agriculture and Commerce, and the Division of Commu-
nity Education of the Department of Education, described
in Chapter 15, are among the most vital and important
new agencies created by the government. The hundreds of
Point IV visitors who go to the island annually, from coun-

Agriculture c 173

tries that have Puerto Rico's basic problem of small income
with which to meet large needs for social improvement, are
almost invariably impressed by their work and carry their
lessons back to such places as India, Indonesia, and various
parts of Africa and Latin America. A number of Caribbean
countries have adopted Puerto Rico's program of aided-self-
help housing and have at times borrowed Puerto Rican tech-
nicians for the purpose.

While the Land Authority got under way because co-
operatives in the early years could not be trusted to keep the
sugar industry going efficiently, the co-operative movement
itself, fostered by government action, has now also matured
to a point of real significance in the island's life and econ-
omy. In the early days everybody with a good idea and some
energy began to organize co-operatives. The federal relief
organization and its succeeding PRRA gave much thought,
effort, and money to fostering the movement. In 1935 and
1936 I was myself quite busy, with microphone and type-
writer, pounding away at the Rochedale idea and its social
significance; and also gaining a reputation in some circles
as a dangerous radical. In 1936 a few of us obtained
$100,000 from the federal government and used it to found
a "self -help-corporation" to organize, finance, and guide co-
operatives. To my delighted surprise I found it still in exist-
ence in 1959, still doing business, though with capital re-
sources that are somewhat shrunken.

Today the Commonwealth government is furthering the
movement as energetically as possible through one or-
ganization the Co-operative Development Administration
which is backed financially by the autonomous Co-opera-
tive Development Bank. While the university, in its agri-
cultural extension service, also has a section devoted to
co-operatives, it works closely with the Development Ad-
ministration.

Some figures released by that administration suffice to
show the movement's growth. In 1949 there were 119 co-

174 c PUERTO Rico

operatives in the island, with 42,014 members, doing a total
business of $23,128,400 annually. In 1958, 312 organiza-
tions, with 113,883 members, did a business of $55,254,900.
These axe divided into five general classes, viz: agricultural
co-operatives to give farmers group strength in such things
as purchasing and marketing; consumers' co-operatives ;
credit unions; housing co-operatives ; and industrial and
other organizations. The growth of the credit-union idea is
significant in Puerto Rico's financial life; it indicates the
growth of savings, which is in turn an index of the increase
in capital available for development. In 1949, 33 credit
unions had 5,000 members and did a business of $403,400;
1958 saw 172 credit unions, with 58,184 members, doing a
business of more than $15,000,000.

Again and again I have had the stimulating experience
of taking foreign visitors from Ethiopia, Ghana, Jordan,
etc. to a newly created settlement of $300 houses and of
being welcomed with an abiding pride by the inhabitants,
who not only insisted on showing the visitors through their
new homes, but also talked with deep satisfaction about
having not only their own store, but even their own "bank.**

The consumers' co-operatives, of which there were 54 in
1949, with 6,900 members, numbered 96 in 1958, with
13,097 members., doing an annual business of $7,807,500.
In 1952 they began to be organized into a federation for
group strength in buying, etc. In 1958, 73 of them belonged
to the federation, which in that year did a business of nearly
$4,000,000. Several co-operative supermarkets have in re-
cent years been established in various cities, and more are
being planned.

All that is encouraging, but still not enough. There are
still too many people, in the government and in private life,
who actively resist the co-operative movement as a kind of
"creeping socialism" that must be fought or impeded on
doctrinaire grounds. But Puerto Rico is a small, poor coun-
try. There are signs, at least in its agricultural life, that it

Agriculture a 175

will not reach the full flowering of its development unless it
also absorbs the lesson once learned by the small and for-
merly poor Scandinavian countries: co-operation, however
it may be borrowed from socialism's bag of techniques, must
become a very way of life, integrated in the national mores
as one of several essential means by which capitalism can
and must save itself in small, poor countries.

The spread of supermarkets is a new phenomenon of the
new Puerto Rico and may eventually have important influ-
ences on the island's agriculture by providing large, busi-
nesslike markets for agricultural products. But the farmers
will themselves have to learn much before many of them
can take advantage of such markets. The supermarkets de-
mand dependable sources of food products, delivered on
time and in the quantities needed, graded as to quality and
packaged according to modern standards. An occasional
Puerto Rican farmer has been sufficiently alert to meet those
requirements; many lack the needed capital and means of
transportation; others merely complain that the supermar-
kets import too many of their purchases from the continent.

Although good progress has been made in land distribu-
tion, Puerto Rico's agriculture has lagged far behind other
branches of the economy in the kind of modernization that
spells maximum or optimum production. The island's lead-
ers realize that the land is a productive machine that must
be put to its most efficient use if it is to serve well the society
depending on it, but it is far easier to start from scratch
in manufacturing build factories and train people to run
them well than to unscramble the heritage of centuries
in agriculture, the heritage of scrambled tenure, inefficient
marketing, undue profiteering, wasteful farming methods.
Writing in American Forests, October 1958, Monroe Bush
says: "Puerto Rico's two million acres have been so mis-
managed through 300 years of desperate subsistence agri-
culture that today only 300,000 acres are undamaged by
erosion/'

176 c PUERTO Rico

The U. S. Soil Conservation Service, according to Harvey
Perloff in his book Puerto Rico's Economic Future, has
pointed out that "only some 845,000 acres out of the island's
total of about 2,103,000 acres of soil areas are well adapted
to a permanent agriculture and that most of this land re-
quires complex or intensive soil conservation practices if
production is to be sustained." Perloff goes on to say that as
of 1949 about 1,000,000 acres were actually in crops, and
therefore Puerto Rico in mid-1949 had 2.2 persons for every
acre of tillable soil. "This compares with about three acres
per person in the United States a highly industrialized
country with much less dependence on agriculture."

The statement, however, is apt to be misleadingly pessi-
mistic unless, as Puerto Rico's planners are now doing, one
substitutes in one's thinking the term "productive use" for
"permanent agriculture." Pastures, orchards, and forests are
also productive and can, in one way or another, be made
profitable for their owners and the society. The urgent task
is to improve drastically the agricultural productivity of
every square foot of land that is not needed for cities, roads,
factories, and the like. But that requires a hard new look at
existing government policies, tacit or expressed. Always the
natural urge to get people "back to the land," to create a class
of noble peasants, to use the rural land areas as reservoirs
for surplus labor and as means for sustaining the otherwise
unemployed, is in conflict with the inexorable need for mod-
ernizing agricultural production, for raising the rural popu-
lation's living standard, for reducing the island's present
enormous imports of foods from countries with more effi-
cient agricultural and distribution plants.

The South American nations that are emerging today are
in that respect better off. The six Amazonian nations, for
instance, are discovering that they own among them a vast,
rich frontier region which is almost as large as the United
States and which has throughout the centuries been left as

Agriculture c 177

a land of social-economic vacuum in the heart of the conti-
nent. They have physical room for expansion, and today they
are energetically building roads into it and planning projects
to expand their economies and absorb "surplus" populations.
Puerto Rico's frontier lies in the realm of technology; its
pioneering consists of making every bit of available land
produce its maximum.

While there is a never ending effort toward diversification,
sugar is still the island's predominant crop and even its one
outstanding industry, producing for the United States mar-
ket under quota regulations. The season of 1958 saw 30
mills grinding cane, employing 7,000 workers, and produc-
ing a total of 922,908 tons of raw sugar and 229,154 tons
of refined. More than 300,000 acres were harvested to cane,
and 55,000 workers were employed as field hands. Sugar is
an industrialized crop and, in effect, a weed that requires
little care and needs to be replanted only every five years or
so. It yields a relatively high return per acre. Financial
credit is available to sugar planters because they have mills
standing by to receive their harvests, and an assured market
within the quota system.

One of Puerto Rico's main agricultural problems is that
of industrializing other crops, of building canneries and
other processing plants plus distribution systems for them
which assure markets both at home and abroad. Much
of the long-established, crude subsistence agriculture still
exists, but is doomed because it cannot compete with more
efficient production elsewhere.

But now, suddenly, sugar has itself suffered a slump and
seems well on the way to being another "sick" crop that in
recent years has failed to produce the maximum tonnages
established by federal quotas. Not only have there been some
climatic afflictions a hurricane, a year of drought, a year of
floods but it is also increasingly evident that Puerto Rico's
sugar industry must again "modernize" if it is to regain its

178 c PUERTO Rico

economic health. It must become more efficient, cut costs,
make every acre produce more than formerly, improve its
milling and hauling.

The first drastic change was from bag-shipping to bulk.
Until very recently the shippers bought jute bags and sent
their loads to the general cargo piers to be handled by steve-
dores. Then four bulk-loading piers were built at convenient
locations, while the mills erected great warehouses in which
to pile their raw sugar while waiting for the trucks to haul
it away. Today the sugar is handled like sand; conveyor belts
carry it onto the trucks, into the warehouses at the piers,
from the warehouses into the ships. The system effects great
savings, but also much apprehension among the managers
of sea ports that had been built in large part for handling
bagged sugar and suddenly saw their trade dwindling down
to nothing in that important category. Naturally it also re-
sults in much restlessness among the stevedores who are
thrown out of work.

Technology demands that the cane be ground within
twenty-four hours after being cut, lest it lose an undue
amount of its sugar content. Traditionally, therefore, the
Puerto Rican crop has been shipped in a semi-refined con-
dition, to be refined on the mainland. When a Puerto Rican
producer some twenty-five years ago built a modern re-
finery, the howl from mainland refiners was considerable.
Washington then made a ruling that only a small part of
the island's sugar quota, 126,033 tons out of a total that was
set at 910,000 tons in 1934 (and increased to 136,113 tons
for sale in the States, in 1958) could be shipped in a refined
state; the rest must be shipped in the crude state for the
purpose of protecting established mainland refineries. That
remnant of economic colonialism irked the Puerto Ricans.
They claimed that if all the sugar produced on the island
could be refined there, the Puerto Rican economy would gain
by about $12,000,000 annually, and about 8,000 men would
find new employment in the refining alone. Pleas and law-

Agriculture 179

suits did no good; the limitations on local refining were up-
held. But in 1958 one began to hear disturbing talk from
the industry that local refining has become uneconomic and
that all refining may soon be moved to the mainland, thus
throwing more workers out of jobs.

Meanwhile, it is also becoming evident that the entire
business of planting and harvesting cane must be over-
hauled for greater efficiency, must be mechanized. That
means eliminating the hillside plantings and bringing all
the cane down to the coastal plains, where machinery can
be effective, and planting new kinds of cane which give a
higher yield.

Pineapples were a minor Puerto Bican crop twenty years
ago. They were excellent large, juicy, and sweet but were
not suited for canning. They had to be shipped raw, which
meant that they were picked green, lost quality enroute, and
were marketed in New York in a precarious fashion. But it
was obvious that if properly handled, pineapples could be-
come a major item in the island's agriculture. Without com-
peting with sugar for the same land, they yield a return per
acre comparable to that of sugar, while employing more
men. Hence the Land Authority, some years ago, sent to
Hawaii for the types of pineapples best suited for canning.
When the Hawaiian interests refused to help, Puerto Rico
turned to Mexico and obtained enough pineapples for an
acre or two. Agronomists devised a method whereby each
fruit could be made to produce eight or nine new plants, in-
stead of the two that result from the methods of propagation
used formerly. The pineapples were planted on government
land, nursed along, multiplied, replanted, until there were
enough to support a small cannery.

The canned products of the government's first pilot plant
were so excellent that they commanded top prices in New
York. The work of propagating pineapples on government
land was pushed at top speed, while cuttings also began to
be distributed to a large number of individual farmers who

180 c PUERTO Rico

could now, with a cannery near to absorb their crops, afford
to produce the fruit. The Land Authority abandoned its first
cannery and built a new one at a cost of more than $4,000,-
ooo the world's largest. It is today operated by the govern-
ment. Under contracts with private distributors, it produces
a number of commercial brands of canned pineapples which
compete in the market, though they all come from the same
fields and are cooked in the same vats. As yet, the plant is
far from operating at capacity. However, the work of propa-
gating pineapples, of increasing the acreages devoted to
them, goes forward energetically, and more are available
for canning every year. The government's policy in a case
of that kind is that it is at any time willing to sell the cannery
to private interests after it has begun to show a profit and
a customer comes forward.

Dairy farming, which hardly existed in Puerto Rico before
1940, now ranks second to sugar in economic importance.
Plants for treating and bottling milk have been built in re-
cent decades; breeds of cows new to Puerto Rico have been
and are being imported; new grasses are tested, propagated,
and disseminated. The spread of dairying is eloquent testi-
mony to the rising standard of living. In 1940, when the is-
land's per-capita average annual income was $121, few
people could afford to buy fresh milk; today, with a per-
capita income of nearly $500, local demands and purchasing
power, plus the fact that many thousands of consumers now
have refrigerators, provide incentives for the investment of
millions of dollars in dairy farms and dairies.

Nevertheless, dairy farming still leaves much to be de-
sired. Denmark is a dairy state in which a good economic
herd, capable of yielding its owner a good living, consists
of about a dozen cows. Puerto Rico's basic economic unit is
closer to a hundred cows; dairying is there the game of
well-to-do people who have much land and capital.

The two countries differ in climate and soils, though the
Danes, having been longer in the business than have the

Agriculture c 181

Puerto Ricans, also understand dairying better. The real se-
cret of Denmark's success, however, is found in the out-
standing success of that country's co-operative movement.

For example, Denmark has more than 1,000 modern
plants, co-operatively owned, for making world-famous but-
ters and cheeses. In Puerto Rico, where there is a seasonal
"surplus" of milk that cannot be sold fresh in bottles, dairy-
men have so far failed in their efforts to organize a co-
operative for the purpose of bunding and managing just one
such plant and a small one at that. Evidently they would
rather pour their surplus milk away than accept the prices
at which a plant for making butter and cheese can make
a profit. While the dairy farmers insist on receiving prices'
that are higher than the United States's average, wasting
their milk in the effort to sustain those prices, Puerto Rico
must import millions of dollars worth of butter and cheese
annually from the mainland United States.

At present, too, $30,000,000 worth of meat and meat
products are imported annually, draining the economy. One
of several reasons is that there is no modern slaughter house
on the island. Only now, in 1959, is such a slaughter house
being built by the government, to be operated, under con-
tract by a private concern. While reducing the export of
monies for imported meats, it will also spur the dairy and
beef -cattle industries and put to productive use many hilltop
lands that are now being eroded, but will soon be covered
with forage grasses. The Water Resources Authority, whose
hydroelectric reservoirs are now filling with silt, washed
down from the hills, has a direct interest in the establish-
ment of a modern abattoir. Until recently, however, it was
an economic impossibility. Not only were the island's people
too poor to buy fresh meat, but most of them had no re-
frigerators, while the rural poor lacked even electricity. To-
day, with the purchasing power rising steadily, the Water
Resources Authority is making so much progress with its
program of rural electrification that it will not be long be-

182 PUERTO Rico

fore every home in Puerto Rico has electricity at low cost.

Before deciding to build and operate the government-
owned slaughter house, the Puerto Ricans looked far and
wide for private capital for the venture. But the vicious
circle that is so often encountered in developing societies,
demanding "socialist" action, and that forced the construc-
tion of the pineapple cannery with public funds, is also at
work in this situation. Private enterprise will not build the
slaughter house because not enough meat is available lo-
cally to keep it going; dairy farmers and the few people who
produce beef cattle will not improve their lands and increase
their herds unless and until they see a sure market for their
beef in the form of a modern processing plant. Again and
again Puerto Rico has discovered that the first venture
capital must in a situation of that kind come from the gov-
ernment even though the plant may later be sold to private
interests.

A few decades ago the island's principal crops, after
sugar, were coffee, citrus fruits, tobacco, and the foodstuffs
that were grown largely on a subsistence basis. The commer-
cial growing of citrus fruits was strangled by competition
from Texas and received its death blow during World War
II, when ships were not available for transporting the crops
to the mainland. Coffee, produced in the western mountain
regions, has always been a typically Puerto Rican crop, pro-
duced by Puerto Ricans on lands owned by Puerto Ricans,
left alone by absentee capital. Until about 1917 Puerto Rican
coffee was cherished in Europe, where it commanded high
prices. As indicated in Chapter 3, however, that did not
mean that living conditions in the coffee Mis were corre-
spondingly good. They were terrible, and the coffee regions
are today Puerto Rico's most stricken areas and the island's
most fertile producers of migrants to New York.

A disastrous hurricane and the disruptions caused by
World War I ruined Puerto Rican coffee as an export crop.
Today it is produced primarily for consumption on the is-

Agriculture 183

land, where it is protected by a special tariff on imported
coffees. Nevertheless, it is still decidedly a sick crop. Hun-
dreds of acres of once flourishing coffee lands have been
abandoned and are reverting to "virgin" forest because it no
longer pays to cultivate and harvest them; their abandon-
ment increases unemployment and accelerates the exodus
of migrants. The remaining coffee plantations, producing
the beans under shade trees, are having a difficult time be-
tween uncertain markets and rising labor costs.

The diagnosticians, as usual, differ widely. Some claim
that coffee, like the anil that was once planted by the early
Spanish settlers, has simply outlived its value as a Puerto
Rican crop and should be replaced by such things as good,
marketable oranges, avocado pears, and cacao. Others say
that a good living can still be made in coffee, on "family-size"
farms where children can be used as cheap labor; what the
large planters think of that idea is not known. Still others
point out that Puerto Rico's methods of producing coffee
remain among the world's least efficient. The island's aver-
age annual yield is about 150 pounds per acre; Hawaii's
growers produce a ton per acre as a result of modern meth-
ods of cultivation coupled with the selection of high-yielding
stock. Puerto Rican technicians have found and tested what
seems to be an excellent high-yield strain of the bean, which
matures in the sun and does not require expensive shade
trees. Its universal adoption could materially increase the
profit per acre, cut labor costs, and release for other uses
at least half, and perhaps three quarters, of the more than
150,000 acres of land that now comprise the world's most
poorly managed coffee plantations. However, it is difficult
to overcome old habits sustained by natural conservatism;
the availability of better beans and better methods, plus an
active government campaign to encourage new plantings,
have to date brought barren results. In the face of financial
uncertainty, the mere fact that it takes a tree of the old type
five years to mature and start bearing, though the new bean

184 i PUERTO Rico

matures somewhat earlier, militates against an energetic re-
planting program.

Puerto Rico imports more than $125,000,000 worth of
foodstuffs annually, while thousands of acres of its lands,
well suited for food production, fail to produce for the local
commercial markets. The problem there is less a lack of
skill and enterprise on the part of the farmers than an ar-
chaic marketing system under which Puerto Rican farmers
cannot hope to compete with their well-organized competi-
tors on the mainland. A farmer may be able to produce the
finest cabbages found anywhere, but if the local produce
market squeezes him down to a ruinously low price, or if
he has to engage in the precarious practice of peddling them
from house to house, he will not go far economically. The
large hotels, the army camps, and the wholesalers find it
better business to order their cabbages, their asparagus, and
their oranges from the well-organized United States market.
The solution to that problem again lies in industrialization
the erection of canning and other processing plants; in
education in such matters as grading for quality; in the crea-
tion and regulation of markets; in the organization of co-
operatives, and in the improvement of agricultural methods.
But meanwhile our cabbage grower, having no dependable
market for his crops, can get no credit for improving his
land and his methods, and may simply have to stand by
while his topsoil is washed away.

The tobacco industry has been helped greatly through the
promotion of cigar factories, one of them the world's largest.
Socially, however, it leaves much to be desired. For instance,
the women who work in the warehouses stripping and grad-
ing the leaves have long received the island's lowest wages
less than thirty cents per hour. The industry maintained
that it could not afford higher wages and has now begun to
mechanize its stripping operations, thereby putting the pro-
duction of cigars on a sounder financial basis while also
accelerating technological unemployment.

Agriculture c 185

One can go on indefinitely listing the things that axe
wrong with Puerto Rico's agriculture. The important thing
to consider, however, is that the Puerto Ricans realize those
wrongs and are doing everything they can to right them.

The island has long been alert to the possibilities of crops
new to Puerto Rico which may, in one way or another, prove
more profitable and less precarious than those now being
raised. At present the acerola cherry, native to Puerto Rico,
inspires much hope and more publicity. Previously regarded
as a weed, it has recently been found to be richer in vitamin
C than is any other known agricultural product. However,
the introduction of new, specialized crops is itself accom-
panied by many economic risks. During the depression the
Federal Relief Administration did excellent work in intro-
ducing vanilla, and helped a number of Puerto Rican farm-
ers to produce that well-paying crop. Vanilla did well for a
time, but is today no longer being produced commercially
on the island, owing to diseases and to fluctuations in the
world market. Some years ago my friend Catesby Jones in-
troduced Indian pepper to Puerto Rico, where it grows very
well, producing large quantities of superior quality. But he
had no sooner made a technical success of growing the very
stuff that Columbus had been looking for in Puerto Rico in
1493, than the world price of Indian pepper dropped so
sharply that the prospects of Puerto Rico's new crop now
look dim.

The Economic Development Administration, well aware
of the crucial tie-up between manufacturing and agriculture,
is making every effort to bring new industries to Puerto
Rico to process agricultural products and so to give farmers
improved markets for their crops.

Out of these various problems, which seem so confused
as to be almost chaotic, there is now developing an agricul-
tural master plan to guide future action, drafted by the
economist Dr. Scott Keyes. The most dramatic part of that
plan, growing out of a study of soils and topography, was

i86 c PUERTO Rico

the division of all the island's agricultural lands into three
general categories, namely, those that are fitted for mech-
anized cultivation; those that are fitted for clean cultivation
by manual methods; and those that, being steep or otherwise
unsuited for the conventional kinds of agriculture, should
be under permanent protective cover. Keyes studied local
problems of agriculture as well as local and export markets,
and drew an idealized, schematic map showing the locations
and areas of lands that should theoretically be devoted to
various crops. Sugar cane, for instance, which today grows
on 360,000 acres, can meet all quota requirements if en-
tirely mechanized and concentrated on approximately 300,-
ooo acres of flat coastal lands. Pineapples, sweet potatoes,
and truck-garden crops are classified as mechanizable and
are given their proper places and areas on Keyes's map of
liypothetical good practices. Some of his dairy cattle, using
a projected total of 125,000 acres, are scattered on the flat
coastal plains where mechanization is possible for the pro-
duction of fodders; some are in the areas of manual produc-
tion on proposed family-sized farms; some are on the steep
hilltops that demand permanent protective cover. The same
is true of swine and poultry. Coffee and fruits are produced
in part in the zones of manual farming, but to a much larger
extent in the "protective-cover" belts. Tobacco, bananas, and
starchy vegetables are shown on the master map as belong-
ing entirely in the zones earmarked for manual cultivation.
The most startling aspect of Keyes's plan is his recom-
mendation that approximately half a million specified acres
be taken out of cultivation and planted to forests. These will
eventually provide the raw materials for a lumbering in-
dustry and related wood-processing plants; in 1956 more
than five million dollars' worth of lumber and wood products
were imported, and the figure climbs steadily. Technical ad-
vances, too, promise to stimulate the island's forestry busi-
ness and thereby lead toward a sound forest policy within
which Keyes's half a million acres today's forest cover

Agriculture c 187

comprises a scant 100,000 acres, or about five per cent of the
total land surface can be profitably forested and managed.
For instance, the yagrume tree grows rapidly and well in
Puerto Rico, but has hitherto been regarded as a useless
weed, a pest. Then a few years ago a company established
a million-dollar sawmill near the city of Ponce, exclusively
for processing yagrume wood, which is light, suited for
many uses for which balsa is used, and well adapted to being
chopped and ground for the various chemical treatments
that now create other products, such as ''synthetic lumber/"
out of natural woods.

The agricultural plan is a symptom of Puerto Rico's grow-
ing sophistication in planning. While it may or may not pro-
duce an eventual scheme for rural zoning, its most immedi-
ate value is found in its guidance of governmental efforts.
For instance, the government's Forest Service now has a
studied plan for its future acquisitions; by the same token,
the Social Programs Administration has warning to be care-
ful not to create new family-sized farms or rural communi-
ties on lands that have been earmarked either for forests or
for intensive mechanized farming.

The Keyes plan will probably not lead to a policy of agri-
cultural zoning by which farmers are told what they may or
may not plant; but it does lay the foundations for concerted
government action along many lines which will eventually
steer Puerto Rico toward a technically, economically, and
socially sound agriculture.

In the American Forests article previously quoted, Monroe
Bush praises the Puerto Rican government for its general
progressive attitudes and for the dramatic progress that it
has brought to the island, but criticizes it for still thinking
of its land problem more in terms of tenure and ownership
than in terms of improved production and financial returns.
He outlines a land policy roughly comparable to Reyes's, but
adds that "it leaves unanswered many pressing questions,
such as what to do with the agriculturally unemployed once

i88 c PUERTO Rico

the island's land is producing income at a rate approaching
its inherent capacity." But he also adds that "a labor surplus
is a problem for the entire economy, which must not and
cannot be resolved by simple recourse to unsound, short-
sighted land-management." He ends his article by saying:
"Staggering as the political problems are in the application
of such a policy, Munoz Marin and his colleagues possess
incredible skill in leading the people toward decisions that
advance the well-being of the whole society. Despite the
narrow limits of the land on this fantastically overpopulated
island, it is to be hoped that the government will find a
proper way to move toward land use compatible with the un-
limited promise which lies before these remarkable people."

12

Battle for Production

WHEN a few of us laid the foundations for systematic plan-
ning in Puerto Rico in the stormy days of the Reconstruc-
tion Administration we put a number of dreams on paper
while more than half suspecting that they were doomed to
remain dreams. Puerto Rico was an agricultural land and
seemed fated to remain one. It might be improved as such
by the curtailment of undue exploitation by the sugar cor-
porations, but it could never aspire to create a healthy econ-
omy based in large measure on manufacturing. To be sure,
we managed to get such manufacturing off to a fair start
by building a cement null, but that was built with federal
money and was therefore a sport, an abnormality of the
depression years.

Why could not Puerto Rico help itself out of its dreadful
dilemma? Why did every local effort to remedy local alls
seem foredoomed to failure? Why, with a certain amount of
local capital available, did Puerto Rico not build factories
to make at home some of the things that were being im-
ported from the continent, thus improving the balance of

c PUERTO Rico

payments and giving local employment? Before the PRRA's
creation, the Federal Relief Administration had studied such
matters and arrived at a numher of dramatic answers be-
sides the obvious one that the sugar interests, wanting to
continue their operations in a reservoir of cheap labor, could
be counted upon to do everything in their power to prevent
rival industries.

One of the island's difficulties was that poor as it was,
it was still the second largest market in the Hemisphere for
American manufactured goods and farm products, the larg-
est being Canada. It was also a place where U.S. manufac-
turers could dump their seconds, thek misfits, their out-
of-style clothing everything they could not sell on the
continent. In those days manufacturers would not stand by
idly while new local industries threatened their profitable
Puerto Rican market.

The various American soap companies, for instance, sold
so much of their product in Puerto Rico that they maintained
twenty-two representatives there. When a Puerto Rican
began to make soap locally, the price of the imported product
dropped to such low levels that the local enterprise was
forced out of business. A Puerto Rican plant for making
candy for local consumption was similarly forced into bank-
ruptcy by the dumping of mainland candies.

It took nothing more than a plan to refine gasoline on the
island to start a price war that reduced the cost of imported
mainland gasoline to fantastically low levels. When the plan
was abandoned, the price of gasoline went up again.

A local plant was erected to manufacture lime near the
town of Fajardo. Immediately the steamship companies re-
duced the freight on imported lime from ten dollars per ton
to three dollars, thus forcing the new plant out of business.

Under such conditions capital had good reason to stay
out of local manufacturing. Puerto Rico seemed doomed to
remain stagnant its people less an agricultural people than
cheap labor in a rural sweatshop of industrialized agricul-

The Battle for Production c 191

ture unable and not permitted to marshal the many skills
that are required for a program of industrialization and di-
versified agriculture.

The conditions described existed not merely in the cut-
throat depression days. As many a colony has discovered,
they were inherent in the exploitative institution of colonial-
ism, One reason why Puerto Rico has been so outstandingly
successful in its industrialization program is that today's
industrial world has entered an era of unprecedented expan-
sion. Investors and manufacturers are today actually search-
ing for new fields of enterprise, as well as new customers
with purchasing power. The erstwhile competitive morality
has undergone drastic changes, and Puerto Rico has been
transformed into "a new American industrial frontier/*

The results, as expressed by statistics, are sensational.
In 1940 the island's gross product was $287,000,000. In
1958 it was $1,286,000,000. In 1940 Puerto Rico's net in-
come from agriculture was $70,000,000, that from manu-
facturinglargely devoted to the processing of sugar, to
the distillation of rum, and to needlework was $27,000,-
ooo. In 1958 agriculture produced a net income of $155,-
000,000, and manufacturing one of $233,000,000. Puerto
Rico is no longer primarily an agricultural country; manu-
facturing began to outstrip farming in 1956 and is today
moving ahead, aided and promoted energetically by the gov-
ernment. In 1940 Puerto Rico's imports, almost entirely from
the United States, totaled $107,000,000; in 1958 the figure
was $728,000,000. During the same period the exports rose
from $92,000,000 to $467,000,000. (The apparently "un-
favorable" balance of trade, with imports exceeding exports
by far, is in this case not unhealthy. Compensating factors
are federal expenditures in Puerto Rico, as for the armed
forces, the post office, and the like. Federal grants in aid,
monies sent to relatives on the island by Puerto Ricans in the
States, and the fact that Puerto Rico does not contribute to
the federal treasury also serve to balance the economy.)

192 c PUERTO Rico

Power

In one sense, as industxialization is intimately and ines-
capably interlocked with the provision of abundant low-cost
electric power, the great effort began almost by accident
as far back as 1908. In that year the insular legislature
created the Puerto Rico Irrigation Service for the purpose of
increasing agricultural production in the island's southeast.
The organization's first project was completed in 1915,
bringing water down from the Carite Reservoir in the moun-
tains and incidentally generating the electricity needed for
running irrigation pumps. The surplus power was wired into
the district's towns and rural areas, which had previously
received nothing at all from private companies; it created
so clamorous a demand and was so effective in the improve-
ment of the living standard that the generation and distribu-
tion of low-cost electric power, in the beginning a by-product
of irrigation, eventually became a major activity of the
government.

Before 1936 a number of Puerto Rican cities were served
with electric power inadequately, poorly, and at high rates
by a few private companies that lacked the means or the
financial incentives for expanding with those cities and had
not the vaguest intentions of expanding into the rural areas,
where the majority of the people hadn't even the money to
buy kerosene for one miserable lamp each. But even then
hydrogenerated government power had begun to prove itself
and its social benefits. Step by legal step, the private com-
panies began to be absorbed by the government, which was
working feverishly to generate ever more power and dis-
tribute it to all parts of the island in an integrated system,
today known as Puerto Rico's "Little T. V. A."

The generation and distribution of electric power at first
exclusively from hydroelectric plants, but now, as virtually

The Battle for Production 193

all the available hydro sites have been developed to capacity,
from a growing number of steam plants burning imported
fuel oil has become an island-wide government service,
administered by the autonomous Water Resources Authority.
There are still those who decry that fact as "creeping social-
ism," inimical to private enterprise. However, the owners
and operators of factories on the island, whose lucrative pri-
vate enterprises are in part made possible and sustained by
government power, do not so decry it, nor do the private en-
terprise manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers of about
$46,000,000 worth of electric machinery and apparatus of
motors, bulbs, neon signs, electric irons, and washing ma-
chines, which were imported in 1958.

When Senator Robert A. Taft visited Puerto Rico in 1943
he was annoyed by the several 150 per cent Americans who
tried to tell him that the government's entry into the power
field was unconstitutional. He didn't believe it. It was a fool-
ish thing to say to an eminent lawyer, to the son of a former
Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court who had previously
as President in 1912 signed the first federal power act ever
passed by Congress. Moreover, while Senator Taft did not
like to see government go into the power business, he agreed
that in Puerto Rico the government hardly had an alterna-
tive.

In 1925 the government generated and sold a little more
than 10,000,000 kilowatt hours. In 1958 the figure was
1,299,000,000, produced in an interlocked island-wide sys-
tem of hydro and steam plants and sold for a gross revenue
of $34,000,000. The 500 new factories that had been estab-
lished with government help by the middle of 1958, giving
employment to 35,000 workers, were attracted by the power
network, and today all of Puerto Rico's cities and towns are
served by it at individual rates that are about half as high as
they were in the days when the government first started the
legal fights to oust the private generating companies.

