Puerto Rico: Kinship or Colony
WAGENHEIM, KAL
'CULMINATING' THE COMMONWEALTH Puerto Rico: Kinship or Colony By Kal Wagenheim San Juan In February of 1898, after four centuries of Spanish colonial rule, the Caribbean island of...
...It would be closer to 30 per cent if Puerto Rico's labor force participation rate were at the same level as the U.S., but many thousands of Puerto Ricans are never included in the employment-unemployment statistics because they are not even looking for work, presumably because their skills are not needed on the marketplace...
...As University of Puerto Rico social scientist Gordon Lewis wrote recently: "The socio-economic changes unleashed by Munoz have had the effect, among much else, of converting the Puerto Rican country people into rootless urban and suburban nomads, and the Governor may discover that his return to the batey (rural front yard) really means a confrontation with huge American cars, the TV sets, the imported Bermuda grass, the U.S.-style teenager culture and, in general, the widespread status panic of the Puerto Rican nouveaux riches...
...Illiteracy had dropped from 35 per cent to 13 per cent...
...You cannot just invalidate what has existed for 14 years...
...Voting against it implied a desire to keep Puerto Rico as it was: a colony of the United States...
...families earn 44 per cent of the income, their counterparts in Puerto Rico rake in 59 per cent...
...For example when the Commonwealth government recently proposed a bill to increase the tax rate on capital gains, the island press has raised such an uproar, predicting that the bill would "destroy the business climate," that it may well have to be drastically altered...
...By U.S...
...The other large faction is composed of individuals who insist on permanent association with the U.S...
...It would be absurd.' One of the "harsh decisions" the Puerto Rican government would have to make is what to do about possible disintegration of the powerful Popular Democratic Party...
...In 24 years, under Munoz's leadership, Puerto Rico had made the "great leap forward" from a stagnant, heavily rural society to a dynamic enterprise with an annual growth rate that is the envy of most nations...
...Nothing else," concluded Sanchez, "can satisfy the need of Puerto Rico in this modern world and in the future...
...No one can confidently predict what STACOM will recommend, although - since three of Puerto Rico's six STACOM members favor Commonwealth - it is likely to come out with a pro-Commonwealth conclusion...
...Manufacturing wages had jumped from 19 cents to $1.09 hourly...
...The alternative to stop is no longer ours...
...El puede hacerlo tan bien corno yo...
...Create a mechanism that can apply these principles to the realities of a changing world, from time to time, and recommend the necessary changes and adjustments in the specific application of such principles...
...The Puerto Rican government has some powers, but it is constantly reminded that it must preserve a "healthy business climate" by an ultra-conservative press (three of the island's four dailies are Republican in varying degrees and back Statehood...
...The island government has taken great pains to demonstrate its affection for the United States...
...After serving in the early 1940s as administrator of the island's Transport Authority, he moved dutifully from one government post to another (the most glamorous of which was resident engineer of the luxurious Caribe Hilton Hotel in 194748) until in 1952 he was named Secretary of State of the new Commonwealth government...
...He fails to see that, in grim reality, it is a raucous tiger not easily tamed...
...A few months ago, the Commonwealth Legislature approved by a near unanimous vote (only one against) President Johnson's policy in Vietnam, prompting a local critic to observe that Puerto Ricans seemed even more patriotic than Americans on the mainland, where Vietnam is subject to the criticism of a vociferous minority...
...products and the acquisitive nature of U.S...
...is far from equitable (and it has remained static for the past 20 years), but Puerto Rico's is far worse...
...While the poorest one-fifth of the families in the U.S...
...Puerto Rico has an industry-by-industry minimum wage system, where joint committees representing labor, industry and government decide upon the wage for each industry...
...It will also offer analyses of independence and statehood...
...He remains today as Senator-at-large something of a legendary figure...
...Support in principle the essential elements of Commonwealth status, as we understand them to be, and not subject to change to another status unless desired by the Puerto Rican people and agreed to by Congress...
...Perhaps the most mordant comment with respect to more sovereignty for Puerto Rico was made by Puerto Rico Independence Movement leader Juan Mari Bras at the outset of the 1964 elections: "I don't see why the U.S...
...would arrange for it to immediately join the Organization of American States and it could control us anyway...
...Congress...
