Puerto Rico's 'Third Way'
ALLEMANN, F. R.
Puerto Rico's 'Third way' Governor Munoz Marins compromise between independence and statehood succeeds in preventing inroads by Castro's anti-American propaganda By F. R. Allemann San...
...More than anything else, this remarkable progress by the Republicans, with their "integrationist" program, indicates the extent to which the old anti-American passions have spent their force...
...Like Fidel, too, "Don Luis" is one of the great popular leaders of Latin America, and despite his decidedly upper-class background he was for a time attracted by socialist or quasi-sociali st ideas...
...Of course, Puerto Rico is far from solving all of its problems...
...Another man I met calls him a "drunkard," accuses him of using politics to get rich quickly, of being utterly unreliable and of having betrayed one party after the other to further his personal ambitions...
...Yet the country's progress is so impressive it has completely changed Puerto Rico's political outlook...
...The similarity of the two islands makes their differences all the more startling...
...Puerto Rico's rate of economic growth (close to 10 per cent) is one of the highest in the world...
...Today, the controversy of independence vs...
...But when this second man is asked for whom he voted last November, he chuckles: "For Don Luis, of course...
...And both countrysides are dominated by sugar cane, tobacco, coffee and banana plantations...
...in eight years, its share of the vote has rocketed from 13 to 32 per cent...
...Even more important is the fact that the island, although exempt from Federal taxation, enjoys all the advantages of belonging to the American market, i.e., to the biggest free market in the world...
...He also has created the best possible conditions for his second and main goal, the transformation of Puerto Rico's economic and social structure...
...As soon as he got into power, however, the poet and visionary turned out to be a hardheaded realist, utterly different from the later romantic revolutionary style of the Cuban Castro...
...It may even be said that the same kind of "bohemian" atmosphere surrounds both men...
...This economic stagnation combined with a population growth rate second to none in the hemisphere to produce dangerous social tensions and political strife...
...This tremendous growth, moreover, has taken place in a climate of economic and political freedom...
...Last year he was elected to a fourth term...
...And though one-third of the budget is used for education, even optimists concede that another decade will be needed to conquer illiteracy...
...On the other hand, the Republican Statehood party, agitating for complete union with the U.S., has grown steadily stronger...
...Unemployment remains disturbingly high, running at a rate of 13 per cent...
...The nationalist Independence Movement received only 3 per cent of the total vote in the last election and is now utterly isolated and hopelessly divided...
...it cannot easily be copied by the sovereign states of South or Central America...
...Munoz Marin's accomplishments are particularly remarkable because he, like Castro, began his career as a national revolutionary and "antiimperialist...
...For this reason, it would be a mistake to point to it as America's "best answer to Castro...
...At the same time, Munoz's Government makes sure the workers get their share of the boom...
...Thus, as Cuba's economy made rapid strides forward with the aid of private American capital, Puerto Rico remained poor and sadly neglected for decades...
...Munoz wears no beard, but he first made his name as a distinguished poet...
...In 1960 alone, investments in industry amounted to more than the whole value of national (industrial and agricultural) production two decades ago...
...What has been achieved in Puerto Rico has been possible only within the framework of its economic union with the United States...
...Puerto Rico is a fortunate and, unhappily, a very special case...
...By 1956, only eight years after he first took office, Puerto Rico, which had been an agrarian "depressed area" for generations, suddenly emerged as a country of thriving industrial plants geared to a market of 170 million American consumers...
...In addition, reduction of the mortality rate below that of the U.S...
...Within a short time, the country, which had been one of the most impoverished in Latin America, has overtaken all others, except for oilrich Venezuela...
...And while its citizens are still considered citizens of the U.S., which makes them liable to service in the American Army, such status also gives them the privilege of unrestricted immigration to the States (a privilege which almost a million Puerto Ricans have exercised...
...Indeed, nowhere in Latin America has it been so ineffective...
...This development was mainly the work of one man, Luis Munoz Marin, who took office in 1948 as the island's first popularly elected Governor...
...That answer still has to be found...
...Puerto Rico, it seemed, was destined to be an ideal recruiting ground for social revolutionary movements and a hotbed of violent anti-Americanism...