An important feature of the power program is its constant

194 PUERTO Rico

expansion to reach more of the rural poor those who still
live in small shacks in the hills and who need light to study
by, power for refrigerators, power for electric irons, etc. Dur-
ing the fiscal year 1957-8 alone, lines were built, and the
system extended, to reach more than 10,000 new rural cus-
tomers, whose low rates are in part compensated for by the
slightly higher rates paid by those who can afford them. The
total number of customers in the rural electrification pro-
gram now comes to 140,000. If a man cannot afford to have
his house wired for electricity, which happens often, the
Water Resources Authority pays a contractor to wire it for
him in case he wishes it, and later adds the cost to the cus-
tomer's bills in easy payments stretched over five years.

In addition, the Authority, primarily because it developed
out of the days when public power was a by-product of irri-
gation, helps the island to maintain a relatively high rate of
agricultural production, by operating three government irri-
gation districts with a total area of nearly 57,000 acres,
while the water from some of its dams, after turning tur-
bines, is also used to supply a number of towns with good
drinking water.

Meanwhile, the growth of the power services and the crea-
tion of new steam-generating plants continue dramatically.
Year by year the plans for further growth keep mounting, the
new jobs for Puerto Rican technicians multiply, special train-
ing programs prepare more technicians for better jobs. Now,
too, the Water Resources Authority is dealing with the fed-
eral government for the acquisition of a nuclear power re-
actor for fostering the use of atomic energy to aid the peace-
ful war on hunger and poverty. At the time of the present
writing, economic conditions are not yet right for such use;
the Authority, being an autonomous government agency
with the power to float bond issues and engage in other "pri-
vate" business, must always conduct its operations in a
thoroughly businesslike manner. But the plans exist, person-

The Battle for Production c 195

nel has been trained, the technical research is being done,
and the agency is looking ahead!

Manufacturing

Intellectual leaders who are concerned with today's revolu-
tionary emergence of vast parts of Africa are expressing
much worry over the fact that they can see no way of de-
veloping their countries except through socialism, which has
an evil reputation in the western half of the "Iron Curtain"
world. If they study Puerto Rico's experiences, they will re-
alize that they needn't be too worried always provided that
they don't remain too dogmatic in their thinking. True,
Puerto Rico is one of several proofs that the modern day's
"emerging" societies cannot do their jobs without substantial
borrowings from socialism; but if they borrow too much and
too enthusiastically, within the framework of the capitalistic
world in which they must survive and prosper whether they
like it or not, inevitable circumstances will either suggest or
force workable adjustments with capitalism.

In Puerto Rico, of the five factories that came to be run
by the government on a Socialist basis during the Tugwell
regime, only one that for making cement was a success
from the start. The others f or making glassware, paper and
pulp products, clay products, and shoes gave employment
and in turn helped to support other industries, but they cost
the government money. After Luis Ferre bought all but the
shoe factory and operated them at considerable profit, he
crowed that he had been able to make them go where the
government of the Popular Democratic party had been un-
able to, and that people should therefore vote him into the
governor's job and let him lead Puerto Rico into statehood.

But things weren't that simple. The shoe factory, manu-
facturing footwear for local consumption, was doomed be-

c PUERTO Rico

fore it was built. To be sure, the people of Puerto Rico bought
many shoes, but they bought so many shapes, styles, and
sizes that one factory couldn't supply them all, and so few
of any one shape and style that they couldn't keep a factory
going. The government withdrew from the business and
rented its plant to a continental manufacturer, making
shoes for the vast United States market; he got along quite
well. AH the government plants, too, suffered from the facts
that their wages were determined politically, rather than
economically, and that precisely because they were govern-
ment plants they were peculiarly vulnerable to labor trou-
bles. Relatively high wages were insisted on by the legisla-
ture as an example to other industries, regardless of whether
or not business operations could sustain them. Moreover, as
there was a widespread impression that the government had
gone into manufacturing as a kind of work relief to take up
the unemployment slack, organized labor insisted on much
feather-bedding, went on strikes to support it, and could
count on only feeble opposition from a government that de-
scribed itself as being "of the poor, for the poor," had much
sympathy for organized labor, and included a legislature
with many members who were labor leaders on the side.

Moreover, while it is not too difficult for a government to
manufacture a number of things, the commercial operations
of distribution and selling are much simpler for private
operators than for government. Even during the Tugwell re-
gime the new government realized this and wanted to switch
to tax exemption as a means of attracting private capital.
But Tugwell was against tax exemption and vetoed the bills
providing for it. Not until Tugwell was out and Pinero sat in
the Fortaleza as interim governor could the necessary legal
steps be taken.

Under today's policies exemption of taxes on corporate
profits- which in the States mount to fifty-two per cent, and
in Puerto Rico to thirty-sevenare offered for ten years to
new industries or to new branches of industries established

The Battle for Production 197

in the States. No help of any kind is given to runaway in-
dustries that may close their doors on the continent in order
to open in Puerto Rico. If workers are needed with special
skills, the government will train them at no cost to the in-
vestor, and do much free research and industrial engineer-
ing for which private firms are used on the continent.

Finally, the government provides factory buildings at low
rental, which may eventually be purchased by the tenants.
As experience has shown that most of these factory build-
ings fall into definite categories of size and proportions,
many factories have been, and are being, built in advance of
demand in order to be ready when a prospective tenant
comes along. Their designs and locations are controEed by
the Planning Board, which, by means of its program of ur-
ban planning and zoning, strives to prevent the growth of
industrial slums around the new industries.

While investors are warned that low wages should not be
regarded as an incentive for establishing industries in Puerto
Rico, as it is the government's aim constantly to raise wages,
there can be no question that the wage differential between
the mainland and the island has been, and still is, such an
incentive, which compensates in part for the freight that has
to be paid for shipping raw materials in and finished prod-
ucts out.

The soundness of such policies is attested by the fact that
Puerto Rico today experiences one of the highest investment
rates found in the capitalist world. Investment in new con-
struction, machinery, and equipment has increased from an
annual rate of $29,000,000 in 1940 to $274,000,000 in
1958, and the autonomous, government-owned Development
Bank, now headed by Dr. Rafael Pic6, has played a strong
role in bringing about those conditions. The bank was es-
tablished in 1942, and its powers and responsibilities have
since then been expanded on several occasions. One of its
most important functions is that of making loans to private
investors. Such loans, as for the construction, expansion,

ig8 c PUERTO Rico

and improvement of industrial and commercial buildings,
for the acquisition of machinery and equipment, for the
financing of inventories, and for hotels and other essential
tourist facilities, are made entirely on the bank's evaluation
of the risks involved, whether to large organizations or small,
new or long-established, locally or externally owned, tax
exempt or subject to taxation. In addition, the bank is the
repository of government funds, as well as the government's
fiscal agent in the matter of floating bond issues.

That the government today strives to attract and aid pri-
vate enterprise does not mean that it has abjured its own en-
try, on one basis or another, into the industrial field. In all
developing economies, the vicious circle referred to in Chap-
ter 10 can be broken only by government action. A case in
point is the famous Caribe Hilton Hotel. In 1947 the gov-
ernment not only wanted a first-class hotel in which to house
as well as impress prospective investors, but also planned se-
riously to foster the tourist industry that is today pouring
millions into the economy. The trouble was that tourists
weren't coming because there was no good hotel, and pri-
vate enterprise didn't build such a hotel because the tourists
weren't there to fill it. Therefore, the government spent $7,-
200,000 exactly the same amount the United States once
gave Russia for what is now the forty-ninth state to build
the Caribe Hotel, and later made a contract under which the
Hilton chain would run it in return for one third of the prof-
its. The venture worked astonishingly well and got the pres-
ent tourist industry off to a flying start.

The cannery for pineapples and the slaughter house re-
ferred to in Chapter 10 are other examples of government
action to break that vicious circle.

It might be said that the Puerto Rican government stands
ready at any time to use temporary socialism for the purpose
of strengthening and abetting capitalist development. Mean-
while, the capitalist investors and potential investors who
now flock to the island are almost unanimous in praising the

The Battle for Production c 199

Puerto Rican officials for honesty, hard work, dedication,
and the eagerness to serve. Those who have done business
in other Latin American societies, or even in the United
States, and who come with money for greasing palms and
opening doors, have an immediate and pleasant surprise: no
favors can be bought. Except for occasional petty pilfering
on a municipal level, there is no bribery or other financial
corruption in the government. Having been in close contact
with Puerto Rico since 1935, 1 venture to say that the island
has by far the most consistently honest government in the
Western Hemisphere,

The 500 new factories that were established under that
program by the end of the fiscal year 1957-8, giving employ-
ment to 35,000 workers, attest to the program's success. The

goal, however, is to establish 2,000 new factories by 1975

the target year for attaining a standard of living comparable
to that found in the United States in 1955.

The industries that were attracted in the beginning were
often fly-by-night affairs that took their tax exemption for a
number of years and then either went bankrupt or took their
profits elsewhere. The government's general policy in those
days, as expressed by Teodoro Moscoso, Head of the Eco-
nomic Development Administration, was : "The best industry
for Puerto Rico is any industry. Anyone willing to take a risk
on us will be cordially welcome. A good entrepreneur should
know enough about his own industrial activity to be able to
determine with a reasonable degree of certainty his chances
of success on the island. So far, the mortality rate of our new
industries is considerably lower than that in mainland United
States/' By and large, the statement still holds good; poten-
tial new industries are not turned down because the govern-
ment wants other kinds, or wants them to locate in some
place other than that of their own choice. However, the ex-
perience of years has indicated that certain industries have
better chances for success than do others. Much of the old
home-needlework industry has in recent years left the island

200 c PUERTO Rico

because of rising wages, and has sought greener sweatshop
pastures in Japan and the Philippines. (It is interesting to
note that some of the operators who made the move have
come to regret it. Philippine workers, they complain, accept
lower wages, but the Puerto Ricans know much more about
skilled, honest, and conscientious work. )

Heavy industries such as rolling mills for steel are, of
course, out of the question for a country with no resources
to speak of. Nevertheless, in addition to twenty-nine sugar
mills, Puerto Rico's list of relatively heavy industries is im-
pressive. It includes two cement mills, two petroleum refin-
eries, a paper mill, an ammonium plant, a general iron
works, a flour and feed mill, a glass factory, and two clay
refractories. Certain other industries have proved so suc-
cessful that they have begun to give definite character to the
program. The brassiere, the baby pants and clothing indus-
tries as apart from sweatshop work are well established,
as are shoes and plastics.

"The growth of industries processing metal articles, ma-
chinery and instruments/' says the Economic Development
Administration's report for 1957-8, "is significant and en-
couraging, as is the high employment potential of such fac-
tories. These are light industries which require more work-
ers and higher capitalization per worker than does the
clothing industry. . . . They can pay higher wages than can
clothing, and are in a far better position vis-&-vis competi-
tion from the southern states." Accordingly, the Adminis-
tration has undertaken special studies toward the further-
ance of such industries. The processing of agricultural crops
as, for instance, through canning and the manufacture of
cigars is coming up in importance. Current agricultural
planning, which calls for the return of twenty-five per cent
or more of the total land to forest cover, presages the growth
of a new forest-products industry, using woods in all the
variegated means developed by modern technical advances.

Puerto Rico has lately begun to gain importance for the

The Battle for Production c 201

canning of tuna fish, caught originally off the Galapagos Is-
lands and now also in the South Atlantic. As most of the
finished products are sold in the eastern United States, it is
cheaper for the companies concerned to can them in Puerto
Rico than in California, whence transportation by rail or
ship to the eastern seaboard is expensive. The residual fish
meal, moreover, helps to support Puerto Rico's growing cat-
tle industry. Although Puerto Rico's deep surrounding waters
had always seemed to rule against the establishment of com-
mercial fisheries on the island, the almost sensational growth
in recent years of sport fishing as a lure for tourists and
sportsmen has begun to throw so much new light on the rela-
tive abundance of deep water food fish that a local fishing
industry, supporting canneries and perhaps freezing plants,
has now begun to loom as a decided future possibility.

In recent years some of the largest United States corpora-
tions have established branch factories on the island and
have thereby reduced the program's "temporary" aspects,
which it seemed to have earlier by virtue of the ten-year pe-
riod of tax exemption. Such organizations as the General
Electric Company, the International Latex Corporation, and
Remington Rand realize that tax exemption is meaningless
unless there is a profit before taxes. After the ten-year ex-
emption period such things as wages and productivity be-
come critical profit factors. What becomes important at this
point is that the Puerto Rican workers, besides drawing
somewhat lower pay than do those on the mainland, are
quick, conscientious, self-respecting, dependable, and loyal.
A large number of those workers are women, whose wages
now give them an economic and moral power they had never
dreamed of in the old Spanish society. Because of this defi-
nite culture change in Puerto Rico's life,, it is unlikely that
the men will long continue to play the dominating role they
had previously enjoyed since Ponce de Leon first colonized
the island in 1508.

The Economic Development Administration is now espe-

202 c PUERTO Rico

cially interested in industries that can in turn support
other industries. The newly established refining of oil, for
instance, though slowed down by oil regulations on the
mainland, has attracted the Union Carbide Company to
make anti-freeze and other products out of the refineries'
"waste"; the capital investment in such ventures is so large
that the cessation of tax exemption after ten years can
hardly cause them to pull up stakes, A flour mill, recently
completed, while having to depend entirely on imported
grains, will not only cut down shipping cost as the grains
can be shipped in bulk, whereas the milled flour was
previously shipped in packages but will, through its by-
products, contribute materially to Puerto Rico's cattle cul-
ture, to say nothing of hogs, chickens, and other animal
products. It will also contribute to the success of the new
slaughter house.

Puerto Rico has long been a heavy importer of rice in
bags and packages. New plants for processing and packag-
ing rice in San Juan harbor will soon be able to receive the
grain in bulk, thus reducing shipping costs, and will also
help to support other industrial and agricultural ventures.

So the planning goes more and more toward integrated,
interrelated new industries that can be promoted in clusters.
Not only has Puerto Rican manufacturing outstripped agri-
culture as a source of income, but it is now itself beginning
to take on the aspects of technical integration and maturity.
All that, of course, puts a heavy burden on the educational
effort. Industrialization and good standards of living are im-
possible in a society with a high rate of illiteracy; the trans-
formation of an agrarian society into a semi-industrial one
demands the acquisition of many skills at all levels.

The other side of the picture is this : while integration in
the technical and economic sense, within the industrializa-
tion program itself, is progressing rapidly, "regional" integra-
tion is lagging far behind. A number of towns in certain
well-defined regions have benefited immeasurably from the

The Battle for Production 203

industrialization program, have indeed been transformed be-
yond the wildest dreams of a few years ago. Others have not
only not benefited, but are actually going downhill econom-
ically and are contributing their major shares to the con-
stant, restless movement toward the larger centers on the
island and toward that largest of all Puerto Rican cities-
New York. There is an effort to use rent differentials for
spreading industrialization more evenly throughout the is-
land; a manufacturer moving to one of the more backward
towns can even get his factory building rent free. It doesn't
work very well. The problem must obviously be attacked in a
new and integrated fashion. The reasons why manufacturers
don't want to establish themselves in certain regions are
themselves indicative of potential solutions to the problem.
Manufacturers don't like to establish plants in towns that
have execrable telephone service, inadequate labor forces,
and whose connections with the nearest shipping ports are
by narrow, winding roads unsuitable for quick transporta-
tion and the heavy trucking of raw materials. In several
instances no amount of tax exemption, no amount of rent
exemption, no amount of cajolery and salesmanship on the
part of the Economic Development Administration could
overcome such formidable industrial handicaps. And be-
cause such difficulties keep industries out of certain parts of
Puerto Rico notably the western mountains, where the cof-
fee industry is located the labor force there grows smaller
yearly as people stream into the more prosperous areas or
out of Puerto Rico.

As an island, Puerto Rico needs low-cost shipping for eco-
nomic health. But today the cost of shipping, and especially
that of loading and unloading ships, rises constantly. That
calls for drastic and sometimes costly technical improve-
ments at the ports, as for instance through the bulk-loading
of sugar, cement, and other products, and for the shipping
of various mixed products in large containers or trailers.
Such measures reduce the amount of labor utilized and thus

204 PUERTO Rico

lead to dock strikes, which have themselves been known to
scare away potential industries. The government steps in
with relief measures to tide the workers over the first impact
of technological unemployment. New plants keep coming in,
but they seek locations near the good ports that have been,
and are being, modernized. Also, they want good roads be-
tween factories and ports. That means primarily the harbor
of San Juan, which is expanding by leaps and bounds, not
without its full share of growing pains. On the south coast
Ponce harbor is also showing a healthy growth, which in
turn makes it the center of a lively industrial boom. But to-
day Puerto Rico, which had twenty active seaports a quarter
of a century ago, has only three that are used for general
shipping; of these the one at Mayaguez, at the island's west-
ern end, has begun to show alarming symptoms of decline,
though it may recover as a result of industrial promotions.

One compensating solution is found in the "industrial
ports" that are created especially to serve special industries.
For instance, the new oil refineries on the south coast and
near San Juan maintain such "ports" special piers built ex-
clusively for unloading crude oil. But that spells the corre-
sponding decline of other ports, which used to receive large
gasoline shipments for their districts. The various competing
oil companies now obtain all their gasoline from the two re-
fineries and truck it to their several distribution centers.

The west-coast port of Mayaguez has recently declined be-
cause of natural economic shifts to other parts of the island
and also because the roads serving the city of Mayaguez have
long been inadequate (though they are now being improved) .
A scheme is therefore afoot to make Mayaguez the scene of
a "foreign trade zone," a kind of manufacturing and proc-
essing compound into which foreign raw materials and
parts can be shipped duty free for processing and eventual
reshipment.

The communications problem is still serious. To date the
island's telephone service has failed dismally to keep pace

The Battle for Production c 205

with the demands made on it. At one time there was talk of
expropriation, following the example once set in relation to
the private power companies. But expropriation has been a
dirty word in the American language since Mexico applied
it to the oil fields, and a society that is striving hard to attract
United States capital doesn't want to hear it bandied about
too freely. The increase in telephone rates, granted by the
government in 1958 at some political risk, may now give the
company the means and incentives to expand and improve
its services.

The matter of roads is now assuming paramount impor-
tance. Twenty years ago the island's roads were adequate
and even relatively excellent for the conditions and needs of
those remote times. Today, even though many dramatic road
improvements are visible in some parts of the island, the im-
provement program lags far behind the need, and in some
sections the system is still so antiquated that it acts as a
brake on economic progress. But good roads are not brought
by Santa Glaus. They must be paid for, and even though a
certain amount of federal money is available for their con-
struction, that money must still be matched. Where is the
money to come from? Through another boost in taxes?
Through bond issues, which will put the burden of payment
on future generations while also demanding current tax
monies for amortization and interest? Through a combina-
tion of the two? A relatively small increase in the tax on
gasoline, the price of which is kept down through govern-
ment control, might permit such a combination, but it would
raise the island's transportation costs and might create a
number of new political enemies for the Popular Democratic
party -among the drivers of taxis and other public vehicles.

Then, too, there is the problem of water. Like many an-
other country, Puerto Rico has hitherto been smug in the
belief that it had plenty of surface water; suddenly it has
awakened to the fact that it hasn't at all at least not where
needed. Many potential new industries require large quanti-

2o6 c PUERTO Rico

ties of water, not only for industrial uses, but also to serve
the population clusters of their workers; on the relatively
arid south coast there is also a growing need for irrigation
water. Now a program has been started jointly with the
United States Geological Survey to explore, gauge, and map
the ground water resources, the deposits beneath the sur-
face that might be safely pumped up at certain rates without
being "mined out." In certain parts of the island, many con-
ditions combine to create settings favorable for decentralized
industrial development, but such development is still impos-
sible until adequate supplies of water can be provided ei-
ther piped in from one of the dwindling surface sources, or
pumped from subsurface sources that have not yet been
found.

Such, and many others, are the pressing problems of a
society that has set out to modernize and industrialize itself.
They must and will be solved, but the solutions take time and
cost effort and money. As already stated, Puerto Rico has set
itself the goal of achieving by 1975 a general and well-dis-
tributed standard of living comparable to that of the United
States in 1955. To do that, it will have to reshape and mod-
ernize its entire pattern of life, not only its seaports, roads,
telephone services, and water facilities, but its town life as
well, its educational and health facilities and their distribu-
tion, its recreational facilities, and finally the distribution of
its population.

Every governmental agency wrestles with those problems
today, if only because the voters in the more backward re-
gions may someday express their annoyance at the polls.
The Planning Board has organized a "Bureau of Integrated
Regional Planning" to rechannel general progress and chart
it by regions, rather than by academic subject matter, and
as now by the glowing statistics that seem to present Puerto
Rico as one homogeneous island, uniformly blessed by
progress.

The Battle for Production 207

The Tourist Industry

Poor, tired Governor Winship who probably deserved better
than to occupy the Fortaleza during the turbulent days of the
PRRA had one idea, and one only, for improving Puerto
Rico's economy. He wanted to create a tourist industry to ex-
ploit the island's natural beauty and fine climate, as well as
its "picturesque," poverty-stricken natives. To accomplish
that he put a tax on salt, staged elaborate pageants in San
Juan, and offered prizes for beautifying roadsides by plant-
ing hibiscus. He even coined a slogan: "You may not find a
pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but you can always
find a garden of flowers." The country people called him "the
Beautician in the Fortaleza"; his numerous political enemies
accused him of wanting the hibiscus shrubs as screens to
hide the countryside's universal misery from the eyes of sen-
sitive visitors. Certainly he thundered hard and loud against
San Juan's evil slums because they would offend the eyes
and noses of tourists, but his somewhat unique urban re-
newal program seemed unpractical because the slum dwell-
ers didn't want to obey his stentorian orders that they "go
back to the hills where they came from."

Also, he seemed completely to overlook the fact that there
were no hotels in Puerto Rico to house the tourists for whom
he ardently longed, but who never came.

As stated previously, in 1947 the new government finally
rid of its autocratic Winships decided to do something
about the matter and primed the pump with what is today
known as the Caribe Hilton Hotel, famous as a show hostelry
in the Caribbean and as one of the world's most profitable
hotel properties. That started a chain reaction, ably speeded
by systematic promotion.

As a result of various vicissitudes and changes, the initial

208 c PUERTO Rico

public-relations program to lure tourists has by now changed
into the "Commonwealth" advertising program, which,
through the combination of texts and gorgeous colored pho-
tographs, blown up to full-page size, sells to readers a kind
of "package" that includes Puerto Rican scenery, pleasant
living, rum, economic opportunity and Pablo Casals.

Like any other industrial plant, a hotel is no better than
are the people who work in it; one couldn't take the machetes
away from cane cutters and field hands, stuff those people
into uniforms, and expect them to function well as bellboys,
waiters, cashiers, and clerks. Swiss instructors were there-
fore imported, and a hotel school was established jointly by
the Economic Development Administration and the Depart-
ment of Education. Courses in that school last ten months
and include many aspects of hotel work plus a working
knowledge of English. Students are paid twenty dollars per
month, plus free uniforms and at least one good meal per
day. Not all of them stay in Puerto Rico after completing
their courses. Some go to Brazil or some other Latin Amer-
ican country that is building up its tourist industry and can
use trained bilingual employees; some go to the United States
Southwest where hotels have many Spanish-speaking guests;
a number are undoubtedly now working in the Waldorf and
other New York establishments. Such migrants give Puerto
Ricans a good name wherever they go and help to make
things easier for other migrating Puerto Ricans.

Hotel guests must find something pleasant to do, within
their own refined and sophisticated tastes, besides lolling on
their establishment's grounds, swimming in kidney-shaped
pools, basking on beaches under the tropical sun, continuing
the game of bridge that was started in some other country,
and patronizing the bar. In 1947 the government hit on le-
galized gambling besides the regular weekly lottery as a
lure, A number of casinos in as many hotels are now sources
of relatively high income, besides helping to draw visitors to
the island. Their croupiers and other employees are trained

The Battle for Production c 209

under the same government supervision, which is extended
so rigidly to the operation of the casinos themselves that the
latter are known as by far the most honest in the Caribbean
area, and perhaps in the world.

As "everybody" had known for centuries that the fishing-
was poor in Puerto Rican waters, the government imported
a sport-fishing captain from Florida to test whether that
knowledge was in accordance with the facts. The result was
a chain reaction; a surge of interest in sport fishing; the in-
vestment of much money for equipment in that expensive
sport; the establishment of thirty world records for fish of
various sizes caught on lines of various strengths; exuberant
photographs of victorious fishermen with their catches; an-
nual fishing tournaments that drew increasing numbers of
aficionados from many states in the union; the description
of Puerto Rican waters by Est<ban Bird a prominent local
banker who by now can't stay away from the water with rod
and reel as the world's best grounds for blue marlin; and
a decided boost for Puerto Rico's public relations and the
tourist industry.

Some of the new hotels have excellent tennis courts. In-
ternational tennis matches are now staged on them, and the
several world champions they attract in turn attract visitors
to watch them perform.

The new El Comandante race track near San Juan has a
great advantage over many continental tracks in that its
season lasts almost the year around. It is another fine new
tourist attraction.

The Laurance Rockefeller interests have created the "Do-
rado Beach Resort/' an hour's drive from San Juan, where
visitors can play golf on one of the world's finest eighteen-
hole courses, under the aegis of President Eisenhower's for-
mer pro, Ed Dudley, and enjoy tennis, swimming, bar en-
tertainment, and pig roasts, with local talent singing and:
dancing. Special airplane service transports guests between,
the resort and San Juan's International Airport.

c PUERTO Rico

Because discriminating visitors like to eat well, the Eco-
nomic Development Administration gives all possible help,
encouragement, financial aid, and promotion to the task of
establishing first-class restaurants that serve both Puerto
Rican and world cuisine, in surroundings acceptable to so-
phisticated world travelers.

When Pablo Casals moved to Puerto Rico from France in
1956, the entire island was overjoyed. The fact that the
world's greatest musician, a fine person of integrity, a
staunch and unrelenting defender of human freedoms, now
makes his home there is a source of deep pride to all Puerto
Ricans. The great impact of his presence and activities on
Puerto Rico's musical life and culture began to be felt im-
mediately, Quite aside from their cultural value and impor-
tance to the entire Western Hemisphere, his annual music
festivals, at which some of the world's greatest musicians
perform the world's greatest music, are an important attrac-
tion for visitors, as is the presence of the genial "Don Pau"
himself. The new Puerto Rican symphony orchestra, organ-
ized by Casals, and the projected conservatory of music will
do much for the island's cultural lif e.

To be sure, such things are symptomatic of Puerto Rico's
general growth and increased prosperity as well as sophisti-
cation, quite aside from the tourist business. But they are
watched and accelerated with much satisfaction by the Com-
monwealth's Department of Tourism, which is accomplish-
ing wonders in the advancement of its own particular branch
of the economy. New hotels spring up constantly, and pri-
vate capital is pouring into Puerto Rico for the purpose of
building and operating them usually aided in some way by
government capital. A recent survey lists four hotels, with
335 rooms, as worthy, before 1949, to be regarded as offer-
ing "tourist accommodations"; by the end of 1958 the num-
ber of such hotels had grown to thirty-nine and the rooms to
2,790. For 1946-7 the number of nonresident hotel visitors
in Puerto Rico is listed in the same report at 20,925, who

The Battle for Production c 211

spent $1,199,000 on the island; in 1957-8, 99,279 such vis-
itors are listed, spending $10,948,000.

That stream of visitors adds immeasurably to the activi-
ties of Senora Felisa Rincon de Gautier, who has won world
fame as San Juan's beloved and superbly efficient mayoress
and city manager (she is something of both), and who is
herself no mean tourist attraction. One of Munoz's first and
most ardent co-workers, who now directs the affairs of
Puerto Rico's capital, she takes time out from keeping the
city immaculately clean and in repair, expanding it, tending
to the poor and distressed, holding wayward political work-
ers in line, running the Popular Democratic party at her
local level, making many trips abroad to spread good will
and receive well-deserved honors to greet a constant and
swelling stream of visitors in a ceaseless round of entertain-
ment. Distinguished guests receive the keys to the city from
her; a bewildering and variegated number of groups cham-
bers of commerce, American mayors, policemen, teachers,
journalists, actors, dentists, doctors, scientists meeting in
conventions, military men's and women's clubs sample her
hospitality constantly.

As "Dona Fela" presides over Puerto Rico's principal port
of entry, her warm personal hospitality is symbolic of the
Commonwealth's

The season of 1958-9 broke all records. The brand-new
luxury hotel La Concha had to take in guests even before it
was finished a week before its formal opening and was
filled to capacity almost immediately. Virtually every hotel
room, every boarding-house room on the island, rich or poor,
shabby or elaborate, low cost or high, was filled for a time*
as were all the planes that carried some of the frantic over-
flow to such places as the Virgin Islands. Not all of that
boom, however, can be credited to the laudable efforts of the
government's Department of Tourism. Fidel Castro had
something to do with it by scaring tourists away from Cuba
with the turmoil of a revolution well won. In the Dominican

212 c PUERTO Rico

Republic Generalissimo Trujillo contributed to Puerto Rico's
success by inviting as through the famous Galindez case
attention to his country as "a well-ordered graveyard." Pos-
sibly the prevailing troubles in Egypt, the Far East, and the
Middle East helped to channel a share of the "Hilton Chain
Globe Trotters" away from the Cairo and Ankara Hilton ho-
tels into the one in San Juan.

Many problems, of course, remain to be solved, and their
solution creates others. Today's main problems stem from
that old and ubiquitous poser, "distribution," which here
needs to be straightened out both regionally and seasonally.
So many visitors come to San Juan, where most of the is-
land's new hotels were built, that a number of Puerto Rican
residents worry lest their beloved capital be turned into a
second Miami.

A long coastal strip in and beyond San Juan has been
zoned as a belt for hotels, and now other valiant efforts are
being made to further decentralize the industry. The small
new hotel, El Barranquitas, in the central mountains is be-
ginning to be known. In the southwest the little fishing vil-
lage of La Parguera, near the famous "Phosphorescent
Bay," is attracting an increasing number of visitors to its re-
sort hotel. The charming "old-style" city of Ponce on the
south coast is beginning to be invaded, and a new tourist
hotel was completed there in December 1959. The entire
southwest part of the island may well before long become
known as Puerto Rico's Riviera. In the east, near Fajardo,
now only about half an hour from San Juan by a magnificent
new highway, and in the vicinity of el Yunque the moun-
tain of the famous rain forest large potentialities for a
thriving tourist business are being studied, explored, and de-
veloped. In the western interior the so-called coffee region is
dramatically beautiful; all planning for that region's restora-
tion to prosperity includes a heavy emphasis on recreational
projects.

Meanwhile, the "drive-yourself" car business and the run-

The Battle for Production c 213

ning of conducted tours are thriving. More and more of the
tourists who a few years ago were content to stay in San Juan
now go out and discover Puerto Rico for themselves, ex-
ploring the island, finding its "native" restaurants, exclaim-
ing over the sections that are still "unspoiled" by tourists,
being charmed by the simple and friendly country people.

The uneven seasonal distribution of visitors presents dif-
ficulties that are perhaps even greater than the regional. But
there is today a definite policy to sponsor relatively inexpen-
sive boarding houses in various parts of the island modest
inns, pensions in the style of the French and thereby to at-
tract a growing number of teachers who take their vaca-
tions in summer, as well as secretaries, college students,
writers, artists, and professional people with modest means
but with a deep personal interest in the things they see
around them. The new policy is still in its earliest stages, in
part because its implications are not yet fully understood by
the men who shape Puerto Rico's public-relations policies.
To date and very successfully those men have labored to
attract tourists by stressing "sophistication" rather than
Puerto Rico itself, and at times by consciously avoiding all
mention of certain picturesque Puerto Rican realities. They
have shaped their policies by the idea, stubbornly adhered
to, that any mention or photograph of dramatic curves in
mountain roads, any official admission that oxen are still
widely used for plowing and hauling carts, may cause people
to think that Puerto Rico is backward." At one time they
even arrived at the decision that the long-established word
jibaro must never be used to denote the island's friendly
country people. In Ecuador, they argued, jibaros are bad
Indians who cut off people's heads and shrink them down
to baseball size; using the word in public-relations efforts to
attract tourists to Puerto Rico might scare away a number
of potential visitors who harbor aversions to having their
own head chopped off and transformed into portable sou-
venirs.

