PUERTO RICO: THE RISE OF THE STRICKEN LAND
Rubin, Morris H.
"Puerto Rico is today the gathering place for students of social planning the world over. They come to admire and study "Operation Bootstrap," this beautiful island's all-pervading program of...
...But there was not enough to go around...
...He has fought powerful economic interests on the island, bent always on depriving them of their political power, not their economic independence...
...military establishment has taken over in Puerto Rico...
...Fomento works in many ways on many fronts...
...It has shown how much can be done by bold government planning and skillful promotion...
...The philosophy of the PDP," the letter said, "is anti-Christian and anti-Catholic and...
...This is the heart of the political struggle in Puerto Rico today: Should Puerto Rico seek statehood, complete independence, or should it put the issue aside for the time being and remain a Commonwealth...
...The present rate of growth is one hundred factories a year, most of them small...
...We are paying back-breaking tribute to American producers and to the American merchant marine, which is the most costly in the world...
...The core of the problem," he said, "is that our poor country must buy in the richest market in the world...
...The present rate is the second highest in Latin America...
...I spent the better part of an afternoon with Juan Mari-Bras, secretary-general of the independence movement, and I found him most eloquent in presenting his case...
...The agencies for action are readily at hand...
...He is working with North American capital to take over everything on our island...
...When it first embarked on its wide-ranging career, Fomento built its own plants for government operation under public service corporations...
...Munoz was fearful that the controversy would hurt Senator John F. Kennedy's chances for the Presidency...
...Puerto Rico's special advantages tend to dilute her role as an example for all Latin America...
...Its electoral strength has climbed from thirteen per cent in 1952 to thirty-two per cent in 1960...
...Puerto Ricans pay no federal taxes, for, as Munoz explained, "The principle prevails of no taxation, no representation, and no representation, no taxation...
...draft...
...And yet little more than a decade ago, Puerto Rico was widely known as the "poorhouse of the Caribbean...
...Munoz turned more conservative...
...Governor Munoz and his party fought back, charging the hierarchy with "medieval interference...
...But the Statehood Republican Party, which is conservative in outlook and dedicated to the early attainment of federated statehood with the establishment of Puerto Rico as the fifty-first state, captured thirty-two per cent of the vote...
...His father, Luis Munoz Rivera, was Puerto Rico's "George Washington" who helped win autonomy for the island from Spain...
...That would be like separating body and spirit...
...bishops were quick to rebuke their Puerto Rican colleagues for their extreme position...
...If Schools and homes have been built at a rate that greatly exceeds anything in all the history of Puerto Rico...
...We soon realized that it would take too long to get the job done and require too much in taxes...
...He seems genuinely to love his people and in turn is loved by them...
...The government still owns factories, notably two large sugar mills, but our emphasis now is toward private investment and expansion...
...But Governor Munoz is convinced that statehood today would mean "suicide" for Puerto Rico...
...For the most part, this arrangement has proved a great advantage for Puerto Rico...
...How the devil will Congress admit a state in which the bishops tell the people what to do...
...It is a Commonwealth by virtue of a "compact" between the U.S...
...Infant mortality has declined from 113 deaths per thousand live births to fifty-four...
...These entries in red ink represent the challenge with which the Puerto Rican government is wrestling today...
...PUERTO RICO The Rise of the Stricken Land Dedicated social planning, a burning determination to lift the country up by its bootstrap, militant political leadership, and the fortunes that attended an economy that had free access to the mass American market a thousand miles away—all these contributed to the transformation of Puerto Rico in one of the most successful peaceful revolutions of our time...
...H In 1950, more than one-half of Puerto Rican family incomes were under $1,000...
...Most Federal laws apply to Puerto Rico, as does Federal authority in matters of defense, foreign policy, customs, and postal service, but the government of Puerto Rico has wide latitude in the control of its own domestic affairs...
...f During the past twelve years more than 600 new factories have begun operations...
