The Puerto Rican question by Jorge Heine and Juan M. García

...... . .. .
THE PUERTO RICAN QVESTION
by
Jorge Heine
and
Juan M. Garcia-Passalacqua
Prepared for the Foreign Policy
Association Headline Series
August 1983
~
TAB LE OF
CO~TE \ TS
PREFACE
1
1.
The United States and Puerto Rico:
The Early Years
2.
The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico:
3.
An Economy in Transition
33
4.
The Puerto Rican Question on the Global Scene
52
5.
Facing the Present
63
Politics and Society
5
17
TALKING IT OVER
81
READING LIST
82
THE AUTHORS
JORGE HE I NE is Director of the Caribbean Institute and Study Center for
Latin America (CISCLA) at Inter American University of Pu erto
Rico, San German, and will be a Visiting Fellow at St. Antony 's
College, Oxford University in 19 84 . He was previ ousl y a Research
Associate at the Latin American Program of t he Woodrow \\'ilson
Inter~ational Center for Scholars in Washington , Q.C.
He is the
editor and co-author of Time for .Decision: The United States and
Puerto Rico (1983) and has degrees from the University of Chile
Law School, York University, and Stanford University.
JUA.i~ MANUEL GARCIA-PASSALACQUA is Counsel to the Ana G. Mendez Foundation
and a political analyst for The San Juan Star. A former aide to
Governors Luis Munoz Mar{n and Roberto Sanchez Vilella, he is the
author of five books and numero~s articles in professional
journals. His Puerto Rico: Equalit y and Freedom at Issue in the
Caribbean will be published by Praeger in 1984. He holds degrees
from the University _of Puerto Rico, Tufts and Tulane Universities,
and Harvard Law School.
PREFACE
The Puerto Rican question embodies a fundamental challenge to Americans.
The Puerto Ricans are a nation. Commonwealth has been an effective way to bring
progress and change, but its own evolution has brought about a serious crisis
which has now become an international issue. Beginning in the seventies, a number of processes were unleashed on the island, in the United States, and on the
global stage that have given urgency to the need to resolve the Puerto Rican
question.
On the night of- January .1 1, 1981 eleven jet fighters of Puerto Rico's National .Guard, worth $45 million, were blown up in San Juan. The guerrilla attack,
undertaken by the Macheteros--a clandestine group named after the roving bands
who fought U.S. troops after the 1898 invasion of Puerto Rico--is the most spectacular and effective to take place under the U.S. flag. It was, however, only
one of a long series of "armed propaganda
2
actions" undertaken by various Puerto Rican pro-independence groups both on
the Island and in the United States, although Puerto Rico is not yet Northern
Ireland.
However, over and beyond violent manifestations of anti-United States
feelings by .small groups at the frin ge s of Pu erto Rican politics, there is a
growing political dissatisfaction among members of all parties with the present Commonwealth ties with the United States.
Supporters of Puerto Rican
independence, of course, have never accepted the legitimacy of the Island's
present relation with the United States, although their electoral support has
remained small.
More significantly, the ascendance of the statehood movement--
rising from 12 percent of the vote in 1952 to 48 percent in 19 76, and winning
three of the last four gubernatorial elections--has meant that a plurality of
,I
Puerto Ricans endorse the view that only as the Slst state of the· Union can
Puerto Ricans achieve full equality as U.S. citizens.
And even the once-
dominant .Popular Democratic Party, under whose aegis Commonwealth status came
into being, is increasingly frustrated by the repeated unwillingness of the
United States to grant greater powers and control over its own affairs to
Puerto Rico.
Within the United States, the· emergence of Hispanics as an increasingly
significant political force--and perhaps the sin gle largest ethnic minority b y
the year 2000--takes place precisely at a time when the Puerto Rican and the
United States electoral systems are becoming closel y intertwined.
Although
Puerto Ricans do not vote in presidential elections, the first presidential
primaries in Puerto Rico
pating in them.
~ere
he ld in 1980 , with over 800,000 voters partici-
There is a distinct possibility that Puerto Ri co may have 80
delegates to the 1988 National Democratic Convention, makin g it the 13th
3
largest delegation.
Puerto Rico is thus being propelled into the mainstream
of American party politics with a rapidity and swiftness few observers would
have predicted as recently as 1975.
The possibilities that the Puerto Rican
Question is handled for political advantage rather than in terms of the
national interests of the United States and Puerto Rico are thus dramatically
increased.
With an unemployment rate approaching 25 percent--twice as high as
that to be found in even the most recession-stricken state of the Union--and
a high dependence on federal funds--reaching 38 percent of GNP in 1980--the
Puerto Rican economy is also in a critical condition, one compounded by
Puerto.Rico's lacking many of the instruments needed to develop its own
macro-economic policy.
It is because of political violence, partisan frustration, economic
uncertainty in Puerto Rico, and the emergent Hispanic presence in the U.S.
that
int~rnational
probing and questioning of the continued U.S. presence and
contr.ol in Puerto Rico--which have gained considerable momentum since 1972-cannot simply be dismissed as empty exercises in Third World rhetoric.
From
the Uni t .ed Nations General Assembly to the Non-Aligned Movement summits, from
the Socialist International to the Conference of Latin American Political
Parties, the voices supporting independence for Puerto Rico have been growing
louder and stronger.
The United States has been put on the defensive and
Washington is wast.i ng considerable diplomatic capital for its . yearly efforts
to induce U.N. member countries to toe the U.S. line on the Puerto Rico issue.
It is to help elucidate the many dimensions and variables· that would
impinge upon any eventual resolution of the P:uerto Rican Questi on that this
4
essay has been written.
Chapter 1 provides a historical overview of U.S.-
Puerto Rican relations; Chapter 2 focuses on the emergence of the
Commonwealth, and political and social developments on the Island over the
past three decades; the Puerto Rican economy, its evolution and current
problems is analyzed in Chapter 3; Chapter 4 covers the international
.
dimension of the Puerto Rican case.
.
.
Th.e ·fifth and finar chapter includes an
examination of several critical issues in U.S.-Puerto Rican relations.
It
also sets forth a proposal to overcome Puerto Rico's present predicament by
asking the United States to indeed face the Puerto Rican Question.
ONE
TiiE UNITED STATES AND PUERTO RICO:
THE EARLY YEARS
The Spanish-American war, that "splendid little war" in John Hay's words
to Theodore Roosevelt, started on April 25, 1898.
In early May, the U.S. Navy
bombarded San Juan, inflicting some 100 casualties.
landed in Guanica, on Puerto Rico 1·s Southwest coast.
On July 25, U.S. troops
In less. than two weeks
Spain had surrendered Puerto Rico.
The United States thus entered upon Manifest Destiny and Puerto Rico
passed from an empire that had become a mere shadow of its former self to the
hands of an emergent world power.
In many ways it was the culmination of a long-standing American interest
in Puerto Rico.
As early as 1825 Secretary of State Henry Clay had written to
the Spanish government recommending that Spain make peace with the new Latin
American republics, so as not to put in danger continued Spanish control over
Cuba and
~erto
Rico, and their open ports to U.S. commerce.
By 1830, Puerto
Rico was sending 49 percent of its exports to the United States--a proportion
that rose slightly to 51.8 percent in 1860--vis ~vis 6 percent to Spain. : By
the mid-nineteenth century Puerto Rico was thus sending over half of its exports to the United States, most of it
sugar, and importing one-fourth of its
total imports--25.4 percent in 1860--from the United States.
But the need to
assure itself of a steady supply of sugar and the possibility of making
further inroads into the not insignificant Puerto Rican market--the Island had
a population of slightly less than one million at the turn of the century--went
hand in hand with military and strategic consiQerations.
America's foremost
naval strategist, Admiral Mahan, wrote that Puerto Rico would make for an
excellent coaling "station for the U. S. Navy; moreover, it could we ll become to
5
6 .
the Panama Canal .what Malta was to Suez:
a key base from which to protect
access to the waterway in times of war.
Colonialism with . a Human Face
In the area of the mountain towns of Adjuntas and Yauco a few roving
bands of rebels (partidas sediciosas) fought U.S. troops, but only briefly and
unsuccessfully.
By and large, Americans were well received, and General
Miles' proclamation announcing .that he had come "to bestow upon you the
immunities and blessings of the Liberal institutions of our government" raised
the hopes of the local elite, many of whose members had long looked with
admiration at American democracy.
They were misplaced hopes.
From the relatively liberal Carta Auton6mica
which Spain had granted to Puerto Rico in 1897 providing a significant measure
of self-goverrunent to the Island--including the right to enter into commercial
treaties with foreign countries--Puerto Rico was put under more orthodox
colonial governance structures.
A military government under supervision of
the U.S. War Department ruled the Island from 1898 to 1900.
With American ingenuity and "can do" attitudes, colonial authorities
embarked on a program to improve the Island's quality of life.
Malaria,
tuberculosis and bhilarzia were the targets of successful disease control
campaigns.
A massive program of road building was implemented, thus
facilitating internal migration.
Americanization of Puerto Ricans through the
school system was a high priorit y , and English became the language of instruc tion throughout the Island's schools.
Protestant churches came to Puerto Rico
from all over the United States, challenging the hold of Catholicism and making
lasting inroads among the common people.
7
American businessmen and corporations, meanwhile, lobbied for advantages
in Washington, where the new relationship between the United States and its
recently acquired overseas
pos~ession
was being discussed with fervor, in a
debate on the meaning of democracy and empire that engulfed the nation.
At
Yale, which took up the anti-imperialist cause, Elmer B. Adams argued that
"There is
cer~ainly
no power given by the Cons ti tut ion ·. to the federal
government to establish or maintain colonies," and his colleague William G.
Swnrner concluded:
"The question of imperialism, then, is the question whether
we are going to give the lie to the origin of our own national existence by
establishing a colonial system."
At Harvard, which sided with the imperialists,
Judge Simeon Baldwin asked whether "the ignorant and lawless brigands that
infest Puerto Rico" deserved to become citizens of a state or "whether Puerto
Rico can be held permanently and avowedly as a colonial
..