214 c PUERTO Rico

Nevertheless, the new policy of "rural turismo" is bound
to be a success before long. Inevitably, a large number of
people who are more interested in the island than in sophis-
tication continue to discover Puerto Rico's charming rural
realities and have begun to create a swelling demand for
simple, low-cost accommodations.

The total number of visitors arriving in Puerto Rico for all
purposes, by ship and plane, from everywhere, was 78,377
in 1951 and 207,000 in 1958. Truly the island has become
America's crossroad in the Caribbean.

13

Labor

PUERTO Rico's revolution has brilliantly fulfilled its original
promise : to provide land for the landless and jobs for the un-
employed. But there is no end to the fulfilling, no terminal
point for the task. When a reporter recently asked Munoz
Marin: "Where do you go from here?" the Governor laughed
and said : "Good heavens. We aren't here yet."

The past twenty years have seen a tremendous effort. Half
a thousand new factories now employ tens of thousands of
workers; the land-distribution program has established thou-
sands of new independent farmers; migration to the main-
land has eased the pressure of population by removing hun-
dreds of thousands from the island. And yet thirteen per cent
of the island's total labor force is still officially listed as "un-
employed," to say nothing of the thousands who are only
partially employed, or poorly employed at bottom wages. In
1940 the official figure was lower, listing only eleven per cent
of the labor force as being unemployed. The comparison,
however, is more dramatic than valid. The standards by
which "unemployment" is judged have meanwhile become
far more exacting; by today's standards the 1940 figure

216 c PUERTO Rico

would be immeasurably higher. The starving sugar workers,
the animal-like coffee laborer described in Chapter 3, were
certainly listed as being employed.

Now, as indicated in Chapters 10 and n, a reshaped,
modernized Puerto Rico must deal increasingly with the
problem of technological unemployment. At one end more
people obtain jobs; at the other, as it is vital that efficiency
be maintained in competition with other societies, they lose
them to machines; in between, labor grows sophisticated and
struggles more effectively for higher wages and better living
conditions. That endless cycle is not unique to Puerto Rico,
though it is there made more serious by the fact that the is-
land has no empty geographical frontier.

The years 1958 and 1959 saw an unusual amount of labor
trouble. Stevedores, seeing their livelihoods threatened by
the introduction of new mechanized methods of handling
cargoes, walked out on several occasions. The telephone
workers struck, disrupting communications for weeks by
cutting trunk lines and private lines. Taxi drivers tied up
their cabs for a time; the bus drivers threatened to walk out
and thus to stop most of Puerto Rico's transportation of pas-
sengers.

Continental labor leaders have discovered a fertile field for
organization in Puerto Rico. During the season of 1958-9 the
AFL-CIO held its annual convention in San Juan, Dubinsky,
of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, has
been active in Puerto Rico in a sane and decent manner; his
union has even gone into partnership with Rockefeller's
IBEC Corporation to provide good housing for workers, and
Dubinsky as well as Postosky, of the Amalgamated Clothing
Workers, have declared themselves in favor of wage differ-
entials between Puerto Rico and the mainland United States,
as the lack of such differentials would close too many shops
and throw many people out of work. While such leaders are
welcome on the island, the racketeers are by no means wel-

Labor c 217

come, and men like Hoff a have so far been unable to gain a
foothold.

Though the wage differentials are needed, and though
they play a role in attracting mainland capital and Indus-
tries, all government officials are emphatic in stating that
they are in no way to be regarded as an incentive to starting
factories in Puerto Rico. It is the government's stated policy
to raise wages as rapidly as circumstances permit. The dif-
ferentials are maintained for the purpose of compensating
for the need for importing raw materials and exporting fin-
ished products at shipping rates that are the world's highest;
the differentials also compensate for the fact that Puerto
Rican labor, for all its devotion and all its mounting skills,
still does not measure up in efficiency to that on the main-
land.

The situation, naturally, has deep political implications.
Advocates of statehood can use the wage differential as a
tempting bait for labor; a general federal minimum of one
dollar per hour, which at the time of the present writing
seems destined to be raised to one dollar and twenty-five
cents, has a strong appeal. The fact is, however, that such
increases and other drawbacks of statehood in a society
whose economy is still far from being on a par with that of
the mainland would almost inevitably mean the wholesale
closing of factories.

In the troublesome dichotomy between more jobs and
greater efficiency, between more employment and higher
wages for fewer workers, between wider distribution of the
land and its more efficient use, lies the great problem of
modern Puerto Rico. The problem demands great flexibility
in matters of government policy and in the functioning of
such agencies as the Department of Labor; it may yet, in the
end, result in the formation of a new political party. The
time may come when a rising political leader wants to give
a stevedore the chance to cast a vote against the Popular

218 PUERTO Rico

Democratic party, in protest over the modernization of the
seaports, without also apparently voting for either statehood
or independence, neither of which he may want.

Despite the current restlessness, however, despite strikes
and dissension, there can be no doubt that the Popular Dem-
ocratic party is a warm friend not only of labor, but also of
labor organizations. One test of that statement is not only
the wording, but also the effectiveness of its labor legisla-
tion. Many a Latin-American country has fairly good labor
laws. In most of them they remain inactive; they stay on the
books largely as decorations. Students of Puerto Rico are
constantly surprised at the manner in which the Puerto
Ricans not only take pains to pass good laws, but even take
them seriously and enforce them to the best of their abilities.

Puerto Ricans are justly proud of their labor legislation
and regard it as the most advanced in the United States.
What other country has written such legislation into the Bill
of Rights, the fundamental, basic document of its constitu-
tion? The Commonwealth's Bill of Rights, besides prohibit-
ing child labor and stating that "persons may join with each
other and organize freely for any lawful purpose, except in
military or quasi-military organizations," goes on to say that
"the right of every employee to choose his occupation freely
and to resign therefrom is recognized, as is his right to equal
pay for equal work, to a reasonable minimum salary, to pro-
tection against risks to his health or person in his work or
employment, and to an ordinary workday which shall not
exceed eight hours. An employee may work in excess of this
daily limit only if he is paid extra compensations as pro-
vided by law, at a rate never less than one and one-half times
the regular rate at which he is employed."

Having thus established some basic principles, the consti-
tution goes on to recognize the workers' right "to organize
and to bargain collectively with their employers through rep-
resentatives of their own free choosing in order to promote
their welfare/' The next section establishes labor's "right to

Labor c 219

strike, to picket and to engage in other legal concerted ac-
tivities, "though it also recognizes "the authority of the Legis-
lative Assembly to enact laws to deal with grave emergencies
that clearly imperil the public health or safety or essential
public services/'

The telephone strike referred to previously led to much
understandable public grumbling to the effect that such
emergency legislation "to safeguard the public health or
safety or essential public services" seemed definitely in order;
there was even clamor for the company's expropriation in
the manner in which all the private electric-power compa-
nies had once been expropriated. However, the legislature
did nothing and prudently left the matter in the hands of Mr.
Fernando Sierra Berdecia, the genial, intelligent, respected
but overworked Secretary of Labor.

On the other hand, the restlessness stirred up by the bulk
loading of sugar, which threw thousands out of work while
saving the sugar producers and shippers more thousands of
dollars, did give rise to special legislation. The law levied a
special tax on the production of sugar, both in the field and
in the mill, and provided for its distribution, as unemploy-
ment compensation, to the approximately 3,000 dock work-
ers and 1,200 workers in sugar mills adversely affected by
the new system of shipping. There is, however, a time limit
on the tax and the compensation, stipulated on the theory
that other jobs for the unemployed stevedores will be cre-
ated before long.

In addition to the constitution's provisions, legislation has
been passed to take care of nearly all aspects of labor's life
and of its relations with management. The most important
fields of such legislation have been those of minimum wages,
industrial peace, employment, and workmen's compensa-
tion.

The question of minimum wages is especially difficult in
an old society with many long-established norms and pat-
terns, both in the field and in the factory. Often these can-

22O PUERTO Rico

not be disturbed drastically without causing shutdowns;
legislative efforts to raise wages to a prescribed minimum
result in little social benefit if they actually bring about the
payment of no wages whatever. It is, of course, impossible
to avoid such consequences entirely. For example, the home
needlework industry, which in 1935 paid wages as low as
three cents per dozen for hemming and embroidering hand-
kerchiefs, has now departed to Japan and the Philippines.

Two laws govern minimum wages in Puerto Rico : one is
the Puerto Rican law, which applies to all industries, in-
cluding agriculture; the other is the Federal Fair Labor
Standards Act, which applies only to industries manufactur-
ing for interstate commerce and has since 1940 made spe-
cial provisions for Puerto Rico. They operate in similar ways.
The island's industries are divided into several groups and
subgroups, and hearings axe held every two years to deter-
mine the minimum wages those groups are able to pay.
Those wages in the determination of which management,
labor, and government experts all have a voice then be-
come law for the ensuing two years.

For the purpose of enforcing the Federal law, commissions
appointed by and in Washington visit the island every two
years, make investigations, hold hearings, and decide on
specific minimum wages for specific industries. If the two
wage-determining bodies, the local and the federal, differ
from each other in theix recommendations, then the higher
of the two minimum wages is the one that is chosen and
adopted as law.

The situation has raised a political question that has never
been quite settled. Should the Congress of the United States
have the power to pass laws pertaining to the Common-
wealth of Puerto Rico without the specific consent of the
Puerto Ricans, expressed either through direct vote or
through the island's legislature? The entire matter of Puerto
Rico's freedom to manage its internal aff airs is often debated
around that one issue alone. The advocates of independence

Labor c 221

make much of the fact that Congress still possesses such
legal right, and claim that Puerto Rico is therefore still a
colony of the United States. However, the government's of-
ficial position is that as Puerto Rico has free commerce with
the United States, it is reasonable that Congress, in order to
protect mainland labor against unfair competition, should
exercise control over wages in the industries that ship their
products to the mainland.

The fact that in a number of industries, principally those
dealing with metal work, affecting some 25,000 workers the
minimum wages have by such means already been brought
up to the one dollar per hour prescribed by Federal law for
the states, testifies to Puerto Rico's growing industrial ma-
turity. But that does not scare away continental manufac-
turers interested in establishing factories on the island. In
the states the figure is usually a true "minimum," a floor,
rather than a ceiling; in Puerto Rico it also tends to be a
maximum. However, says the government, that is the point
at which government action in regulating wages has reached
its limit; from then on, unless the federal minimum is raised
above the present one dollar, organized labor must assume
the task of raising wages through the orderly processes of
collective bargaining.

In general, minimum wages run the gamut from twenty-
six cents per hour for hand sewing on gloves to a dollar in
the top industries, with some forward-looking U.S. compa-
nies deliberately paying more than the legal minimum in
order to improve their labor relations. The industries in the
low wage brackets are those that have shown to the govern-
ment's satisfaction that they cannot afford to raise their pay.
Hence, as they operate in what must remain a rising labor
market, some of them either pull out, as did a number of the
needle-work industries, or mechanize, as has been done in re-
cent years in cutting tobacco. Such mechanization then cre-
ates technological unemployment, and the Department of
Labor maintains that it is precisely the victims of such un-

222 PUERTO Rico

employment who are the hardest to place in new jobs. The
women who lost their jobs in tobacco cutting were at the
lowest end in the wage scale; they were also the least skilled
and now find it increasingly difficult to find jobs in a society
that is daily placing greater value on individual aptitudes.

Until the educational system, with its strong emphasis on
vocational training, has succeeded in raising the general
level of skills, and the Economic Development Administra-
tion has provided enough new jobs for everybody, the Com-
monwealth must rely increasingly on social assistance and
unemployment compensation.

Puerto Rico's labor movement had its earliest beginnings
just before the Spanish-American War though in those
days of Spain's rule anybody who talked about the rights of
workers was regarded and persecuted as a dangerous radical.
The movement received impetus under the aegis of the
United States at a time when labor slowly began to feel its
strength. But the movement's growth was a long and painful
uphill struggle. The feudal type of management that was in-
herited from the Spanish regime, the management intro-
duced by the sugar corporations during the early decades
under the American flag which was no less feudal for be-
ing more efficient and slightly more generous retained a
strong contempt for labor. Conciliation and arbitration were
not regarded as proper functions of the government. Labor
relations hovered constantly between the uneasy industrial
peace under which the workers perforce accepted starvation
wages, and the sporadic conflict of strikes, which only too
often amounted to desperate, savage warfare. Fields were
burned, properties destroyed, lives lost. Being weaker than
management by the usual norm of lasting power/' labor
was inclined to intensify its violence.

All that is changed today, partly because of the govern-
ment's progressive attitudes, partly because the new indus-
tries being established on the island bring with them ideas

Labor c 223

on labor relations which may be old in the United States, but
are new in Puerto Rico. The former methods are now being
replaced by work contracts, collectively bargained, while the
government's Department of Labor offers its free services
for conciliation and arbitration. While labor is encouraged to
organize and to use its collective strength to strive for higher
wages and better working conditions, both it and manage-
ment are also encouraged through a continuing process of
education and experience to adjust to a new day's new
ways. In the states those new ways emerged gradually from
a long period of strife that resulted in sporadic legislative ac-
tions. In Puerto Rico, entering the industrial scene later and
having to run very fast to catch up, they were legislated into
the picture during the transformation's earliest stages.

Conciliation services are offered by the Department of
Labor at all times during strikes or during the negotiations
of work contracts for all types of discussion. At times the
conciliation services are requested by one party to the dis-
pute, at times by both, and sometimes when public inter-
ests are involved by the legislator from the district or the
mayor of the town concerned. At the conciliation table the
workers have the same weight management has; the govern-
ment leans neither way, but gives its advice according to the
merits of the case and on the basis of the public good. How-
ever, the rulings of the conciliator are not binding; they
merely represent efforts to bring the two parties together.

Arbitration services, on the other hand, must be requested
by both parties to the struggle, and are devoted largely to set-
tling disputes over the interpretation of existing contracts.
Such arbitration may draw out for weeks or months, but
both parties requesting them must agree beforehand to ac-
cept the arbitrator's decisions. Obviously the law's effective-
ness depends entirely on the faith the people of Puerto Rico
and of management have in the government's good faith
and fairness.

224 c PUERTO Rico

According to a revealing statement in the 1957-8 report
of the Department of Labor, "The original concept of the
union as an organization devoted to the attainment of higher
wages and better living conditions is gradually changing.
Today the union is beginning to be regarded as an agency
for the achievement of social services for the worker and his
family, including medical plans, retirement systems, protec-
tion against unemployment and other aspects of social se-
curity. . . . These changes have greatly complicated the
functions of the conciliator as well as of the arbitrator. To-
day the unions' objectives, and their concepts of negotiation,
have become far more complicated, requiring much more
study, making both conciliation and arbitration more diffi-
cult, and demanding of the conciliators and arbitrators much
more skill than formerly, as well as a better understanding
of all the questions involved."

Although strikes are played up heavily in the newspapers,
one hears much less about the department's effectiveness in
preventing them, in maintaining industrial peace. During
the fiscal year 1958, 217 controversies, all of them potential
strikes, were conciliated; special services were rendered in
196 more cases; arbitration was requested and given in an-
other 192 instances; thirty-nine strikes and seventeen threats
of strikes were settled through collective bargaining with the
help of conciliation. More than ninety per cent of the cases
were settled peacefully, a record which few, if any, states
can match,

The basic principle in Employment Security is that a
worker who suffers from technological unemployment or a
temporary lay-off is entitled to help from the government
until he can again be placed. The government admits its
responsibility in the matter of creating jobs; when a worker,
through no fault of his own, becomes unemployed, the so-
ciety has a responsibility toward him. Again, that responsi-
bility was freely acknowledged in the constitution as origi-

Labor c 225

nally written, which stated that "the Commonwealth also
recognizes the existence of the following human rights:

"The right of every person to receive a free elementary
and secondary education.

"The right of every person to obtain work.

"The right of every person to a standard of living adequate
for the health and well-being of himself and his family, and
especially to food, clothing, housing and medical care and
necessary social services.

"The right of every person to social protection in the event
of unemployment, sickness, old age or disability.

"The right of motherhood and childhood to special care
and assistance/'

Having boldly proclaimed such "welfare-state" rights, the
original Bill of Rights goes on to admit: "The rights set forth
in this section are closely connected with the progressive de-
velopment of the Commonwealth's economy and require, for
their full effectiveness, sufficient resources and an agricul-
tural and industrial development not yet attained by the
Puerto Rican community."

The next paragraph, however, pledges the government to
do everything in its power to bring about conditions under
which the various stipulated rights may be fully achieved by
the island's people. Meanwhile, until such conditions have
been achieved, the Department of Labor, bolstered by special
legislation, must do everything it can to find employment
and cushion the evil effects of unemployment.

Those provisions of the constitution were adapted from
the United Nations "Universal Declaration of Human
Rights." However, when the constitution was submitted to
Congress for ratification, that body objected to the provisions
on the grounds that they were "un-American," despite the
fact that the United Nations declaration had previously been
ratified by the United States. As a result of the Congressional
objections, that section of the constitution was eliminated

226 PUERTO Rico

by Puerto Rico's Constitutional Convention. Morally, how-
ever, as a statement of intent, and in the government's policy
and actions, its provisions remain in force,

As stated in Chapter 2, the Department's Migration Divi-
sion, while neither encouraging nor discouraging migration
to the states, labors constantly to help those who do migrate.
That division is part of the Bureau of Employment Security,
which also runs an employment agency and administers un-
employment compensation. Recently, it may be added, the
latter activity has become connected with the federal em-
ployment-insurance program.

The increase of the number of people applying for jobs
through the employment service is indicative of Puerto Rico's
current trends. Between the years 1957 and 1958 the is-
land's gross product increased from $1,204,000,000 to $i r
286,000,000; the net income rose from $1,014,000,000 to
$1,079,000,000; the per capita income rose from $446 to
$469; the number of new factories promoted or helped by
Fomento rose from 499 to 577. Nevertheless, the number of
clients asking the Department of Labor to find jobs for them
also rose from 103,753 to 121,188 or 16.8 per cent. That in-
crease, however, is not entirely the result of technological
unemployment in Puerto Rico. Net (permanent) migration
to the states decreased by more than 20,000 during the same
period, while local job applications increased by about 17,-
ooo, indicating that it was somewhat due to the recession
on the mainland.

Of the total applicants, 66,267 were placed in jobs, 54,-
087 in Puerto Rico and 12,180 in the States. The employ-
ment service's statistics, then, show that there are about 6o r
ooo workers in the Puerto Rican labor force for whom
employment cannot now be found and who may well, for
want of opportunity, or lack of skills, or both, be regarded
as forming a permanent body of unemployed.

Like all government agencies, the Department of Labor is

Labor c 227

growing by leaps and bounds, though it is still handicapped
by lack of funds, still unable to meet all the many demands
made on it. For instance, besides the activities mentioned
above, it gives courses in labor laws and labor relations to
both workers and managers; it maintains a Bureau of Labor
Statistics that keeps track of problems and progress in many
fields; it maintains special divisions for unemployment com-
pensation in the sugar industry, for the social security of
chauffeurs, for accident prevention, for the handling of vet-
erans, and for the determination and maintenance of work
standards.

This large and complex government program on behalf of
labor and industrial peace grew naturally out of the chaotic
conditions the Popular Democratic party encountered in
1940, and has made Puerto Rico a model for labor relations
in the Americas. On the other hand, the island's progressive
labor laws have impeded the growth and strengthening of
the labor movement. Unions became strong in the States
through their struggle to achieve the things the Puerto Rican
government has given the Commonwealth workers on a leg-
islated silver platter. As a result, the Puerto Rican unions are
still relatively weak.

The father of the island's labor movement was Santiago
Iglesias, a Spanish carpenter with little education, but a
burning messianic fervor. He came to Puerto Rico in 1896,
found labor conditions truly terrible, and began immediately
to rouse the workers out of their almost hopeless lethargy.
He was in prison in San Juan during the Spanish-American
War, but when Admiral Sampson bombarded the capital,
one of his shells knocked a hole in the wall of Iglesias's cell
and conveniently failed to explode. The agitator managed to
escape and began immediately to harangue some sugar
workers in San Juan's outskirts, telling them not to accept
the rotten, maggoty codfish the company store was selling to
them at high prices in return for the miserable token pay-

228 c PUERTO Rico

ments they received for their work. For that he was arrested
and taken to the American land forces, which had by then
come close to San Juan.

The American officers were impressed by Iglesias and by
the samples of rotten codfish he had given them as indica-
tions of labor conditions, They protected him when a Spanish
commission arrived to inform them that he was a danger-
ous character, an agitator and incendiary who belonged in
prison. As a result, Iglesias became an ardent admirer of the
United States. Later he became a close friend of Samuel
Gompers, and still later, from 1933 until his death in 1939,
he was Puerto Rico's Resident Commissioner in Washington.

The "Federation" founded by Iglesias was Puerto Rico's
first labor organization, composed of a considerable number
of loosely knit unions. In 1899 Iglesias organized the Social-
ist-Labor party, which was some years later transformed into
the Socialist party with a platform taken from Eugene Debs's
party in the states. That was the party to which Munoz
Marin gave his allegiance in 1920 getting his first expe-
rience in political campaigning to the horror of many peo-
ple who thought that he should, if only from family loyalty,
have worked with his father's Unionist party. The Socialists,
however, had small political success until 1932, when they
joined with the Republicans to form the Coalition that took
over the government as a result of that year's election and
held it until 1940, when Munoz's new Popular Democratic
party managed to nose it out. Not until 1952, however, did
the Socialist party cease completely to function as a political
organization.

The first unions grew out of and within the cigar industry,
in which, until recently, every shop had its "reader," a man
who kept the workers interested by reading newspapers and
other materials to them. Many of these readers were labor
agitators on the side, slipping a good deal of exhortation and
denunciation of management into their singsong readings.

Labor c 229

In the sleepy, out-of-the-world Puerto Rico of those days
many cigar makers received their first lessons about the
outer world and about labor's rights from their readers. A
number of them became labor leaders and organizers, and
used these positions to get themselves elected to the legis-
lature.

During the century's first four decades the labor move-
ment grew with the organization of a number of local unions
that were independent, not only of the United States labor
movement, but also, despite the "Federation/' of each other
as well.

The movement grew sporadically, dispiritedly until the
modern day arrived with its new conditions and the new
powers granted to labor by the government, As stated above,
the union is more and more being regarded by its members
as an instrument of social welfare, not merely as a means
of increasing wages. Moreover, the old system of a number
of independent unions is now giving way to the modern sys-
tem of federations. The movement toward affiliation with
the AFL-CIO is gaining headway rapidly and is in no way
discouraged by the government. (Typical is the story of the
U.S. industrialist, A. N. Spanel, who maintains excellent
labor conditions in his plant through paternalistic means,
but happens to hate and fear unions with a desperate fervor.
His company, the International Latex Corporation, estab-
lished a factory in Puerto Rico, where it pays wages higher
than the legal minimum, grants fringe benefits above those
demanded by labor or the government, but will not allow a
union organizer anywhere near the premises. Somehow Mr.
Spanel formed a high opinion of Munoz Marin, During his
one visit to the island, some years after his branch factory
had been established and proved itself to be the most suc-
cessful of all his various factories in various parts of the
world, he requested and virtually demanded an interview
with the governor. Eventually the invitation arrived. The

230 c PUERTO Rico

industrialist was invited to a cocktail party given at the ex-
ecutive mansion in honor of a visiting group of high officials
intheAFL-CIO).

About ten international unions were functioning in Puerto
Rico in 1958, and their intensive program included the or-
ganization of workers in long-established local plants that
have survived from the former unhappy days, whose man-
agers are accustomed to old ways of doing things and are
likely to scream much more loudly than do the American
managers of new factories. But, on the whole, the interna-
tional unions go at things sensibly and refrain from making
demands that could wreck the entire present effort to raise
standards of living.

Meanwhile, the Hoff as and other racketeers still constitute
a threat. I asked an official in the Department of Labor what
was being done about them. "Officially/' came the answer,
"very little. The racketeers have so far failed to gain a foot-
hold here largely because our unions, while they may be
weak, are certainly honest. There lies our greatest strength."

14

Public Health

ACCORDING to the claims of a once powerful school of
thought, tropical diseases impede successful development in
the tropics and will always impede it because it is more dif-
ficult to control illness in the miscalled "torrid zones" than
in the middle latitudes. The uniformly warm and humid
climate, runs the argument, is ideal for the propagation of
disease germs and of insects and other vectors that spread
those germs. Vicious in that it is fatalistic, the claim is today
refuted by many public-health experts who work in the
tropics,

It is nonsense, say the latter, to blame the natural climate
for tropical illnesses, when the man-made social and eco-
nomic climate is so obviously bad in the tropics that health
conditions must be correspondingly bad. In the middle lati-
tudes, in the countries that are economically advanced,
standards of living are sufficiently high to eliminate wide-
spread malnutrition as a health problem. Residents of the
more advanced countries are surrounded by municipal, state,
and national health organizations, alerted, equipped, and
financed to deal immediately with any threat to the public's

232 PUERTO Rico

health. Much money is spent and great care is taken to see
that their water and sewage facilities axe not sources of in-
fection. Their meat and other foods, as well as their res-
taurants, are inspected. They have sufficient doctors, hos-
pitals, clinics, and sufficient private and public income to
support them.

The humid tropics, however, have long been the world's
colonial regions par excellence, exploited as such. To be sure,
capital outflow from the ruling countries to the colonies has
been great, but profit returns have been greater. Whatever
was left behind was not sufficient to raise wages above the
twelve cents per person per day about which Est^ban Bkd
complained, to assure diets and ways of life for the majority
which are conducive to general health, to give the tropical
society a budget sufficient for creating an adequate sanitaxy
environment, medical services sufficient to meet existing
needs, education geared in part to problems of hygiene, and
income large enough to support all these out of taxes.

"Public health," say doctors of the U. S. Public Health
Service, "is a purchasable commodity. The amount you get
is the amount that you can, or are willing to, pay for." It is
a good working principle that says, in effect, that public
health is a function of an intangible called "standards of
living." Modern Puerto Rico is among the several societies
(Australia's Queenland is another) which have shown that
a tropical society which tackles its health problems by im-
proving the man-made social climate is likely to achieve no-
table results.

In 1951, at a reception in Washington, I met Dr. Juan
Pons, then Puerto Rico's amiable and energetic Secretary of
Health, who was succeeded in 1957 by Dr. Guillermo Ar~
bona. I told him about my interest in the tropics and in all
their problems, and congratulated him on the remarkable
progress Puerto Rico had made in matters of health.

"Look," said Pons. "Let's not talk about tropical medicine,
because there is no such thing. There is only a medicine

Public Health c 233

of low standards of living and another of higher. Our expe-
riences in Puerto Rico and the entire world's disease pattern
bear that out."

Today we are witnessing a thrilling world-wide drive on
communicable diseases, carried forward in the Western
Hemisphere by the Pan American Sanitary Bureau in collab-
oration with the health departments of all the American
republics. They are aiming at the elimination of malaria,
yellow fever, smallpox, and a number of other devitalizing
ailments, and they are training men and women, and send-
ing them out in teams, and buying sprays and spray mate-
rials and jeeps, and hiring doctors, nurses, and statisticians,
and they are going out to the four corners of every land,
and achieving notable results. But they will find as some
learned in Puerto Rico that those results will be temporary
unless and until they are accompanied by settlement and
development in such wilderness areas as the vast Amazon
basin, and by the improvement of standards of living in such
backward areas as Venezuela's hinterlands.

Dr. Bailey Ashford was one of Puerto Rico's heroes. He
had won world fame by being the first in the Western Hemi-
sphere to isolate the parasite of hookworm, or ancylostomia-
sis, and subsequently he had headed, for the U.S. army, the
first campaign to eradicate the plague on the island. When
I met him in 1931, shortly before his death, he told me why
that campaign had been unsuccessful and why similar cam-
paigns carried on in purely mechanical fashion were
bound also to fail. Talking about the Rockefeller eradication
teams, he said:

"Those fellows go all over the world trying to clean up
hookworm, but they go at things wrong. They tell people to
wear shoes, which they can't afford, and to build outhouses,
which they can't afford, either. They dose hookworm pa-
tients with carbon tetrachloride, which in their weakened
condition is worse than the disease. If they examined peo-
ple's stools they would see that nature is constantly trying

234 e PUERTO Rico

to pass off the parasite. Why don't they give nature a
chance? Feed the people: improve their strength. After a
while they will find that the hookworm problem is simple/'

In 1931, the year Ashford talked to me, Puerto Rico had
397 deaths from hookworm, or 25.1 per 100,000 people. By
I 933 (^e worst of the depression years), the figures had
gone up to 770, or 46.8. Then the relief and reconstruction
administrations started their work, and the hookworm fig-
ures began to show slow but wavering declines. The war
came, and the armed forces, helped a great deal with their
medical work; in 1944 there were 133 deaths, or 6.6 per
100,000. The next year there was a sudden drop to 48
deaths, or a rate of 2.3, from hookworm. Standards of living
began to improve greatly after the war; people ate better and
had more money for shoes and latrines; on growing budgets
the Department of Health could do more work. The statistics
for 1956, far more complete and reliable than had been those
of 1931, showed not a single death from ancylostomiasis.

Similar gains are noted in other so-called tropical diseases.
Twenty years ago malaria was a scourge in Puerto Rico, as
it also was in India, Africa, the Amazon basin, many other
tropical countries, Washington, D. C., as far north as Ohio,
and in Saratoga, New York. Between 1931 and 1934 malaria
caused about 3000 deaths annually on the island, with rates
of close to 200 per 100,000. In those years that rate was
about six times as high as it was in the malaria belt in Ala-
bama, Florida, Mississippi, and South Carolina. Mortality,
incidence, and rates began to go down with the advent of
the PRERA and the PRRA, but the figures for 1941 still show
2,382 deaths at a rate of 124.6. From that point on, however,
the figures show a sharp decline, reaching zero in 1955. The
fact that no cases of malaria have been reported since the
latter date does not necessarily mean that the disease has
been eradicated; it may still be dormant in a few people's
spleens, or it may be reimported by a sick sailor or two.
However, being no longer needed, the Health Department's

Public Health 235

Bureau of Malaria Eradication was abolished in 1955. The
spraying of DDT in the interiors of houses was primarily re-
sponsible for the disappearance of malaria; however, the
raised standard of living, which provided funds for the drive
and improved people's living habits, as well as their health
and resistance to disease, was another essential factor in
getting rid of the disease.

Before 1940 Puerto Rico's three greatest killers were, in
the order given: diarrhea and enteritis (a kind of grab-bag
name for several gastro-intestinal diseases), tuberculosis,
and malaria. In 1937 diarrhea and enteritis caused 8,590
deaths at a rate of 483.5 per 100,000, or more than ten times
the rate in Hawaii, and more than fifty that in Connecticut;
in 1956 the figures were 1,796 and 79.3 respectively, and the
chart for the ailment, in the office of the Secretary of Health,
keeps dropping steadily. Tuberculosis killed 5,182 Puerto
Ricans in 1936 at a rate of 297.3 per 1 00,000 ; the island's
several tuberculosis hospitals were constantly overcrowded,
and thousands of patients could not be accommodated. 1956
saw 831 deaths from the disease at a rate of 36.7.

Such figures, which are studied with enormous interest
by medical visitors from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, are
in themselves dramatic indices of Puerto Rico's new vitality.
In partial explanation of the distressing earlier health statis-
tics, an unpublished PRRA report prepared in 1936 said:
'The Puerto Rican laborers are subject to a process of slow
starvation which for hosts of unemployed becomes habitual,
pressing hunger. Meat and milk, for example, are such lux-
uries that the daily per capita consumption is measured in
ounces and spoonfuls." On the other hand, in line with Dr.
Pons's dictum that there is only a medicine of low standards
of living and another of higher, several other diseases now
plague the island to an increasing extent. Not only do rising
standards of living bring their own ailments, but the fact
that the Puerto Ricans' life expectancy has risen from 46
years in 1940 to 68 in 1958 has also increased the menace

236 c PUERTO Rico

from the several diseases of age. So, for instance, we find
that cancer killed 676 in 1931 and 1,682 in 1956; diabetes
caused the death of 44 in 1932 and 165 in 1956; deaths from
heart ailments went up from 1,466 in 1931 to 2,525 in 1956,
when heart trouble was a far more serious disease, statisti-
cally considered, than were tuberculosis and diarrhea and
enteritis.