...In overwhelmingly Catholic Puerto Rico, the Christian Action Party polled only seven per cent of the vote —short of the ten per cent required to stay on the ballot for the next election...
...They employ 46,000 workers...
...This I regard as a valid function of the state no less than its encouragement of economic development...
...rule, but he changed his position with characteristic decisiveness and became a fiery supporter of what was to become Commonwealth status...
...The governor came by his passion for politics naturally...
...It attracts new industry to the island by such inducements as tax incentives, its own capital for pump-priming, research and promotion, and programs for recruiting and training personnel...
...Governor Munoz' position on issues and his personal popularity have swept him to the governorship for four consecutive terms of four years each...
...His replies constituted a mixed bag...
...Three of them—the Planning Board, the Water Resources Authority, and the Government Development Bank—have made prodigious contributions to recent achievements...
...Its agents have developed a new plan for low-cost rural housing under which rural families pay $350 for materials and the services of a foreman and proceed, through cooperatives, to build their own modest homes...
...Puerto Rico's underprivileged can go to the mainland without restriction—and some 800,000 have—and qualify for unemployment and Social Security benefits that are not available to those who remain at home...
...Governor Munoz is a big, hulking, handsome man, with more than his share of both charm and nervous tension...
...A one-time socialist, Munoz has mellowed and moderated with the years...
...Nevertheless, it is my concluding judgment that Puerto Rico does have much to offer other Latin American countries searching for the right road to social progress...
...Much that Castro has done, he argued, "can be justified on the ground that a revolution is not business as usual...
...We found, at the outset of our revolution, that we were placing too much emphasis on distributing what there was...
...If the independence cause has not caught on, the drive for statehood has won a considerable following...
...Puerto Rico pays nothing in money for its own defense, but its youth is subject to the U.S...
...The Independence Party, which believes in a Puerto Rican republic completely independent of the United States, polled only three per cent...
...But this cannot begin to justify Castro's deepening reliance on and association with the Kremlin in Soviet Russia and the Communists at home...
...In some areas where fishing is the only source of livelihood for Puerto Ricans, they are forbidden to fish because it might interfere with the operations of the U.S...
...The action of the Catholic hierarchy doubtless sprang from its resentment over laws permitting the dissemination of birth control information and the refusal of the regime to permit "released time" for religious instruction in the schools...
...But there is not much the United States can do unless it can prove that the Soviet Union dominates Castro, and then it becomes a Western Hemisphere problem which should be resolved by all American countries acting in concert through the Organization of American States...
...But the soul of Operation Bootstrap ¦—and its custodian—is the Economic Development Administration, known to most Puerto Ricans as simply Fo-mento...
...It maintains a network of offices in mainland United States whose personnel goes out, facts in hand, to sell potential investors...
...The United States, the governor said, cannot live with Castro's Cuba "so long as it is so pro-Soviet and anti-United States...
...The forces favoring statehood are painfully aware that Puerto Rico will lose many of the fiscal advantages it now enjoys under Commonwealth status, but they are nonetheless convinced that statehood must come—and the sooner the better...
...It has demonstrated that those rarities in Latin American life —honest elections and clean government—can provide the indispensable foundation for investor confidence and capital investment so necessary to social progress and economic expansion...
...The poet and philosopher in Governor Munoz show up in his concept of "Operation Serenity," advanced to accompany Operation Bootstrap...
...More than sixty per cent of the people continue to live in sub-standard housing, some of them in tiny hovels thrown together with boards, boxes, Coca Cola signs, and old tin cans...
...There is concern, too, even among admirers of Governor Munoz like Rexford Tugwell, that the plan is basically a "parasitical" one, under which there is a one-way flow of benefits that is hardly "partnership" and cannot endure indefinitely...
...The controversy between church and state boiled over into a raging row...
...The rest of Latin America can learn much from Puerto Rico, but the road the other countries travel will necessarily be different in some respects because conditions and circumstances are different...
...Navy...
...Fomento is Spanish for development, promotion, "stirring-up...