~
The dilemma was posed in outright terms.
If the United States was to
become ·an imperial power, it could hold colonies for a long time without any
,,
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d~pendence."
...
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moral restraints.
If, however, the nation was to be true to its origins it
·.:
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l
had to decide to make its new acquisitions equal as states within the Union or
, .:,
-ll
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let them go as independent nations.
But in 1899 Abbott Lawrence Lowell pro-
posed in the Harvard Law Review a "third way," by transforming the problem
into the solution.
He set forth a legal distinction eventually adopted by the
Supreme Court in the Insular Cases, which was to set Puerto Rico's place
within the American constitutional system.
Lowell's recommendation was to
distinguish between different types of territories; the newly acquired
te:r;ritories could thus be classified as "appurtenant to but
United States.
no~
part of" the
In a subsequent phrase, they were to become unincorporated
territories, thus obviating the need for a firm promise · of event ua l incorporatio:
8
into the Union as had been the case witl1 all previously acquired territories.
Since 1901, then, when the Insular Cases were hea.rd, Puerto Rico has belonged- ....
to but has not been a part of the United States.
The Foraker Act, adopted by the Congress in 1900, laid the basis for the
-
continuee corrunercial expansion of American corporations · in Puerto Rico.
The
peso, the Spanish currency then being used on the Island, was substituted by
the dollar, at 60 percent of its value.
Anothe:r measure was to bring Puerto
Rico within the American tariff system, thus granting free access to the
American market to Island products.
This would prove to be crucial for the
rapidly expanding sugar production, which grew by a factor of seventeen from
1896 to 1940. Puerto Rican coffee, the Island's main export crop by 1898, was
sold mainly · in European markets and lost a large part of them in the ensuing
years.
The Foraker Act also established a system in which Puerto Ricans could
elect their own mayors and the members of the lower House of the Legislative
Assembly.
But true political power rested in the Island's executive branch
and in the upper House," whose members were all appointed officials of the U.S.
War Department and the White House.
Literacy and property-owning requirements
also limited the electorate to only a fraction of the total population.
Out of
a population of 953,243 in 1899, only 123,140 were registered voters in 1900.
,..
-? Thus, even thi
;;'./
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... - 1
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\.
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r~latively
ineffectual realm of electoral politics in a colonial
_. :' (
setting was limited to a small elite.
"
In 1909, the
politi~al
structure had its first crisis.
As the increasing
\
control of the economy by the American corporations asserted its e lf, the
Unionist Party deadlocked the Legislature by refusing to approve the gove rnor's
budget.
\Vith unkind W'Jrds for the Puerto Ricans' "lack of grati t ude," President
9
Taft passed a law amending the Foraker Act and allowing for the previous year's
budget to go in effect whenever the legislature refused to approve the one
submitted by the governor.
Still, events had shown that the Foraker Act was
insufficient to control the local elite atid Congress started deliberations on
a new "omnibus bill" for Puerto . Rico, while a Bureau of Insular Affairs was
...
.,-
:-
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''
~r~ated in the War Department .
.I
,
With the election of Woodrow Wilson to the presidency in 1912, the
Democrats came to power and had their first opportunity to deal with Puerto
Rico.
Their vision of the relationship differed from the Republ°ican approach.
Republicans emphasized territoriality while Democrats spoke of the rights of
residents, and in 1917 granted American citizenship to Puerto Ricans.
The
military draft was also extended to the Island in that year, in which the
United States entered World War I, and has been in effect since.
In addition to citizenship, the 1917 Jones Act provided somewhat greater
room for local input into political decisions, establishing a fully elected
bicameral legislature.
The governor, the auditor, the commissioner of educa-
tiort and the attorney general would continue to be appointed by the President,
as would the members of Puerto Rico's Supreme Court, but the rest of the
cabinet appointments were to be approved by the Legislature.
Puerto Rico was thus
ruled by a presidentially appointed colonial bureaucracy--in firm control of the
·i
execu.ti ve- -in .·
an uneasy relationship with Puerto Rico's hacendado
'I '
elite, in control of the majoritarian, autonomist Unionist Party, which had a
majority in the
Legislatu~e
until 1924.
10
Sweet and Sour:
Jhe Imperatives of Sugar
Although sugar had been one of the main cash crops to emerge with the
development of commercial agriculture in nineteenth-century Puerto Rico, during
the last third of the century Island sugar producers faced serious difficulties.
Significant technological progress had revolutionized the . industry, but Puerto
Rican producers did not keep up w"ith ·them, thus becoming .uncompetitive in ·a
world markei where sugar production was increasing rapidly.
But once Puerto
Rico came under the U.S. tariff, thus having unrestricted access to the
protected U.S. market, things changed.
With a seemingly inexhaustible
demand for sugar and sugar products in the United States, American investors
were quick to realize the profits to be made, and three American
o~~ed
corporations--Aguirre, Puerto Rico Sugar and Fajardo Sugar--soon took advantage
of the tight credit policies established by the colonial adm.inistration to buy
up a considerable amount of land, to
rationaliz~
sugar production and to
modernize.equipment and technology.
Sugar-planted acreage increased fourfold from 1899 to 1930; the
substitution of the old-fashioned, oxen-driven trapiches by modern centrales
(sugar mills) which could process vast amounts of sugar cane rapidly, and the
application of new. varieties of sugar cane and fertilizing techniques led to
much higher yields per acre, which increased frOQ 15.5 tons per acre to 33.3
tons in 1941.
Production increased from under 100,000 tons per year in the
1890's to over one million tons in the 1940's.
As economist Harvey Perloff has pointed out, "sugar thus became the
foundation on which the
~conomic
structure of the _Island (was)
1940 the sugar industry in Puerto Rico accounted
ba~ed.''
By
. .;. ::· r
J.rO. 20 percent of Puerto
Rico's GNP, for 40 percent of total employment and for 21 Jfercent of the total
11
amount of salaries and wages paid on the Island; from 1936 to 1940 it.
accounted for 62 percent of all exports.
By the late thirties and early forties employment at the height of the
harvesting season reached between 130,000 and 140,000 plus another 13,000 to
15,000 jobs in the processing phase.
Thus,
m~ch
of the growth that took
place in Puerto Rico during the first three decades of the twentieth century'
(exports, for example, grew from 9 million dollars in 1900-1901 to 107 million
in 1926-1927) was based on the rapid expansion of the sugar industry.
Despite
the dynamic role it played, however, the dominance exercised by ·the sugar ··
industry .
in Puerto Rico was by no means an unmixed blessing.
·.
Although it
paid the highest salaries in agriculture, it did so only at harvest time, from
January to June, when the zafra took place.
Most sugar workers were thus
unemployed at ,least half the year, and lived in deplorable co.nditions.
More-
over, sugar cultivation in Puerto Rico brought with it all of the negative
effects of. absentee land ownership, with .American corporations controlling
Puerto Rico's best land and exercising enormous economic and political control
over Island affairs.
With the hacendados unable to compete with the modern, capitalist plantation system that emerged, many agregados were forced to leave the relative
security and predictability of life in the haciendas to move to ·the cities or
to become hired hands to cut sugar cane, thus leading to the emergence of a
rural proletariat, which was to be instrumental in supporting the Socialist
Party.
Most significantly, ,however, sugar production locked Puerto Rico into a
situation in which the Island's core economic activity depended to a considerable degree on political decisions made in Washington, over which Puerto
---------...iiii...J
12
Rico had little control.
This became particularly evident with the imposition
of sugar production quotas in 1934.
Sugar, then, became not only Puerto Rico 1 s dominant crop on the co.a stal
lands from Aguadilla to Fajardo; it also transformed Puerto Rico's social
structure and the nature of politics.
Political Parties and Class Alignments
From 1904 to 1924 the Partido Uni6n de Puerto Rico won all elections,
under the leadership, until 1917, of Luis Munoz Rivera, the autonomista who
had negotiated the Carta Auton6mica with the Sagasta Government in Spain in
the 1890's.
':
'
· ' . '.
..
·~
The Unionist Party was, for the most part, the party of the local
hacendados, who, after flirting with the possibility of trying to make Puerto
Rico a state of the Union for the initial four years of American occupation,
felt cheated by the newly emerging economic structure which favored American
capital.
They rebelled through the electoral process, bringing with them the
few newly enfranchised property voters existing at the time.
As sociologist Angel Quintero Rivera has perceptively discussed, the
...
.
ruling elite and the common people were in very different positions vis a vis
the metropolis.
./
Professionals, laborers and artisans admired the civil
• .I
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"' .'
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.. ·"\
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liberties existing in the United States, freedoms that the hacendados were
"\
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reluctant to grant in Puerto Rico.
The middlemen working in the sugar
companies, merchants benefitting from increased trade with the United States
and professionals sided with statehood, under the Partido Republicano, led by
a black, University of Michigan trained physician, Jos~ Celso Barbosa.
In
general, blacks and mulattoes, living mostly in the coastal plains and the
cities.tended to look with sympathy at the United States, thinking that under
-·.
14
From San Felipe to the New Deal
If the first three decades of American rule, from 1898 to 1927 had been
marked by social dislocation, the emergence of a rural proletariat and the
beginnings of urbanization, they were also characterized by a not insignificant
economic growth rate and po~kets of prosperity throughout the Island.
As if to
warn about worse.to · come, hurricane San Felipe hit the Island bn Sept~mber -13, 1923,
destroying almost all of Puerto Rico's coffee crop and causing serious damage
throughout the Island.
Coffee production dropped from 32 million pounds in
1927-28 to 5 million in 1929-30.
and Puerto Rico was not spared.
Shortly thereafter the Great Depression hit,
Per capita income dropped from $122 in 1929-30
to $86 in 1932-33.
']
Social unrest led to strikes and burgeoning support for the Nationalist
Party, which had been founded in 1922 and whose charismatic leader, Pedro
Albizu Campos (who shunned elections) developed an Island-wide following
denouncing the American presence.