In 1906 Governor Beekman Winthrop wrote: "Although it
may be possible, through the introduction of more advanced
sanitary mediums, to reduce Puerto Rico's death rate, this
rate is not excessive for a tropical island." In that year it was
twenty-three per 1000. In 1940 about 35,000 Puerto Ricans
died on their island, or 18.4 per 1000. When the mortality
rate dropped to twelve per 1000 in 1947, Dr. Pons thought
that things had gone about as far as a public-health program
could bring them. In his report for that year he wrote that
the tuberculosis rate might be reduced slightly by direct
action, that minor improvements in the total health situa-
tion could be expected here and there, but that the death
rate was leveling off. "I expect," he wrote, "that at this point
in our accomplishment any marked reduction in our mor-
tality rates in the years to come must be in proportion to the
improvement in economic level at which our population
struggles, rather than to any increase in our direct health-
promoting efforts; and that the smallest unfavorable change
in our economy will have an immediate effect on those
rates."

There was no unfavorable change; the economy kept im-
proving, though not rapidly enough to suit the impatient
Secretary of Health. Budgets for public health increased;
efforts to reduce illness and death increased to correspond.
I n X 957 the death rate was 6.9 per i ? ooo, which is lower
than that of the United States. The following year, however,
it climbed to 7.2, possibly because the population is growing
older while many of the younger and healthier people are
migrating to the States. The "crude" death rate here referred

Public Health 237

to is one that has not been adjusted to the population's age
and age groups. Puerto Rico's death rate is at present one
of the world's lowest, but it will quite possibly continue to
climb as the island's population grows older and becomes
increasingly afflicted with the ailments of age. Such a climb
will in no way indicate a decline of general health condi-
tions. "As an index of general health," said a world authority
to me recently, "give me a good solid heartline. A country's
general health is indicated by the number of deaths it has
from cardiac diseases." (It should be noted that the Soviet
Union now crows that its death rate of 7.5 is "the world's
lowest.")

Such figures, I know, distress a number of demographers
who seem today to be terrified by the word "overpopulation."
However, the birth rate is also dropping, though not as
rapidly as is the mortality.

Just as Puerto Rico is beginning to achieve social and eco-
nomic health, it is also moving toward a proper balance
between population numbers and the developed resources
sustaining the population. Year by year the Puerto Ricans
produce more to eat; at the same time, they have begun to
produce fewer Puerto Ricans to share the food. That is as
it should be, in line with demographic trends often observed
in many parts of the world, and also in line with the theory
advanced by Dr. Josue de Castro in his book The Geography
of Hunger. According to his theory, for which the author
reaped vituperative abuse from many scholars, human fer-
tility tends to rise with malnutrition and to go down as
nutritional standards rise. While he cannot prove his theory
experimentally, his many enemies cannot disprove it, either.
However, they know that nutrition improves immediately
with the same rise in living standards which is usually ac-
companied by declining birth rates.

Dr. Jacques May, who is in charge of the American Geo-
graphical Society's studies in Medical Geography, became
aware of those matters some years ago and formulated an

238 c PUERTO Rico

ambitious, systematic program of research in Puerto Rico,
aimed at arriving at possible conclusions regarding the com-
plex interrelations between public health on the one hand,
and on the other such matters as economic indexes, employ-
ment, manners of individual living, cultural mores, ways of
living together, attitudes and habits of government, sanitary
environment, psychological environment, and possibly nat-
ural climate as well. Unfortunately he failed to find the
needed financial backing. His study would have helped to
clarify man's understanding of the relations between him-
self and his environment of which man himself is the most
important component.

Adequate and energetic medical treatment is, of course,
only one phase of any public-health effort; the provision of
an adequate sanitary environment is another. The quality
of drinking water available to the people is one of several
indexes of such an environment.

To judge by his book The Stricken Land, Governor Tug-
well seems to have been greatly preoccupied with San Juan's
untrustworthy water supply. He seems to have considered
it symptomatic of all of Puerto Rico's ills; at times his book
reads as though having to put up with it, having to boil and
filter his drinking water, was among the worst of the hard-
ships he had to endure in a backward and improvident so-
ciety.

He wrote about conditions during 1942-6, which were
infinitely better than they had been when the United States
first stepped into the Puerto Rican scene. In contrast to his
complaints, however, it is significant that since 1950 the
San Juan water supply has been approved for interstate
commerce. That means that steamers and airplanes putting
in at the capital may now fill their tanks from the city water
system with no thought of further purification, with no dan-
ger of their crews and passengers catching diseases from
poUuted water. It also means that the life of some future
Tugwell will be far easier and less worrisome in the capital.

Public Health 239

If you should move there tomorrow, you may throw away
most or all of the common advice, oral and printed, about
how to stay healthy in the tropics. Precisely as you may for-
get about the daily quinine pills for prophylaxis against ma-
laria, so you may now drink from the common water supply,
from anybody's tap, in any hotel or restaurant, without hav-
ing to go through the common tropical ritual of boiling,
filtering, and adding so many chlorazene pills that it smells
worse than Chicago water. In fact, if you come from some
place other than Chicago or Milwaukee, you may even be
bothered by the fact that the San Juan water already smells
and tastes of chlorine. You will not be bothered long; Chi-
cagoans have long since become accustomed to it, and so
will you. A little chlorine is better than a lot of typhoid and
dysentery.

In matters like the provision of safe drinking water, the
Department of Health must of course work closely with
other branches of the government, such as the Aqueduct
and Sewer Authority. Every year more of Puerto Rico's
communities and municipalities receive filtering and other
plants for purifying their water, as well as improved distri-
bution systems. In his latest published report the Secretary
of Health stated that in 1956 alone his department's Bureau
of Environmental Sanitation "encouraged the Puerto Rico
Aqueduct and Sewer Authority to supply drinking water to
203,695 subscribers (approximately 1,018,471 people), The
Section approved 96 construction plans for new water sup-
plies and alterations or extensions to existing ones."

Puerto Rico's "rural aqueducts" are important in the gen-
eral health program, A decade ago most of the island's rural
women had to carry their water in old gasoline tins, con-
verted into pails, often for long distances and even more
often from polluted sources. Today every effort is made to
purify the springs, rivers, and other sources of water, and
long pipelines, with hydrants conveniently spaced, run along
road after road, bringing good water from safe sources to

240 c PUERTO Rico

the countryside's populations. Their construction proceeds
steadily in a continuing program as funds become available;
it will not be long before every family, rural and urban, has
access to an ample and safe source of water. Such programs,
of course, capture the imaginations of the people themselves.
A number of rural communities are now anticipating routine
governmental efforts and axe installing their own water
supplies with government help, but with their own labor
and limited funds.

For building latrines, too, considerable direct participation
of the people has been enlisted. Twenty years ago Puerto
Rico was a pesthole for hookworm, one reason being that the
people had no shoes; barefoot peasants became infected by
walking on soil that was polluted because virtually nobody
in the rural areas had a latrine. The Department of Health is
today building latrines as rapidly as funds and staff permit,
at a cost of about ninety dollars each. Now, however, a num-
ber of communities have decided not to wait for the gov-
ernment's program to reach them; they organize themselves
for group action, ask the government for technical help and
advice and perhaps for some financing as well take up
collections among themselves, donate their labor, and build
latrines at a cost, to the government, of less than twenty
dollars each. As an added health measure, the government
gives shoes to the rural poor, while the Health Department's
Section of Soil Sanitation inspects dwellings and privies and
carries on research projects aimed at evaluating "the impor-
tance of the use of sanitary privies in regard to the inci-
dence of Bilharzia, hookworm and other intestinal parasitic
infestations in the rural zones of the island."

"How have we lengthened our lives so much in so short
a time?" asked Munoz in a nation-wide radio broadcast on
Columbus Day 1953. "Largely by involving the people them-
selves in the determination of their own destiny."

As a result of these programs, the periodic inspection of
restaurants, stores, ice plants, bottling works, and factories

Public Health 241

to say nothing of private homes and a campaign to teach
the rudiments of sanitation to the individual poor, the sani-
tary environment has been so drastically improved since
1941 that Puerto Rico is today, in its sanitary as well as its
social and economic aspects, virtually a new country.

Puerto Rico's present low death rate seems all the more
remarkable when one remembers that over eighty per cent
of the island's people are still, despite rising standards of
living, medically indigent, and that of that eighty per cent
an appreciable number are still medically all but inacces-
sible, in part because they live in remote sections of the hills,
and in part because they superstitiously follow the hocus-
pocus of curanderos or curanderas male or female folk
healers who flourish in all the world's isolated and poverty-
stricken communities.

Despite the fact that there were about 500 doctors on the
island in 1940 as compared to 1,745 today, and the number
of persons per physician was reduced correspondingly from
3,672 to 1,325, over eighty per cent of the medicine prac-
ticed in Puerto Rico must be public medicine and therefore
a drain on a budget already low and overstrained when com-
pared with those of the various states.

In addition to managing six tuberculosis hospitals and
five general hospitals, the department maintains seventy-six
public-health units in the various districts. Each of these
is a clinic (though some have small hospitals attached to
them) for the treatment of such diseases as tuberculosis,
syphilis, and heart trouble. Each unit, however, is also an
important educational center in which doctors and nurses
constantly talk to patients about various health problems,
as well as a field outpost of various suborganizations, such
as the bureaus of Tuberculosis, Venereal Disease, Maternal
and Infant Hygiene, Crippled Children, Malaria and Insect
Control, Public-Health Nursing, and Sanitation. It is largely
through these centers and through its Division of Social
Welfare that the department manages to reach a large num-

242 PUERTO Rico

ber of the rural poor, who also, because of their poverty, con-
stitute the greatest single reservoir of disease.

The ultimate aim is through the public-health units, the
department's Division of Public Welfare, the Division of Hos-
pitals, and through close co-operation with the educational
system for health instruction, school lunches, and public
milk stations to reach into all walks of Puerto Rican life
and into all of the interlocking phases of any one walk of
life. Always the work comes back to education in its mani-
fold forms and to pioneering in education. One unique but
gratifyingly succesful practice is to talk about general-health
problems to patients in hospitals, where they and their visi-
tors are more receptive to such talks than at any other time.

Mrs. Glenola Rose was one of my students in the area-
studies course I had the honor to conduct in Puerto Rico in
1952. A mature woman and an interested one, with a vast
variety of experiences in matters of public health in many
parts of the world, in the term paper she wrote for the course
she had this to say about the Rio Piedras public-health unit:

"Among the seventy-six public-health units one is unique,
that at Rio Piedras. It is the training center for all personnel
for all public-health units in Puerto Rico."

After describing the plant, the staff, and the varied activi-
ties of this unit which includes the offering of services in
prenatal, well-baby, preschool, and school clinics, control
programs for tuberculosis, venereal disease, malaria, and
communicable diseases, programs designed to combat can-
cer and heart disease, education in nutrition and all other
matters of health she calls attention to what is undoubtedly
one of the greatest factors in Puerto Rico's success. "One is
impressed with the enthusiasm and response from every per-
son involved, both patient and staff, from the janitor up.
This atmosphere appears to result from the insistence that
every person is valuable in his own right true democracy.
One of the ways of giving satisfaction is the custom of giving
a diploma at graduation to anyone finishing a course of

Public Health c 243

training. The Puerto Ricans are eager to be educated, take
pride in securing an education. Janitors as well as other
employees get diplomas. But, so do mothers, who are taught
how to care for themselves and their families. There are
constant graduation ceremonies. The people are being
taught to want what they should have and to be proud of
wan ting it T

In describing his program to the second regional meeting
of the American College of Physicians in November 1950
Dr. Pons said: "It is imperative that we put into the attitude
of people, into their everyday conscious thinking, that ill-
ness and infirmity are to a very large measure preventable,
that they are cancelable liabilities, and that it is unnecessary
to suffer them. . . . We must teach people to seek the serv-
ices that prevent them, rather than those that remedy them.
We must see that the communities co-operate in a construc-
tive manner with the agencies dedicated to the promotion
of health. When we accomplish this, then we shall have the
greatest of any progress in medicine to report."

While Pons's report on the problems and achievements
of Puerto Rico's Department of Health was noteworthy, I
doubt if the American College of Physicians liked hearing
it, especially at a time when many of the doctors in the
United States were frightened by the bogey of socialized
medicine.

"It is interesting indeed," Pons went on to tell the Ameri-
can College of Physicians, "that a small epidemic outbreak
in Puerto Rico brings forth all our might to prevent a few
deaths in as many days and that public opinion becomes
manifestly impatient if that might is not Immediately forth-
coming; yet, there is no great worry over the fact that some
60,000 women give birth each year (164 daily) in dingy,
substandard homes in the rural areas without any of the
benefits of present-day medicine. Certainly a small epidemic
outbreak offers no greater urgency than the fact that hun-
dreds of children do not have a wholesome home and

244 PUERTO Rico

appropriate food; the death of a few during an epidemic out-
break is not a more serious matter than the fact that hun-
dreds of families are each month left to suffer hunger and
misery upon the death or infirmity of the breadwinners."

Continuing in that vein and dealing with the obstacles
that result from limited budgets, he said: "We now have on
the waiting list of the Crippled Children's Bureau, 1,009
children waiting for orthopedic treatment of one kind or
another, 556 children waiting for plastic surgery, and 1,358
waiting for treatment of remediable ocular conditions; most
of them have been waiting for much too long, and we do
not know just when they can be taken care of. We know of
824 cerebral palsied children who are receiving little if any
expert care.

"Screening surveys have shown that our schools, with an
approximate enrollment of 400,000 children, contain some
38,000 with visual difficulties readily correctable, and some
25,000 children who are hard of hearing; little is being done
about them. One study has indicated that there are no fewer
than 400 children under eighteen years of age who are blind,
most of them from causes that could have been prevented."

Pons complained about conditions of 1950, which have
improved immeasurably since that date. He is quoted here
to illustrate a widespread attitude of mind; in his own field
the then Secretary of Health personified a society impatient
to get things done. But even while such men and the entire
society complain, Puerto Rico keeps progressing in its public-
health affairs, with amazing statistical results.

The Department of Health is today a vast, sprawling or-
ganization with many branches, each busy with its own
share of the complex total task. While ambulatory X-ray
plants photograph hundreds of thousands of chests in the
drive against tuberculosis, other trucks distribute to public-
assistance beneficiaries food donated by the Federal Depart-
ment of Agriculture, Plans are now well under way to con-
struct a modern medical center in San Juan's Rio Piedras

Public Health 245

section. There is a psychiatric hospital, a psychiatric train-
ing center, and a project for mentally retarded children.
The Bureau of Health Education goes deeply into all phases
of Puerto Rican life. The Mental Health Bureau is "mainly
concerned with the basic function of promoting and main-
taining the mental health of the people of Puerto Rico as
part of the objectives of a public-health program." The Bu-
reau of Medical Social Service strives to improve and tie
together the social services of all the other bureaus. There
is a Bureau of Nutrition and Dietetics that works hard to
improve the island's nutritional levels, making studies and
surveys and offering consulting services, as well as in-
service training. The Hospital Service and Construction Bu-
reau strives to enlarge and improve the island's hospital
facilities. The Bureau of Cancer Control attempts to curb
the inroads of cancer. The Office of Pathology and Medical
Education does laboratory work besides training workers in
special fields. Specific bureaus deal with communicable dis-
eases, while others are concerned with venereal diseases,
heart diseases, and tuberculosis. Among the many bureaus
are those of Health Laboratories, of Nursing, of Maternal
and Infant Hygiene, of Crippled Children, and of Oral
Health. Some of the activities of the Bureau of Environ-
mental Sanitation have been recounted earlier. The Division
of Hospitals runs hospitals, while the Division of Public
Welfare, with a complex system of programs in many fields,
is as yet the closest thing on the island to a general Depart-
ment of Public Welfare.

Such divisions and subdivisions are, of course, common
in large governmental departments. The results of organiza-
tional efforts, they do effective work, though it is a fact
increasingly recognized today throughout the world that
the compartmentalization of effort they represent brings its
own serious drawbacks. The battle between compartmental-
ization and integration is a universal phenomenon in Puerto
Rico, and in that connection the new "Bayamon Health and

246 PUERTO Rico

Welfare Regional Program" is of special interest. Believing
that the lives and aff airs of people and societies are not com-
partmentalized and are truly integrated, the Department of
Health is now carrying out activities in the region served by
the Bayamon District Hospital, aimed not only at integrating
all its own activities and services for improved health, but
also at co-ordinating its activities with those of other gov-
ernment agencies and of the various municipalities.

A pamphlet published by the Department of Health in
1957 begins as follows: "When all the agencies for curative
medicine, preventive medicine, public health, and social
service within a given geographic area are coordinated under
a single system, the term regionalization is used to denote
the organization." It is an important venture, the first of its
kind under the American flag, which is attracting attention
from medical circles in all parts of the world. In Puerto
Rico it may yet lead to further administrative pioneering.
In 1957, in his annual message to the legislature, Governor
Munoz Marin asked for something similar, at least in a local-
ized experiment, for all the various governmental efforts.
What he asked for, in eff ect, though he has not yet received
it, is something similar to Egypt's imaginative "Demonstra-
tion and Training Area of Naguib," which has a population
of some 300,000. In that instance governmental appropria-
tions are made for the region in question, and not for the
various government departments active in it. The Naguib
area is administered by a committee composed of representa-
tives of all those departments, who must spend the monies
appropriated in accordance with integrated master plans.

Perhaps the most important single explanation of Puerto
Rico's remarkable success in matters of public health is
found in the fact that the island's Department of Health not
only subscribes to, but also abides by, Craig's dictum that
"the days of monastery medicine and the ivory tower are
gone." Medicine, according to Howard Reid Craig in his
book Introduction to Social Medicine, is "an integral, inter-

Public Health 247

related, and interdependent part of a functioning social and
economic system which to be viable must exist in a con-
tinuing state of flux."

The vision of a future Puerto Rico with the world's lowest
death rate and one of the world's best climates of sanitation
and health is not necessarily one of the distant future. As
yet, the figures, curves, and charts dealing with mortality
and incidence of various diseases, with infant mortality and
maternal deaths in childbirth, have shown no indication of
discontinuing their dramatic drops. The vision of a Puerto
Rico with the world's lowest death rate is realizable in the
near or immediate future of another decade or two barring
a local catastrophe of a world calamity.

15

Education

WHEN the United States took over Puerto Rico in 1898,
the island's educational system was extremely limited and
church-controlled. With characteristic energy and good will
we started to do something about the matter immediately.
Commissioners from Washington were appointed to expand
and reorganize the system according to the latest and best
continental patterns. They built schools, hired teachers,
worked with vigor and devotion to improve something that
was obviously bad, and wrote enthusiastic reports, which
were characteristic of our national exhuberance of those
days. As early as 1900 Dr. M. G. Brumbaugh, the first Com-
missioner of Education under the American flag, proudly
informed the U.S. government that the average Puerto Rican
child already knew more about Washington, Lincoln, Betsy
Ross, and the American flag than did the average child in
the United States.

Educational policy, which is a knotty matter everywhere,
was in those days not at all knotty in Puerto Rico. Politically
determined, by and in Washington, it had one obvious major
aim, and one only, namely: to make "good Americans" as

Education c 249

rapidly as possible out of as many Puerto Rican children as
possible. Hence the children learned about Betsy Ross and
the American flag; the question of whether or not they
learned as much as they should about the responsibilities
involved in taking their places as Puerto Ricans in the
Puerto Rican society was hardly considered.

For the children it proved confusing, especially as it
seemed obvious to the American commissioners of educa-
tion that one couldn't be a good American learn about
Betsy Ross, with perhaps a little arithmetic and writing
thrown in except in the English langauge. It was therefore
decreed very early that all the teaching in all of Puerto Rico's
public schools must be done in English, thus forcing the
teachers immediately to learn a new language if they wanted
to hold their jobs. The results were chaotic. Children who
had never heard anything but Spanish at home and in the
streets now had to learn the three R's and various other sub-
ject matters including the history of a culture alien to
theirs as expounded to them in English by teachers who
hardly knew English themselves. Many a time during these
early decades, especially in the higher grades, many a
teacher closed the classroom door against the enemy in order
to bootleg a little comprehensible Spanish into her conver-
sation with her students; a supervisor who caught her at
it might well have been sympathetic, but had to discharge
her just the same, thus accentuating the teacher shortage^
as well as resentment against the United States.

Immediately after taking over the government, the Amer-
ican rulers began to send promising Puerto Rican students
to the States for an education. The first group presented dif-
ficulties. Where should they go? They were not citizens of
the United States, and as colonial subjects they didn't have
the full rights of American boys and girls. But the fact that
they were undeniably West Indians offered a solution : they
were sent to that training institution for other colonial sub-
jects Carlisle Indian School. But then some of our better

250 c PUERTO Rico

private schools opened their doors to Puerto Ricans, and
those of the second group had better luck.

One of them was Jose Padin, who had the good fortune
to be taken in by Haverford College. However, the fact that
Haverford was a Quaker institution distressed his Catholic
relatives. When he returned to Puerto Rico four years later,
they asked him with much apprehension whether those god-
less people had diverted him from the true faith and had
made a Quaker out of him. His classic and revealing answer
was : *1 couldn't make the grade/*

In 1930, while Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. was Puerto Rico's
governor, Herbert Hoover appointed Padin Commissioner
of Education. Things began to change immediately, though
uneasy stirrings also began to be felt in Washington. The
daring new commissioner set out to reshape the educational
system to fit the island's needs. He even managed to abolish
the rule under which all the teaching had to be done in
English, and to substitute for it a system whereby the teach-
ing was done in Spanish, but English became a required
subject of study. Also, he encouraged the teachers to express
their opinions. Many of them held such opinions before,
but they had kept them prudently hidden from the Ameri-
canizing commissioners of education.

The so-called Second Unit Rural Schools, established by
Padin during the thirties, represented the first truly Puerto
Rican educational effort designed to fit Puerto Rican real-
ities, integrated with the island's indigenous life. These took
the pupils from the seventh grade through the tenth, and
their organization and basic ideas have been studied and
adapted by many Latin-American countries.

Previous to the establishment of those schools, most of the
educational effort had been confined to the towns and cities;
the rural areas had a few poor equivalents of the Little Red
Schoolhouse, in which the three R's and other subjects were
taught by rote. That was bad, of course, in a society that
was still predominantly rural, and one whose human

Education c 251

strength consisted primarily of the impoverished peasantry*
The new program of the Second Unit Rural Schools began
with detailed studies of all the various rural areas in which
they were established, of their type or types of agriculture,
their health conditions, their relative isolation from the rest
of Puerto Rico, their social conditions and characteristics.
As a result of such studies, the operations and educational
programs of each of the Second Unit Rural Schools were
then shaped in such a manner that the school came directly
to grips with the problems of the community which it served.

Each school had (and has) a farm on which the boys are
taught agriculture in addition to their regular academic sub-
jects. Facilities exist for teaching the girls cooking, canning,
and other branches of domestic science. In the early days the
teaching of social studies was aimed primarily at the under-
standing of the particular communities in which the schools
were located; much emphasis was placed on vocational train-
ing; instruction in health and hygiene was made an essential
part of the curriculum. Boys and girls, as today, were en-
couraged to join such organizations as the Future Farmers
of America, so becoming, through devotion to their own par-
ticular problems, also identified with the vast agricultural
world beyond Puerto Rico.

The work of the schools soon became intimately tied with
that of the Office of Public Welfare, Social workers attached
to them strove to help the children and their parents and to
bring about a close relationship between the school and the
community's various individuals. Mothers' clubs and parent-
teacher associations strengthened that relationship. Thus
the school became also a community center; its influence on
adult life came to be felt widely, as for instance through
night classes for adults, the organization of co-operatives,
and the joint tackling of many other community problems.

Such innovations were revolutionary in Puerto Rico a
quarter of a century ago. The Second Unit Rural Schools
have by now been drastically modified. Today they axe largely

252 c PUERTO Rico

rural junior-high schools with some vocational aspects
added, but this means only that Puerto Rico has changed.
The psychological and cultural division between city and
country is now not nearly as drastic as it was three decades
ago; people by the thousands have flocked to the towns to
take industrial jobs; new roads have united city and country
more than ever before; the growth of literacy, the radio, and
other means of communication have brought about accel-
erated exchanges of information.

The stress Padin placed on health and hygiene in the Sec-
ond Unit Rural Schools has since his day been greatly inten-
sified throughout the educational system. The phenomenal
success of the Department of Health in reducing the death
rate is due in no small measure to the increased emphasis
on health and hygiene in the school system, and to the
island-wide program for training teachers for health instruc-
tion. Health is further improved by the more than $9,000,-
ooo spent per year, including a sizable amount from the fed-
eral government, on school lunches and milk stations, while
the Department of Education also distributes free shoes to
the poor.

Vocational training, even of the most rudimentary type,
was a welcome innovation when the Second Unit Rural
Schools were established. Today all of Puerto Rico is voca-
tion-minded to such an extent that individual public schools
can no longer cope with the entire problem of vocational
training in an industrializing society and have been supple-
mented by vocational schools.

Padin was and is modern Puerto Rico's great culture hero
in education. He set the pace and the norms for adjusting
education to the changing culture's changing needs, and he
achieved success largely because he insisted that the teach-
ing, the talking, the discussions, the planning, be in the lan-
guage that teachers, students, parents, administrators, knew
best. But in 1936, in view of the dangerous tensions arising
from Colonel Rigg's assassination, a number of eminent

Education c 253

members of the U. S. Congress visited the island to see for
themselves what the trouble was. Among them was Senator
King of Utah, Chairman of the Senate's Committee on In-
sular Affairs, and his rather novel manner of correlating
one problem with another in order to reach a solution came
to have far-reaching effects on Puerto Rico's educational
system. It was obvious that there was trouble in Puerto Rico;
it became equally obvious to King that few Puerto Rican chil-
dren knew English. There, to the powerful senator, lay the
key to the Puerto Rican "problem."

Padin's resignation was accepted, and his successor's ap-
pointment was confirmed by the Senate only after he had
pledged himself again to put major stress on the teaching of
English. Again English became a political football, rather
than a desirable subject of study. In Puerto Rico the Com-
missioner of Education found himself in much trouble and
resigned in 1945. From then until 1948 there was no com-
missioner at all, no responsible head of the school system, as
qualified Puerto Ricans refused to accept the job unless they
could work out the problem of English instruction according
to their best judgment and by the best pedagogic means, in-
stead of obeying the U. S, Senate, whose members included
few, if any, skilled educators. The federal law providing for
the election of 1948, when the people elected their own gov-
ernor for the first time, also stated that the governor would
appoint his own Commissioner (now Secretary) of Educa-
tion, responsible to the people of Puerto Rico rather than to
the Senate of the United States.

One result has been a dramatic expansion of education in
all its forms and institutions. Puerto Rico's sudden upsurge
of interest in education, of popular hunger for learning, is
not unique to the island; it is symptomatic of a similar surge
in all the world's new emerging societies in Ghana and
Nigeria, Thailand, India, Indonesia. Many of the thousands
of visitors from such countries are particularly interested in
the methods used in Puerto Rico, not only for expansion, but

254 c PUERTO Rico

also for effective instruction. There is still much groping,
much study, much dissention. But Puerto Rico is not unique
in that respect, either. Even in the United States modern
educators are obviously and bitterly at each other's throats
in magazines and in books, on lecture platforms and in
board meetings, in faculty meetings and in personal gossip
over the vital issue of whether or not today's education
prepares American pupils and students for the demands of
the future.

There are many in Puerto Rico today who are proud of the
obvious progress that has been made, of the goals toward
which the educators are working, of the means used to
achieve those goals. There are others and some jingoistic
U.S. journalists echo them who again make a political foot-
ball out of the subject of English. They claim correctly that
today's children are not yet learning English fast enough and
well enough, and insist that this proves the present govern-
ment to be extremely nationalistic and to be actually aiming
at the island's eventual independence. Still others are dis-
tressed because education in the States is as yet much bet-
ter than that in Puerto Rico.

Whatever the situation's realities, the statistics that in-
dicate progress are impressive.

In 1940 the total enrollment in schools, public and pri-
vate, elementary, intermediate, and high, was 296,679. By
1958 the figure had more than doubled, to 614,000. In 1933,
61,655 children were born in Puerto Rico; 28,121 of them,
or 42.3 per cent, found thek way into the schools in 1940.
In 1958, 67.2 per cent of the 85,455 children born seven
years earlier were in the first grade.

One of the prime aims of the Department of Education is
to make schooling universal, to create conditions under
which every child of school age is actually in class, and illit-
eracy is finally eliminated as a social scourge. Another aim
is to keep the children in school as long as possible, with a
maximum number continuing through high school. The in-

Education 255

crease in enrollment in high schools, public and private, has
been phenomenal. In 1940 it was 12,440; in 1958 it was
59,3".

The regular school program is accompanied by a special
adult educational program aimed primarily at the elimina-
tion of illiteracy. Its standards are high, defining literacy as
the equivalent of a third-grade education, rather than as the
mere ability to read and write. The program was inaugurated
in 1954 with the organization of 548 groups in both rural
and urban zones, and an enrollment of 17,892. In 1958 there
were 1,782 groups, with 32,895 students. A total of 118,258
adults had by then taken advantage of the courses offered.
Results in a nutshell are: in 1898, 85 per cent of the popula-
tion was illiterate; the 1950 census, which judged the mat-
ter solely by answers to the question "Can you read and
write?" listed nearly 25 per cent of the population as being
illiterate; the 1960 census will show the figure to have been
reduced to 10 per cent; by 1970 or earlier the entire popula-
tion may well be literate, even according to the "third-grade"
definition.

The University of Puerto Rico shows a similar growth. Its
enrollment of 4,987 in 1940 had grown to 16,753 in 1958.
A School of Medicine and a School of Dentistry have been
added, and today the university is becoming an inter-Amer-
ican center for the study of atomic energy and its peacetime
applications.

Vocational schools, public and private, show a correspond-
ing growth in a society that is hungry for education and
training.

The number of teachers has risen from 6,294 in 1940 to
12,302 in 1958.

According to a United Nations report of 1957, 29.9 per
cent of Puerto Rico's total population was in that year en-
rolled in the elementary, secondary, and vocational schools.
The figure was the world's highest; that for the United
States, 22.2 per cent, came next. If you lump all the Puerto

256 c PUERTO Rico

Kicans who axe today taking courses of one kind or another,
in the regular public and private schools, in night classes, in
vocational schools, in the university and in other institutions
of higher learning, you find that well over one third of all
the island's people are receiving some kind of formal educa-
tion. Again the figure is the world's highest; in the United
States it is less than one fourth.

Such statistics are all the more remarkable in view of
Puerto Rico's relative poverty. Every government department
makes clamorous demands on the limited budget, but edu-
cation has top priority. Approximately one third of the
budget now goes for educational efforts. The Department of
Education spends about sixty-seven dollars annually for
every pupil enrolled in its schools and its various special
didactic activities. Admittedly that is low when compared
with the $2oo-odd spent by New York and New Jersey, but
it is remarkably high when compared with the twenty-four
dollars Puerto Rico spent per pupil in 1 940.

The teachers, as dedicated a group as one can find any-
where, are necessarily overworked and underpaid. Despite
heroic efforts and dramatic gains, there are not yet enough
teachers and classrooms to meet the urgent needs. Nearly
seventy per cent of the pupils in the urban and rural public
elementary schools suffer from the "double enrollment" sys-
tem, under which a teacher has one class in the morning
and another in the afternoon, while the pupils receive only
half a day's schooling. Admittedly that system, which is re-
garded as a temporary makeshift to get as many children
into the schools as rapidly as possible, has its limitations as
pedagogy.

The question of language is intimately tied up with that of
culture, and both are extremely difficult in the present era
of rapid culture change much more difficult than they were
during the revolutionary period of 1940-8. In those days it
was relatively easy to recognize the vital importance of
Puerto Rico's getting its own education into its own hands.

Education c 257

The basic principle that education had to be shaped to fit
Puerto Rico's cultural life was easy to grasp; the matter of
defining that life in an era of rapid change was more diffi-
cult, took longer, and led to much conflict.

The truth of the matter is that modern Puerto Rico is not
exclusively a society with an old Spanish culture. It is a so-
ciety that prides itself on bridging the gap between the Latin
and Anglo-American cultures. Its "dual citizenship" in the
political sphere exists also in the cultural. In fact, Puerto
Rico is today a bi-cultural society in which the educators
are hard-put to incorporate both sides in their curricula and
methodologies.