...Fomento is the principal fuel of the Operation Bootstrap reactor, the key agency in the development, promotion, and encouragement of manufacturing, tourism, and trade...
...Puerto Rico is a unique political establishment...
...And so they have...
...The rate of economic growth last year was 9.4 per cent, highest in the world...
...This pushes up the cost of many foodstuffs and decreases our standard of living...
...The Catholic hierarchy proceeded to form its own political organization, the Christian Action Party...
...His vehicle has been the Popular Democratic Party, which he helped to establish...
...Archbishop James P. Davis said the absolute separation of church and state was an "absolute insult to Catholics...
...I killed it politically—not economically...
...Overpopulation is still a critical problem—Puerto Rico has a population density greater than Japan's...
...The governor has made his peace with modified capitalism that goes along with a program of democratic social reform, but free enterprise, he insists, must serve the community...
...is based on the modern heresy that the popular will, and not the divine law, decides what is moral and right...
...The time for statehood might come, he believes, when Puerto Rico's per capita income is equal to that of the poorest state in the United States, Mississippi, whose per capita income of $1,190 is still roughly double that of Puerto Rico...
...Now, a decade later, seventy-five per cent are above $1,000 and fifty-four per cent above $2,000...
...If In 1940, the output of electric energy totaled 130,000,000 kilowatt hours...
...There is a grave educational shortage...
...A favorite expression of his runs like this: "Private enterprise is not to be considered a sacred cow, but as a contented cow—to be used to provide for the people...
...I was myself in support of the Castro revolution," he said in response to one question, "but I am skeptical now and will remain so until the Communists are driven out of power in Cuba...
...And yet, the governor added, much of Latin America cannot understand why the United States has been so helpful and friendly toward the corrupt tyranny of the Dominican Republic for so long—"and actually gave her part of Cuba's sugar quota last year"—in view of our solemn commitment to oppose dictatorship and support democracy...
...Under this status, the Puerto Ricans are citizens of the United States, but they cannot vote for President or members of Congress —only for a delegate who has a voice but no vote...
...For all the new factories and jobs, unemployment persists at thirteen per cent...
...It would mean, at the very least, he argues, the doubling of taxes, "which could destroy so much that we have done to promote the economy under Operation Bootstrap...
...For a time Governor Munoz was a battler for independence for Puerto Rico from U.S...
...He went on to say that except for U.S...
...So we shifted the emphasis to expansion, largely through private investment...
...although thirty per cent of the budget goes for schools, classes are crowded, and more than sixty per cent of the pupils attending elementary schools go for only half a day...
...The forces seeking independence represent a small group, but they are vociferous and unusually dedicated souls...
...Mari-Bras complained that his independence movement was doing well "until Munoz schemed and maneuvered to break our party into fragments...
...In the 1960 elections he did better than ever, capturing fifty-eight per cent of the vote, partly, perhaps, because some voters who were wearying of him decided to support him in order to repudiate the bitter opposition to his candidacy expressed by the Catholic bishops of Puerto Rico...
...But there is a deepening concern that Puerto Rico is becoming too "Americanized" under Commonwealth status and is losing her individual flavor as a Latin American nation...
...Some of the statehood spokesmen with whom I talked felt that while Puerto Rico might initially lose some advantages with statehood, it would regain much ground by qualifying as a "disaster area" under President Kennedy's program of special assistance to depressed areas in the United States...
...As her brilliant governor, Luis Munoz Marin, told me, "We still have a long pull ahead to reach our goals...
...H Operation Bootstrap has raised the gross national product from $250 million to $1.5 billion in a score of years...
...The spokesman for the independence movement also protested the extent to which the U.S...
...Thus, he says of his successful struggle against the once all-powerful sugar industry: "We threw it out of power completely, but, by God, the sugar industry is also an industry and has the same rights as any industry...
...Castro's original following has declined greatly in Puerto Rico, he said, but there "are some here, as elsewhere in Latin America, who believe that he is still headed down the right road of revolution...