Political violence by the nacionalistas and
government repression ensued, culminating in the 1937 Ponce massacre, where
over 100 nacionalistas were _casualties of the police as they demonstrated for
independence.
In 1934, matters Puerto Rican had been transferred from the War Department
to the Interior Department, and several members of President Roosevelt's Brain
Trust took a special interest in Puerto Rico.
In 1933 the Puerto Rican
Emergency Relief Administration (PRERA) was founded, to provide assistance to
the Island; it was replaced in · 1935 by the Puerto Rican Reconstruction
-----·
Administration, which wa,s to play a critical role in providing help to Puerto
Ricans through a variety of economic and social programs .
Some $ 2 30 million
15
was spent in Puerto Rico through federal relief programs and loans between
1933 and 1941.
And as the federal government tried to compensate for the tremendous
slowdown in private investment that the Great Depression had brought about,
another parallel development was taking place in the political sphere.
thirties were a decade of severe
econom~c
If the
hardship in Puerto Rico they were
also the period in which the common people achieved full political rights.
Women were granted the right to vote in 1929, and universal suffrage was
finally established in 1936.
The total number of registered voters more than
doubled from 1928 to 1936--from 321,113 to 764,602.
It was the juxtaposition
of the rapid increase in federal funds available for social programs with the
emergence of the conunon people in the political process that created the conditions for the rise of a new political
mov~rnen~
in Puerto Rico.
The Birth of Populism
It was Luis Munoz Mar{n, the
SO!f
of former Unionist Party leader Luis
Mufioz Rivera, who was to. play the leading . role in the gestation and development of this movement.
Munoz had been educated in the ·united States and lived
there until 1930; he was a protege of the Socialist leader Santiago Iglesias
Pantfn and a self-proclaimed admirer of the President of the Nationalist Party,
Pedro Albizu Campos.
Founding a responsive .chord among progressive Democrats,
particularly Eleanor Roosevelt, Munoz soon became a crucial middle-man between
the federal government and Puerto Rico, playing a decisive role in allocating
federal funds--and becoming, in the process, the first and last Puerto Rican to
have exercised true influence in Washington.
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16
Aware of the revolutionary potential of the emergence of the common
people in the political arena, Munoz grew restless with the old-style, elite
party politics of the Liberal Party he formed part of.
In 1938 he quit to
form a new party, to be named Partido Popular Dernocratico, whose slogan was
pan, tierra y libertad (bread, land and freedom) and whose distinctive emblem
was the pava, the j{baro's straw hat.
Munoz and his closest follo wers (many
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of them lawyers, teachers and intellectuals) were, literally and figuratively,
the sons and daughters of the old hacendado class which had been displaced by
the new sugar economy.
Deeply disappointed by Washington's unwillingness to
·.,
concede a measure qf self-government to Puerto Rico and incensed by the dismal
living conditions of their countrymen, they were willing to take up the fight
,
.
of the Puerto Rican jibaros as if it were their own.
Munoz thus took to the
mountains from 1938 to 1940 to : talk to and--in his words--"to learn from" the
j l'baros, particularly the newly enfranchised illiterates.
Buying votes had been a regularpractice until then, one used by the
ruling elite to keep the people under electoral control.
Munoz asked the
people not to sell their vote but to "lend it to him" and won their trust.
To everybody's surprise, the newly founded Popular Democratic Party
(PPD)--Puerto Rico's first populist party--almost won the 1940 elections and
achieved a
~assive
victory in 1944.
Working closely with former Roosevelt
aide Rexford Tugwell, who was appointed Governor of Puerto Rico in 1941, and
who sympathized with many of ~!uii:'oz' reformist · ideas, the populares thus
initiated an extensive program of economic, social and governmental reform.
A new era began in Puerto Rico .
....., .
T\VO
THE COMMONWEALTH OF PUERTO RICO:
POLITICS AND SOCIETY
"Status is not an issue 11 was a recurrent theme in the Popular
Democratic Party's electoral campaigns in 1940 and 1944.
Grasping that the
Puerto Rican masses were oblivious to the perennial status discussions among
the Islandis political elite, Mufioz, . although himself· an independentista,
focused on bread-and-butter issues and garnered significant political support
in so doing.
As World War II drew to an end, however, a changing international
environment seemed to hold considerable promise for ending colonialism in
Puerto Rico.
The Atlantic Charter and the guiding principles of the United
Nations gave strong support to self-determination and self-government as key
principles for the post-war international order.
Munoz to start taking steps for independence.
Many populares pressed
In Washington, Senator Tydings,
who had introduced a bill granting Puerto Rico's independence in 1936, did so
again in 1943 but in 1945 agreed with the Resident Commissioner to propose .
the three status alternatives (see Table I, column 3) for a plebiscite, since
a fundamental change of perspective had taken place in the mind of Puerto
l
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Rico's lider maxima.
I
Studies undertaken by the U.S. Tariff Commission concluded that the
I
Puerto Rican economy would undergo a severe depression if independence were
I
granted.
Statehood, on the other hand, was, in Senator Tydings' words, "as
far off as the North Pole. 11
The Puerto Rican masses, with whom Munoz had
developed an extraordinary rapport, seemed skeptical of independence.
And in
1946 Munoz made public a compromise solut:lon to the status dil emma, a "third
..
way". entitled then "Pueblo Asociado de Puerto Rico" (As;;ociated Peo ple of
17
18
Puerto Rico) in.which Puerto Rico would have full internal autonomy but would
continue under U.S. sovereignty.
!vlunoz' s stance was denounced as a betrayal
of his independentista convictions by members of the Congreso por Independencia, who in 1946 formed the Partido Independentista Puertorriqueno (PIP).
This third option was not original to Munoz.
As early as 1922, the
Unionist Party had included in its platform the goal of establishing an
Estado Libre Asociado in Puerto Rico, inspired by the Irish Free State (see
Table I, columns 1 and 2) and agreed on a proposal to that effect with the
j
Republican Party in the 1924 Alianza.
I
had been the dominant leitmotiv of Puerto Rico's political elite since the
nineteenth century under Spanish rule.
And autonomy rather than independence
But Munoz was the first Puerto Rican
leader to obtain an effective measure of self-government for the 'Island from
the United States, to provide an ideological rationale for .the emerging
Commonwealth, and to insert this new political entity in the framework of a
new approach to economic and social development designed to maximize the
economic advantages accruing to Puerto Ricans from the Island's continued
colonial condition.
Development and Social Change
If
indepen~ence
was aborted, the 1946-1952 period was fertile in
advancing the cause of internal self-government .
In 1946, after Rexford
Tugwell'.s resignation, President Truman appointed Jesus T. Pinero as the
Island ' s first Puerto Rican governor.
In 1947, Congress passed a bill making
the governor's position an elective one, and in 1948 Luis Munoz Marin became
Puerto Rico's first elected governor.
The most important breakthrough came
with the approval of a Constitution for Puerto Rico which came into force in
19
1952, after a Constitutional Convention, a referendum, modifications and
final approval by the _U.S. Congress.
At a time when most colonial empires had not been dismantled yet, the
Estado Libre Asociado--the Commonwealth's official name in Spanish--was widely
praised as a forward-looking, innovative solution to the inherent tensions in
colonial relationships.
Former United States Supreme Court ·Chief Justice Earl
Warren referred to it as "perhaps the most notable of American governmental
experiments in our lifetime" and Harvard professor Carl Friedrich hailed it
as "a new dimension in feder·a1 government."
Munoz himself elaborated at
great length on how Puerto Rico's path meant "a breakthrough from
nationalism" and The Washington Post suggested it might be a good idea to
extend the Commonwealth concept to Cuba, Panama, Central America and
Venezuela.
As American investors flocked to the Island.in droves, attracted by
cheap
l~bor
growth.
and federal tax exemption, Puerto Rico underwent rapid economic
And the government of PueT.to Rico took major initiatives in
education, housing and health, which improved dramatically the Island's
quality of life.
With the ruling Popular Democratic Party firmly in con-
trol, and Munoz at the helm from 1948 til 1964, Puerto Rico also offered the
democratic stability that seemed so sorely lacking among its Caribbean
neighbors.
As a result, Puerto Rico in the fifties and early sixties became a
veritable "showcase" of U.S.-sponsored economic progress and political
development.
The U.S. ·Agency for International Development_ (AID) brou ght
thousands of technicians and public administrators from all ov er the world to
get acquainted with Puerto Rico's programs and institutions.
~lun o z
h imself
.. . ·..
~·
.
·~
. .
-· -
20
. teamed up with · President Jose Figueres of Costa Rica, Romulo Betancourt of
Venezuela, and others in what was known as the Democratic Left, fighting both
Communism and right-wing dictators like Rafael Leonidas Trujillo and Marcos
Perez Jimenez throughout the Caribbean and Central America, often in close
collaboration with Washington.
In the Kennedy years, Puerto Rico was at the
.
.
forefront of the Alliance for Progress.
ind~strial- iz-a-t·ie>fi
The man who directed Puerto Rico's
program, Teodoro Moscoso, was appointed to head the Alliance .
Former Under Secretary of State of Puerto Rico Arturo Morales Carrion became
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter American Affairs and the Peace
Corps training camp was set up in Arecibo, on Puerto Rico's North Coast.
A Stalemated Status
Despite all the economic and social progress taking place on the
Island, little changed politically in U.S.-Puerto Rican relations.
From the
very beginning Popular Democratic Party leaders had conceived of the
Corrunonwealth as an essentially dynamic entity that would grow and evolve with
the times, allowing Puerto Ricans to assume a progressively larger share of
governmental responsibilities vis
a vis
the federal authorities.
And
numerous efforts were undertaken from 1953 (see Table I, column 4) on to
up-grade and revise Puerto Rico's status to a more fully autonomous condition
called in 1959 "n ew association" (see Table I, column 5) and in 1975
11
a new
compact" (see Table I, column 6) - to what is known as a "culminated"
Commonwealth.
For the estado li bristas, the Commonwealth was a creative, imaginative
solution to the needs of a "small, overpopulated island with f ew natural
resources.''