In an excellent pamphlet published in 1956 by the Depart-
ment of Education, Leonard S. Kenworthy went so far as to
say: "With close economic and political ties with the United
States, with rapid industrialization and urbanization, and a
growing feeling of kinship to the States, the question of how
much of their Spanish background can be retained in the
next generation continues to cause controversy. Certainly
older and even middle-aged people are proud of their Spanish
cultural heritage, but whether this pride can be developed
in the oncoming generation is still open to question. Already
most of the African and Indian heritage has disappeared;
whether the same will eventually happen to the Spanish
heritage remains to be seen,"

In the matter of art and music, in which, according to
Kenworthy, the Puerto Rican schools are still deficient, the
culture question must necessarily play an important role.
However, the question of English instruction is still by far
the most difficult in the educational struggle. It is widely rec-
ognized that the Puerto Ricans must make every effort to be-
come relatively bilingual as rapidly as possible, though the
governor has added the cogent admonition that they must
be careful not merely to become "semi-literate in two lan-
guages/' As stated above: when the process seems too slow,
the political opposition that advocates statehood charges the

258 c PUERTO Rico

government with nationalism and with secret aims for inde-
pendence; on the other hand, when a consultant some years
ago urged intensification of English instruction largely be-
cause migrants to New York are handicapped by not know-
ing the language, he was widely attacked for wanting to use
the school system to train Puerto Ricans primarily for ex-
port.

Some years ago the Department hired Dr. Charles C.
Fries, former Director of the English Language Institute of
the University of Michigan, to make studies and recommend
solutions. The present program is based on his recommenda-
tions. Under his supervision the Department wrote the "Fries
American English Series" of texts, as well as teachers' guides
for the various grades. They were printed by the Department
of Education press.

Today English is taught daily as a required subject in all
the grades from one to twelve. In the first three grades it is
taught as an oral subject; reading and writing axe not be-
gun until the third grade. The general aim is to so shape
courses and methods that high-school graduates can take full
advantage of the university, where a number of non-Puerto
Rican faculty members lecture in English, and where a num-
ber of texts are perforce also in that language. In the Eng-
lish classes in high school special stress is placed on United
States history, culture, and literature.

The program for English instruction, aided by special
texts that were designed to meet Puerto Rico's specific needs,
has been planned with great care and skill. But it cannot be-
come effective immediately, if only because too many of the
teachers are themselves still deficient in their knowledge of
the language. As a result, the island's sixty-three Catholic
schools and the new Catholic university in Ponce are today
more effective in their teaching of English than the public-
school system can be. The public-school system must take
its teachers as they come and laboriously train them to be
better. If they don't know much English, they must be

Education c 2,59

taught. The Catholic schools have no difficulty in sending to
the States for excellently trained English-speaking nuns.
The difference, like everything else in Puerto Rico, has poli-
tical repercussions. For years, and especially since the Com-
monwealth constitution provided for the complete separa-
tion of Church and State, Puerto Rico's two bishops have
railed against Munoz Marin over what the bishops called the
"godlessness" and "materialism" of the government's present
policies. At the same time, the bishops have tried in all con-
ceivable ways, though without success, to regain a foothold
in the school system, which had been virtually controlled by
the Church during the Spanish days. In that situation it is
easy for the opposition parties to fish for the Catholic vote
by announcing that they, at least, are good Catholics, and to
line up with the bishops in the never-ending war on the gov-
ernor and his dramatic programs. They gain relatively few
votes by such tactics, but that merely shows that in a society
in which some eighty per cent of the people are Catholics,
the political maneuverings of the Church and the political
pronouncements of its local officials are not taken as se-
riously as they might be in the States, where the Catholics
are a minority.

The public-school system cannot hire skilled continental
English teachers, if only because they would cause friction
by having to be paid more than Puerto Rico's teachers re-
ceive. Under the present system the regular class teachers
handle English in the first three grades, though some of
them necessarily do it by rote ? knowing little English them-
selves. After that, however, the language is taught by a spe-
cial corps of teachers who do nothing else. Improving their
skill and preparation has been described in a recent official
report as one of the department's most pressing problems.
Between 1955 and 1959 more than 300 were sent to the
States on special scholarships for a year each. Summer in-
stitute scholarships are planned for more. Special English
classes for teachers have been and are being organized. A

260 c PUERTO Rico

good supervisory program to keep track of results and to
devise new methods is in the process of being created.

The department also offers special adult courses in Eng-
lish free to all Puerto Ricans who plan to migrate to the
States.

All of which costs much money that is also badly needed
for many other things, from nursery-schools to highways,
from seaports to hospitals.

In a society that is rapidly drawing closer to the United
States by means of its accelerated industrialization, voca-
tional training ranks high in importance after English. In
that field Puerto Rico has also developed an impressive pro-
gram, which fascinates visitors from Latin America, Asia,
and Africa, whose countries, too, face the drastic changes
and new ways of life that result from industrialization. Al-
though systematic vocational training in agriculture, in
home economics, and in trade and industry was begun in
1931 under the United States Smith-Hughes Law, it had its
greatest impetus after 1948.

After World War II the government bought a wealth of
war-surplus machinery and equipment and used it for found-
ing what was then the world's largest single vocational
school, in which some 3,000 students soon began to learn
fifty different trades, ranging from welding to cooking, from
carpentry to electronics, from blacksmithing to airplane
mechanics. After 1950, however, the school was decentral-
ized for the purpose of better serving all of Puerto Rico's
people. Today vocational training is offered in the general
categories of agriculture, industrial arts, home economics
and native handicrafts, business, trades, practical nursing.
It is offered in distinct vocational schools, in the regular
public schools, and in night classes, to young people, adults,
and veterans, by regular teachers and specially trained itin-
erant teachers. In special cases it is offered to prospective
workers in new factories which could previously not have
found their required skills in Puerto Rico. In 1940 some 450

Education c 261

students received vocational training. By 1958 the figure had
risen to 118,749.

Ever since Padin organized his Second Unit Rural Schools,
the island's educators have been in close touch with the peo-
ple, the voters, the parents. In March and April, 1958, the
Department, under the leadership of Dr. Efrain Sanchez
Hidalgo, Secretary of Education, organized public hearings
in all parts of the island, at which more than 102,000 adults
expressed themselves on what they wanted from the school
system. Carefully studied and tabulated, the results were re-
vealing. While a few diehards lamented the new directions
and wanted to see a return to the "good old days," by fax the
majority wanted the new programs speeded up and made
more effective. They wanted to do away with the system of
double enrollment. They asked for much more stress on
English, more history, more geography, more information
on the wide world of which Puerto Rico is now becoming a
functioning part. They asked for stricter standards, under
which their children would be promoted from class to class
only on merit. They requested more homework, drastic cuts
in absenteeism, and greater retention in the schools, aimed
at having the pupils go as far as possible, preferably through
high school. They seemed to be thoroughly aware that the
present serious problem of technological unemployment is
at least partly rooted in inadequate education. A large num-
ber talked about the dignity of the teaching profession; they
wanted both the pay and the prestige of the teachers to be
increased. Many were interested in the school health pro-
grams and asked for annual physical examinations for pu-
pils as well as teachers. Some wanted the school lunch pro-
gram extended through the serving of light lunches at ten in
the morning. Finally, the testifying parents demanded an
even closer relationship than has existed heretofore between
the school and the community.

I have been a teacher in the States. I have attended P.T.A.
meetings, have talked at P.T.A. meetings. The kind of vital

262 c PUERTO Rico

interest that was shown in Puerto Rico by 100,000 adults at-
tending special hearings may well be envied by thousands of
U.S. educators.

In response to the demands that both the skills and the
prestige of teachers be improved, the department has worked
out a series of norms and procedures for teacher promotion.
Today teachers may be promoted only on merit; seniority,
nepotism, and political influence no longer count in the
process.

The department's publication activities are extremely im-
portant. A number of the texts, for instance, have to be spe-
cially written to fit the island's needs. Sometimes they are
books that are available in the States in English and need
merely to be translated into Spanish; more often, like the
'Tries American English Series," they must be created from
scratch. Then, too, the department publishes three periodi-
cals, Educacidn is a monthly with a circulation of 16,000,
distributed to teachers, dealing with a great variety of edu-
cational problems. Escuela is a weekly paper distributed free
to pupils in the elementary and high schools; it deals with
literature, art, science, general information, the English lan-
guage, biographies, and school notes. More than 300,000
copies go every other week to pupils in the elementary
schools; on alternate weeks 100,000 copies go to the high
schools. Finally there is Semana, a weekly with a circulation
of nearly 300,000 copies, published for free distribution to
adults. A magazine with cultural orientations, dealing with
a miscellany of things from all over the world, it is designed
to improve the level and widen the scope of the people's cul-
tural interests.

It should be added that all traces of political partisanship
are excluded from those publications, as they are from the
Education Department's radio and television stations.

Station WIPR TV, in San Juan, was opened in 1958, and
is the only television station in the Spanish-speaking world
that deals exclusively with educational programs. Previously

Education 263

there had been educational radio, as there still is. Com-
mercial advertising is as rigidly excluded as is politics from
both the radio and television programs. Music (for instance
the Casals festivals), literature, drama, the problems of la-
bor, of health, of education, news of the day and the world,
play important roles in the programs. Now the medium of
television is being studied toward the end of organizing
courses in subjects for which the teacher-shortage is most
acute. Courses in mathematics and physics were success-
fully transmitted in 1958, and at the time of the present
writing a course in conversational English is being offered to
a total enrollment of more than 3,000. Among the new
courses offered in 1959 and given by various members of the
university faculty are; Universal Literature; The Spanish
Language; The Structure of the Universe; and Principles of
Economics. New television courses are being developed con-
stantly; Puerto Rico's educational pioneering in that field is
impressive. All students enrolling in such courses receive
free specially prepared printed materials to accompany the
broadcasts. Final examinations are required for credit.

All such steps, and many more, are completely new to the
Puerto Rican scene, and some are new to the general scene
of education. But they represent a ferment that will inevi-
tably bring good results within a relatively short time. The
most important aspect of that ferment is perhaps the en-
couragement of self-criticism and the invitation of criticism
from without. In 1959 the Commonwealth brought three
eminent European educators to Puerto Rico, to study the
educational system and make pertinent recommendations.
One was Danish, the second German, and the third Italian.
Their report, which they had agreed to make unanimous in
all its specific parts, was not yet available for public perusal
at the time of the present writing, but that they were asked
to prepare it is important.

An educational system taken in its entirety is always a
mirror of the total society in which it functions. When the

264 PUERTO Rico

society is in rapid change, socially, economically, politically,
the educational system must struggle against the inevitable
lag also to change. But Puerto Rico is today not only exam-
ining its own problems, but is also reaching elsewhere
throughout the world for solutions to those problems; pre-
cisely as many parts of that world are reaching toward
Puerto Rico for solutions to their problems. Let the present
trends continue another decade, and Puerto Rico may well
develop educational innovations as important and effective
in their way as Denmark's world-famous folk high schools
are in theirs.

16

Wc Employment

IN a message to the legislature, March 20, 1952, Governor
Munoz Marin discussed health activities and education as
being vitally necessary for improving the standard of living
and for the purpose of giving impetus to economic expan-
sion. For such ends, he said, the government would need
mone y and ever more money. Where was that money to
come from? It would come "from six sources, most of which
axe not at present being adequately used: (i) taxes which
are collected; (2) taxes which are [now] not collected; (3)
federal aid; (4) the issuing of Commonwealth and munici-
pal bonds; (5) economies effected by running the govern-
ment more efficiently; (6) civic action in the community to
solve its own problems. There has been only very slight ac-
tion on the part of the community, except through the gov-
ernment, in creating on its own initiative a school, or a co-
operative, or in helping to purify the waters of a river, or to
provide a library, or to provide food and shelter in cases of
extreme necessity."

The governor talked about community participation in
terms of cash returns to the Commonwealth. However, the

266 c PUERTO Rico

poet and humanist who constantly distinguishes for his peo-
ple between creation and mere acquisition, who coined the
subtle and deeply human term "Operation Serenity," does
not think merely in terms of cash returns. When, under
Agriculture's Social Programs Administration, men, women,
and children give of their own time and strength to build
their own new modest homes and those of their neighbors,
when the Co-operative Development Administration per-
suades groups of neighbors to organize themselves into asso-
ciations for joint action toward improved economic strength,
Munoz is even more aware of the spiritual than the financial
returns. Puerto Rico's new drives toward organized self-help
at community levels are the island's most eloquent expres-
sions by far of a new, modern phase of its ancient sense of
creative, democratic civilization.

With the aim of fostering the growth of the creative hu-
man spirit, of encouraging people to help themselves through
their own efforts, the Division of Community Education was
created by legislative action May 14, 1949. Operating within
the Department of Education, it started from scratch with
inadequate funds, no staff, no materials. All it had was a
vital idea blessed by the governor and his legislature. The
Statement of Motives of the bill creating the organization,
written by Munoz Marin himself, says in part that it is to
give "to the communities and to the Puerto Rican Commu-
nity in general the wish, the tendency, and the way of mak-
ing use of their own aptitudes for the solution of their own
problems. . . ." The statement goes on to say: "The com-
munity should not be civically unemployed. The community
can be constantly and usefully employed in its own services,
in terms of pride and satisfaction for the members thereof/'

Fred G. Wale, formerly with the Julius Rosenwald Fund,
was appointed head of the division. Throughout the suc-
ceeding decade he has strived both creatively and defen-
sively to adhere to the organization's prime aim of education
and training in the basic democratic processes. His basic phi-

Civic Employment c 267

losophy is admired by many, attacked by some. His sole aim
is education in the spirit and processes of community self-
help. Having acquired that spirit, he insists, communities
will decide for themselves on the creative programs to which
they wish to dedicate it, and will seek means for learning the
required skills.

Puerto Rico's Division of Community Education is known
outside of the island for the excellence of the documentary
films it makes and uses for the purpose of arousing civic con-
sciousness. The New York and Chicago offices of the Com-
monwealth's Department of Labor lend such films to schools
and other institutions. UNESCO and the Technical Co-
operation Administration of the U. S. Department of State
purchase many copies for distribution throughout the world.

One of these films is the famous El Puente, The Bridge.
Simply, but with a high degree of technical and artistic ex-
cellence, it portrays the story of how and why a rural com-
munity built a foot bridge over the apparently peaceful Rio
Canab6n.

A small stream, easily forded in good weather, the Cana-
bon flows near the city of Barranquitas. About a hundred
children who live near its bank have to cross it twice daily on
their way to and from school, as do their parents bound to
or from the city. In rainy weather, however, the crossing
used to be dangerous, if not impossible, because the river
becomes torrential. Flash floods roaring down from the
mountains have in the past threatened the lives of several
people who were caught on the stepping stones of the fords;
a few years ago a schoolboy was swept downstream by such
a flood and narrowly escaped either drowning or being bat-
tered on the rocks. If it rained while the children were in
school on the other side, they couldn't get back sometimes
for days at a stretch. The result was that if it even looked
like rain, mothers would not permit their children to go to
school, while many of the men in the sixty families affected
also had to stay at home and lose working days and wages.

268 c PUERTO Rico

It is estimated that before the bridge was built, a hundred
children lost about half of their school time. For decades the
people affected had clamored to various government officials
for a bridge. Once the neighbors had built a makeshift
wooden bridge, but it was washed down the river in the first
flood.

Then in 1949 the Division of Community Education se-
lected one of the most respected men in the district, brought
him to San Juan for a training period, and sent him back
with the title of Group Organizer.

He began to discuss community problems with the people,
and to distribute thousands of booklets on life in Puerto Rico'
on health, on new ways of doing things, on many subjects
that were interesting but had nothing to do with a bridge, He
visited everybody for miles around, driving a jeep on the
often all-but-impassable roads, and after a while he began
to paper his district with colorful posters announcing free
movies on certain nights. On those occasions he set up a
portable screen on a hilltop, turned on a portable generator
he had in the back of his jeep, and showed a film of Puerto
Rican life to the assembled people, many of whom had never
seen motion pictures before. The films were fascinating, but
they were still in no way related to the bridge that was on
everybody's mind.

In December 1950 a group of twenty-four neighbors called
on him to discuss the question of why a government would
spend so much money on movies, but not a cent for pro-
viding safe passage across a river that constantly cut into
their earning power and the education of their children.
He listened sympathetically and hinted that the community's
people might build the bridge themselves. That was not ex-
actly a new idea, but it was staggering in its implications and
almost an impossibility to isolated countryfolk who had no
money and few, if any, of the required technical skills. But
the organizer kept encouraging them, and from the time of

Civic Employment 269

the first discussion the bridge became the central theme of
his conversations in the community. Twice a month, be-
tween January and July 1951, he organized meetings to dis-
cuss the bridge from all angles. Gradually, those meetings
began to result in action.

Members of the community raised $125 among them-
selves in pennies, nickels, and dimes. One man had had some
construction experience; encouraged by the organizer, he de-
signed a concrete bridge, specifying for reinforcement two
old truck chassis he had seen in a junk yard in Barranquitas
which they might hope to obtain as a gift. The design was
submitted to the local district engineer of the island's Depart-
ment of Interior; he checked the plans, improved on them,
and gave advice for construction. A school was being re-
paired nearby, and there was some lumber left over; the peo-
ple asked for this lumber and obtained it as a donation. Peo-
ple waited on the mayor of Barranquitas and persuaded him
to contribute eighty bags of cement and 600 pounds of iron
rods from the city's stock. Other donations of cement, of
nails, of tools, and of the two truck chassis began to come
in. By July 1951 the community had gathered all the ma-
terials needed for their bridge.

The people now elected one of their neighbors as project
foreman. He began his work on July 12, sending out daily
calls for the number of helpers he would need for the job
after regular working hours in the fields, on Saturdays and
Sundays, whenever people had a few hours or a day to spare.
He had no labor problems. When he called for ten helpers,
fifty were likely to come men, women, and children eager
and interested.

The bridge was completed after twenty-two days, during
which about sixty people had contributed their work, and
even the dedication, attended by the entire community, was
something new in Puerto Rican affairs. The local politicos
were present only as welcome guests, not to make speeches.

270 c PUERTO Rico

The little boy who had been swept down the river the year
before made the principal speech, and a mother cut not only
one ribbon, but a dramatic series of them.

After the bridge's completion the Division's staff in San
Juan undertook the preparation of a new documentary film,
depicting the entire story, from the troubled school situa-
tion that had existed before the bridge had been built, the
misadventure of the boy who had nearly drowned in a flash
flood, the anguish of the parents when the weather looked
threatening, through the first talks of the group organizer,
the talks in the community, the gradual growth of commu-
nity determination, the efforts to obtain materials, to the
actual construction and dedication. The script was written
carefully, and the picture was made on the scene with no
professional actors; the community's people played the same
parts they had played while planning and building. Inci-
dental music was composed for the picture; posters were
painted and reproduced by the silk-screen method.

That El Puente is today being shown in many parts of the
United States and in many foreign countries is an incidental
result. It was designed to be shown throughout Puerto Rico
to hundreds of rural audiences, not for the purpose of per-
suading them to build bridges, but to stimulate them into
saying: "Those people are poor country people, just like our-
selves. If they could solve one of their community problems
in that fashion, why can't we get together, discuss our own
problems, and perhaps swing into some kind of similar
action?"

In the barrio Mariana, the sugar zone, where most work-
ers earn their poor livings by cutting cane, individual farm-
ing is almost unknown. The people, however, wanted to aug-
ment their food supply. The group organizer encouraged
them with talks that went on for months and covered every
phase of the problem to create a community garden. They
obtained land from the local school in return for the promise
of vegetables for the school lunches. They sent soil samples

Civic Employment c 271

to the Agricultural Extension Agency, had them analyzed,
and requested advice on proper practices from that agency
and the Soil Conservation Service. They obtained good seeds
from the university's experiment station, on their promise to
set aside a portion of the garden for growing seeds for future
years. They took up a collection of pennies and dimes for the
purchase of fertilizers and the materials for the fence that
was needed to keep cattle out of the garden. The entire com-
munity turned out to prepare the soil and cultivate the gar-
den under the direction of an elected foreman. Among the
results were: (i) crops so large that they astonished mem-
bers of the community; (2) an education in proper agricul-
tural practices, which, as the result of direct experience vol-
untarily sought and intimately related to the community's
problems, was far more effective than any mere lecture
courses could have been; (3) close liaison between the com-
munity and the various agricultural agencies which promises
large returns in the years to come; (4) marked improvement
in individual gardens of the neighbors and some decrease
in cash expenditure for food; and (5) increases of the school
lunches given to children.

The barrio Santa Olaya in Bayam6n had only two one-
room schools serving the first four grades. For fifth grade
and up, children, had to walk a long distance to another
school and cross rivers that were sometimes in flood. This
meant that few children in the barrio ever went beyond the
fourth grade. The hard-pressed government had no money
available for the construction of another school. Finally,
stimulated by the group organizer, the community decided
to build a school for the fifth and sixth grades. Committees
were appointed to consult with various agencies on the
proper plans for such a project, One group went to San Juan
to visit the Planning Board, not only obtaining much valu-
able technical help and advice, but also returning to spread
the message among their rural neighbors of what the Plan-
ning Board, always an august body in the eyes of simple

272 c PUERTO Rico

farmers, meant to the people of Puerto Rico. The Depart-
ment of Education promised to provide a teacher as soon as
the school was finished. Collections were taken up. As the
barrio was poor and was able to raise only eighty dollars in
two months' time, it was decided to build a wooden school
instead of the concrete building that had been envisaged in
the beginning. Wood, nails, tools, and paint were gathered
wherever they could be found, and the barrio's entire popu-
lation turned out to do the work, the women preparing hot
meals while the men labored.

The planning of this venture had begun in March 1951.
The school was inaugurated in September. As usual, the
community itself conducted the inauguration, but one of its
members was a Puerto Rican soldier from Santa Olaya, re-
cently returned from the Korean War. He made the main
speech, expressing his pride in being able to participate in
that one example of the things he had fought for on the other
side of the world.

Now the community of Santa Olaya has begun to study
other problems. Its people have talked of their need for a
water tank for the school and have considered building a
community center.

The directives of the Division for Community Education
called for the use of "motion pictures, radio, books, pam-
phlets and posters, phonograph records, lectures and group
discussions," and one of the first steps was the rental of an
old market hall in San Juan, which was converted into a stu-
dio, office building, and general workshop. While one group
in the Division began the important work of selecting and
training an adequate staff for work in the field, another
group in the studios and in the shops turned out materials
for use by those representatives. A similar organization in
the mainland United States would be able to obtain a wealth
of such materials at little cost in the form of rented films
and educational pamphlets and posters, turned out by the
thousands in Washington and in various other cities. But in

Civic Employment c 273

Puerto Rico the need was for materials in Spanish, dealing
in the simplest possible terms with various aspects of the
Puerto Rican problem. It was therefore necessary to start
from scratch to create these materials. This was done with
the help of a group of young Puerto Rican writers, artists,
composers, photographers, printers, and other craftsmen,
who were thereby granted new outlets for their own creative
impulses.

The old market is today a beehive of activity. The booklets
that are there produced include an annual almanac stressing
the Puerto Rican scene and dealing with such special sub-
jects as good land use, health, etc. The almanac form as-
sures that thousands of country people refer to it again and
again throughout the year. There are special booklets on
health; there is one on life in various parts of Puerto Rico,
produced for the benefit of those many rural people who have
never been far beyond their own valleys; there is another on
how people live in various other parts of the world, how they
work and how they shape their environments toward the im-
provement of life.

By March 1959 the division had produced forty films and
had eight more in production, varying, one from the other,
over a wide range. Like El Puente, Una Voz en la Montana
(A Voice in the Mountain) re-enacts the entire story of a
community effort; it deals with the finally successful strug-
gles of an illiterate laborer to organize a night class for illit-
erate adults, Los Peloteros (The Ballplayers') runs one and a
half hours and is the longest film made by the organization.
Although its script is fiction, it is eminently and recognizably
true to Puerto Rican life. Both as an example to adults and
as a warning to beware of pitfalls it tells, charmingly, the
story of the trials and tribulations endured by a group of
poor boys in their efforts to raise money for uniforms for their
baseball team. Modesta is a film that tells the apocryphal
story of how a group of country women won improved treat-
ment for themselves by staging a revolt against their bus-

274 c PUERTO Rico

bands. It won signal honors in both the Venice and Edin-
burgh film festivals during the summer of 1957. However,
despite its recognition abroad, and despite its present role in
fostering a concept of their own worth and dignity among
Puerto Rico's rural women, it was not borrowed by the group
of nine eminent Moslem educators who went to Puerto Rico
for ideas a few years ago.

Several films reproduce musical expressions of the island's
folk life and lore. There are films that deal with problems of
soil erosion, agricultural improvement, consumer education,
health, and the like. They derive their beauty in part from
their simplicity; each of them is clearly understandable by
every jibaro, educated or illiterate. Together they comprise
a new expression in Puerto Rico's folk art.

A number of the posters used for advertising the films are
now collectors' items, and several of them are nearly always
reproduced in the various annual books, published in several
countries, dealing with the world's best poster art.

The report of March 1959 also lists twenty-eight books
and booklets written, designed, illustrated, and printed in the
Division's central shops for free distribution throughout the
countryside. These, like the almanacs, cover a wide range of
subjects: nutrition; housing; the world of children; problems
of migrants to the mainland; family life; the rights of
women; Christmas songs; hurricane damage. Most of them,
were prepared to complement specific films.

The Division has forty-three field workers, each supplied
with a jeep, a projector, a generator, and other needed equip-
ment. Mrs. Wale, Dona Carmen Isales, is in charge of the
important work of selecting and training field representa-
tives. Hundreds of applicants for these field positions have
been interviewed. The hard lesson the successful candidates
have had to learn is that it is not at all their job to persuade
people to build bridges, schools, roads, to create gardens, or to
build latrines. It is to encourage people to develop the initia-
tive, the ability to plan, and the needed discipline which will

Civic Employment c 275

eventually result in community-created bridges and the like.
At first it is always difficult for prospective group organizers
to realize that they are not leaders or teachers, that they are
merely catalytic agents whose job it is to encourage people
to develop and act upon their own ideas. A group organizer
may be firmly convinced that the thing his people need most
is a new and pure water supply. But he says nothing about
it, and if they develop a desire for a kitchen in which school
lunches may be cooked for their children, or an improved
road, or a community center, he encourages them to trans-
late that idea, and not his own, into action. The basic con-
cept there is that community spirit and enterprise have a
much better chance of growing around an idea that springs
from the community itself than around something a govern-
ment employee preaches as being for the people's good.

I asked Dona Carmen about her standards for selecting
organizers. She said: "They must be respected at home, be-
lieve in our basic philosophy, dedicate themselves to it, and
prove their ability to work democratically. We don't discrim-
inate against people who hold a Ph.D. or a Master degree.
A number of our men have graduated from the university,
but one has finished only eighth grade. He has the confidence
of his people, his work is outstandingly effective, and he has
by now, through sheer interest in his work, learned to write
analytical reports that any highly trained social worker could
be proud of. UNESCO published one of them recently."

Although the Division's general philosophy and approach
seem eminently sound and bring dramatic results, they are
not universally accepted or understood by professional peo-
ple. Many Puerto Ricans may grant that the Division of
Community Education is doing good work, even though they
may know next to nothing about its fundamental purposes.

I have heard at least one eminent Puerto Rican educator
rail against the program because he thought that it embodied
a serious basic error: one cannot trust uneducated and often
illiterate people to choose their own paths for salvation; they

276 PUERTO Rico

simply don't know what is good for them. Before being per-
mitted to embark on community projects, said the critic, they
must be educated in such things as the co-operative move-
ment, the value of good housing, the benefits from drinking
milk and brushing teeth, the dangers lurking in impure
water; they cannot merely get together, discuss community
problems, conclude that too many children are sick or that
they need a road, and then go out on their own initiative and
get the information they need for effective remedial action.
People don't do that kind of thing, he said; they don't know
enough; they need guidance. But more and more people are
now doing them, and the critic himself is coming around to
the point of supporting the program.

The critic had voiced a point of view common in many
parts of the world. Many countries have community pro-
grams today, and their great value is being recognized to an
increasing extent. Such programs play important roles in the
current transformations of India, Israel, and the Philippines.
The United Nations and the U. S. International Co-operation
Administration foster them in many countries. Often they do
much to spread and strengthen the spirit of democracy,
though they are also used by the nondemocratic countries.
Even Generalissimo Trujillo likes to see people doing things
for themselves, as long as they do the things he tells them
to do; it saves him money. The construction of the Moscow
subway, with private citizens turning out by the hundreds
of thousands to donate their labor, was a community proj-
ect on a vast scale. China is today rebuilding itself in large
measure with the voluntary labor of millions of Chinese who
may well like to improve their lives through such work, even
though it was planned and directed by their Communist
overlords.

But when we study the approaches of other community
programs, we find that virtually all of them differ from
Puerto Rico's in one vital respect, They are, in effect, exten*
sion programs whose field workers have been trained as

Civic Employment c 277

technicians. The latter learn something about agriculture,
construction, child care, sanitation, or co-operatives, and
then go forth to spread their various gospels and to organize
communities along specific, dictated lines. A field worker in
Puerto Rico's Division of Community Education who be-
comes a technician in anything but the subtle business of
helping to foster people's faith in themselves has outlived his
usefulness as a group organizer. He may eventually become
valuable as the director or foreman of a project decided upon
by the community, but he is through as an educator.

That lesson must be understood by the field workers, as
well as by all those who for one reason or another are in a
position to collaborate with the Division. It is being learned,
step by step as specific cases arise, and is now also beginning
to influence American education. On two occasions, in 1955
and 1959, 1 have seen groups of thirty students from Sarah
Lawrence College come to Puerto Rico for some ten days.
On both occasions they spent at least half their time with the
Division of Community Education, living in the modest
homes of group organizers, attending community meetings,
watching projects grow through discussion, seeing the films
that helped them to grow. Both times the girls went back to
Bronxville, New York, enormously stimulated. Vast new vis-
tas had been opened for them. They had seen a way of teach-
ing that was new to them, and had learned many exciting
things that illuminated and invigorated their more formal
classroom work.

The Division's methods often seem slow and cumbersome
if success is to be measured by the number of community
projects undertaken. Now, however, ten years after the Di-
vision's creation, the insistence on hurrying nobody, on
merely aiding communities in clarifying their own problems
and setting their own pace, has begun to pay dramatic divi-
dends. A number or projects are now in various stages of
progress, and many of them tie in directly with established
government programs. As pointed out in other chapters, var-

278 c PUERTO Rico

ious governmental agencies are dedicated in part to the task
of bringing to the island's people, as rapidly and as cheaply
as possible, the benefits of electric power, of abundant pure
water, of schools and free lunchrooms for children. All com-
munities want such things immediately, but it is not always
possible to bring them to any one community at a specified
time. Suddenly, however, an authorized delegation from one
part of the interior arrives in San Juan for a talk with the
proper government official, and says : "We have studied our
situation for a long time. We have too much illness and we
know that the construction of a pure water system will help
us to combat it. Give us technical help and advice, and per-
haps some money for materials, and we will do all the con-
struction and digging, without charging for the labor." Some-
times such delegations ask for money; sometimes they don't.
Everything, including financing, has been thought out and
talked out before the delegation goes elsewhere for help, and
all rural communities take a deep pride in doing as much as
possible by and for themselves. Now the particular delega-
tion referred to is offering actively to help the government in
one of its important programs, and so, also, to save the gov-
ernment and the taxpayers money.

So many offers of such "partnership" have been made in
recent years that the government has created a special com-
mittee to deal with them, and has established a fund of
$300,000 per year for meeting the requests. The committee
is composed of the Director of the Division of Community
Education and three top officials in the Department of Pub-
lic Works. In that agency there is now an entire section that
does nothing but render technical assistance, as requested,
to the communities in which the Division's field men are
working.

In April 1959 there were no fewer than 192 applications
for such help, of which fifty-one, involving a total estimated
cost of over half a million dollars, had been approved and
were actually being carried out. The approved projects in-

Civic Employment c 279

eluded four small schools, six community centers, fourteen
roads averaging 1.5 miles each, nineteen aqueducts to bring
good water to communities, one well plus pipes for the dis-
tribution of its water, and a school lunchroom. There is no
estimate of how many meetings were held in the fifty-one
communities involved before the requests were made be-
fore decisions had been reached on priorities among the
many things that any community might undertake at any
time. The important thing is that no community sends a
delegation beyond its borders with a request for help without
first having gone over the entire problem so thoroughly that
it knows exactly what it is doing.