...They control ten per cent of the arable land," he said...
...Poet, philosopher, and politician, he has brought a rich background to his post...
...In the closing days of the campaign, Archbishop Davis and the island's two other Catholic bishops released a pastoral letter which "prohibited" Catholics from voting for Governor Munoz or his Popular Democratic Party...
...They respect Governor Munoz, but they are fearful that if he dies, or is defeated, or retires from office, he might be succeeded by someone less stable who would try to lead the country down what they regard as the disastrous road to independence...
...This was socialism," Governor Munoz cheerfully concedes, "but when we gave it up, it wasn't because we were afraid of the word...
...I asked Governor Munoz a number of questions about the impact of Castroism on Puerto Rico in particular and Latin America in general...
...Operation Serenity emphasizes "the cultural goals of a good civilization...
...H Life expectancy has increased from forty-six to nearly seventy-one years...
...Agrarian reform has achieved much, but there is still widespread rural poverty...
...They threw a cold potato at me and missed," he said afterwards, "but when it bounced on the mainland, it was a hot potato...
...no one has yet urged that we duplicate these fiscal and economic benefits for other Latin American peoples, who, we wish, would follow in Puerto Rico's progressive democratic path...
...He is disturbed by the possibility of distorted emphasis on the mere accumulation of material things and by the prospect that Puerto Rico may lose too much of its Latin flavor, culture, and traditions in its close ties with the United States...
...this is especially true in the fiscal benefits which eliminate the payment of Federal taxes and provide for mainland financing of defense, foreign policy, and postal services...
...Congress and the Puerto Rican people—a compact that makes the island an "associated" rather than a "federated" state...
...Consider some of the statistics: H Puerto Rican per capita income is now $571 a year, compared with $151 in 1951...
...Eighty-five to ninety per cent of our exports come from the tariff-protected American market...
...If it be argued that Puerto Rico does not have to finance an elaborate military establishment, the same can be said of most Latin American nations whose armed forces are primarily intended for domestic purposes, and which, in the last analysis, would be dependent for protection in case of Communist military threat on the same forces on which Puerto Rico depends—those of the United States...
...This is the heart of the problem...
...U.S...
...influence, Munoz would be a "Trujillo who doesn't carry a revolver...
...The government contended, on the first count, that population pressure had reached explosive proportions in Puerto Rico, and, on the second, that there was altogether too much released time, with most children attending school only half a day because of inadequate educational facilities...
...II Puerto Rico has developed a broad free medical service program for sixty per cent of its poorest families...
...This is an impressive record for this once stricken land, but it would be a grave mistake to assume that all goes well for Puerto Rico...
...Rexford Guy Tugwell, once our appointed governor of the island who did so much to launch it on its progressive way, called it the "stricken land...
...Today it reaches 1,600,000,000 kwh in the publicly owned system of the Water Resources Authority, a growth of 1,230 per cent...
...There must be, said Governor Munoz, "conscious leadership by the state to direct increased income away from just increased consumption of goods, and toward greater cultural activities and educational programs...
...Fomento doesn't wait for investors to come to Puerto Rico...
...We are redoubling our efforts on every front," said Governor Munoz, "with special emphasis on putting more muscle into our educational program...
...He is forever working on new plans, and he keeps notebook and pen by his bedside to jot down the essence of nocturnal brainstorms that assail him from time to time...
...he asked...
...It would be "a sin," said the bishops, to vote for Munoz and the PDP...
...Perhaps in time statehood will be the answer, but it could only prove disastrous in this stage of Puerto Rico's development...
...He is far less doctrinaire than in earlier days, and is counted today as a practical, pragmatic reformer who will borrow anywhere or initiate anything that will give his people a greater stake in their society...
...They come to admire and study "Operation Bootstrap," this beautiful island's all-pervading program of democratic planning, and they take home the lessons they have learned from a startling story of industrial growth and social progress...
Vol. 25 • June 1961 • No. 6