While able to keep their own social and cul _tural i de nt it y , Puerto
21
TABLE I
ISScES
l.~
~1AJOR
Years
AUTONOMIST
DEVEc<;l'~IE!\T-?RO?OSALS
o~
1945
1925
1922
Proposals
TO THE U.S.
C.S . -?.R. ?OLjTICAL
~ 95 3
Tydings-Pinero;
La .Uianza
Tn~
~
i
?er::ios "Cvs-
i
:::etic" Bill
REL.~TIO~
l9iS
1~59
Fe!'Tlos-~tur:-ay j
3ill
~eo:.·
Coo.pace:
:
c:-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~, ~~~~~~~-
govern~ent
Internal self
w~s
dea!c
~ich
in the
1952 Cons t itu t ion.
Is sues in the U.S .- Puer~ o
Rico relation rem1in.
A bill c::eat- A ?latfor::i i
, ing a "doc:in- propo?al co :
1
ion ' rela t ion - j create an .
ship.
Based
Escado Libre
on the Union - Asociado by .
isc Party
Liberals and 1
placfon:i .
·Republicans J
1
I
1
I
l. Save reignty
~.
- 3.
~ .
5.
6.
· 7.
~-
9.
10.
11.
12.
lJ.
Par~icipacion
in
C. S. Govem:nent
Ll.S. Supreme Court
Jurisdictict1
~ar iff s 2nd Tr3Ce
Appli~ation of
Federal La\.IS
Coast wi se Shiooing
3anking 3.Dd Cu t-renc11
Social welfare
5eneiits
Cot!!!:lercial Treacies
!orei'l::-. ?..elations
lnte:-;laciooal
?e::-sonalicv
Federal U.S.
Prooertics
I
;.. bill pre- in ·:iill ?rc-A bill ? :C Ol ';;.:..bill to
posed by ?uer- :
jc.la.:-ify csse:J- ! ?ose~ by : he jpcsed ~y the
R esiCe~t Ccc- : acsicie~: Comto Rican Resi~1· 5 ltial ele=ie...1'\cs
de:-:c Co=is _ fa£ the rela~issioner to ; cissiooer to
adopc ·~e'J
i aC.op c a '''S ew
.~ i tion after
sioner offe:- Articles of
Coc;:'ac:" being three al ~ !adop:::.on ~f
ASsociacion. " 1 t'...·een the t: . S.
;: 1 t~e Cons : i tuternatives to
Puerto ilico.
r:ion .
_aoci P . R.
1
I
I::; !
x
I
x
I
x
x
I
x
I
x
x
I
x
x
I
I
I
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
·x
·1
I
I
x
1
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x·
:<
x
x
Citize~s h i:>
x
x
x
x
x
Labor Laws
16 . Soecific Consent
~i. Geographic Descrip-
x
x
t:.on
x
18. C:0\..'1 Prooe::·.; i .cs
l ~ . ;.:r.=i;: raci on
:o. ~e~eral Taxes
Fecie ral Agencies
in ?1.:er : o Rico
22 . Deie~se and U. 5.
x
x
.x
x
Securicv
23. Full Fait~ and
Credit
2~. Customs
x
i
x
x
x
x
x
x
:\
. x·
x
x
:\
25. ?arts and i\ avi gaOl~
'..ia t~rs
26 .
~ovalcv
27.
~ederal Uistricc
Cou ::t
:-lilitarv Draf t
Lerricor-i.al
',:accrs
Cor::municacions
~~e-of .Relaticnship
Snv ironmencal
Laws
?:·ocess cf C:'ian2.e
Transier of
?o-..:i?rs
28 .
29.
JO.
31 .
;..:. .
33.
] ',.
·x
Oacn ·
I
!
x
x
I
I
I
x
x
x
...
22
Ricans benefitted economically and politically from their association with
the United States.
The flexibility of the Commonweal th was one of its
greatest virtues, as it did not preclude any future status changes, in
marked contrast with the irrevocability of either statehood or independence.
But Commonwealthers also believed
forge Puerto Rican progress.
tha~
they needed additional instruments to
At a general level, for example, they wanted to
clarify and delimit the areas of federal and state authorities; more
specifically, they wanted control over immigration of foreigners (non-U . S.
citizens) into Puerto Rico, setting up some tariffs, full control over labor
relations as well as over environmental regulations.
But over and over
again, at least three times in three decades, Washington proved impervious
to Puerto Rico's demands, raising in the process serious doubts about the
sincerity of U.S. commitment to self-determination for the Island.
Nevertheless, the Popular Democratic Party and its supporters
continued to maintain that Commonwealth was the best alternative for Puerto
Rico, defending the long-standing Island tradition of autonomismo, thus
perpetuating the status debate that has been so central to the Island's
political discourse . since the late nineteenth century.
For statehooders, represented by the New Progressive Party (NPP),
in power since 1976, with its president, Carlos Romero Barcelo as governor,
the cardinal political fact about Puerto Rico is U.S. citizenship.
In
granting it in 1917, they argue, the U.S. Congress created an unbreakable
bond between the United States and all Puerto Ricans.
They question the
constitutional standing of Commonwealth status, for which ·there is no
precedent in American constitutional practice, and affin,n that und er the
Constitution's territorial clause Congress continues to exercise full powers
)
23:
over the Island.
And as long as Puerto Rico is not fully represented in the
U.S. Congress--rather than have only a Resident Commissioner in the House
with no voting rights on the floor--Puerto Rico will continue to be second
class American citizens.
Saddled with many of the duties of citizenship,
such as having to serve in the U.S. Armed Forces--which Puerto Ricans have
done in four wars--but without being able to fully exercise the rights of
U.S. citizens, as Puerto Ricans do not vote in presidential elections, Puerto
Rico's problems, they argue, will not be solved until it becomes
the Union.
a
state of
With 2 Senators and 7 Representatives Puerto Rico would have a
Congressional deleg ation larger than half of the present states of the
Union.
This, plus the right to vote in presidential elections would give
Puerto Rico sufficient leverage within the American political system to
increase the allocation of federal funds for the Island--thus ending the
present situation where Puerto Rico, because of its . territorial status, 'is
exc.Iuded from a number of federal programs and limited in its participation
in others.
The security of federal statehood would also enhance the Island's
attractiveness as an investment haven, despite the gradual imposition of
federal taxation that would come together with statehood.
The independence parties, on the other hand, of which the largest and
most .significant is th.e Partido Independentista Puertorriquef'io (PIP) argue
that Puerto Rico's growth and development as a nation has been seriously
impaired by U.S. colonial ties.
Pu~rto
Only an independent
Rico, they
argue, would be able to lift the Island from its present dependent condition,
develop native indhlstry and cornmerce--rather than depend overwhelmingly on
external investment as is now the case--and remove the stifling limitations
..
imposed by U.S. control. over Island affairs.
The rea.s on for the ls land's
24
inability to solve its chronic unemployment problem is a simple one,
according to independentistas; lack of control over its own tariffs and over
monetary policy make it impossible for Puerto Rico to develop its own
economic policy, one suited to the Island's needs and priorities.
Common-
wealth status is nothing but a spruced-up version of colonialism, which
allows U.S. corporations to make huge tax-free profits on the basis of paying
much lower wages than they would have to pay in the United States.
Statehood
would be the culmination of colonialism, an act that would put in danger the
very existence of the Puerto Rican nation.
The Puerto Rican Socialist Party (PSP), a smaller, more radical party
than the Social Democratic PIP, singles out for particular criticism U.S.
military presence in Puerto Rico--Roosevelt Roads is the largest U.S. Navy
base in the world and Vieques Island is regularly used fo-r target practice by
the Navy--and argues that elections under current colonial conditions--in
which the PIP has obta·ined 5.percent and the PSP less than 1 percent of the
vote--are quite meaningless.
Only a full transfer of powers from the United
States to Puerto Rico would allow the proper exercise of democratic rights,
argue PSP members.
Independentistas have also been critical of the fact that
the Island's condition has led so many Puerto Ricans to emigrate to the
United States.
The Other Puerto Ricans
"The uneven equation between the unlimited fertility of the people
and the limited fertility of the soil" was the somewhat uncharitable
description by Life magazine in 1943 of what it described as Puerto Rico's
basic problem.
Indeed, Puerto Rico's population almost doubled between 1899
2.5
and 1940, from 953,000 to 1,869,000, a large population to support for an
Island of a mere 3,435 square miles.
Moreover, sugar cane cultivation, the
Island's main and dominant economic activity, provided largely for only
seasonal labor, with long periods of idle time ("tiempo muerto") between
harvests.
Although Puerto Ricans were free to migrate to the United States
since 1917, when U.S. citizenship was conferred on them by the U.S. Congress,
the time and expense involved limited the numbers of those willing to travel
to the mainland.
And among those that made the long journey to Manhattan,
many were quick to return to Puerto Rico when economic conditions deteriorated
in the United States; during the early years of the Great Depression--from
1931 to 1934--a net total of 8,694 Puerto Ricans returned to the Island,
setting a pattern that would repeat itself again in the seventies.
But all of this changed after World War .II.
Inexpensive airfares, a
strong demand for low-paid labor by the garment industry and active promotion
of migration to the United States by the Puerto Rican government led to a
fast-growing flow of Puerto Ricans to the sweatshops of Manhattan.
From 1946
to 1950 net Puerto Rican migration to the U.S. reached 31,000 per ·year-whereas as recently as 1940 the estimated total number of Puerto Ricans in
the United States had been a mere 70,000.
The yearly average of net migrants
for 1951-1960 reached 45,000, and hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans
found themselves transplanted from placid tropical mountain towns like Utuado
and Jayuya to the very heart of the world's largest metropolis, mostly in
East Harlem (soon
renam~d
as El Barrio) but also in Brooklyn and the Bronx.
Puerto Rican migration slowed down in the sixties-:...when the net
yearly average fell to 13,000--and reversed itself first 1n 1969 and later in
26
the early seventies as more and more Puerto Ricans returned to their
homeland.