Once such a request is received, the government commit-
tee's technical staff drafts detailed plans as for a road or a
water line accompanied by a complete estimate of what it
would cost to build the project by government efforts. These
budgets are then mimeographed, and a copy is given to every
family in the community concerned. Then begins the work
of analyzing the estimates to determine what part of the to-
tal cost can be met by the community, in the form of skilled
or unskilled labor, trucks, tools, various kinds of materials,
rights of way over the land. That requires more meetings
nobody can know how many. Finally the community talks as
follows to the San Juan committee: "The cost of the project
is estimated at so and so much. But we are prepared to carry
this or that percentage of it ourselves, according to our own
calculations and division of labor. Can you help us with the
rest? Give us technical supervision and let us go to work."

As stated, the fifty-one projects under way in April 1959
had a total estimated cost of over half a million dollars
$582,965.13, to be exact. But after studying the estimates,
the various communities decided that they could themselves
take care of $308,397.22, or more than half. All they finally
asked for and all that those roads, pipelines, schools, etc.,
are costing the government is $274,567.91.

After Puerto Rico had turned the corner with the election

280 C PUEBTO RlCO

of 1940, one heard poor people everywhere on the island say
of Mufioz Marin : "He is our leader who has given us faith in
ourselves." The Division of Community Education was crea-
ted for the purposes of helping that faith to grow and of
channeling it into constructive action. A number of Puerto
Ricans, who are today justifiably concerned over the prob-
lem of Mufioz Marin's successor, have begun to agree with
Dona In6s, the governor's wife, who said to me in 1951:
"That is the program which will produce the island's future
leaders."

17

Culture Changes

THE Puerto Ricans have remained "Latin Americans" to a
far greater extent than have the Mexicans in our Southwest,
Their language, religion, literature, folklore, and abiding be-
lief in the individual's worth had come to them from Spain
at the height of her power, and remain integral parts of their
culture. That culture, however, was modified after the con-
quest's first wave. Almost from the beginning there was a
strong infusion of Indian blood and Indian adjustments to
the environment. In many parts of the interior most of the
rural Puerto Ricans still look like Indians. The aboriginal in-
habitants were not exterminated as ruthlessly as some his*
torians have claimed; many fled to the interior mountains,
maintained themselves as long as they could, but gradually
through the centuries took on the white man's ways, learned
Spanish, and intermarried with the whites. Only their lan-
guage and culture were exterminated, so that now little is
left of them a word here and there, some root crops, the
hammock, and a few palm-thatch houses, which are rapidly
being replaced by concrete constructions. African slaves, too,
came to add their blood to the common stream, and their

282 PUERTO Rico

rhythms to the music. French, Italian, Corsican, and South
American Creole settlers were taken in their stride, absorbed
as Spanish-speaking Puerto Ricans.

As colonial subjects the Puerto Ricans were in no way full-
fledged Spaniards. "Disdainful of metropolitan commands,"
they began, slowly, to alter their first heritage into something
truly "Puerto Rican." They developed their own folklore,
music, arts and crafts however rudimentary and primitive
their own ways of living together, which in many ways set
them apart from the Spanish officials, clerics, businessmen,
and soldiers who infested the capital and often despised the
rural people. What is typically Puerto Rican in the island's
culture was developed in large measure as a social mech-
anism for defense against alien overlords and ubiquitous
poverty. The foundation of the social structure came to be
the family, each close-knit and huge, including all relatives
of all ages and varying degrees of legitimacy, each a vast
and smoothly functioning mutual-aid society, held together
by the fact that there was no other social aid and no political
power for attaining it.

But despite such modifying influences, Puerto Rico has
through the centuries kept alive something vital of Spain's
ancient culture, as is attested by the several great Spaniards
who have settled on the island in recent decades and ob-
viously feel at home there. Among those notable migrants
who are themselves sources of deep pride to the island's peo-
ple have been Juan Ramon Jimenez, winner of the Nobel
Prize for Literature, who died in San Juan in 1958, and Pa-
blo Casals. One doubts, however, if Don Juan and Don Pau,
both embattled democrats and fighters for human dignity,
would have liked living in Puerto Rico before 1940, when
we Americans were still running things with a rather high
hand.

The coming of the North Americans regarded by many
Latins as materialistic, godless, Protestant enemies precip-
itated a profound culture crisis. Members of the lower classes,

Culture Changes 283

to be sure, may not have been seriously disturbed about
their new masters from the United States. They were already
accustomed to being exploited by their Spanish overlords,
and we Americans proved somewhat more humane than the
Spaniards had been. But the intellectuals and the upper
classes often found it difficult to adjust themselves to the
new regime. At one end were the fanatics who wanted by any
and all means to retain Puerto Rico's culture all of it, re-
gardless of whether or not it had outlived its usefulness. It
was from that element that the Nationalists drew their ad-
herents, and it was the members of that group who regarded
the assassination of Colonel Eiggs as a patriotic act. At the
other end, and especially in business and professional cir-
cles, were the new super-Americans who set out enthusias-
tically to change their cultures with the same ease with
which they changed their coats. They embraced "American-
ism" passionately with a terrible, uncritical fervor, and be-
came a ridiculous element in Puerto Rico's life.

There was the famous story, for instance, of the salesman
from Illinois who was introduced to one of these superpa-
triots. Asked what part of Illinois he came from, he answered
"Springfield."

"Ah," came the impassioned answer. "You must indeed be
proud. Springfield, Illinois, the home of Abraham Lincoln,
'the Emancipator,' the greatest man who ever lived. Doesn't
it fill you with pride to have sprung from the soil made sacred
by Lincoln?"

Whereupon the salesman turned to another man and
said: "What's the matter with him? Is he nuts?"

The cultural nationalists and the superpatriots stUl exist
in Puerto Rico, though in modified form; today they don't
feel that they need to parade either their Puerto Rican cul-
ture or their Americanism quite as fervently as they once
did. Side by side with them in today's cultural scene are the
remnants of the former unassimilated Spaniards who stayed
on the island after the advent of the Americans. These are

284 PUERTO Rico

the "Spanish merchants" who are still identifiable as a class
and continue to feel superior to the Puerto Ricans. They have
their own social life and their elaborate, exclusive club,
where they maintain "white supremacy" and have wor-
shipped at the shrine of Francisco Franco since the outbreak
of the Spanish Civil War. Under the American flag, too, came
a number of Americans, and their influx has accelerated
dramatically since the end of World War II. Now there are
about 25,000 of them. In many ways they, too, have their
own life, their own social affairs, their own schools, their
own church services, their own Jewish center. A few of them
still talk in terms of an "American colony" and like to tell
everybody who will listen that the Puerto Ricans "hate us."
But, the former gulf between continental Americans and
Puerto Rican citizens of the United States is now narrowing
rapidly.

The year 1940 was every bit as great a turning point in
the cultural sense as in the economic. The Spanish-oriented
indigenous Puerto Ricans had never before been able to
achieve great and constructive things for themselves ex-
cept the near-miracle of survival as a people. Now suddenly,
and without experience in such matters, they released their
latent energies by "borrowing" a number of culture traits
from Anglo-America. From a broader viewpoint: after 1940
the Anglo-American culture of the United States effectively
joined forces with Puerto Rico's Latin American culture in
the effort to reach a common goal. The far-reaching im-
portance of that union, especially in the realm of inter-Amer-
ican relations, is only now beginning to be realized. But
Puerto Rico's leaders and people are aware that their Com-
monwealth could not play an important role in those rela-
tions, could not capture the imaginations of the twenty
Latin-American republics, were it not for the fact that Puerto
Rico, while changing fast, remains essentially and proudly
"Latin American."

When I talked to Munoz Marin in San Juan in 1931, im-

Culture Changes c 2,85

mediately before he entered politics, he was deeply and re-
sentfully concerned with the effect the United States was
having on his people. The old, leisurely habit of sitting in
coffee houses for hours, discussing politics and praising or
damning poets, was giving way to a frenetic chase after the
dollar; the coffee houses themselves were disappearing in
favor of soda fountains. Up in the hills many jibaros were
giving up their ancient faith and turning for salvation to the
Holy Rollers and other hysterical sects. The former solid
structure of family life showed signs of cracking. The people
were losing their cultural identity under the terrifying im-
pact of the United States. Where would it end? Such think-
ing had much to do with the fact that Munoz was in those
days an ardent advocate of Puerto Rico's independence. He
was afraid that under the American flag the Puerto Ricans
would turn into second-class citizens, similar to the Mexi-
cans in Texas and in New Mexico. It was not until he had
found the formula for political action by which the Puerto
Ricans could save themselves by their own indigenous efforts
and thus retain a pride, as Puerto Ricans, in their own cul-
ture and life, that he also turned his back on independence
as a means of salvation.

Munoz is profoundly, poetically aware that societies draw
the strength and unity that nourish their creative genius
from their own past, their historical roots, their culture, the
living thoughts of their forebears, and that nothing is
socially more devitalizing than their rejection perhaps
through shame deriving from a colonial feeling of inferiority
of their own cultural roots and evolutions. In all his ac-
tions and in all his speeches he strives to keep alive, in the
people of Puerto Rico, a proud sense of being Puerto Ricans
and thus also of being Latin Americans. Although while he
is one of the island's most ardent baseball fans, he is never-
theless apprehensive about the rapid influx of American in-
novations in the cultural scene and about English words in
the language, and does his personal best to keep them at a

286 PUERTO Rico

minimum. At times he reminds one of Henry Ford, Sr., who,
having done more than any other single individual to change
the old American "way of life," grew sentimental and tried
his best to preserve or at least to immortalize it through
such monuments as Dearborn Village.

Munoz's efforts, as translated into government programs,
are immensely valuable. The officials of the government in
power now respect Puerto Rico's cultural heritage, and work
to keep it alive and viable; under Spain and the United States
that heritage was largely ignored by the government to the
point of being despised.

The Institute of Puerto Rican Culture, established by the
legislature during the 1950*5, plays an important role of bal-
ance and guidance in today's turbulent culture changes.
Headed by Ricardo Alegria, an able anthropologist, it en-
gages in a wide variety of activities. The excavation, study,
and preservation of pre-Columbian archeological sites and
artifacts are entrusted to this Institute, as axe the study and
recording of folk music, folklore, and old festival rites. Work-
shops and instructional help are provided for artists and as-
piring artists. The Institute's exhibitions include permanent
collections of folk art as represented by home-made guitars
and similar instruments and the carvings of saints and the
Three Kings, for which Puerto Rico is now becoming famous
among collectors. There are also both permanent and tem-
porary collections by modern Puerto Rican painters, engrav-
ers, and sculptors, while an increasing amount of attention
is paid to the world art the Puerto Ricans had no chance of
seeing a few decades ago unless they traveled to New York,
London, Rome, or Paris. During 1958 the Institute's fine ex'
hibition hall was for seven weeks used for the display of
some of the world's greatest paintings borrowed from mu-
seums in the States and in Europe; at another time it housed
a display of native African art carved masks, objects of
cast metal, textiles, artifacts of ivory, and the like.

That growing interest in the world's great art also appears

Culture Changes 287

in the field of music. A few decades ago sophisticated Puerto
Ricans, many of whom tended to reject Puerto Rico's indig-
enous music as being poor and naive, had little opportunity
to hear the world's best music unless they left the island for
cultural refresher courses in New York. After World War II,
however, when money became available for hiring artists,
more and more famous musicians came to the island for
concerts and concert tours. When Pablo Casals decided in
1956 to make Puerto Rico his permanent home, he stirred
up a fervent interest in music, while also, by his own atti-
tudes, strengthening respect for Puerto Rican songs and
other musical expressions. The annual Casals Festivals are
today much more than tourist attractions; they are a source
of deep pride to thousands of Puerto Ricans. The new Puerto
Rican Symphony Orchestra, founded, directed, and at times
conducted by "Don Pau," was considered impossible until the
immediate time of its founding; today it is an integral part
of the island's cultural life, and the government sees to it
that it plays a number of open-air concerts where thousands
of jibaros can hear the world's greatest music free. Such ac-
tivities have led toward the eventual creation of a Puerto
Rican Conservatory of Music to train native musicians of the
first rank.

The Institute of Puerto Rican Culture is also active in the
preservation and restoration of buildings remaining from
Spanish colonial days. In the interior town of San German
the Porta Coeli Church, said to be one of the oldest in the
Hemisphere, but long in a state of half -ruination, is now be-
ing restored. Those of San Juan's old fortifications which
have been relinquished by the federal government are simi-
larly being restored as historic monuments.

Following detailed studies by a number of experts, the
Institute now heads a movement toward the eventual res-
toration of "Old San Juan/' the Spanish walled city, to some-
thing of its earlier aspects. Public buildings in that part of
the capital, for instance, cannot be changed except in man-

288 PUERTO Rico

ners prescribed by the Institute's experts. The government
cannot, of course, exercise such control over privately owned
houses; however, if you buy a house in old San Juan, and
then repair and renovate it according to plans and designs
furnished by the Institute of Culture, your reward is tax
exemption for a number of years.

Most of the streets in Old San Juan are still paved with the
glazed bricks that were once brought from Spain as ships*
ballast; the city government is today not permitted to replace
that paving with concrete; if necessary, it must be replaced
with new glazed bricks. New neon signs may no longer be
erected in that part of the city; a business establishment that
has an old one must take it down within a period of years
calculated to give the owner his money's worth in usage.
Slowly, the old city which had since the turn of the century
degenerated into a vast, fetid, overcrowded slum is being
restored to its pleasant aspects of a century and more ago,
while a number of good new shops, curio stores, and res-
taurants are moving into it. Like the French Quarter of New
Orleans, which was once fashionable, then a slum, and is
now fashionable again, Old San Juan is at the same time be-
coming a major tourist attraction.

Shortly after the American occupation, following the
Spanish-American War, a number of overzealous citizens
claimed that the massive old walls and gates, erected during
the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, were
outmoded and stood in the way of progress, As good Amer-
icans and progressive men of the world, those people were
ashamed of such reminders of an age that was at the same
time sleepier and more turbulent. On one festive occasion a
large number of San Juan's inhabitants tore down one of the
city's gates and a section of its walls. Those who remember
that day of rejoicing now regret it bitterly. There is growing
sentiment to the effect that the U.S. army and Washington's
Department of the Interior should relinquish the old Morro
and San Cristobal forts and give them back to the people of

Culture Changes c 289

Puerto Rico, in whose history they once played so powerful a
role. The American Commander in Chief of the armed forces
in Puerto Rico lives in the beautiful "Casablanca," the 'White
House," which was built by Juan Ponce de Leon and be-
longed to the latter's descendants until the United States
took it over. His occupancy of that lordly mansion was in
the beginning undoubtedly arranged as a symbol of the
United States's overlordship on the island. As such, it is to-
day as out of date as is the former imperial Caribbean com-
mission, and a number of Puerto Ricans now urge that the
high military officer relinquish the island's most important
single historic monument and give it to the Puerto Rican
people.

As one of several conscious efforts to preserve and respect
old culture values, the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture was
founded precisely because the island's culture is changing
with a dizzying speed. A new middle class, with new values,
is rapidly growing in what a few decades ago was essentially
a two-class society. Old social orientations are disappearing,
and new relationships, new values as yet but imperfectly
defined and accepted are beginning to take their places.
Virtually everything described in this book every bit of
progress and change in agriculture, manufacturing, educa-
tion, health, labor relations both symbolizes and demands
a cultural reorientation so drastic as to be almost terrifying.
Many Puerto Ricans cannot keep up with such changes.
"Where," wailed an old friend to me in 1958, echoing many
others, "have the fine old days gone? What has happened to
our old family unity, to the human respect that we had for
each other, to the leisure with which we once contemplated
and discussed our problems, to our intellectual honesty?
They have been eliminated, replaced by a mad scramble for
money, possessions, mediocrity."

The fact that he was only partly right didn't mean that he
was not wholly distressed. Where did the good old days go?
They went the way of the wolf packs of homeless waifs

290 c PUERTO Rico

which once infested the cities. They went the way of ubi-
quitous starvation, illness, despair. Many another society in
today's world is discovering that the good old ways of life
can be preserved only at the cost of also preserving the bad
old ways of misery.

My friend's distress over the modern scramble for material
things is reflected on a higher level by Governor Munoz
Marin, whose thesis of "Operation Serenity" is an exortation
to his people not to be carried away by the shabby instinct
for mere acquisition for its own sake. It was reflected in part
by the government itself when in 1957 it imposed new ex-
cise and license taxes on automobiles. The more expensive
the car, the higher both taxes are today; the newer the car,
the more costly the annual license plates. The taxes were
imposed in an effort to cure people of the senseless habit of
buying new cars every year -thereby often remaining inex-
tricably in debt to the finance companies and exporting mil-
lions of dollars annually that could be put to much better
uses at home for no better purpose than that of keeping up
with a neurotic American trend.

The revolution of 1940 could take place, had to take place,
for no other reason than that the good old ways of life had
begun to break down long before, and the survival of Puerto
Rico's people demanded that new ways be devised. The out-
standing Puerto Rican composer, Rafael Hernandez, wrote
his haunting song "Lamento Borincano" "Puerto Rican La-
ment," a decade before that climactic year. For a long time it
was, and to some extent still is, Munoz Marin's theme song,
and when his people want to honor him, they serenade him
with it. In two verses, the song describes the joy with which a
jibaro, singing happily, makes his way to the city with the
mare that carries his crop to market. He plans to buy his old
woman a new dress with the sale's proceeds. But the city is
dead, the market is deserted, there is no sale. Sadly the little
countryman makes his way home again in the evening, weep-
ing and crying: "What will become of my Borinquen and my

Culture Changes c 291

sons?" The song's melody became an immediate interna-
tional success. It became a dance tune, was pirated in the
United States, and was published with sentimental English
words and the astonishing title: "Cuban Moonlight." In
Puerto Rico today a number of upper-class people dislike
hearing it, and dislike especially having visitors hear it; they
are deeply ashamed of the former days of misery which gave
rise to the present day of creation and hope.

The widespread desertion of rural areas and the phenom-
enal growth of the cities were symptomatic of Puerto Rico's
modern culture changes long before the 1940 revolution.
The movement is, of course, accelerated by today's indus-
trialization, but what is truly new is the responsible attitude
the present government takes toward it. Before the rise of
the Popular Democratic party, there had been sporadic at-
tempts at slum clearance and the creation of decent low-cost
living quarters; after the great turning point these efforts
came to form major parts of the government's many social
programs.

When people first began to stream into the cities, they had
no place to go. One after another, they took over fetid, in-
fested areas, swamps, wastelands that nobody else seemed
to want, and created new slum settlements. The city author-
ities could not cope with that frenetic trend. The newcomers
built their houses at night and acquired uncanny skills at
putting them together between sundown and sunup; when
the sanitary inspectors arrived in the morning, they found
the faits accomplis of new slum sections, housing thousands
of people and often tapping nearby power lines for stolen
electricity. The growth of city slums was accelerated im-
measurably by every hurricane, which scattered parts of
houses, doors, windows, to be picked up by all who wanted
them.

The clearance of such slums and the substitution of de-
cent houses immediately became one of the new govern-
ment's major concerns. It will remain one for years to come.

292 c PUERTO Rico

Thousands of people still stream into the cities and still have
no place to go on arrival. As fast as one slum is cleaned out,
a new one springs up especially in San Juan, Meanwhile,
however, Puerto Rico's urban-renewal program is attracting
world attention.

On a per-capita basis and almost on an absolute basis no
part of the American Union, no state, uses federal aid for
low-cost housing as enthusiastically and as well as does
Puerto Rico. That, however, is only partially the result of
the present government's deep concern for the welfare of
its poor. It is also related to the fact that in Puerto Rico one
finds fewer powerful financial interests vested in slums than
on the mainland, where many real-estate operators find it
more profitable to own and operate crowded tenements than
to manage better types of housing. The sorry spectacle of
powerful churches owning city blocks of rat-infested, crum-
bling tenements, of universities drawing their monies from
such dwellings, of southern investors going in for "nigger
housing" because its occupants must be content with very
little and axe not permitted to demand improvements, has
never been a part of Puerto Rico's cultural scene. In Puerto
Rico, in other words, it is less difficult than it is in the con-
tinental United States to oust the owners of slum dwellings,
which are no less disgraceful and socially dangerous for
being exceedingly profitable.

Originally Puerto Rico's municipal housing projects con-
sisted of the rows of apartment buildings, attractively de-
signed, laid out with playground space and other aids to
good urban living, which one now sees in most of the cities.
The apartments vary in size to accommodate variously sized
families; each, moreover, has electricity, water, a kitchen,
and a bathroomutilities unknown to the tenants in their
early slum existence. Rent is charged according to ability
to pay. A man with a large family but a small income may
live in a three-bedroom apartment for as little as $3.50 per
month. His neighbor, with a smaller family but a large in-

Culture Changes c 293

come, may have to pay up to $30 for a much smaller apart-
ment. Keeping track of incomes is a task for social workers
and not always a pleasant one. If the first man's income
goes up, or his sons take jobs or join the army, his rent is
raised to correspond; if the second tenant's income rises
above the legal limit governing occupancy of municipal
housing, he has to move. Both may become so annoyed with
the Popular Democratic party that they vote against it at
the next election. As the only opposition parties advocate
independence and statehood respectively, their actions give
rise to many claims that the Puerto Ricans are growing tired
of their Commonwealth status.

While slum clearance goes forward at an astonishingly
rapid pace, it must not be assumed that all slum dwellers
are overjoyed at being forced to move into better houses
as their former quarters are condemned. Slums are them-
selves a way of life, with much to commend it in a climate
as gentle as Puerto Rico's, and the Puerto Rican slum
shacks, bad as they are, have never been as evil as the
New York slums into which migrants are herded after they
leave their beloved island. Life in those shacks, as opposed
to the overcrowded San Juan tenements, involved a certain
amount of individual freedom and a resulting minimum of
governmental regimentation. But even the recalcitrant ones
are eventually nudged, cajoled, lured into one of the new
housing projects. After that, and often to their surprise, they
are subjected to a patient process of education, designed to
"take the slums out of the people." They must be taught not
to throw their garbage out of the windows as they had in
their former homes in "el Fanguito," the notorious "Mud-
hole." They axe taught new ways of living together in civi-
lized surroundings; it requires much patience, but the labor
brings results. Many of the more enthusiastic are taught
but never coerced not to become so elated over their fine
new homes that they mortgage their souls, buying new
furniture on the installment plan.

294 PUERTO Rico

San Juan's San Jose housing project is a model for the
island and an active experimental ground for new ways
of handling old problems. Its present population is about
30,000, which means that it is a separate city within the
capital. And it is a separate city, energetically evolving ways
of life that differ radically from the old ones, though the
spirit behind them is typical of Puerto Rico's "good old days."
An attractive city, it is as immaculately clean as San Juan
itself under the stewardship of that dedicated "house-
keeper," Mayoress Felisa Rincon de Gautier. Section by sec-
tion, block by block, its apartment buildings show the prog-
ress in architecture and attractive color schemes which
themselves help to instill pride.

Visitors to San Jose are shown the shopping center and
the large community hall in which tenants discuss their
problems and inaugurate courses of remedial action. They
see a free library, a free dental clinic, a baby clinic, and a
pleasant nursery in which working mothers can leave their
children during the day. They are shown the well-equipped
classroom in which women who enroll in such courses are
taught cooking, dietetics, sewing, and even the art of build-
ing attractive furniture out of old barrels and boxes. The
visitors see a model school, as well as quarters for aged ten-
ants, each of whom has his or her separate small apartment
where he can live in dignity and freedom, receive visitors
at will, and avoid institutional regimentation.

New things are now stirring in San Jos<. As the system of
rentals according to ability to pay creates a certain amount
of insecurity, an effort is made to create a class of rooted
home owners on the project. If a man has a small house in
fair condition in a condemned slum area, he and his family
may now be moved to San Jose, house and all. There they
live in the old home, and perhaps they merely paint it and
enlarge it. But some of them set to work immediately, build-
ing new houses around the old with cement blocks and tech-
nical help obtained from the government at less than cost.

Culture Changes 295

Eventually they have two houses, one inside the other, and
have to dismantle and remove the small inner one while liv-
ing on the spot and expanding their quarters into the new
outer house.

An adaptation of the aided-self-help process that has
proved so effective in the country is now also being used in
San Jose for building new homes, and is giving sections of
that vast development the air of clean, decent communities
of independent home owners. San Jose's home owners may
sell their houses if they wish, but only to other poor people,
approved by the government. Speculating and trading in real
estate for mere profit are rigidly excluded.

When Fidel Castros's Minister of Finance came to Puerto
Eico early in 1959 with a large mission from Cuba, he shook
his head in wonder over San Jos6 and said; 'We would never
dare to try anything like that in Cuba. If we did, the United
States would immediately accuse us of being Communists .*

Like many other things in Puerto Rico, San Jose does have
Socialist tinges. The proof of the pudding, however, is found
in the fact that San Jose, a city of 30,000 inhabited exclu-
sively by former slum dwellers, has no police station and not
a single policeman. While the crime rate rises alarmingly in
the rest of San Juan, there seems to be no crime to speak of
in the capital's San Jose section.

The dramatic urban growth has given rise to a boom in
the construction industry. Vast new private developments
of attractive houses their design, spacing, and surroundings
controlled by the Planning Board under zoning laws create
thousands of new homes for the growing middle class. There
is, however, an in-between group of people whose incomes
are too high to permit them to live in low-cost municipal
housing, and too low for the purchase of homes built by
private enterprise, even with F.ELA. help. At the time of the
present writing the government is studying the possibility
of building homes at a cost of perhaps $3,000, to be sold
to members of that class through monthly payments. In ad-

296 PUERTO Rico

dition, the government is considering the possibility of low-
ering and perhaps even eliminating taxes on homes inhab-
ited by their owners.

The culture changes implied by the growth of the cities
are now also indicated by a steady lowering of the birth rate,
which a decade or so ago was one of the world's highest and
was called "explosive" by demographers. To be sure, 31.8
births per 1,000 per year, compared with 7.2 deaths, is still
too high for the comfort of the planners who must think in
terms of creating jobs for all those people and who are, to
quote Harvey Perloff , "in an Alice in Wonderland situation,
where one must run very fast in order merely to stand still/'
But in 1949 the birth rate was 39 per 1,000, and its steady
drop continues year by year. Sampling studies made in
Puerto Rico some years ago by Dr. Lydia Roberts showed that
families with incomes above $2,000 per year had fewer chil-
dren than those with less money; women who had completed
grade school had fewer children than those who hadn't;
people in cities tended to be less fertile than those in the
country.

The growing demand for contraception and even for ster-
ilization is a new Puerto Rican culture trait. Though not
actively urged or practiced by the government, both are legal
under certain conditions. A private agency is doing impor-
tant work apparently with considerable success in testing
and demonstrating a new contraceptive pill to be taken
orally.

While the Catholic Church is unhappy about that trend, it
seems powerless to stop it. Episcopal messages denouncing
birth control, and lurid attacks published from time to time
in the newspapers tend largely to arouse popular interest;
after every such attack, thousands of the rural and urban
poor seem merely to say; "this is wonderful where can we
learn more?" Indeed, the Church has become apprehensive
over losing its former stronghold on the people. In an ap-
parent effort to combat the trend, it has in recent years es-

Culture Changes c 297

tablished the "Catholic University" in Ponce. It has also
induced a number of intellectuals, including several high
government officials, to join religious discussion groups, and
seems to be covertly in politics on the side of the opposition
especially the Republican Statehood party. Certainly on
a number of occasions its high spokesmen have attacked the
present government for being materialistic and excluding
both God and spiritual values from its programs an atti-
tude that once caused Jose Padin to write to me that "it is
easy to say that man does not live by bread alone when one's
belly is full of bread/'

A large proportion of the thousands of Puerto Ricans who
migrate to the mainland belong to the most fertile age group,
and this also contributes to the present decline in the island's
birth rate.

The alarming increase in crime, especially in the San Juan
area, is a negative aspect of modern culture changes. When
Puerto Rico began to import good things from the United
States, bad things came with them. The island's first bank
robbery occurred in 1958, followed a few weeks later by the
first attempted armed holdup of a bank messenger. The
events gave rise to many agonized laments over the passing
of the "good old days"; the fact that both crimes seem to
have been committed by one or more continental Americans
did little to assuage the sorrow. The current rise in juvenile
delinquency, the appearance of junior gangs New York style
and probably led by Puerto Rican youngsters who have re-
turned from New York, are other disturbing symptoms of the
island's growing modernity. Laws remaining on the books
from the days when children were both better behaved and
considered sacrosanct, and even a stipulation in the consti-
tution of 1952 to the effect that minors may not be impris-
oned, make it almost impossible for the police to deal with
the rising wave of juvenile delinquency. Burglaries are be-
coming more common, especially in the San Juan homes of
mainland Americans.

298 c PUERTO Rico

The police force is being enlarged to cope with its mount-
ing problems, but its standards are now so high that it has
difficulty in finding qualified men. Meanwhile, new civic
organizations, patterned after San Juan's "Condado Improve-
ment Association/' co-operate with the police to suppress
crime, support the Little League baseball movement and
other outlets for youth's energies, clean up the beaches, paint
their houses, and improve urban life in general.

Puerto Rico's outstanding modern culture trait is the
creative restlessness, the eagerness to get things done, which
is felt immediately by almost all visitors to the island. To
paraphrase Boris Pasternak in Dr. Zhivago: everything is
growing, fermenting, rising with the magic yeast of life.
That does not at all mean, however, that all Puerto Ricans
are agreed as to the meaning and desirability of what is
going on. A definite "culture war" is still being fought, often
unsuspected by resident Americans, but extremely serious
and real to thousands of native intellectuals. Like many
other things in Puerto Rico, that war finds its ultimate ex-
pressions in politics. The two minority parties, one demand-
ing independence and the other statehood, are supported by
remnants of the former groups, one of which lamented the
passing of the old ways and labored to preserve them, while
the other sneered at Puerto Rican culture and tried willy-
nilly to take on "American" ways of living and thinking. Both
of those groups deny that the island's modern revolution is
a true expression of a revitalized Puerto Rican culture. The
advocates of independence, the cultural nationalists, accuse
Munoz Marin and his followers of having sold out to a grasp-
ing Uncle Sam. The statehood people, among them many
150 per cent Americans, insist that what is happening in
Puerto Rico today is nothing but an inexorable outpouring
of the United States' creative spirit at a time of unprece-
dented economic expansion. The Puerto Rican leaders and
people, they say, had nothing to do with the matter, and all

Culture Changes c 299

claims to the contrary while effective as political propa-
ganda are decidedly unpatriotic.

The university, which has experienced a tremendous
growth in two decades, from 2,000 students to more than
16,000, has in some ways become a cultural battleground.
A number of its faculty members are accused of sneering
at Puerto Rican culture, of claiming and telling their stu-
dents that there has never been such a thing, of insisting that
Puerto Rico has "no history" and that the university is not
interested in the island's past, only in shaping its future.
There is a certain amount of justice in such accusations,
especially when made against some of the non-Puerto Rican
professors from the United States and Europe, a few of them
shallow people, proud of their pseudosophistication, who in-
sist that Puerto Rico has no culture because it has produced
no Shakespeare, Descartes, or Einstein, no history because
it precipitated no Battle of Waterloo. But the faculty itself
and even its non-Puerto Rican members are divided on the
matter. No greater service has been done to Puerto Rico's
pride and integrity than is being done, for instance, by the
American, Dr. Thomas Matthews, whose exhaustive, schol-
arly history of the "Gruening Era," the days of the PRRA,
is about to be published by the University of Florida Press.

Despite these dissentions the Puerto Ricans as a whole
are and seem determined to remain Latin Americans,
closely identified with the Latin-American scene in which
they have begun to exercise important leadership. All their
industrialization, all their borrowings from the United States
in the financial, technical, and managerial realms cannot
change that hard fact. A Latin-American revolution, which
usually means little or nothing to the average North Ameri-
can, is extremely real to the Puerto Ricans; the fall of a dic-
tator is cause for personal rejoicing, as is the strengthening
of democracy in any one of the Latin-American republics.
Most of them even take pride in the venomous hatred such

300 c PUERTO Rico

tyrants as the Dominican Republic's Generalissimo Trujillo
display toward Munoz Marin, and in the fact that Trujillo's
government supports a hidden mailing center in San Juan
which uses the United States mails to disseminate a steady
stream of scurrilous literature to attack Munoz and his entire
program with unbridled and often libelous vituperation.