...Maritime Service in transporting goods to and from the mainland...
...Munoz Marin, though consistently defending Commonwealth status, was from the beginning acutely aware of the basic flaw in the compact with the U.S...
...capitalism," if this is possible, and make it better serve the island's needs...
...Sánchez "inherited" an island of 3,500 square miles and 2.5 million citizens where startling, almost incredible, economic progress had taken place since the Popular Democratic party won power in 1940...
...Life expectancy stretched from 40 to over 70 years...
...But that's simply not the way most of us are used to being...
...Owning a car, or leaving a window open in one's house, is a risk...
...We'd get all sorts of attention,' one Puerto Rican official said recently, "if a bunch of us decided to start fighting and yelling and demonstrating and picketing against U.S...
...Kal Wagenheim is the editor of Puerto Rico's San Juan Review...
...One of the results is a "community" of over 10,000 drug addicts, which breaks down to an alarming ratio of one per 250 island residents...
...can threaten disastrous results for Puerto Rico...
...and, without Commonwealth, might shift to the statehood movement...
...culture, an appalling majority of residents can do little more than aspire to own the accoutrements of prosperity, or go into debt up to their necks to own - or be owned by-them...
...Along with the tidal wave influx of U.S...
...some because they believe in independence and refuse to pledge allegiance to the American flag, others because they feel that it is unjust to risk their lives in Vietnam without having had a chance to vote for or against the President who is asking them to go and fight there...
...And, to enter Puerto Rico's "elite" bracket, to be among the top one-fifth, a family need earn only $60 a week according to Miller's study...
...As a poet and writer of blistering, and brilliant, pro-independence articles, Muñoz had gripped the imagination of the Puerto Rican masses during the formative years of the mildly socialistic PDP - holding together its strong-willed partisans of diametrically opposite political, cultural and economic beliefs...
...The question an observer of Puerto Rico asks himself: How can the island's progress be maintained, but better channelled...
...And while the wealthiest one-fifth of U.S...
...One U.S.owned chain discount store recently expressed doubt that it would open another branch because it had been suffering shoplifting losses of "up to 19 per cent," compared with 2 per cent in its mainland stores...
...Speaking at his alma mater, Ohio State University, in March 1966, he said: "We stand now at the threshold of development and success a demi-developed society...
...For this reason, on July 10, 1962, he wrote to President John F. Kennedy: "It seems clear that the people of Puerto Rico should be consulted again regarding the relationship of its government with the United States...
...The new U.S...
...Yet, all along there had been cracks in the showcase, and each year the cracks are widening...
...On April 13, 1964, the Puerto Rican government accepted the invitation and for the past two years has shared equally the $1 million cost of the study...
...Sometimes, even an apparently benevolent action on the part of the U.S...
...The result, on February 20, 1964, was Public Law 271, signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson and approved by the 88th U.S...
...Real autonomy would also allow Puerto Rico to soften the sometimes brutal impact of the U.S...
...In September 1966 STACOM is scheduled to make public its findings, which should include a definition of what the present Commonwealth status is, what it can evolve to be, and recommendations for legislative action...
...Now called "The Law of Federal Relations," it stipulates that Puerto Rico is still "an island belonging to the United States" - a phrase that contradicts and seemingly negates Puerto Rican autonomy...
...In December 1962, Governor Mufioz submitted a bill to the Puerto Rican legislature requesting "prompt settlement of the political status of Puerto Rico...
...It is about double the amount of unemployment experienced by the United States in the Great Depression of the 1930s...
...Perhaps the meek shall inherit the earth...
...In 1952 when Puerto Ricans voted in favor of Commonwealth status, they had little choice...
...Coastal Shipping Laws apply to Puerto Rico, which is not on the U.S...
...press as a "showcase of democracy in the Caribbean...
...from the delegates - pointed to the man next to him and announced: ¡Ese es...
...The U.S...
...Whether or not this is so, the fact that Puerto Rico's wage policies are being set, not by Puerto Ricans, but in the distant United States (where average income is over twice as high) is an other example of the type of colonialist influence the United States exerts...
...coast, and force the island to use the high-cost U.S...
...The Commonwealth concept has been bombarded from both sides: Statehooders maintain that Puerto Rico is still a colony, and that the only chance for equality is complete integration in the American system...