But as a result of previous migratory waves, it is estimated that
some two million Puerto Ricans--vis
a vis
3.2 million living on the Island--
live now more or less permanently in the United States--not so heavily
concentrated in New York City anymore, but still living mostly in the urban
Northeist, with significant Puerto ·Rican communities in Philadelphia, Boston,
Chicago and Newark.
Living in the cities' worst slums, working in the most menial jobs--if
they can find employment at all--and having to face harsh discrimination both
because of their language and their less-than-lily-white color, Puerto Ricans
come
in the United States have found it impossible to make/true the dreams that
brought them from their Caribbean surroUJ1dings.
In 1975, for example, a
study found that Hispanic families in the United States had - a substantially
lower income than the average U.S. family, and that among Hispanics, Puerto
Ricans had the lowest income of all, with a median of $7,629 versus 9,498
for Mexican Americans and · $11,410 for Cuban Americans and other Latin
American families.
Puerto Ricans established themselves in the Northeastern region of
the United States, the one most heavily hit by the recessions of the
seventies and the early eighties, so that their economic standing has
deteriorated further over the past decade.
But their problems are not only
economic; they are also political and cultural.
Despite their U.S. citizen-
ship, their large numbers and their concentration in ·a few key cities--all
factors conducive to
de~eloping
some strong political representation--Puerto
Ricans from early on were excluded through a variety of mechanisms from the
political process.
And even since the sixties, when literacy tests in
27
English for registering to vote and other such exclusionary tools were
removed, the number of Puerto Rican elected officials remains exceedingly
small.
There is only one Puerto Rican Representative in the House--Robert
Garcia of the Bronx--versus seven Mexican Americans.
Maurice Ferre is the
onJy Puerto Rican mayor of a large U.S. city (of Miami, which has a relatively small Puerto Rican population).
One important reason for this lack of
political representation--which in turn means scarce federal funds and low
budgetary priority at . the city and state level for the predominantly Puerto
Rican areas--has been low voter turnout.
As political scientist Angelo
Falc6n has pointed out, it is estimated that less than one-third of all
eligible Puerto Ricans in New York City are
r~gistered
to vote and the
turnout in some predominantly Puerto Rican districts is often as low as 5
percent of all eligible voters.
In a very fundamental sense, many Puerto
Ricans on the mainland do not feel part of American society and do not feel
motivated to participate in its politics.
Seventy-five percent ·of a sample
>
cf Puerto Rican residents in New York City in 1980, some of them born in New .
York, did not consider themselves American.
And after all, one can still get
a one-way ticket to San Juan or Aguadilla for $99 ....
But for those Puerto Ricans that do return to the Island--particularly
for second and third generation Puerto Ricans--the transition from Hoboken or
New Haven to Bayamon or Carolina is not an easy one.
For those who are not
fluent in Spanish, it can be very rough, as they are often rejected as
"Newyoricans," not "real Puerto Ricans," and branded as troublemakers.
Treated as "Spiks" in the United States, as "Newyoricans" in Puerto Rico,
mainland Puerto Ricans are the most visible victim of the division of the
I•
Puerto Rican nation brought ·about by the massive migratior\ ·programs of the
TABLE II
PROFESSIONALS AS MIGRANTS:
.. . .. PUERTO RICO'S ENGINEERING COLLEGE RECRUITS
First Jobs--Graduates, School of Engineering, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez
... ·: ~..'.
1980-1981 1981-1982
96
-
101
41=43%
... .
. .. .
. ~ . (Gradu~te . stude~ts,
. no information, etc.)
19~0-1981 .
1981-1982
.. . ..
. 45=44; 55%
45=47%
41=40.59%
10
15
9
9
8
18
.. .
.... ...
-
59
66
20=33 ', 9%
17=25. 76%
30=50.85% 39=59.09%
Civil
Engineering
47
46
17=36.2%
17=36. 96%
22=46.8%
Industrial
Engineering
46
49
Chemical
Engineering
77
74
11=23.91%
N .
00.;
9=19.6%
34=42%
9=18.37%
22=29.73%
35=73.9%
29=59.18 %
25=32%
10=13.51%
3
11
20
42
'
-
Sou r ce:
.:.·.. · .:,-' :· Other : : · ~ · . :.:.· :: •. .
...
"
Mechanical
Engineering
"1. ~.:
1980,....1981 1981-1982. .19.80:....1981 l981-1982
.. , .
Electrical
Engineering
Working in
Puerto Rico
Working in
the United States
Graduates
;
' .:
University of Puerto Rico•
~ ~
.. .. . .·. . ;
~
.
· 1:,; ;_-_
-,-. · -• .:-- · ~ -··· · ·-
_ __ _.. _ . _... ..... -
-
-
·· - ·
29
forties and fifties.
After the significant net return migration waves of the early and
mid-seventies, Puerto Rican migration to the United States has picked up
again in the late seventies and early eighties.
A distinct feature of this
new crop of ·migrants is. the relatively large number of professional and
technical personnel who is now leaving Puerto Rico given the lack of jobs
the Island and salary differentials with the United States.
bn
In a cruel twist
of fate, Fortune 500 corporations and federal agencies co~e to Puerto Rico to
recruit the cream of the crop of engineering and business graduates of
Puerto Rico's best universities, allowing them to fill their minority hiring
quotas set up to help deprived mainland Puerto Ricans and other Hispanics.
Puerto Rico thus loses some of its best talent, and mainland Puerto Ricans
continue to scurry at the bottom of the ladder of jobs and job opportunities
in the United States.
Here, as in other areas, unless and until Puerto Rico implements a
development strategy whose central objective is job creation rather than
simply economic growth, the drain of Puerto Ricans from their homeland and
many of its unwelcome consequences will continue.
The Ascendance of the Statehood Movement
The secret to the success of Munoz and the populates from 1940 to
1968--three decades in which the Popular Democratic Party became almost
synonymous with the Puerto Rican governrnent--lay in identifying with and
supporting the demands of Puerto Rico's downtrodden--the j{baros and
agregados who had to work for 8 cents an hour in 1940, who lived in miserable
boh1os and who couldn't afford to send their children to school, thus
. 30· .
perpetuating the poverty cycle.
For Puerto Rico's rural population, the
populares promised and delivered a different world.
To this day, Popular
Democratic Party support runs strong in those conununities like Mayagliez,
Salinas, and others where agrarian reform took place.
But industrialization and urbanization changed Puerto Rico dramatically, bringing new issues and priorities to the political arena.
""
Munoz
.
understood the need to institutionalize party rule and stepped down in 1964,
.f
allowing his long-time
II
aid~
Roberto Sanchez Vilella to obtain the party's
nomination and be elected governor.
But in 1968, the New Progressive Party
(NPP) standard bearer Luis Ferre became the first pro-statehood Puerto Rican
...,fl)
governor.
Since then, only once (in 1972) have the populares won a
gubernatorial election.
In 1976, San Juan Mayor and NPP president Carlos
Romero Barcel6 was elected governor, being re-elected, albeit by the thinnest
of margins, in 1980.
Surveys show the
~ypical
NPP supporter tends to live in urban
centers rather than in the countryside or the smaller Island towns--even in
·} 1980, when a majority of the municipal elections were won by the
Commonwealthers, Puerto Rico's largest urban areas remained under firm NPP
control--and is younger than PDP supporters.
The memory of Munoz and the
valiant struggles of the forties and fifties means little to Puerto Rico's
younger generation, although it is still vivid in the minds of their parents
and grandparents.
A younger, much more urban population has thus shown to be
much more receptive to the pro-statehood message.
Important changes also took place in the discourse of the statehood
movement, allowing it to partially shed the image of the "100 percent
"
American," profoundly conservative stance that had marked s:tatehooders as the
31
party of landowners and sugar cane interests until the mid-sixties.
Politically, the striving for Puerto Ricans' full enjo)rment of their rights
as U.S. citizens, with the concomitant participation in U.S. national
elections, still provides the core of the statehood argument.
Yet,
throughout the seventies, the NPP's appeal at the polls started to rely more
and more on economic reasoning.
Statehood would not only provide "security";
more importantly, it would raise the income and standard of living of the
vast majority of Puerto Ricans who still found themselves under the poverty
line.
As a state, Governor Carlos Romero Barcelo argued in his Statehood is
for the Poor booklet, Puerto Rico would qualify for many more federal expenditures than under Commonwealth status.
The Electoral Revolt
The growth of support for the statehood movement and the declining
hegemony of the PDP thus led to a fundamental realignment in Puerto Rican
politics, for which the 1968 elections provided a critical turning point.
From a "one-party dominant" system, in some ways similar to the one existing
in Mexico, the Puerto Rican political system evolved into a two-party system,
more similar to the one existing in the United States.
Contrary to what some
· observers expected, the NPP has failed to become a hegemonic party in its own
right.
In the 1980 elections, despite a creditable economic performance dur-
ing Governor Romero's first tenn and with the memories of the 1974-76
recession under PDP Governor Rafael Hernandez Col6n still vivid in the mind
of the electorate; Romero won by the razor-thin margin of 3000 votes out of
over 1.6 million ballots cast, with the PDP winning a majority in both houses
of the Legislature and of all municipalities.
32
Th~
emergence of this two-party system has been paralleled by a
rapidly growing and more independent electorate.
The total nwnber of
registered voters doubled from a little under one million in 1960 to over two
million in 1980, .with the principal expansion occurring from 1968 to 1972, as
the lowe ring of the voting age from 21 to 18 years of age added almost
400,000 ~ew voters to the roles.
Voter participation has continued at a
high- level--fluctuating from . a low of 74 percent in 1968 to a high of 86
percent in 1976.
But one of the most significant developments in the
seventies was decreasing party loyalty--ticket splitting reached 10 percent
of the total number of voters in 1980, up from 1
growing significance of local as opposed to
perce~t
island-wi~e
in 1960--and the
issues and candidates.