Now that the Puerto Ricans have taken their own affairs
into their own hands, they are prouder than ever of being
Puerto Ricans, with their own, indigenous culture stream.
And it is precisely that growing pride that now brings them
closer to the United States. Earlier under U.S. rule, when
Washington attempted to ram English down the throats of
all the bewildered school children and attempted in a num-
ber of other ways to "Americanize" them, there was always
a wide rift between the Americanos as rulers and the Puerto
Ricans as colonial subjects. Today that rift is closing fast
precisely because the Puerto Ricans refuse to become "car-
bon copies of people in the United States," precisely because
their strong nationalism in the cultural sense gives them the
strength to reject nationalism in the political sense and pro-
vides a sturdy foundation for a growing affection for their
fellow citizens in the north.

18

Where Mow?

IN 1953 the United States officially reported to the United
Nations that Puerto Rico was no longer a dependent territory
and that Washington would no longer report on it as such.
Momentarily the United Nations became a Puerto Rican de-
bating ground. Representatives of the Independence party
went to New York to protest against the move on the ground
that Puerto Rico was still a colony. They were opposed
by representatives of the Puerto Rican government, who
claimed that the Commonwealth had entered freely and of
its own accord into the compact with Washington defining
its present political status, that it had achieved self-govern-
ment within the framework of the American Union, and that
it was, in fact, no longer a dependent territory. A small
flurry was stirred by the debate. Fear of Nationalist terror-
ism caused the bodyguard of Henry Cabot Lodge, America's
delegate to the United Nations, to be increased. President
Eisenhower made a statement to the effect that if at any time
the Legislative Assembly of Puerto Rico adopted a resolution
in favor of more complete or even absolute independence,
he would immediately thereafter recommend to Congress

3O2 c PUERTO Rico

that such independence be granted. Munoz Marin officially
thanked the President for his generosity, but disavowed, on
behalf of his people, a desire for what he called "separate
independence."

The official Spanish term for Puerto Rico's present Com-
monwealth status "Estado Libre Asociado, Associated Free
State" is more accurately descriptive than the English term.
In his book The Art of Politics Tugwell described the status
as "having your cake and eating it too'* and as "a first rate
political device one to be ranked with our federal union
and with the British Commonwealth/* It is conceded to be
unique in world affairs, with no precedent in history. Both
its importance and its effectiveness grew directly out of
Puerto Rico's realities.

Under the present arrangement the United States con-
tinues to operate the army, navy, air force, post office, cus-
toms service, and various federal agencies, such as the Soil
Conservation Service, in Puerto Rico. Excise taxes collected
on goods manufactured in Puerto Rico and duties collected
in Puerto Rican ports continue to be returned to the Puerto
Rican treasury instead of being kept by the federal govern-
ment, as they would be if Puerto Rico were a state. Incomes
earned in Puerto Rico continue to be exempt from federal
taxes. However, Puerto Rico is eligible for federal grants in
aid for roads, school lunches, housing, and the like on a
basis of equality with the various states.

Such financial "advantages," plus the fact that Puerto
Rico remains within the economic structure of the United
States and has free access to America's markets and pool of
capital, help to compensate for the island's lack of natural
resources. That Puerto Rican purchases from U.S. manu-
facturers have multiplied almost sevenfold since 1940, and
that Puerto Rico is giving the United States a good name
throughout the world worth untold millions in today's
propaganda war indicate that American "generosity" is
here paying dividends. Puerto Rico's "advantage" of not con-

Where Now? c 303

tributing to the federal treasury springs from the old Amer-
ican principle of "no taxation without representation." The
Commonwealth continues to be represented in Congress by
a Resident Commissioner who has a voice, but no vote, can
prepare legislation pertaining to Puerto Rico, can argue for
or against such legislation, but cannot vote on it.

Although the people of Puerto Rico have been citizens of
the United States since 1917, they are citizens in a somewhat
limited sense. They can come and go freely within all the
areas that are under the American flag. They enjoy all the
civil rights and legal protections of U.S. citizens. But, as
though to compensate for the financial arrangements that
permit their island's dramatic transformation, they lack
some of the political rights enjoyed by citizens of the fed-
erated states. They vote for their own officials in their own
government, but as long as they remain in Puerto Rico they
cannot vote for the President or for voting members of the
Congress. When I moved to Puerto Rico in 1955 and began
to vote as a citizen of the Commonwealth, I voluntarily gave
up my political rights as a citizen of the United States. I can
get them back, however, and any Puerto Rican can attain
them simply by moving to one of the states and establishing
such residence there as is required for becoming a voting
citizen of that state. In other words, only by being a citizen
of one of the fifty federated states can a person be a full
citizen of the United States of America.

In matters pertaining to local government Puerto Rico
now has a free hand subject to control, not by the U. S.
Congress, but only by the Supreme Court, on the grounds of
constitutionality. The people of Puerto Rico govern them-
selves under a constitution of their own drafting which was
ratified by Congress (with the minor deletions listed in
Chapter 12) and accepted by the Puerto Rican voters in a
plebiscite. Neither the Congress nor the executive branch
of the United States government (through an appointed gov-
ernor) can today veto a law passed by the Puerto Rican

304 PUERTO Rico

legislature. In theory Congress can and does still pass laws
pertaining to Puerto Rico without submitting them to formal
acceptance by the Commonwealth; in practice that ability
has been voluntarily curtailed on several occasions. Some
years ago, when Congress passed two laws that involved
special financial contributions to the federal treasury, it
stipulated that those laws should not apply in Puerto Rico
unless and until they had been accepted by the Common-
wealth legislature. As the laws were good, and promised to
benefit the Puerto Rican society, they were ratified in San
Juan.

Though that excellent arrangement is new and unique
in world affairs, its basic concept that of local autonomy
while retaining economic ties and common citizenship with
the former ruling country is in no way new. Munoz Marln
is often credited with having invented the idea, and Tugwell
goes to some length to show that it had cropped up a few
years before Mufioz's ascendancy, and that, in fact, even the
term "Estado Libre Asociado" had been used for a similar
proposal in 1922.

Actually, the basic idea began to appear in Puerto Rico
as far back as 1808, when the island gained a measure of
representation in the Spanish Cortes. It gained strength and
appeal after the establishment of the Dominion of Canada,
which set a number of Puerto Ricans to thinking along new
tines, and was inherent in the thinking on autonomy of
Munoz's father, Luis Munoz Rivera. Morales Carri6n has
pointed out that the idea was advocated in the United States
by Henry Stimson in 1912, by Horace M. Towner in 1916,
and by Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. in 1937, plus several others.
It was^ proposed by Puerto Rico to Congress in 1922. Munoz
Marin's important contributions to the idea were: (i) the
specific forms taken by the political arrangement when it
was finally put into effect; (2) the fact that after more than
a century of talk, it finally was put into effect; (3) the imag-
inative manner in which that was done.

Where Now? c 305

Previous advocates of autonomy expected such home rule
to be handed down to Puerto Rico by a benevolent Congress,
in a kind of ultraliberal organic act, drafted by Congress
with or without consultation with the Puerto Ricans. Munoz,
however, aimed from the start at the abolition of congres-
sional organic acts; from the first he labored to utilize the
principle of self-determination. The present status was not
handed down to Puerto Rico as a bit of enlightened imperial-
ism, as the PRRA had been. The manner of its achievement
was in itself a rejection of the imperialistic process. Public
Law 600, providing for the new status, was drafted in Puerto
Rico, was submitted to the Congress by Puerto Rico's Resi-
dent Commissioner, and was passed by Congress on July 3,
*95> with the proviso that it was not to become law unless
and until it had been accepted by the island's people. Other
congressional acts become law when they are signed by the
President; this one was submitted to the Puerto Ricans for
signature. The referendum was held in 1951; Public Law
600 was upheld by a vote of 387,016 to 119,169. During the
preceding discussions the law had been opposed largely by
the advocates of Puerto Rico's independence, who felt that
Commonwealth status weakened the chances for eventual
independence by voluntarily confirming continued political
relations with the United States. Those who were for Puerto
Rico's eventual statehood had fewer objections to the law
because it in no way precluded, and in some ways even im-
proved, the chances for that status.

Public Law 600 was a simple document, drafted "in the
nature of a compact" and in recognition of the principle of
"government by consent." It stipulated that the people of
Puerto Rico, working through an elected constituent assem-
bly, were to draft their own constitution; the only things
Public Law 600 said about that document were that it must
contain a bill of rights and provide for a republican form of
government. The constitution was then to be either accepted
or rejected by the Puerto Rican voters in another plebiscite,

306 c PUERTO Rico

and later ratified by Congress. After such ratification, Puerto
Rico could start functioning under its new status.

Nothing similar has ever happened in the colonial world.
By their own vote and by carrying out the principle of self-
determination, the people of a so-called colony could reject
legislation passed by the ruling country. But they did not
reject it. In the second referendum they accepted the con-
stitution by a vote of 375,594 to 82,877. Congress ratified
after a bit of haggling, and Puerto Rico chose July 25 as
its own Fourth of July, its Commonwealth Day. It was
chosen for its dramatic implications. July 25, 1898, had been
the day on which General Miles had landed with his Ameri-
can troops on the island's south coast in the military opera-
tion that was to wrest Puerto Rico from Spain.

Puerto Rico's political debate since the establishment of
Commonwealth status has centered largely on the question
of whether that status is permanent or is merely another way
station on the road to something else. Ever since 1808 Puerto
Rico's people have passed a succession of such way stations,
not one of which was regarded by them as the final goal in
their political evolution. During the nineteenth century
Spain lightened its former harsh rule by a series of reforms,
alternated by occasional setbacks; the autonomy achieved in
1897 was a great step forward, but hardly the final solution.
The ceding of the island to the United States after the
Spanish-American War was a drastic turning point; the For-
aker Act of 1901, Puerto Rico's first American "constitution,"
drafted by Congress without consulting anybody in Puerto
Rico, proved a political setback. The Jones Act of 1917 re-
paired some of the damage done by its predecessor, but
could hardly especially as it turned out to work poorly be
regarded as the final answer. The right of the Puerto Ricans
to elect their own governor, first practiced in 1948, was an-
other great advance, but again not the final answer; too
many remnants of the old colonialism still remained.

Governor Munoz Marin and his Popular Democratic party

Where Now? c 307

insist that as a result of its present arrangements Puerto
Rico has at last attained its final, ultimate status. They do
not claim that it is perfect; they do insist that it is sufficiently
flexible to permit adjustment and improvement. They agree,
for instance, that Congress can still pass laws pertaining to
Puerto Rico without consulting the Puerto Ricans; but they
also maintain that the same good working relations with
Congress that led to establishment of the Commonwealth
status permit its eventual amendment to take care of that
defect. "We have planted a tree," they say. "It is still young,
but it grows older and more sturdy daily. The one thing we
know is that it will not turn into some other kind of tree. A
young oak does not grow into an older elm; it remains an
oak. So the tree of our Commonwealth status will not even-
tually turn into either independence or statehood; it will
develop into a better and sturdier Commonwealth status/'

The two minority parties one for independence and the
other for statehood choose to differ. If they didn't, they
would disappear as parties.

The Republican Statehood party, while insisting some-
what vaguely that the status of its choice would improve
Puerto Rico's economy, also waves the flag with an emo-
tional "patriotism." Many of its members claim to be the
only real "Americans" on the island, accuse Munoz Marin of
working secretly toward independence, and insist that any-
body who opposes statehood for Puerto Rico is a traitor to
the United States. At the governors' conference held in San
Juan in August 1959 they were exceedingly busy trying to
persuade the various state governors to support their cause,
while the Independence party staged rallies, waved its own
flag, did its own lobbying, and chanted "Yanqui go home r
when the various governors drove past their meetings.

Both of the opposition parties, however, have a hard time
reconciling their desires on status with Puerto Rico's eco-
nomic situation and needs.

Independence seems undesirable and impractical, quite

308 c PUERTO Rico

aside from the fact that in today's interdependent world
small nations with few natural resources are apt to find the
going increasingly rough. To advocate independence is to be
willing to throw away the one most important resource that
Puerto Rico does have its economic and political relation-
ship with the United States. The sugar business, for in-
stance, is still the island's most important single industry.
There is grave doubt about its ability to survive at all if
Puerto Rico were a sovereign republic and therefore had to
pay duty on the sugar it sells to the States. Cuba, to be sure,
does pay such duty, but the Cuban conditions of soil, climate,
and topography are so much better than are Puerto Rico's
that the larger island can afford the duty. That may be one
reason why the cause of Puerto Rico's independence has so
many warm adherents in Cuba. At present the production
of sugar on both islands for the United States market is reg-
ulated by a U.S. quota; if Puerto Rico's industry went bank-
rupt as a result of independence, Cuba might expect to in-
herit the entire quota of both.

It has been pointed out, too, that most of the manufactur-
ing done in Puerto Rico today is done for the great United
States market, not for the Puerto Rican. There is serious
doubt as to whether the General Electric Company could
make circuit breakers on the island, or the International
Latex Corporation baby pants, if they had to pay duty on
shipping their products to the continent. As there is no way
in which the United States could give independence to
Puerto Rico and then give the new republic anything better
than "most-favored-nations" treatment in the matter of tar-
iffs, it is almost certain that General Electric and Interna-
tional Latex and most of the other mainland corporations
that now employ tens of thousands of people in their fac-
tories would have to close shop once independence was
achieved. And then New York would really have a Puerto
Rican "problem."

Puerto Rico today benefits to the tune of nearly $40,000,-

Where Now? c 309

ooo annually from grants in aid which Washington give$
the island on a basis of equality with the various states.
Matched in varying amounts by the Commonwealth, these
grants are virtually indispensable for building roads, cre-
ating public housing, providing lunches for school children,,
and extending the public-health and education programs.
Their loss, in the event of independence, would be a disaster
to the society.

Leaders of the island's Independence party seem to think
that in one way or another they can, if they win an election,,
persuade the U. S. Congress to give independence to Puerto
Rico, while allowing the island to retain all the financial
benefits it now enjoys from its relationship with the States.
To date, however, they have been vague about how that was
to be accomplished, while it is significant that most con-
gressmen who talk publicly about Puerto Rico's potential in-
dependence do so in a punitive fashion. It will be remem-
bered that the notorious Tydings Bill of 1936 was drafted to
punish "the Puerto Ricans" for shooting their Chief of Police.
The independence bill of January 1959 was introduced by
Congressman Moulder, of Missouri, because many Puerto
Ricans were coming to New York, and many United States
industries were opening plants in Puerto Rico; Moulder
didn't think that was right. A month later Congressmen
Withrow, of Wisconsin, and Jackson, of California, accepted
invitations to go to Ciudad Trujillo to address a joint session
of the Dominican legislature. Both praised Dictator Trujillo
to the skies; both scolded Puerto Rico for being against dicta-
tors, and implied that the island was even influencing the
United States in that direction. Withrow said that he was
certainly going to look into the matter, and Jackson came
out flatly for Puerto Rico's independence, presumably as
punishment for being against the Dominican "benefactor,"
and certainly to prevent Munoz Maria from any longer in-
fluencing Washington's policies.

The recent admittance of Alaska as the Union's forty-

3*o c PUERTO Rico

ninth state and Hawaii as the fiftieth has naturally led to
much political discussion in Puerto Rico and has caused re-
doubling of the Statehood party's propaganda efforts. It is
significant, however, that nobody denies that Puerto Rico's
tax burden will be increased in the event of attaining state-
hood, as the present Commonwealth will then have to con-
tribute to the federal treasury as well as maintaining its
own. Puerto Ricans will have to pay federal income taxes as
well as local; customs receipts and excise taxes on such
things as rum and cigars wiU be kept by Washington instead
of continuing to be given to Puerto Rico.

In that realm the debate centers on the amounts poten-
tially involved. Seiior Luis Ferre, the Statehood party's
perennial candidate for the governorship, points out that
Mississippi gives about 8.3 per cent of its gross income to
Washington, and that Puerto Rico, if it did the same, would
pay less than $90,000,000 per year to the federal govern-
ment. Dr. Rafael Pico, Puerto Rico's former Secretary of the
Treasury and present President of the Government Develop-
ment Bank, says that the exact amount can be easily deter-
mined from Puerto Rico's realities (instead of from vague
comparisons with some state chosen at random), and that
had the island been a state in 1955, its contribution to the
federal treasury in that year would have come to $133,-
600,000. In 1959 the U.S. Bureau of the Budget made an
independent study of the situation and concluded that in that
year statehood would have cost Puerto Rico $188,000,000 in
contributions to the federal government which are now not
made. Whatever the figure, many people wonder where the
extra amount would come from; it is already difficult enough
for the Commonwealth to raise its annual budget, which is
now close to $230,000,000. It would come from increased
taxation, from a drastic reduction of the Commonwealth's
present income, and would thus slow down the industrializa-
tion program, as well as the programs for building roads and

Where Now? 311

extending the blessings of education and health facilities to
the island's people.

Nothing of the kind, says the spokesman for the Statehood
party. He points out that the various states today receive
larger federal grants in aid per capita than does Puerto Rico,
and that the island could expect corresponding increases in
such grants if it were a state. His opponents point out that
those grants are not outright gifts, but have to be matched
by local funds in proportions that vary with the purposes for
which they are given. In general, the bigger the grants in aid,
the larger the matching funds that must be raised locally in
one way or another, at the same time that anywhere from
$90,000,000 to $188,000,000 must be sent to Washington as
direct contributions to the federal treasury. As one of Ferris
critics has pointed out: "For every forty-two cents that Mis-
sissippi receives in federal grants in aid, it not only puts up
somewhere near forty-two cents in matching funds, but also
pays a dollar in federal taxes."

Ferr6 insists that the attainment of statehood would some-
how result in a marked increase of new industries estab-
lished in Puerto Rico; his critics insist that exactly the op-
posite would happen, that it is only the fiscal autonomy now
enjoyed by Puerto Rico which makes Operation Bootstrap
possible. Not only would tax exemption be impossible, as in-
dustries in Puerto Rico would have to pay a federal tax of
fifty-two per cent on corporate profits, but the wage differ-
ential which is still an incentive to many new industries
would also be a thing of the past. A State of Puerto Rico
would have to abide by the federal government's minimum-
wage laws as they apply in the states. Many factories, they
insist, that now flourish on wage scales somewhat lower than
those on the mainland would have to close their doors in the
event of statehood, and it would be more difficult, rather
than easier, to attract new industries. It is a matter of record
that several U.S. manufacturers who in 1959 were on the

312 c PUERTO Rico

verge of establishing branch factories in Puerto Rico were at
the last minute scared away by the Statehood party's inces-
sant propaganda activities.

Late in 1958 the Soviet ambassador, Mikhail Menshikov,
visited Puerto Rico briefly with his journalist son, Stanislav.
Stanislav could not understand how there could be a State-
hood party at all, let alone one supported by the island's most
powerful industrialists. "What is their aim?" he asked me.
"What economic incentive do they have, to subscribe to a
program that will probably multiply their taxes by three in
the event that they manage to carry it through?"

Although it is difficult to answer such questions to a di-
alectic materialist, I tried my best to make things plain in
my own terms and according to my own thinking. In the first
place, there is undoubtedly some hangover from the old
days, when struggles between parties were actually struggles
for control of the budget, rather than over matters of prin-
ciple. I had my own serious doubts about whether the in-
dustrialists and reactionary large landowners, if ever they
won an election, would be eager for statehood as they are
today. Statehood on the one hand and independence on the
other seem to appeal to some of the leaders of the minority
parties, not as desirable goals, but as convenient pegs on
which to hang parties.

There can be no doubt, however, that a number of men
advocate statehood as a hedge against independence, which
would be even worse for the island and which is still legally
possible, no matter how impossible it may be economically,
morally, or politically. The political device of accusing
Munoz again and again of being secretly for eventual inde-
pendence is used as a means for angling for statehood votes,
as our Civil War was fought over the issue of "once a state,
always a state."

Mr. Menshikov could understand that reasoning, but he
was still not satisfied. "Parties need votes to survive," he said,

Where Now? c 313

"and I understand that in the 1956 election the Republican
Statehood party won more than twenty per cent of the total
vote. There can't be that many industrialists and large land-
owners. Who votes for the party and why?"

There are those who vote for the minority parties because
they honestly believe that either statehood or independence
would be better for Puerto Rico than Commonwealth status.
Others are employed by the Statehood party's leaders. Still
others yearn for what they call "full citizenship," even at the
cost of social hardship and physical hunger. Then, too, there
are many who merely want to cast a protest vote at election
time.

I explained to my fellow journalist from the Soviet Union
that the Popular Democratic party has been in power since
1941, and that it is impossible for a party to rule that long
without making enemies. People are thrown into technolog-
ical unemployment, or have their rents raised in low-cost
housing projects, and express their indignation by voting
against the party in the next election. "It is an odd situa-
tion/* I said, "in which a man cannot vote against the party
in power without apparently voting for either statehood or
independence, neither of which he may want."

That pleased Mr. Menshikov. "I see," he said. "You mean
that Puerto Rico actually has a one-party political system."

As of today, he is right. In its internal affairs Puerto Rico
does have a one-party system, though by accident, rather
than design. The Popular Democratic party has been so
dramatically successful with its programs, which were "revo-
lutionary" a few decades ago, and Mufioz Marin is wor-
shipped so intensely, that it would be political suicide to op-
pose them on major internal issues. Many believe that the
one-party system will continue until Munoz either dies or re-
moves himself from politics. In that event, they say, the
Popular Democratic party may fall to pieces and divide itself
into two or more parties perhaps as a result of the internal

314 PUERTO Rico

dichotomy between more jobs and greater productive effi-
ciency, perhaps in a demagogic struggle for power between
its various leaders.

In 1959 the Popular Democratic party, through its Resi-
dent Commissioner, presented Bill H. R. 9234 in Congress,
designed to strengthen Commonwealth status by amending
and clarifying it somewhat. Among other things the bill pro-
vides that Puerto Rico henceforth determine the limits of its
debt-incurring capacity, which have hitherto been set by the
federal government. It stipulates that several kinds of fed-
eral laws affecting Puerto Rico should be formally accepted
by the Commonwealth before being applicable on the island,
and it also provides for certain financial contributions by
Puerto Rico to the federal treasury. After its first submittal
as the "Femos-Murray" bill, the measure and indeed the
entire Commonwealth "compact" were questioned by some
senators on the grounds of constitutionality; the legislators
seemed to wonder whether Congress has the constitutional
right and power to cede, limit, or abrogate any of its powers
opposite Puerto Rico. Others wondered whether the bill,
which stipulates that it "shall be known and cited as the 'Ar-
ticles of Permanent Association of the Commonwealth of
Puerto Rico with the United States/ " did not preclude the
island's possible future admission to the Union as a federated
state.

In Puerto Rico the bill threw the leaders of the opposition
parties into an uprbar, in part because it again disproves the
politically convenient claim that Munoz is secretly working
for independence, and in part because its passage will go far
toward establishing Commonwealth status as a permanent
form of relationship. Whereupon the Populares announced
a new attitude on the statehood question, which was imme-
diately incorporated in the Fernos bill's present form.

As present objections to statehood are based on Puerto
Rico's inability to afford such status, the present bill pro-
vides for a review of the entire matter "at such time as the

Where Now? c 315

per-capita income of Puerto Rico, as determined by the
United States Department of Commerce, shall equal that of
any member State of the Union." When Puerto Rico has pro-
gressed to the point where its per-capita income is compar-
able to that of the poorest state, the stipulations under which
the Puerto Ricans pay no federal income taxes and retain for
their own use the federal customs duties and excise taxes
collected on the island "shall be subject to termination by
the Congress." At such time, too, the people of Puerto Rico
shall review the entire status question and may hold a pleb-
iscite to decide whether they want statehood or prefer to con-
tinue with their present Commonwealth arrangements
with or without possible further amendments.

Understandably, the new policy did not suit the opposition
parties. If it had suited them, those parties would no longer
have reason to exist the one because independence is not
mentioned as one of the political alternatives, the other be-
cause one cannot clamor for "statehood now" while at the
same time admitting that it may be well to wait until Puerto
Rico comes a little closer to being able to afford it. Both par-
ties therefore accused Munoz Marin of acting in bad faith
when he merely combined some hard economic common
sense with the kind of political astuteness that has made him
world-famous.

Earlier in 1959, before the ruckus over the Fernos bill, the
Republican Statehood party quite correctly raised the issue
that general elections do not result in the true expression of
the people's will in the matter of status. The party began to
demand a plebiscite, specifically on that issue. The Inde-
pendence party opposed this plebiscite on the ground that
independence is a sacred right, not to be subjected to the
votes of the people. Munoz Marin, who was quite safe in his
stand, said that he had no objection to such a plebiscite, pro-
vided it gave the people a choice between statehood, inde-
pendence, and Commonwealth status, and provided also that
the two losing parties would agree ahead of time thereafter

316 c PUERTO Rico

to stop their propaganda efforts. The statehood people didn't
want that kind of arrangement, which might well have re-
sulted in the death of their party. They not only demanded
a plebiscite on the simple question: "Statehood, yes or no,"
but they also insisted that the U. S. Congress arrange for it,
giving advance assurance that it will grant statehood if the
vote goes that way. Since the leaders of the opposition par-
ties insist that Commonwealth status is not, and cannot be,
permanent, and that only statehood or independence may be
regarded as the ultimate solutions for Puerto Rico's problem
of political relationship with the United States, such a pleb-
iscite would, in effect, give the voters a choice only between
those two final arrangements. However, as it is inconceivable
that any congress will commit itself ahead of time to grant
statehood after such a lop-sided vote, the chances for the
plebiscite seem to be extremely faint.

The present status, the present government and its fine
programs, are obviously the creations of one man. There is
much apprehension because Munoz Marfn has not "trained"
anybody for the role of successor. To be sure, his govern-
ment contains a number of the finest public servants to be
found anywhere on earth, but how many of them have the
popular appeal, the qualities of leadership, that are needed
for winning elections? Moreover, the Popular Democratic
party's greatest single weakness stems from the fact that it
seems all but impossible for young men, new leaders with
new ideas, to rise to the top in the party's affairs.

In the years immediately following 1940, when the Popu-
lares had only a minute plurality in the legislature and were
beset by bitter enemies, and when, moreover, they had both
to learn and to teach concepts of government that were ut-
terly new to the stricken colony, they had to close ranks
against their embattled opponents, as well as to discipline
themselves against internal dissentions. The strong discipli-
nary hold Munoz began in those days to exercise on his party

Where Now? 317

as a safeguard against mere demagogy has never been
relaxed and leads to repeated though false charges that he is
a "dictator/' Today the party is still a tightly knit organiza-
tion, strictly ruled by its Central Committee.

Young men, ardent Populares, complain that they have no
chance to rise in the party or in the government by their own
efforts, their own fresh ideas. A "Young Populares" move-
ment does not exist and seems indeed to be unthinkable un-
less sponsored by Munoz and the Central Committee in a
paternalistic fashion, which would defeat the very aim and
philosophy of such a movement. The result is apprehension
over the fact that a successor to Munoz is not only not being
"trained," but is even prevented from getting ahead by means
of his own concepts of leadership.

Commonwealth status, designed to fit Puerto Rico's spe-
cific needs, is obviously best for the island, and by far the
majority of voters realize that fact. But it is now becoming
apparent that the final decision on status may yet rest with
Congress, and that a number of congressmen who see the
present status only as Tugwell described it, as a means of
having one's cake and eating it, too may not care particu-
larly about what is good for Puerto Rico. The question that
they may want answered is: what is best for the United
States?

That modern Puerto Rico has experienced an unprece-
dented social and economic development; that its current
trends redound immeasurably to the good name of the
United States; that it plays a powerful role in the important
matter of assuaging Latin-American mistrust toward el co-
loso del norte and cementing inter-American relations; that
its people are today "loyal" to the United States as never be-
fore; that it has become a new American industrial frontier;
that its purchases from the United States have multiplied
sevenfold since 1940; that it attracts eminent and admiring
visitors by the thousands from all the free world's countries,

318 PUERTO Rico

who in turn spread America's good reputation these are
powerful arguments for continuation of the Commonwealth
status that makes such facts possible.

While the political debate is raging, Munoz Marin is doing
everything in his power to maintain and support the opposi-
tion groups. For instance, under the Commonwealth's con-
stitution, minority parties are assured representation in the
legislature, even though, as happened in 1952, they don't win
a single seat at the polls. By law, one third of the legislators
must today belong to opposition parties, dividing their seats
in a system of proportional representation; in the event that
none of their candidates is elected, the legislature is simply
enlarged to make room for them. Also unique is a recent law
under which the government makes financial contributions
to all the existing parties on a basis of complete equality,
regardless of their electoral strength. It will be remembered
that in 1940 Munoz Marin broke the political control power-
ful financial interests had previously exercised through the
wholesale purchase of votes. He did it by persuading people
not to sell their votes. Now the amount of money any one
individual or corporation may donate to a party is rigidly
limited by law, while the public treasury gives money to all
the legitimate parties.

Cynics have accused Munoz of using such means to assure
the continuation of weak opposition parties, thereby pre-
venting the rise of a strong one. However, he has also in-
sisted on a constitutional provision that might facilitate the
creation of a new party. Under present law a party must in
an election win ten per cent of the total vote in order to re-
main a true party and be able to go to the next election. How-
ever, if a new party is formed, or if a former one wishes to
reconstitute itself, it now needs petition signatures totaling
only five per cent of the total vote cast in the preceding elec-
tion.

Whatever one says about the rigid control Munoz Marin
exercises over his government and party, there can be no

Where Now*? c 319

doubt that he is ardently and even fanatically devoted to the
principles of human freedom. Roger Baldwin, former head
of the American Civil Liberties Union, and himself world-
famous as an embattled advocate of freedom, has been re-
tained by the Commonwealth government to advise it in the
matter, and to organize a nonpartisan committee on civil
liberties, which advises the government and is free, through
its reports, to publicize any infringements of freedom which
it uncovers. No other government in the world has ever paid
money to skilled and impartial outside experts to advise it
in the matter of broadening and strengthening its basic de-
mocracy.

Puerto Rico's elections of 1952 and 1956 hinted at signi-
ficant political changes. Four parties participated in 1952,
one of which the Socialists won only three per cent of the
total vote and died as a result. At the same time, the Re-
publican Statehood party polled thirteen per cent of the total
vote, the Independence party nineteen per cent, and the
Popular Democratic sixty-five per cent. Four years later,
partly because it had inherited much of the Socialist party's
former vote, the Republican Statehood party garnered twen-
ty-four per cent of the total, the Independence party slipped
from nineteen to fourteen per cent, while the Populares,
though gaining numerically more votes than in the previous
election, slipped from sixty-five per cent to sixty-two per cent
of the total.

The broadest conclusion to be drawn from such changes
is that the people of Puerto Rico, though preferring their
present relationship to federated statehood, are overwhelm-
ingly and increasingly for continued relations with the
United States.

Many important problems in that relationship remain to
be solved, but the method of solving them in a free and
democratic manner has been established at the very time
when the United States is under vicious attack from the
world's Communist side as a grasping imperialist. Moreover,

320 c PUERTO Rico

with the world in turmoil over the dual problem of abolish-
ing colonialism and raising standards of living for the hun-
dreds of millions of people who are still on the verge of star-
vation, Puerto Rico with Washington's full co-operation
has set an important example of the manners in which those
problems can be solved.

Thousands of visitors from all parts of the free world go
to the island today, see what Puerto Rico has done and is do-
ing, and return to their homes, saying: "This is America's
answer to communism.'* In this they express Puerto Rico's
greatest importance to the United States and to the modern
world.