...Both remained in Spanish possession long after the secession of the South and Central American colonies, and both fell into American hands around the turn of the last century...
...Jaime Benitez, Chancellor of Puerto Rico University (which, with its 16,000 students, has rapidly become one of the liveliest centers of Latin American culture), calls him "most remarkable" and even a "great" man —and this in spite of the many arguments he has had with the Governor...
...Furthermore, Munoz has extraordinary political ability and an uncommon gift for compromise—not the half-hearted compromise of the mere tactician but the creative compromise which is the mark of the statesman...
...By accepting this economic tie with the former colonial power, the Governor has prevented his country from regressing into a small state economy...
...Urban slums are still developing faster than the excellent new housing projects being built to accommodate the masses streaming into the new industrial centers from the rural hinterland...
...True, every year thousands of observers from the underdeveloped countries of Latin America, Africa and even Asia gather in San Juan to study the methods by which this small island has worked its way out of its former misery and created a strong, expanding and exceedingly vital economy...
...It would probably be wrong, nevertheless, to overrate the importance of the Puerto Rican experiment...
...But Munoz was not (and still is not) willing to accept the idea of Puerto Rico becoming just another state in the union...
...San Juan is a second Havana, with the same Spanish-Creole architecture overlaid by the same aggressive American modernism...
...rate (the birth rate is also slowly but steadily going down) must be considered a sign of a well-balanced social welfare policy...
...But how far these methods can be imitated remains an open question...
...As a matter of fact, Munoz has two major accomplishments to his credit: He has succeeded in developing a workable arrangement with Washington and he has started to build a progressive economy...
...To attract private enterprise, too, manufacturers are offered 10 years' exemption from corporate income tax, favorable lease arrangements for factory sites and a welldeveloped system of professional education, directed and backed by the island's Government...
...Of course, Munoz Marin's Popular Democratic party, with 58 per cent, still holds a comfortable majority...
...A sovereign Puerto Rico would mean permanent misery...
...Industrialization is the heart of Munoz's program...
...The man has his faults, as all of us, but he has done more for us than anybody else...
...Yet Castro's propaganda, which thrives on anti-Americanism and social discontent, has scarcely touched Puerto Rico...
...Puerto Rico's 'Third way' Governor Munoz Marins compromise between independence and statehood succeeds in preventing inroads by Castro's anti-American propaganda By F. R. Allemann San Juan Immediately upon arrival here, the island-hopping Caribbean observer is struck by the sharp contrast betweeen Fidel 'Castro's Cuba and Governor Luis Munoz Marin's Puerto Rico...
...Even the morros, the hill fortifications built by the Spaniards to protect the two cities against pirates, are very much alike...
...status quo seems to have lost all relevance: The debate rages over the respective advantages of "association" and "integration...
...He started groping for a "third way," and it is a measure of his political acumen that he succeeded in winning both Washington and his own countrymen to what has been called the "commonwealth" solution: a combination of interior "autonomy" with a permanent "association" with the U. S. By Federal law, Puerto Rico is free to govern itself in nearly all matters except foreign policy and defense...
...Nevertheless, Munoz also is a somewhat controversial personality...
...Cuba and Puerto Rico also share a similar historical heritage...
...Not only has Governor Munoz chucked his nationalist dreams overboard, he has convinced himself of the necessity to make peace with capitalism...
...The statistics—every foreign visitor to San Juan is showered with them—show that within 20 years the island's per capita social product has increased nearly five-fold...
...However, while the United States eventually granted Cuba limited independence, it continued to administer Puerto Rico as a colony because the smaller island dominates access to the Panama Canal...
...For in the 1950s the country experienced a tremendous change, which in a quiet, democratic and evolutionary way actually amounted to a social revolution...
...In this debate, Fidelism doesn't mean a thing...
...Strictly enforced minimum wages and the activities of a free and vigorous trade union movement have combined to raise individual incomes...
...Once elected, the Governor very soon realized that independence was no real solution for the island...
...All factories originally built up by the state have been sold to private industrialists...
Vol. 44 • March 1961 • No. 13