...And with a sizeable middle class for the first time, Puerto Rico was being hailed in the U.S...
...We're esentially a peaceful people, we always have been, who believe in legislation, law and order...
...The Gross National Product had soared from $28.7 million to $2.5 billion in 24 years...
...He's the one...
...chairman...
...And so we must continue to change, to improve, to alter, to succeed...
...Congress, a split in the PDP would be almost a certainty...
...In effect, to tame the "raucous tiger of U.S...
...and obviating complaints of a colonial status...
...They feel that the new relationship would take "at least a generation to jell," but that Puerto Rico could gradually assert itself and become a key economic and cultural force in the burgeoning Caribbean area...
...In the case of Puerto Rico, only time, and the U.S...
...The U.S...
...The real problem with respect to low wages - an ineffective Puerto Rican labor movement - was outlined in an April 25 speech by Governor Sanchez...
...Though average family income in Puerto Rico is $2,100, only one-third of the island's 448,000 families earn that much...
...for economic reasons...
...Although unknown to most mainlanders, this study is crucial to Puerto Ricans: It will serve as a primary reference when "the moment of truth" arrives and the island's political destiny is finally decided by the Puerto Rican people and the U.S...
...He is, more and more, a Puritan in Babylon...
...Census Bureau expert on poverty, was contracted by the island government to make a study of Poverty in Puerto Rico...
...military bases dot the island...
...Per capita annual income had septupled from $118 to $832 (it is about $900 today...
...There are," he said, "still too many important sectors of the economy where a very small number of workers have joined union ranks, where there are very few who enjoy the strength of the union and the benefits collective bargaining can offer...
...In addition to lengthy private deliberations, STACOM has held public hearings in Puerto Rico...
...I would be less than frank with you if I would not tell you here today that in the next four years we will have to run fast to protect the gains we have made and even faster to materialize our goals for the decade...
...We are already beyond the point of refusal...
...In 1964 Herman Miller, U.S...
...There were over a quarter of a million registered autos, compared with about 25,000 in 1940...
...If Puerto Rico were independent the U.S...
...While on the mainland Puerto Ricans can vote for the U.S...
...Despite the island's progress, Puerto Rico's unemployment rate has fluctuated between 11 and 13 per cent for many years...
...For if the "culminated" Commonwealth concept were rejected by the U.S...
...Since his election, Governor Sanchez has tried to create what he calls a "new style" government...
...Kennedy replied 14 days later, expressing his "total sympathy" for Puerto Rico's aspiration...
...A few months later, before the new government had a chance to flex its legislative muscles, the island was swept up like a bauble in the Spanish-American War and ceded to the United States...
...If we put on the brakes, we are going to crash...
...Over 23,000 students crammed island universities, compared with 5,000 in 1940...
...The commission was to consist of six members from the U.S., six from Puerto Rico and a U.S...
...The party is composed, to a great extent, of moderate independentistas who are willing to be associated with the U.S...
...While calling for a "more vigorous and militant" labor movement, Sanchez cited a recent study which showed "extremely discouraging" results: that "only 18 per cent of the workers interviewed - employed and unemployed - said they belonged to a labor organization...
...earn a dismal 5 per cent of the income, the poorest one-fifth of Puerto Rico's families earn only 2 per cent of total family income...
...For years Puerto Rico has stood politely by, patiently awaiting the solution to its status problem...
...That is the beauty - and in some ways the tragedy - of this small island, which has been turning the other cheek for centuries...
...Government controls the postal service here, and all island radio and television stations are subject to the FCC...
...In 1964, Munoz decided that in order to institutionalize his partyand the Commonwealth status it championed - he must step down...
...But it is even riskier to predict the reaction of a U.S...
...For the next 12 years he remained in Muñoz's shadow, learning the inner workings of the Administration...
...showed Muñoz and Sánchez in a smiling embrace, and the PDP once again won overwhelmingly, sweeping a rather bewildered Roberto Sánchez Vilella into office...
...Will Puerto Rico's polite request be heard amid the maelstrom of a confused, violent world...
...belief in the free determination of all peoples...
...He added that of $60 million in capital gains reported on 1964 income tax returns, $40 million was accounted for by only 305 persons, which gives some idea of why income distribution is so unjust in Puerto Rico...