Index

acerola cherry, 185

advertising, 208, 213

A.F. of L., 85, 155

AFL-CIO, 216, 229, 230

Agricultural Extension, 271

agriculture, 12, i6y/f; divers ifica-
tion of, 177; industrializa-
tion of, 177, 184; master
plan for, 185, 200; mechani-
zation of, 1 68, 176, 179, 1 86;
see also citrus fruits, coffee,
credit, dairy farming, land,
pineapples, tobacco, sugar

Agriculture and Commerce, De-
partment of, 172

airplane transportation, 30, 32,
374i

airport, San Juan, 209

Alaska, 310

Albizu Campos, Pedro, 7O/f, 82,
89, no, 117, 119, 120, 121,
130

Alegria, Ricardo, 286

Algeria, 8, 12

Amalgamated Clothing Workers,
216

Amazon basin, 176, 234

American Civil Liberties Union,

113, 318
American Forests, 175, 187

American Geographical Society,

American Legion, 154
American Mercury, The, 86

Americanization of Puerto Hi-
cans, 26, 34, 248, 300
ammonium plant, 200
ancylostorniasis, 233
Aqueduct and Sewer Authority,

239

aqueducts, rural, 239
arbitration, 222f
Arbona, Dr. Guillermo, 232
Arkansas, 37
Army of Liberation, 72
Art of Politics, The, 151
Ashford, Dr. Bailey, 59, 233, 234
assassinations, 74, 100, 252
Atlanta Penitentiary, 74, in
atomic radiations, 75

balance of trade, 61, 191
Baldwin, Roger, 318
Baltimore Sun, 88
Barcel6, Antonio R., 69, 92, 94,

U5f

bargaining, collective, 218

Barranquitas, El, 212, 269

Batey, El, i26f

Batista, Fulgencio, 95

Bayam6n Health and Welfare Re-
gional Program, 245

beef cattle, 182

beet sugar, 168, 178

Ben<t, William Rose, 86

Betancourt, Romulo, 18, 163

Bilharzia, 240

Bill of Rights, 218

11

Index

Bird, Esteban, 56, 209, 2,32

birth control, 80

birth rate, 4, 10, u, 12, 30, 52,
62, 63, 237, 296

bishops, Catholic, 259

Black, Ruby, 93, 95

Bolivar, Simon, 69

Bootstrap, Operation, 125

Borinquen, 32, 290

Boston, 37

bottles, factory for, 141

Bourne, Dorothy and James, 78

brassiere industry, 200

Brazil, 24, 208

Bridge, The (film), 2,67/f

Bridgeport, 25

Brookings Institution, 56, 60

Brumbaugh, M. G., 248

budget: control of, 65; Puerto
Bico's, 139

Bureau of Employment Security,
226

Bureau of Environmental Sanita-
tion, 239

Bureau of Malaria Eradication,
2-35

Bush, Monroe, 175, 187

Bushnaq, Dr. Hussein, 18

bulk-loading, 203

Byrnes, Governor, 37

Camden, 37

Canada, 190

cancer, 236; virus of, 72

capital: American, 28, 161; for
development, 140, 152, 153,
182; see also United States

capitalism, 6, 7

Caracas, 74

Carbon and Carbide Co. Union,
202

Caxibe Hilton Hotel, 198, 207

Caribbean area, 17, 20, 63

Caribbean Commission, 2off
Carlisle Indian School, 249
Carmen, Dona, 274
Casablanca, 289
Casals, Pablo, 208, 210, 263, 282,

287

casinos, 208
Castro, Josue de, 137
Castro, Fidel, an, 295
Catecismo del Pueblo, El, 123
Catholic: bishops, 259; Church,

80, 171, 296; culture, 69, 71,

80 ; faith, 259; schools, 259;

University, 258, 297
cement plant, 4, 98, 104, 141,

195, 200

Chard6n, Carlos, 97, 99, no, 136
Chard6n Plan, 98f, 102, 3:09
Chicago, 25, 37, 146, 239
child labor, 218
children, status of, 34
"Children of Famine/' 76
Chile, 140, 143
Chillicothe, Ohio, 78
China, 167, 276
Chinese labor, 45
cigar industry, 228
cities, growth of, 77, 291, 296
citizenship: Puerto Rican, 31;

U.S., 14, 67, 130, 131, 303
citrus fruits, 58, 182
civic employment, 12, 265^
civil liberties ,113,318
Civil Liberties Union, American,

clay-products factory, 141, 195
Cleveland, 25, 37
climate, 4, 33
clothing industry, 200
Coalition, 91, 92, 99, 102, 127,

143, 144

Coastwise Shipping Law, 90
coffee, s8f, 79, 98, 182, 203

Index

m

Colgate University, 22
collective bargaining, 218
colonialism: Puerto Rico's, 9, n,

12, 13; world, 6, 7
colonos, 53, 64, 119, 151
Colom, Jose* Luis, 17
Comandante, El, 209
Commonwealth Day, 306
commonwealth status, 20, 152,

communism, 7, 14, i6 ? 18, 71,

319,320
Community Education, Division

of, 172, 266/f; posters made

by, 274; publications of,

273; use of films by, 267ff
community garden, 270; partici-

pation, 239ff
compact with U.S., 131
conciliation, 222f
Conference, Governors', 19
conferences, international, 19
Congress, U.S., 51, 83, 303, 316;

shooting in, 75

Congressional committees, 146
Connecticut, 29, 40, 42
conservation, 142
constitution, Puerto Bican, 218,

224, 305; U.S., 65
consultants, American, 161
contraception, 296
contracts, labor, 42
Co-operative Development Ad-

ministration, 173, 266;

Bank, 173
co-operatives, 79, 98, losf, 139,

168, 172ff, 181, 184, 251
Costa Rica, 18, 163
Craig, Howard Reid, 246
credit: agricultural, 53, 54, 120;

unions, 172, 174
crime, 295, 297
Cuba, 21, 95, 211, 295, 308

culture, Puerto Rican, 27, 82, 87,

150, 256f, 28iff
culture societies, 48, 160
customs duties, 302; receipts, 50

dairy farming, 180, 186

death rate, 10, n, 30, 57, 23 6f,

241, 296

Debs, Eugene, 228
de Golia, Jack, 61
Delaware: University of, 22; Val-

ley, 40, 42

delinquency, juvenile, 36, 77, 297
Democracia, La, 84, 86, 93, 95,

149

democracy, Puerto Rico's, 14, 46

Democratic party, 94

Denmark, 10, 167, 168, 180, 264

Department, of Agriculture and
Commerce, 172; of Educa-
tion, 254, 261, 262, 272; of
Health, 239, 240, 244/f* of
Labor, 223/f, 230, 267; of
Public Works, 278; of State,
1 6, 19; of Tourism, 211

depression, world, 6/f, 63, 76, 77,
89

Descartes, Sol Luis, 104

Detroit, 37

Development Bank, 140, 197, 310

Development Company, 140,

diabetes, 236

diarrhea and enteritis, 57, 235
dictators, Latin-American, 14
DifEe, Bailey and Justine, 60
diseases, tropical, 231
distribution, geographic, 30, 202,

212, 213
Division of Community Educa-

tion, 172, 266/f
dollar diplomacy, 18

iv

Index

Dominican Republic, 21, 91, 130,

158, 211,300, 309
dope, in New York, 34
Dorado Beach Hotel, 209
double enrollment, 261
Drake, Sir Francis, 45
Dubinsky, 216
Dudley, Ed, 209
dumping, 190

Economic Development Admin-
istration, 1 60, 185, 199, 200

201, 208, 210, 222
Ecuador, 213
Educacidn, 262

education: 12, 31, 68, 114, 135,

202, 222, 248/f; adult, 255;
community, 265/7%- double
enrollment in, 261; expan-
sion of, 253; language prob-
lem in, 256; policy on, 248;
public hearings on, 255;
United Nations report on,
255; use of radio and tele-
vision in, 262; see also
English language, schools,
teachers

Education: Commissioner of, 68,
248, 253; Department of,
208

Educational Exchange program,
17

Egypt, 246

Eisenhower, Dr. Milton, 165

Eisenhower, President, 301

election: of 1932, 71; of 1936,
115; of 1940, 3, 29, 53, 102,
124/f, 151, 316; of 1944,
125, 144; of 1948, 149, 253;
of 1952, 319; of 1956, 319

election law, 127

elections, dishonest, 66

electric power, 192
electrification, rural, 98, 142, 181,

194

Ellsworth, Elmer, 131
Employment Security, Bureau of,

224
English language, 34, 39, 78, 83,

114, 208, 249ff> 253, 254,

erosion, soil, 4, 175, 181, 184
Escuela, 262
excise taxes, 50
exports, P.R., 191
expropriation, 205, 219

factories, 139, 140, 175, 189, 193,
*95/f* 2*5; see also indus-
tries, industrialization

Fair Labor Standards Act, U.S.,
220

Fajardo, 212

family, role in P.R., 282, 289

Fanguito, el, 293

Farley, James, 94

Faubus, Governor, 37

FBI, 144

FERA, 78, 103, 130, 137, 173,
185, 190

Fernandez Garcia, Benigno, ioif;
Rafael, 97, 109

Fern6s Isern, Antonio, 148, 149,
313; see also Resident Com-
missioner

Fern6s-Murray bill, 314

Ferr<, Luis, 153, 195, 3io/f

F.H.A., 295

Figueres, Jos6, 18, 163

Firestone Rubber Co., 53

fishing, 80, aoi, 209

Five-Hundred-Acre Law, 52, 53,
54, 55, 90, loif, 118, 120,
, 139, 140, 1 67f

Index

Florida, 43

flour and feed mill, 2,00

Font Saldana: Carmen de, 129;

Jorge, 12,8

Ford, Henry, Sr., 286
Foraker Act, 51, 52, 53, 68, 306
Foreign Relations Committee,

U. S. Senate, 156, 163
Foreign trade zone, 204
forests, 176, 183, 1 86, 200
fortifications, 45
Fortune, 88
France, 20, 21

Franco, General Francisco, 284
Frankfurter, Felix, 106
Fries, Charles C., 258
frontier, geographic, 35, irs, 177
Future Farmers of America, 251

Galapagos Islands, 201

Gallegos, Romulo, 91

gambling, 208

Gandhi, 71

garden, community, 270

Gary, Ind,, 39

Gbedemah, Kohla Agbedi, 8, 9

General Electric Co., 201, 308

Geography of Hunger, The, 237

Geological Survey, U. S., 206

Germany, 10, 37

Ghana, 8, 13, 18, 24, 253

Gibraltar, 46

glass factory, 141, 147, 195, 200

Gold Coast, 8

Gompers, Samuel, 228

Gonzalez, Rafael, 104

Gore, Robert H., 94f, 100

governor, elected, 15, 75, 148,

graft, 66

Great Britain, 20

Gregory, Horace and Marya, 86

ground water, 205

Gruenibng, Dr. Ernest, 99, iO7/f

*35> 299
Guadalupe, 21
Gulama, Ella Koblo, 18

Haiti, 21, 32, 167

Haitianization, 168

Hanson, Earl P., 104, no, 189

Harding, President, 68

Harlem, 15, 35

Harrisburg, 37

Harvard University, 70, 106, 157

Hartford, 25, 37

Haverf ord College, 22, 250

Hawaii, 28, 179, 310

Hays, Arthur Gariield, 113

Health, Department of, 77, 234

health instruction, 242

health, public, 12, 14, 30, 77, *39,

23I/F

heart ailments, 236, 237

Henry VIII, 167

Herald Tribune, N.Y., 76

Herndndez, Rafael, 290

Hitler, 8

Hoffa, 217, 230

hookworm, 233f, 240

Hoover, President, 76, 250

hospitals, 103, 235, 241

hotel school, 208

hotels, 19, 198, 207/f

House of Representatives, 74

housing: 33, 36, 77, 103, 266;
aided self-help, 173; munic-
ipal, 292; project, San Jose",
294; rural, 14, 171, 295

Housing Authority, 142

humid tropics, 232

Hungary, 32

hurricanes, 45, 58, 98, 172, 177,
182

hydroelectric power, 4, 10, 12,
104, 142, 181,

VI

Index

IBEC, 216

Iceland, 25

Ickes, Secretary, 73, 107 f , 134

Idlewild airport, 33

Iglesias, Santiago, 92, 109, 227

illiteracy, 202, 255

immigration into P.R., 28

imports, P.R., 191

imperialism, U.S., 20, 58, 73

Independence party, 309, 315,

independence: Puerto Rican, 31,
66, 68, 71, 88, 92, 98, 101,
106, 108, in, 114, 116, 131,
218, 220, 258, 293, 307, 309,
315; economics of, 307; Ty-
dings bill for, iO7f, 115, 309

income, per capita, 12, 60

income tax, 50

India, 13, 143, 234, 253

Indians of P.R., 281

Indochina, 8

Indonesia, 13, 18, 24, 253

industrialization: 12, 65, 90, 98,
104, 120, 139, i40/f, 152,
161, 175, 177, 184, 191, 260;
mortality in, 199; policies
for, 196

Institute of Puerto Rican Cul-
ture, 286/f

Interior, Department of, 98, 102

International Co-operation Ad-
ministration, U.S., 276

International Ladies Garment
Workers Union, 216

International Latex Corporation,
201, 229, 308

Iraq, 13

iron works, 200

irrigation, 194

Irrigation Service, P.R., 192

Isabela, 131

Israel, 13

Jackson, Congressman, 309

Jamaica, 24, 32

Japan, 200, 220

jibaros, 59, 116, 122, 129, 130,

131, 132, 145, 213, 285
Jimenez, Juan Ram6n, 282
Jones Act, 68, 306
Jones, Catesby, 185
Jordan, 13, 1 8
Juarez, 167
juvenile delinquency, 36, 77, 297

Kenworthy, Leonard, 257
Kenya, 8

Keyes, Dr. Scott, i8s/f
King, Senator, 253
Korsa, Sir Arkuh, 18

labor: 2i5/f,- agents, 41; cheap,
161; force, 31, 203; leaders,
102, 196, 216, 229; legis-
lation, 2i8ff; racketeers, 34,
39, 41; troubles, 196, 216;
unions, 39, 229/f

Labor: American Federation of,
85; Department of, 37, 40;
Statistics, Bureau of, 227

La Concha Hotel, 211

Lafayette, Central, 103

"Lamento Borincano/' 290

Land Authority, 140, i69f, 179

land: distribution of, 14, 120,
167, 168, 170, 175; reforms,
134, 139, 140, 170, 175

land law, i6g/f

La Parguera Hotel, 212

latifundia, 167

Latin America, relations with, 9,
13, 14, 16, 18, 191, 58, 82,
159, l63f, 281, 284, 299,
317

latrines, 240, 275

lawyers, in PRRA, 106

Index

League of Nations, 71
Leahy, Admiral, 135
Lee, Muna, 85, 88, 93
legislation: labor, 2i8ff; social,

139

legislature, P.R., 196, 317
Liberal party, 91, 92, 94, 99, 115,

121

Liberia, 53, 97
life expectancy, 10, n, 31
limestone, 190
literacy, 202, 252, 255; see also

illiteracy

Little Rock, Ark., 15
Lodge, Henry Cabot, 301
Los Canos mill, 103
lottery, 208

lunches, school, 242, 278
lynching of Nationalists, 74, 107

Maine (battleship), 49

malaria, 57, 233f

Malaria Eradication, Bureau of,

235

malnutrition, 235

manufacturing, 189, 191, I95/F;
see also factories, industrial-
ization, industries

market in U.S., 54; for U.S.
goods, 190; see also United
States

Markham, Edwin, 85

Martinique, 21

massacre, Ponce, 112

maternal-health program, 80

Matthews, Dr. Thomas, 299

May, Dr. Jacques, 238

Mayagiiez, 204

mayoress of San Juan, 211, 294

meat, 181; see also cattle, slaugh-
terhouse

medical geography, 237

Medicine, School of, 255

Mendoza, In6s, nsf

Menshikov: Mikhail, 311; Stanis-
lav, 3ii/f

Mexico, 32, 45, 167, 168, 179,
205

Migration Division, 37/f, 226

migration, Puerto Rican, 25/f,
191, 203; see also New York

Miles, General, 49, 306

milk, production of, 180; see also
dairy farming

mineral resources, 4

minimum wages, 123

Mississippi, 37, 310

Missouri, 31

monopoly, trade, 47

Monserrat, Joseph, 38

Morales Carri6n, Arturo, 17, 44,
1 1 6, 304

Morro, el Castillo de, 45, 288

Moscoso, Teodoro, 141, 199

Moscow subway, 276

motion pictures, 2,68ff

Moulder, Morgan H., 31, 309

municipal housing, 292; see also
housing

Munoz Marin, Luis: n, 12, 33,
53, 73, 76, 82/f, 105, 106,
134, 143, 154, 188, 215, 229,
241, 259, 266, 280, 290, 300,
304, 313, 314, 317, 3i8; ac-
quisition versus creation,
on, 157; A.F. of L. speech,
155; American Legion,
speech at, 154; assassina-
tion, attempted, 74; Barcel6,
quarrel with, iisf; cam-
paign of 1940, nBff; Char-
d6n Commission, with, 98;
culture changes, on, 284;
demagogy, on, 158/7 dicta-
tors, on, 163; dictatorship,
accused of, 158, 159; eco-

viii

Index

nomic aid, on, 165; Eisen-
hower, Milton, with, 165;
federal contributions, on,
162; Gore and, 94ff; gover-
nor, elected, 75, 149; Gruen-
ing, quarrel with, 107; Har-
vard University, at, 157;
Ickes and, i34f; independ-
ence, on, 109, ii4f, 144,
285, 314; industrialization,
on, 161; land law, 136;
Latin America, on relations
with, 19, 156; Latin Ameri-
can, as, 14, 159, i6sf; legis-
lature, messages to, 158,
161, 265; lobbyist, as, 107;
nationalism, on, 154; New
York, life in, 55, 85, 137;
Nixon, with, 19, 165; Opera-
tion Serenity, on, 158, 290;
philosophy, iso/f; poet, as,
84; political status, on, 84^,
156; private enterprise, on,
155; PRRA, and, 101, no;
realistic, 143; Roosevelt,
and, 95f, 133; Senate For-
eign Relations Committee,
at, 156; successor to, 316;
socialism, on, 155; socialist,
as, 85; sources of income,
on, 265; Trujillo, versus,
1 68; Truman, visits, 15;
writer, as, 55, 60, 61, 84
Munoz Marin, Inez Mendoza de,

H3
Murloz Rivera, Luis, 49, 67, 83,

85,91,304

music in P.R., 210, 287; see also
symphony orchestra

Naguib, Demonstration and

Training Area of, 246
Nation, The, 55, 86

National Resources Committee,

104

nationalism, 69, i54f, 254, 258
Nationalists, 72^, 89, 106, ii2/f,

283, 301
needlework industry, 34, 54, 57,

191, 199, 220
Nehru, 13
Negroes, 15, 28, 34, 35, 39, 46,

70, 71, 281; see also race re-

lations

Nelson, Donald M., 147
neo-Malthusians, 7
Netherlands, 20

New Deal, 64, 96, 101, 134, 135
New Jersey, 29, 42, 43
New Republic, The, 86
New York, Puerto Ricans in, 9,

24/f, no, 203, 293, 297, 308
Nigeria, 14, 253
Nixon, Richard, 18, 165
Nkrumah, Kwame, 13
Norway, 10
nuclear power, 194

observers, foreign, gff
one-party system, 313
Operation Bootstrap, 10, 15, 125,

Operation Commonwealth, 158
Operation Serenity, 158, 266, 290
Organic Act, 51, 68, 102, 304
overpopulation, 7, 237
overproduction, 6

Padln, Jose*, 94, 250, 252, 261

Pagan, Bolivar, 143, 144

Pagan de Colon, Petroame*rica,

38,42

painters, Puerto Rican, 286
Pakistan, 143
Palm Sunday, 112

Index

IX

Pan American Sanitary Bureau,

233

Pan American Union, 17
Panama, 70; Canal, 48
paper and pulp factory, 141, 195,

200

Parent Teachers Association, 251
Paris, Treaty of, 49, 71
pastures, 176

patronage, political, 54, 116
pava, 120

People's Catechism, The, 123
pepper, 185

Perloff, Harvey, 176, 296
Peru, 27, 163

petroleum refining, 190, 200
Philadelphia, 25
Philippines, 115, 200, 220
Phosphorescent Bay, 212
physicians, 241
Pic6, Rafael, 104, 197, 310
pineapple cannery, 179
pineapples, 179, 186, 198
Pineiro, Jos Ram6n, 17
Pinero, Jesus, 148, 151, 196
Pizarro, 27

planning, ib, I04/f, 202
Planning Board, 105, 139, 160,

197, 206, 271,295
Planning Division of the PBBA,

104

planters, sugar, 53; see also sugar
plebiscite on status, 131, 305, 315
Point IV, i$ff, 173
police force, in, 298
Poland, 32
Ponce, 112, 204
Ponce de Leon, 201, 289
Pons, Dr. Juan, 232, 235, 236,

243
Popular Democratic party, 102,

H9ff, 128, 133, 143, 146,

151, 195, 2-05, 211, 217, 227,

, 293, 306, 313, 316, 319
population: 28, 52, 62, 63; den-
sity of , 4, 5, 7; movement of,

37

Porto Rico, 60
ports, 203, 204
posters, 274
Postosky, 216
power, electric, 12, zgzff
Prado, President Manuel, 163
PRERA, 7 8ff, 103, 130, 137, 173.

2-34

proportional profit farms, 169
proportional representation, 317
prostitution, 34
Protestant Church, 80, 171
PRRA, 56, 80, 98, 99, 101, I02f,

115, 128, 130, 135, 137, 141,

173, 190, 207, 234, 235, 305
P.T.A., 261

Public Health Service, U.S., 232
Public Law 600, 305
Public Welfare, Office of, 242,

251

Queensland, 232

race relations, 7, 14, 15, 28, 33,

34, 35, 46, 70, 71; see also

Negroes
racing, 209

radio in education, 262
Ramos, Menendez, 97
Reconstruction Administration,

see PRRA
referendum, 305
refining, oil, 190, 200, 204
reforms, land, 134
regional distribution, 30, 202,

2r2, 213

Reily, J. Montgomery, 68
Relief Administrations, j&ff; see

also FERA and PRERA

X

Index

Remington Rand, 201

renaissance, 6 ,

Republican party (includes Re-
publican Statehood party),
67, 68, 91, 94, iai, I45 *53,
297, 307> 3io, 312, 319

research, 79, 141, 160

Resident Commissioner, 51, 83,
92, 109, 143, 148, 228, 303,

313

resources, natural, 4, 14
restoration of Spanish San Juan,

287
revolution, Puerto Rican, 3, n,

12, 127, 290

regionalization of medicine, 246
restaurants, 210
rice, 202
Riggs, Col. E. Francis, 74, 100,

105, 106, 252, 283
Rincon de Gautier, Felisa, 211,

roads, 50, 204, 205
Roberts, Dr. Lydia, 296
Robinson, Edward Arlington, 86
Rockefeller Foundation, 233
Rockefeller, Laurence, 209; Nel-

son, 216

Romany, Marcelino, 146
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 64, 73,

80, 92, 94, 95, I07f, 133;

Mrs., 73, 97
Roosevelt, Theodore, Jr., 60, 76,

2-50, 304

Rose, Dr., 59; Mrs. Glenola, 242
Rosenwald Fund, 266
Rubert Hermanos, Inc., 102
rum industry, 138, 141
rural aqueducts, 239
Russia, 37

Sampson, Admiral, 46, 227
San Juan, restoration of, 287

San Crist6bal, Fort, 45, 288
San Jose Housing Project, 294
Sarah Lawrence College, 22, 277
Sanchez Hidalgo, Dr. Efrain, 261
Sanitary Bureau, Pan American,

233

sanitary environment, 232

Santo Domingo, 46

Scandinavia, 175

schools: 50, 271; Catholic, 259;
public, 259; Second Unit
Rural, 250/7 vocational, 252,
260; see also education,
teachers

seaports, 55

Second Unit Rural Schools, 25of

Secretary of Education, 261

Self -Help Corporation, 103, 173

Semana, 262

Senior, Clarence, 40

Senate Committee on Foreign Re-
lations, 19

shipping, 178, 203

shoe factory, 141, 195

Sicily, 37

Sierra Berdecia, Fernando, 37,
38, 42, 219

Sierra Leone, 18

Skinner, Constance Lindsay, 86

slavery, 45, 46

slaughterhouse, 181

slum clearance, 103, 123, 293

slums, 171, 197, 207, 291

smallpox, 233

Smith-Hughes Law, 260

smuggling, 44, 47

soap, 190

social legislation, 139

Social Programs Administration,
172, 266

social workers: U.S., 40; Puerto
Rican, 79

socialism, 142, 143, 144, 152,

Index

XI

I55> 174, 182, 193, 195, 198,

295
Socialist party, 85, 91, 94, 121,

144, 228, 319
Soil Conservation Service, 176,

271

Soil Sanitation, Section of, 240
South, U.S., 37, 42
South Africa, Union of, 12
South Carolina, 37
sovereignty, national, 69
Soviet ambassador, 311
Soviet Union, 164, 237
Spain, relations with, 44/f
Spanel, A. N., 229
Spanish-American War, 51, 227
Spanish language, 36, 41 249
Spanish merchants, 47, 284
Springfield, 111., 283
standard of living, 202, 206
State, P,R., Department of, 16, 19
statehood for Puerto Rico, 54, 64,

67, 87, 195, 217, 257, 293,

307, 3i5
Statehood party, see Republican

party
status, political, 48, 63, 67, 87,

120, 151, 302ff

Stef ansson, Vilhjalmur, 86
sterilization, 296
stevedores, 216
Stimson, Henry, 304
Stricken Land, The, 138, 238
strikes, 170, 196, 204, 216, 219,

222/f

sugar economy: 42, 48, 52, 54,
58, 84, 102, 115, 141, 170,
173, 308; beet, 168, 178;
bulk-loading, 219; culture,
28, 1 86; labor, 222; mechan-
ization of, 179; politics in,
55, 99> 105; production, 52;
public utility, as, 120; regu-

lation of, 135, 139, 140, 167
summer workshops, 40
supermarkets, 174
Supreme Court, U.S., 65, 152,

303

Swope, Governor, 135, 136
symphony orchestra, 210, 287

Taft, Robert A., I47f, 193

tariff, U.S., 5, 28, 49 5O, 61, 90,

taxes: 205, 310; excise, 139, 290,

302, 310; exemption from,

152, 153, 196, 201, 310, 311;

income, 314; Washington,

to, 50, 51, 162
teachers: 256, 259, 261; New

York, 40; see also education,

schools

Teasdale, Sara, 86
Technical Co-operation Program,

17
telephone service, 203, 204, 216,

219

television in education, 262
tennis, 209

tenure, land, 168; see also land
terrorism, 70, 74
Thailand, n, 13, 253
timber resources, 4; see also for-

ests

tobacco, 58, 184, 1 86
topography, 4

Tourism, Department of, 211
tourists, 4, 141, 198, 207/f
Towner, Horace M., 304
Toynbee, 64
trade: balance of, 61, 191; free,

47, 48, 50; monopoly, 47.

48; statistics on, 191
transportation, 30, 54, 205
Transportation Authority, 142

Xll

Index

Travel Association, P.R., 141
Treaty of Paris, 49, 71
Trinidad, 21
tropical, climate, 231; diseases,

234

Trujillo, Generalissimo, ai, 46,
158, 212, 2,76, 300, 309

Truman, President, 15, 74

tuberculosis, 57, 235

Tugwell, Rexford: 86, 97, 105,
I33ff> 150, 160, 238; Art of
Politics, The, by, 151; com-
monwealth status, on, 302,
317; governor, as, 136/f; in-
augural address, 139; land
law, investigates, 136; re-
signation of, 148; Stricken
Land, The, by, 138, 238; tax
exemption, against, 196

tuna fish, 201

T.V.A., 142, 192

Ty dings, Senator Millard, 107,
, 309

unemployment, 77, 170, 183, 185,
187, 203, 2i5/f, 221, 226

UNESCO, 275

Union party, 67, 68, 85, 91

United Fruit Co., 53

United Nations, 9, 225, 255, 276,
301

United States: capital, 48, 52, 58,
152; expenditures in P.R.,
191; market, as, 54, 115,
302, 308; politics in, 60; re-
lations with, 5, 9, 13, 14, 16,
20, 29, 32, 49ff, 65/f, 86,
131, 257, 283, soiff; trade
with, 61, 302

Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, 225

University of Puerto Rico, 17, 60,

73, 95, 98, 99, 104, 136, 141,
160, 173, 255, 258, 263, 271,

299
urban renewal, 292

vanilla, 185
Velazquez, Luis, in
Venezuela, 18, 74, 163, 233
veto power of governor, 54, 127,

135, I52-, 303
Virgin Islands, 21, 211
visitors to Puerto Rico, official,

9/f,253, 319
vocational training, 38, 222, 252,

255; schools, 252, 260
votes, purchase of, 55, 57, 65,

116, 119, 124, 125, 129

wages: 56, 161, 185, 196, 197,

200, 215, 2i6ff; differentials

in, 216; minimum, 123,

2i7ff, 311

Wale, Fred G., 266; Mrs., 274
Waldorf Hotel, 38, 208
War Department, 98
Washington, George, 69, 83, 89
Water Resources Authority, 142,

181, I93/F
water, ground, 205; urban and

rural supplies, 238, 279
West Africa, n
West Florida, 46
West Indian Federation, British,

20, 32

West Indies, 35, 42
Wilkins, Sir Hubert, 86
WiJliams, Fatayi, 14
Wilson, Woodrow, 67
Winship, General Blanton, 96,

111,113,127,207
Winthrop, Governor Beekman,

236

Index c

Withrow, Congressman, 309 Yager, Arthur, 67

"wolf gangs," 77 yeUow fever, 233

women, role of, 2-01 Youngstown, 25

workshops, summer, 40 Yugoslavia, 13

World Wars I and II, 6, 8, 15, 29, Yunque, El, 212,
4i, 50, 53, 5$> 138, 182, 260,

zoning, urban, 197

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

EARL PARKER HANSON was born in 1899, in Ber-
lin, Germany, of American parents. He was
graduated in engineering from the University of
Wisconsin in 1922,, and later did graduate work
in geography at the University of Chicago and
at Columbia University. At various times in his
life he has been an engineer in Chile; an explorer
in Iceland, sub-arctic Canada, the Amazon basin,
and the Andes; head of the first U.S. economic
mission to Liberia; and professor of geography at
the University of Delaware. In 1935 and 1936 he
was in Puerto Rico as a consultant to the federal
Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration and
organized its Planning Division, of which he be-
came executive secretary. His interest in Puerto
Rico grew parallel to the fascinating develop-
ment of that society. He is now Consultant to
Puerto Rico's Department of State and a colum-
nist for the weekly newspaper The Island Times.

In his career as a writer he has frequently
contributed to geographical and scholarly maga-
zines, as well as to Harpers, and is the author of
many distinguished books, such as Journey to
Manaos (1938), Chile, Land of Progress (1941),
New Worlds Emerging (1950). He is also the
originator and editor-in-chief of the three-volume
New World Guides to the Latin American He-
publics (1944, 1946, 1950).

Mr. Hanson has been knighted by Liberia and
Iceland.

A NOTE ON THE TYPE

THE TEXT of this book was set on the Linotype in
a new face called PRIMER, designed by Rudolph
Ruzicka, earlier responsible for the design of
Fairfield and Fairfield Medium, Linotype faces
whose virtues have for some time now been ac-
corded wide recognition.

The complete range of sizes of Primer was first
made available in 1954, although the pilot size
of 12, point was ready as early as 1951. The de-
sign of the face makes general reference to Lino-
type Century (long a serviceable type, totally
lacking in manner or frills of any kind) but bril-
liantly corrects the characterless quality of that
face.

In the designs for Primer, Mr. Ruzicka has
once again exemplified the truth of a statement
made about him by the late W. A. Dwiggins:
"His outstanding quality, as artist and person, is
sanity. Complete esthetic equipment, all man-
aged by good, sound judgment, about ways and
means, aims and purposes, utilities and 'func-
tions* and all this level-headed balance-mecha-
nism added to the lively mental state that makes
an artist an artist. Fortunate equipment in a dis-
ordered world . . ."

Composed, printed, and bound by H. WOLFF,
New York. Paper manufactured by p. H. GLAT-
FELTER co., Spring Grove, Pennsylvania. Typog-
raphy and binding design by VINCENT TORRE.

(continued f f "c ,. ' 'lap)
cultural reforms, its ^m 'M - "' in labor,
health, and education, a.Kii ihc prrul-
iarly sensitive problem of dual culture.

Puerto Rico was once a symbol of
American imperialism, and not a very
happy one. Today it is again a symbol
to many: this time a proud symbol of
American ingenuity, innovation, and
humanity, and of Puerto Rican vigor
and enterprise. In today's world of
political turmoils, it is as important a
symbol as t^e TVA was to yesterday's
world of depression. Thousands of vis-
itors to the island, from all parts of the
free world, but especially from such
places as India and Ghana, see what
Puerto Rico is doing and go home say-
ing; "This is America's answer to
communism."

Most Americans know that Puerto
Rico is overpopulated; that its citizens
are Americans free to migrate to the
United States; and that tax remission
has helped its giant strides toward
industrialization and economic prog-
ress. What most Americans do not know
(and what makes this book so exciting)
is the way in which the high-spirited
islanders have taken industrialization
and other modes of progress into their
own hands and accelerated them.

The story that Mr. Hanson, ex-
plorer, geographer, and Latin Ameri-
can expert, tells so well is one that all
Americans will' read with a thrill of
pride.

PRINTED JN U.S.A.

C 2

115 110