And this electorate was prepared to oust an incumbent governor when
it didn't like him, as it has with every incumbent one since 1968, with the
exception of Governor Romero in 1980, who, however, lost his majority in the
House and the Senate, and suffered a division in his
pa~ty
in 1983, with San
Juan Mayor Hernan Padilla leading a Puerto Rican Renewal Party.
In the early eighties, then, the consensus that had characterized
Puerto Rican politics in the fifties and early sixties has been replaced by a
profound division within the political elite and among the mass electorate as
to the best course to follow to overcome Puerto Rico's serious social and
economic problems; this dissensus also extends to the type of relationship
Puerto Rico should have with the United States.
THREE
AN ECONOMY IN TRA.NSITION
To the tourists who fly into Isla Verde international airport or go
shopping and nightclubbing while their cruise ship awaits them at San Juan
harbor, Puerto Rico must seem to be a fairly prosperous--if not downright
well-off--place.
There are . hardly any beggars, barefoot children are nowhere
to be seen and San Juan's most serious problem seems to be the monumental
tapones (traffic jams) caused by the hundreds of thousands of Toyotas, Datsuns
and Volvos that crowd the capital's highways at rush hour.
Indeed, with a
whopping per capita income of $3,150 a year, one automobile for every three
Puerto Ricans and one telephone for evecy four, the Island's standard of living
1
is far higher than that bf most of its neighbors.
With four times as many jobs
in manufacturing as in agriculture, the structure of its economy also seems to
have more in common with France or .Italy than with Haiti or Jamaica.
Moreover,
with a population of only 3.2 ~illion., Puerto Rico's external trade is the
fifth largest in Latin
kn~ri~a ,' .higher
than Colombia's (with a population of
26 million) and Peru's (with 17 million).
And it is not only in aggregate economic figures
tha~
Puerto Rico
stands out. : Over the past decades, tremendous inroads have also been made in
health care) education and housing.
The life expectancy of Puerto Ricans is
73 years, roughly the same as in the United States; with one physician for
every 513 people, the Island can count on a large solid core of health care
professionals.
Death causes have come to reflect more and more the pattern
of advanced indusq·i_a lized societies, with degenerative ailments like heart
disease and cancer having become the leading causes of death, displacing
earlier fatal agents like diarrhea-enteritis and tuberculosis, now almost
totally eradicated.
-.
.) .)
34
TABLE IIL
DEMOGRAPHIC STATISTICS
Population as of July 1
(thousands)
Birth rate per 1000 population
Infant mortality rate per
each 1000 live births
Life expectancy (years)
1940
1950
1960
1970
1980
1,878
2,218
2,360
2, 722
3,206 i
40.1
40 . 1
35.5
25.8
22. 8
109.1
65.6
42.1
27.5
18.5
46
61
69
72
73
.
rRevised
Source:
Puerto Rico Planning Board, 1982 Socioeconomic Statistics.
Education has been another area of significant accomplishments; the
CoIIIlllonwealth government has traditionally assigned between a third and a
fourth of its budget to education.
In 1981 over a million Puerto Ricans--o n •.
out of every three people on the Island--were enrolled as students at one e d1
cational institution or another; the literacy rate is 90%.
Particularly wor
noting is the tremendous expansion of Puerto Rican higher education, where
student enrollment has increased by a factor of eleven over the past 30
years, reaching 135,000 students in 1982.
has also increased dramatically.
The quantity and quality of hous i
In 1940, a full 80% of Puerto Rico's
housing stock was considered inadequate; this figure was cut down to 44% in
1960 and to 21% in 1978.
In 1977, 72% of all Puerto Rican families owned
their ciwn homes, of which 93% had running water.
35 .
The Roots of Bootstrap
What have been the origins of this progress?
Although Puerto Rico
became a U.S. territory in 1898, until 1940 it continued to be a poor
colonial backwater, "our cherished slum" in the words of one American
cormnentator, with an average life expectancy of 46 years, an infant mortality rate of 109 per 1000 populati n and a meager $121 yearly per capita
income.
It was in 1940 that Luis Hunoz Marin and nis newly founded Popular
Democratic Party obtained a resounding victory at the elections to the Legi s
lature; in 1941 New Dealer Rexford Tugwell was appointed Governor of Puerto
Rico.
Munoz and Tugwell were to initiate a program of wide-ranging social
and economic reforms which laid the foundations for modern Puerto Rico.
best ally in this endeavor was Adolf Hitler.
Th <
World·War II was in many ways
the best thing that could have happened to Puerto Rico at that point in tirn·
·In gearing up for the war effort, federal expenditures rose swiftly, considerably increasing the meager income of Puerto Ricans; from 59. 4 million
1940 they climbed to 207. 5 million in 1945, while an additional $179 millio
strengthened the coffers of the Puerto Rican government--the product of f eci ·
excise taxes levied on Puerto Rican rum, whose consumption in the U.S. soa r
during the war.
And the remittances of 65,000 Puerto Rican servicemen pro -
vided a substantial cash inflow.
36:·
Federal Expenditures in Puerto Rico 1940-1945
(in millions of dollars)
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
59.4
72 .4
125.4
180.0
221. 5
207.5
Source:
Rafael de Jesus Toro, Historia Econo[l)ica de Puerto
Rico .(Cincinnati: South-Western Publishing Co.,
1982).
It was in this context that a highly creative--if ideologically ambiguous--effort to restructure and reorient the Puerto Rican economy took place
In a relatively short period of time, the establishment of a minimum wage, t h
approval of a tax reform law, and the implementation of an agrarian reform
program led to a substantial improvement of the standard of living of
Puerto Rico's lower income sectors.
An important expansion of the public sector also took place.
Through
the creation of numerous boards and agencies, the government started to develop the capabilities to monitor economic trends and to play an active ro le
in the economy.
The Planning Board, the Government Development Bank, the
Bureau of the Budget and Puerto Rico's Industrial Development Corporation we ;
among the most significant of these bodies.
The government also set up
state-owned glass, cement and paper factories and brought several public
utilities under the public aegis.
Yet, with the end of World War II and the beginnings of the Cold War
the Popular Democratic Party steered a different course; away from
pro-independence sympathies, populist
of industry.
redis~ributionisrn
and state ownership
37
Fomento's Success Story
In 1947, under the direction of Teodoro Moscoso, head of the Economic
Development Administration--best known for its Spanish name Fomento--Puerto
Rico launched a massive effort to attract U.S. capital and investors to the
Island".
The centerpiece of the strategy was the offer of full tax exemption
from federal, state and local taxes for those who invested in manufacturing
facil~ties in Puerto Rico.
Low ~ages--at $0.44 an hour in 1950 only 31 per-
cent of the prevailing U.S. industrial wage--were another key attraction.
timing was
superb-~there
The
was a veritable glut of U.S. companies in search of
secure outlets for their bountiful wartime earnings.
Reasoning that Puerto Rico's high-density population needed jobs and
income that far outstripped the possibilities of the agricultural sector,
industrialization was seen as the only road toward progress and development.
And given the lack of indigenous capital and technology, the Popular Demo·j
cratic Party's managerial and technocratic elite decided to push to the hilt
Puerto Rico's main "comparative
advantage!':~
its condition as a U.S. territo r:.
· l'
Investors were thus offered what seemed to be an unbeatable combination:
I
a
low-wage environment with tax-free profits under the U.S. flag and unrestrict <
access to the U.S. market.
Puerto Rico's development strategy paid off handsomely in man y
------re as.
In constant dollars, GNP tripled from 1950 to 1970, and net per capita incom e
soared from $278 to $1,353 during the same period.
Rico grew at an average rate of 6.8 per annum.
From 1947 to 1965 Puerto
The hundreds of Fomento-pro-
moted factories of shoes and textiles, clothing and chemica.ls that sprang up ,
mostly around San Juan, but also in other areas of the Islan d were the main
catalyst for this growth.
Manufacturing sector output inc r e ased f ivefold,
from $128 million in 1947 to $66 8 ~illion in 1965.
38
TABLE IV .
Gross Product:
Fiscal Years
GROSS PRODUCT
1940
1950
1960
1970
1975
In millions of
dollars
287
755
1,676
4,687
7,129
11,043
In millions of
constant 1954
dollars
499
879
1,473
2,901
3,422
4,149
198lr
1982p
12,129
12,617
4,174
4 ,Oll
/
rRevised figures
PPreliminary figures
Source:
Informe Economico al Gobernador 1982, Puerto Rico Planning Board,
pp. A-2, A-3.
Federally mandated increases in Puerto Rico's minimum wage, howe -,; e r ,
raised industrial wages
consid~rably
by the mid-sixties.
From an average
hourly wage in manufacturing of $0.44 in 1950 (31 percent of the U.S. wage)
_it increased to $1.24 in 1965 (48 percent of the U.S. rate).
Structural
changes in the world economy also weakened Puerto Rico's position:
the
Kennedy Round cut U.S. tariffs considerably, making it easier for foreign
competitors to break into the U.S. market.
This, in turn, led many U.S.
companies to search for low-labor cost countries to export to the U.S.
The Oil Strategy and the Oil Shock
U.S. oil import quotas set in 1954 had exempted Puerto Rico,
allowing the Island to import then-cheaper foreign oil, to
~efine
~:ms
it and to
re-export it to the United States, without falling under the U.S. quota
syst e ~
39
e~rly
Until the
sixties Puerto Rico used this advantage largely to satisfy
its own domestic oil consumption needs.
But Puerto Rican planners realized
that oil refining and petrochemicals could become the new catal ysts for
growth, replacing the apparel or footwear industries.
tracks.
And Fomento changed
Al though oil and petrochemicals were "dirt y " industries ll'i th a
relatively low job creation potential, the possibilities for expanding them
"downstream" were deemed to be high--from petrochemicals to plastics to the
whole line of plastic-made products.
A plan to create an oil "superport 11
on Puerto Rico's West Coast symbolized the seemingly boundless optimism of
the times.
Producing largely for a seemingly ever-expanding U.S. economy, undergoing a boom in the construction industry--which benefitted from generous FRA
financing--and enjoying the lion's share of the Caribbean tourist market, the
late sixties and early seven ties were "go-go" years in Puerto Rico.