...Congress simply ignores STACOM'S hopefully favorable recommendations, and continues to insist that Puerto Rico is still nothing more than an 'island belonging to the United States...
...This month a preliminary draft of its findings was submitted to STACOM'S 13 members for further study...
...law, an across-the-board measure also applying to Puerto Rico, would do away with the industry committees and, according to most Puerto Rican authorities, would cause a drastic increase in unemployment by discouraging industries from coming to the island...
...average...
...How, ask the critics of Commonwealth, can an Estado Libre Asociado (Free Associated State), as it is called in Spanish, still "belong" to the United States...
...Thus, on an island which is direcly exposed to high-priced U.S...
...Such a shift could polarize the Puerto Rican voting public into two enormous groups-pro-independence and prostatehood-and make impossible a consensus in the near future...
...Governor Sánchez has been realistic in admitting these problems...
...He likes to dream of American capitalism as a non-sacred cow to be rationally utilized by rational Puerto Ricans...
...At the party convention in the west coast city of Mayagüez, he confirmed the rumors that he would not run again and - amid tearful cries of No...
...Other Commonwealth government leaders have also been stressing, in recent months, the need for a status solution and more autonomy...
...Puerto Rico's Commonwealth status, approved on July 25, 1952, calls for self-government within the framework of permanent association with the United States, based on a common market, common citizenship, fiscal autonomy, common defense, common currency and common loyalty to the democratic way of life...
...Yet, as noted Puerto Rican educator Pedro Muñoz Amato wrote in 1953...
...Congress, can tell...
...In 1953, on the assumption that Puerto Rico had freely determined its status and was an autonomous territory, the United Nations allowed the United States' request that it was no longer necessary to render regular reports on Puerto Rico to the UN committee on colonial affairs...
...Sanchez's immediate challenge was to try to fill the shoes of his predecessor, Luis Muñoz Marín, the charismatic lider máximo whose Popular Democratic party (PDP) had steamrollered the opposition for over two decades...
...One of the men most concerned with the study's results is Roberto Sanchez Vitella, a 51-year-old excivil engineer who in November of 1964 was elected Governor of Puerto Rico...
...A Commonwealth government official was recently asked: "What if the STACOM simply doesn't go along with Governor Sánchez's request...
...Then," he said grimly, "both we and the United States would have to face some harsh decisions...
...financial aid...
...Congress, which called for the establishment of a U.S.-Puerto Rico Status Commission to study the political, economic and social aspects of the island's link with the mainland...
...Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson visited Puerto Rico and referred to Kennedy's letter as "proof" of the U.S...
...Recommend that a plebiscite be held, under the laws of Puerto Rico, in which the three forms of status be submitted in consultation to the electorate of Puerto Rico, and express the conviction that participation in that plebiscite is a responsibility of all parties advocating a status formula and of all citizens to vote...
...melting pot...
...should hesitate to grant sovereignty or even outright independence to Puerto Rico...
...Even for the well-to-do, Puerto Rico's unbalanced progress has had unfortunate side effects...
...Later this year, in September according to recent announcements, a joint U.S.-Puerto Rico Status Commission (STACOM) will make public a two-year study of the island's foggy political kinship with the United States...
...The new governor could not have been more unlike Munoz...
...recently wrote: "Underutilization of human resources on the island is about six times greater than the U.S...
...The most recent example is the current minimum wage legislation...
...over 170,000 telephones, compared with 16,700 in 1940...
...On April 6, Puerto Rican Secretary of State Carlos J. Lastra told business and government leaders at a luncheon that Puerto Rico is "doomed not to grow at the pace we should unless we have flexibility in wages, in transportation and in other economic areas.' What the PDP calls "culminated Commonwealth" is based upon a need for Puerto Rico to be sovereign, and to enter into a real compact with the United States by what Muñoz Amato has called "democratic participation,' not "passive consent...
...But it's absurd to even entertain such a possibility...
...The independentistas agree that the island is a colony but they feel that Puerto Ricans would disappear as "a people" once they were integrated into the U.S...
...One of the most serious cracks in the showcase is that Puerto Rico's immense material progress is not being equitably shared...
...standards (if one accepts Gunnar Myrdal's $2,000 level as the extreme poverty line), over two-thirds of Puerto Rico's families are living in "utter destitution.' Income distribution in the U.S...
...President, but in Puerto Rico they cannot (their interests are represented by a Resident Commissioner in Washington who has no vote...
...Starting with the administrative structure, he has chosen a number of bright young liberals for cabinet-level posts (his new Secretary of Justice is less than 30 years old...
...In his Ohio State speech, Governor Sánchez outlined what he hopes the STACOM study will do: • "Recognize that Commonwealth status has the attributes of political dignity...
...Congress beleaguered by Vietnam, the War on Poverty, the "Red Chinese Menace," turmoil in Latin America, riots in Watts, and the constant demands of constituents...
...Manufacturing investment (spurred by the vigorous "Operation Bootstrap" promotion program which offers tax exemption and other lures to new businesses) had increased from $26.7 million to $431.8 million, and factories had multiplied from less than 100 to nearly 1,000...
...The need for drugs, and the need for cash by non-addicts, has caused a rapid spiral in the crime rate...
...Sánchez hopes that this injection of new blood will revitalize a once-dynamic government, which seems to be sagging with fatigue and complacency after 24 years of power...
...Some segments of both the independentistas and statehood factions have threatened to boycott such a plebiscite...
...In recent years he has talked about "perfecting," or "culminating" the Commonwealth - that is, achieving within it maximum autonomy and equality with the U.S...
...colonialism...
...economy upon nascent native industries...
...Although it was immediately suppressed by the government (most of the copies were destroyed), its depressing contents have leaked out...
...He can do it as well as I!) It took Puerto Ricans a few weeks to recover from the shock of losing their father-figure, even with Muñoz campaigning tirelessly at his protégé's side...
...Campaign posters headlined ¡Ese es...
...A tall, taciturn man with dark unruly hair, heavy-rimmed glasses and a perpetual pipe in his mouth, whose favorite relaxation is a game of dominoes, Sánchez also had worked in the party since the beginning, but in a quiet, almost anonymous role...
...CULMINATING' THE COMMONWEALTH Puerto Rico: Kinship or Colony By Kal Wagenheim San Juan In February of 1898, after four centuries of Spanish colonial rule, the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico achieved full autonomy from the Mother Country...
...The real meaning of the new political relation between Puerto Rico and the United States had yet to be clarified.' And today, 13 years later, the meaning of that relationship is no clearer...
...But it is hard to prove by the history books, or the daily headlines...
...or what if the U.S...
...One of the sorest points among Puerto Ricans is that part of Law 600 (which created the Commonwealth concept in 1950) is actually a carry-over of a 1917 law called the Organic Act...
...But no matter how many executive changes are made, Puerto Rico's most important problems cannot be approached until the island's status question is more adequately resolved...
...The flashy hotels and high-priced cooperative apartments (with locked entrances and night watchmen) contrast individiously with fetid slums within walking distance...
...A number of Puerto Rican youths have refused to go into the Armed Forces...
...welfare benefits, and Puerto Rican highways and schools receive U.S...
...Puerto Ricans do not pay taxes to the mainland, yet are eligible for certain U.S...
...In a speech before the National Press Club in Washington, in February 1965, he said: "We still face the pains and problems of a developing country...
...Commonwealth Government economist Hugh C. Barton Jr...
...In the past half-century Puerto Rico's leaders, with Sisyphus-like patience, have cajoled their way from absolute colonial subjection to a considerable degree of self-government...
...One answer is for Puerto Ricans to exercise greater control over their internal affairs...
...In practice, too, Puerto Rico's freely associated autonomous status is loaded with contradictions...
...commerce and industry, such symbols of affluence engender acute social pressures...
...On Commonwealth Constitution Day, July 25, 1965, the then U.S...
...But Fidel Castro's disdainful comment that Puerto Rico is nothing more than a "perfumed colony" of the United States is still to a great extent true...
...a dignity based on the principle of mutual consent and on a bilateral compact...
...In defending the measure, Commonwealth Planning Board Chairman Ramón Garcia has testified that land in certain areas of the island has changed hands several times, with high profits being realized on each sale and very little of the land being actually developed...
...Commonwealth government leaders are reticent as to what specific steps they would take were Puerto Rico to achieve sovereignty within its association with the U.S...
Vol. 49 • May 1966 • No. 11