The
average annual growth rate for 1969-1973 was 7 percent.
The quadrupling of oil prices brought about by the November 1973 oil
"shock" and the ensuing recessions in the United States brought Puerto Rico's
economy to a screeching halt.
Not only was the Island overwhelmingly dependent
on imported oil for its energy needs; the price differential between U.S. oil
and oil produced elsewhere had also become an important ingredient in Puerto
Rico's development projects in the oil refining and petrochemical sectors.
Puerto Rico's oil bill escalated from $302 million in 1973 to $1,148 in 1975
and $2,048 million in
~980.
·' · ~ · ~
---- -- - -- - - -- - - - -.
40
The economic growth rate fell to a meager 1. 3% in · :r9 74 ;·· in · 197.5,
the economy declined by 2 .1%; after an upturn in 1977-1979, the growth rate
has been declining steadily again, from 2.4% in 1980, 0.6% in 1981 and a
negative 3.9% in 1982.
In no year since 1973 has the average growth rate of
the 1969-1973 period been reached again.
And unemployment has doubled from
11% in 1971 to 22% in 1982.
In marked contrast to the fifties and sixties, then, the seventies and
early eighties in Puerto Rico have been a period of economic stagnation ar.d
recession.
With production largely geared toward the U.S. market, any re-
cessionary wave in the U.S. leads immediately to higher inventories and a
.
slowdown of the assembly lines in Puerto Rico.
This was especially evident in
1975 when Puerto Rican GN ]declined by 2.1 percent as U.S. GNP declined by
2. 9 percent.
~~
s~en
It
has also manifested itself in 1981 and 1982,
from Figure 3.
as can - :_.
41 .;.
Figure 3
. Total M an_ufacturing Employment
rn Puerto Rico and the United States
(Fiscal Years 1974-1982, Seaso nafly Adjusted)
Unll • d Stah•• •
(In million s)
Pu•rto Rico •
(In thou~nds)
21.5
160.0
21.0
156.0
2Q5
152.0
20.0
148.0
19.5
1.u.o
19.0
140.0
18.5
136.0
1ao
132.0 "
128.0
11. s
.19H
1975
1976
1977
1978
1979
1980
1981
1982
· F iscal _Years, Monthly Figures
Source:
Miguel Echenique, "The Economy of .-Puerto Rico in Fiscal l'::luL
as Seen Through the Determining Short-Term Variables of the
Inducing Sector--Part Two," Puerto Rico Business Rev iew
Vo 1. 7 • No • 5 (May 19 8 2 ) , p . 3 .
•
From Jeans to Drug s:
A Chan ging Industrial Structure
But the underlying reasons for Puerto Rico's economic slowdown are
structural, not cyclical.
Whereas in the fifties and six ties growth and de-
velopment rested mainly on labor intensive manufacturing, tourism and construction--all sect•ors with a high multiplier eff ect--i_n the seventies the
most dynamic sector has been capital intensiv e industry --h eav i l y export
.+ 2
oriented and using little loc a l content in its products.
From 1970 to 19SO
labor intensiv e industry (food, tobacco products, textil es , apparel, l euther
products, furniture, paper products and printing, stone, cl ay and glass products) saw its relative contribution to total manufacturing output mo re than
halved, from
63.1/~ ~o
31.1 %; and the capital intensive s e ctor (chemicals,
machinery and metal products, oil, rubber and plastics·) ~oubled it~ 5;1ar e,
from - 34. 8% to 67. 3%.
Chemical products--including t he pharma ceutic al indu s-
try--more than tripled their con tributiM, reaching 35. 4_% of Puerto Rico's
total manufacturing output in 1980.
These industries have several advantages over their more traditi -: nal
counterparts.
They tend to pay higher salaries, they train workers in the
~s e
of advanced industrial equipment; the pharmaceutical industry has also shmvn
to be less vulnerable to the fluctuations of the U.S. business cy cle than,
say, the textile and garment sector.
At the same time, their job-creating
potential is, by definition, limited.
In 1982, for example, the net income of .-Puerto Rico's chemical industry
reached . $2.1 billion, some 40 percent of tot a l man u factu ring output, with only
15,600 workers, 10.5 percent of the manufacturing labor fo rce.
The garsen t
sector, on the other ·hand, while producing only $377 million, a mere 7 percent
of total manufacturing output in 1980, employed twice as many workers.
Thus, despite GNP growth from $4.6 billion in 1970 to $11 bill io n in
1980, the industrial work force only grew by 25,000 frorn.· 1970 · to 19 80 ,. half
the number of jobs lost in ag riculture and construction during the same
period.
1\3
Fi g ure 4.
Tax Benefits Per Employe<? anJ ;-\ve r a<; e
Emp loyee Compen1 J t1on, Sele-:tej
M anufJC1tJ r ing In du s~/')' Groups, 1980
S55
0001
~ ·';
51),000 •
571
- ··~ ·- --- -
r.-/;/,
~:~
™
,/,::
~;{
Tax
a~r.efi ts .:>e r
.___ _...;, A'werage
Emolo y ee
Emolo ye ~
Comoe nsan on
25 ,000
20,000
15.833
13, 1d4
11,589
9 .2 73
0
01
No .
i::no loyee s
~'i 10 ·347 J.....;..
j
Ch'!i:nicals
I~
~1
12,712
J .987
~
1~
E :ec~ r ica l
&
E!ectro nic
Eou1pment
Note:
~I3.544l-i-
/~
~1
Instrume nts &.
Machinery
lexce ot elec:r ical)
17.223
I,~-
Fooa Prccucts ,
A ll O : he r
Apoarel, and
Manufac:uririq
Texules
The ne !ght :Jf the !:.ars indicates :he tax cenefits oe r employee ~n d the Jverage compensation oe r emo loye e .
3ecJuse the ·..viC :h of the ba rs in d ica tes tt':e number of emcloyees, the Jrea : nc icat~s total tax benefits 3 na
~o ra1 c o IT'u~ ss•;>" ·
Sou rce: /Department of the Treasury , The Operatiot1 and Effect of the
Possessions Corporation System of Taxation, Fourth Repor t,
February 1983, p. 114.
The figure shows the high tax benefits obtained by th e ch emica l industr y
in
Puerto Rico through Section 936 of the U.S . Ta x Code.
The U. S. Department of
the Treasury and the Congress have r epeated l y tried to limit wh ;i t th e y conside r
to be excessive tax benefits ac..:n1i;1g to ph~1n;i:1ccutic:-i l ..:0T'1pani ":" in : .1::rto
Rico.
\line r restrictions 1vere introduced i n
1 9S~ .
44_ :_:
A Burgeoning Bureaucracy
But far and away the most rapidly growing sector in the seventies was
government.
Throughout the Corrnnonwealth years, government has come to play
a steadily more important role in all areas--including investment, regulation, the provision of basi.c service and employment.
The total number of
government employees doubled from i950 to 1970--from· 45,000 to 106,000--and
almost doubled again in the seventies; by 1980 a total of 202,000 Puerto
'Ricans, a full 24.percent of the active labor force, making the government
the single most important employment sector on the Island, way above manufacturing--with 157,000 .jobs--and wholesale and retail trade, with a combined
total of 152,000.
Given the central1zed nature of public administration in Puerto Rico,
these figures include employees that would be city or county employees in many
states of the Union; all public schools, for example, are run centrally by
the
D~partment
of Public Instruction; the same thing goes for most public
health care facilities.
The fact that all utilities are also publicly owned
also adds considerably to the number of public employees.
But the fact re-
mains that the main reason for the expanion of the public payroll has been that
the private sector has simply been unable to create jobs at the rate needed
by the rapid entrance of new members into the labor force.
And one of the reasons Puerto Rico's
bur~aucracy
could swell so
rapidly was because of the availability of vast amounts of -federal funds, not
only of transfer payments to individuals but also in grants to the state and
municipal
governments~
--- .... . . " ... ··
· ~-
~ -· -
.,
45
The Impact of Federal Largesse
In retrospect, it becomes evident that it was only a massive infusion of
federal funds that saved the Puerto Rican ·economy from collapse in the midseventies.
The rapidity of this infusion can be gauged from the fact that
there was a six-fold increase in gross federal transfer payments to Puerto
Rico from 1970 to 1977; and a fifteen-fold increase in the net inflow of
transfer payments over the same period.
Net federal expenditures in Puerto
Rico increased from $608 million in 1970. to $3, 416 billion in 1980, reaching
38.S percent of Puerto Rico's GNP.
The most significant addition to federal
expenditures in Puerto Rico was the Food Stamp program, introduced in 1974.
It expanded rapidly, reaching $812 million in 1980, covering over half of
Puerto Rican families.
Washington's spending of 10 million dollars a
da~
helped to keep the
Puerto Rican economy afloat and had serious implications.
This became readi ·L :
apparent when President Reagan's efforts to cut federal spending hit Puerto
Rico--just the elimination of the CETA program cost Puerto Rico over 25,000
jobs between February 1981 and January 1982.
The existence of federal welfar e
programs with eligibility requirements set to income standards that are
higher than those prevailing in Puerto Rico has a significant impact on the
work ethic.
On the one hand, when a majority of the population receives Food
Stamps, any stigma associated with receiving a government handout is soon
erased.
Moreover, the incentives for not working are strengthened by a rewa n
46. ·.
'f.AJ;)LE V
Federal Funds Received in Puerto Rico:
Fiscal Years 1965, 1970, 1975 & 1980
(in millions of dollars)
1965
1970
1975
1980
136.7
303.3
1,167.1
2,359. 5
60.9
118.6
136.1
240. 2
Expenditures of federal
agencies in Puerto Rico
110.8
160.8
188.0
302. 8
Grants to the state
government and municipalities
126.0
256.5
650.6
1,348. :~
Transfer payments
Customs duties and rum excise
taxes
Total amount of funds
received
Minus: payments to federal
government
434. 4
839.2
2 ,141. 8
4 ,250. s
109.4
231.1
591. 2
834. ':
Net amount of funds received
325.0
608.1
1.550.6
3 ,416. ·.
2,748.0
4.687.5
7,129.5
11.031. 0
15.8
17.9
30.0
Puerto Rico Gross
Produ~t
Share of federal funds of
Gross Product (percentage)
Source:
Informe Economico al Goberuador 1982, Puerto Rico Planning Board,
p. 410.
structure in which the differential b e tween the monthly wage for
uns~illed
labor and unemployment compensation plus Food Starr: ps is much lower th a.n in t h· e
Cnited States.
Over and beyond this
dep e~~ e n c y
en t h e f ed er a l
purse, transfer payments contribute little towards Puerto Rico 1 s more long
term economic development needs.
Given the openness of the Puerto Rican
economy, a large amount of consumer spending goes for imported goocs, fincin g
its way right out of the Island.
Problems and.-Pros2ects in the 1980 's
As Puerto Rico approaches the last decade of the 2 0 th century, it faces
a number of key e c on omic c h all e n g es.
The way they are a p p r oache d wil l ha v e a
decisive impact not only on the Island 1 s economic well being but also on its
politics and its relationship with the United States.
As should be evident
from the preceding analysis, U.S. involvement--both from the federal goYernment and the priv a te sector--in the Puerto Rican economy is widespread an d
pervasive.
Close cooperation between Puerto Rico and the United States is
therefore an imperative for confronting these chall e n g e s .
The most critical
of these are:
0
High linemployment
With unemployment approaching 25 percent in the early eighties, job
creation is clearly the most significant public policy issue in Puerto Rico.
Puerto Rico 1 s unemployment is aggravated by the fact that a significant part
of it is structural rather than simply demand responsive.
Eousehold heads are
also strongly represented among the jobless.
Even in the boom y e a rs of the mid- a nd late sixties,
declined belo w 10 p erc en t, but the r e c o rd r a tes o f
a stea d il y wors e ning situati on.
un e~ r ~oy~ e ~ t
the ea rl y
e i ~ ~t i ~s
nev e r
i nd i c~ t e
48 .
TABLE VI
Puerto Rico's Unemployment Rate
1940 1950 1960 1970 1973 1975 1976 1977* 1978* 1979* 1980* 198lr* 1982P
Rate of unemployment,
percent
15.0 12.9 13.1 10.3 11.8 15.4 19.4 20.0
18.8
17.5
17.0
18.0
21. 7
*Refers to the population 16 years old and over
rRevised figures
PPreliminary figures
Source:
Informe Economico al Gobernador 1982, Puerto Rico Planning Board.
Moreover, high unemployment goes together wi~h a relatively lov;· ratio c
labor force participation.
This ratio has declined from 53 percent in 1950
t
43.3 percent in 1980, reaching s~gnificantly lower levels than those found,
for example, in the United States, where it is· around 60 percent.
0
Lower Investment Rates
Puerto Rico's extraordinary economic growth of ~arlier times was
achieved, among other things, because of the high fixed capital investment
rate., which reached 30 percent of GNP in the early seventies.
By i979 that
investment rate had declined to. less than 20 percent.
This occurs at a time when investment funds are more plentiful than
ever:
936 funds--those deriving from the earnings of U.S. corporations
operating in Puer~o Rico under Section 9 36 of the U.S. Tax Code--reached $f ..
billion .in 1981.
By law, they have to be reinvested in Puer t o Rico, yet t h"
bulk of them find their way back to the U.S. through" th e Puert o Rican bank~ system, without being used in Puerto Rico.
49
o
A Negative Personal Savings Rate
Over the past decades Puerto Ricans have demonstrated a low proclivity
for saving; in fact, indicators regularly show a negative personal pavings
rate . . A variety of interpretations have been offered for this--most of them
related to the massive introduction of U.S. consumer habits into a s:ot:iety
whose income is still less than half of-that of the poorest state
Union--Mississippi.
6£
the
The infusion of federal transfer pay ments, rather than
freeing funds for savings, :has.: of course only increased consumer spending.
o
An Ex cessive Dependence on Federal Funds
As the "Reagan Revolution" .has underlined, it was unwarranted to bank
on the continued expansion and growth of federal social programs.
Yet the
four billion dollars a year flowing into Puerto Rico from federal sources hav e
come to be indispensible, with cutbacks wreaking havoc . on the Island's
economy.
Far from having been laid on the solid ground of
a balanced, productive, and efficient economy, an important part of Puerto
Rico's remarkable economic performance and growth has been built on the shakv
foundations of external investment and the willingness of the U.S. taxpayer t c
continue to subsidize Puerto Rico through federal tax e x emptions for U.S. cornpanies a nd a massive program of transfer payments.
Depending, as it does, on
the vagaries of U.S. public opinion and the willingness of the U.S. governmen :.
to continue all or any of these policies, it is an economy living under condi -tions of extreme uncertainty.
It will definitely have to unde·rgo some very
fundamental changes 'if Puerto Rico wants to preserve e v en a meas u re of the
relatively high standard of living a majority of its population has come to
enjoy.
Toward a New Develooment Strategy
I
Puerto Rico's economy. then, has become one fundamentally oriented
i
I
l
toward consumption rather than nroduction, soendine rather than saving,
financial speculation rather than productive investment.
And, instead of
evolving toward greater self sufficiency and ability to stand on its own, it
is becoming ever more dependent on federal funds-.
In the forties, uoon unexpectedly receiving hundreds of millions of
dollars from Washington from rum excise taxes and war-related expenditures,
the government undertook a major investment program in public utilities,
'
i
j
infrastructure and industrial development facilities from which Puerto RicO .
1
benefits to this day.
In the eighties, billions of federal dollars are
being spent at . the cash registers of supermarkets and shopping malls rather tr. a
being invested in Puerto Rico's future.
A radically new approach focusing .:. ::-
Puerto Rico's concrete economic problems is long overdue.
Its central
obje~-
tive should bi the creation of iobs.
Puerto Rico's economic development shows clearly that industrializati;r
by itself is not the panacea many believe it to be for solving a country's
unemployIDent problems.
succes~ful
The fact that after 35 years of launching a highlv
industrialization program Puerto Rico IS· unemployment
is almost twice as hi·gh-· _.
speaks by itself.
..·.
It is therefore self-defeatin
to continue to rely on manufacturing as the main engine of economic growth-particularly of the assembly-type operations (even if hi-tech) most plants i
Puerto Rico engage in.
Industrialization will continue to be vitally important to Puerto Rice
but only an economic policy based on the premise that full utilization of t h
51.
Island's resources entails giving greater attention tc other sectors-particularly those with a high multiplier effect--will be able to lead
Puerto Rico successfully
into the twenty-first century.
Investments in further developing the Island's infrastructure, its
0
tourism facilities and access to them on an island-wide bases and agricultur e
would be·important steps in that direction.
They.would also promote a more
balanced development throughout Puerto Rico rather than simply in the metropolitan area as has been the case in the past.
The resources are there:
a gradual: shifting of part of the federal
transfer payment programs into block grants to be used for such economic
development projects would make available up to a billion dollars a year.
And a serious effort to ensure that 936 funds are actually used for productive investments in Puerto Rico, rather than siphoned off to U.S. banks or
used for consumer loans--as is now the case--would also have a dramatic
effect in raising Puerto Rico's investment rate.
FOUR
THE PUERTO RICAN QUESTION ON THE GLOBAL SCENE
"The Panama Canal was to our Latin policy what Vietnam was to our
global policy:
blood poisoning.
There will be new issues--like Puerto Rican
independence," remarked a Latin American specialist at the State Department
immediately after
~he
approval of the Panama Canal
t~eaties.
Since those
words were uttered the Puerto Rico issue has gained a steady international
momentum.
Consider the following:
• On September 24, 1982 the United Nations General Assembly rejected
by 70 to 30 and 43 abstentions a Cuban resolution to include the case of
Puerto Rico as a separate item in the Assembly's agenda for that year.
solid victory for the United States?
Perhaps, but at a high cost .
A
The
United States had to pull its full diplomatic weight behind a frantic, global
effort to cajole countries, particularly Latin American ones, not to vote in
favor of the resolution.
According to at least one interpretation, the pro-
cess was so humiliating to several governments that shortly thereafter
Nicaragua was elected to the U.N. Security Council--against Washington's
strong opposition--among other things, because several swing votes sided
against the United States and with Nicaragua due to bad feelings over the
vote on Puerto Rico.
o At the March 1983 swnmit of the Non-Aligned Movement in New Delhi ,
the following statement was issued:
Recalling the previous decisions of the ~lovement and reaffirming
the need to do away with colonialism in all its forms and manifestations, the Heads of State or Government reiterated their support
for the Puerto, Rican people's inalienable right to self-determination and independence in conformity with resolution 1514(XV).
52
53
• At the April 1983 Lisbon conference of the Socialist International,
which groups, among many others, the political parti e s now ruling in Franc e ,
Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Greece, the Dominican Republic and other countries,
I
I
the final declaration stated:
j
dependence of Puerto Rico--a Latin American nation . "
I
"The Socialist International supports the in-
If it ever was a purely '.'domestic" issue for the United States--a
highly questionable proposition--the Puerto Rican Question has thus long
ceased to be one.
Whether the United States likes it or not, it must deal
with the issue in a plethora of international fora, use sticks and carrots t c
obtain support and pay a diplomatic price for its steady refusal to acknowledge that Puerto Rico's present Commonwealth status sililply does not meet
international self-government standards.
It is also evident that the Puerto
Rico issue ha s long transcended its being the Cubans' ''pet issue" to irk the
United States, or even one garnering exclusively Third World and Soviet
support, as the vote by the Western European-dominated Socialist Internationc.l
indicates.
The roots of support for Puerto Rican independence, however, go way
beyond Fidel Castro and Willy Brandt's organization all the way back to the
father of Latin American independence, Simon Bolivar, who in the early nineteenth century led the struggle for liberating not only his native Venezuela ,
but also Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia.
Puerto Rico as a Latin American Issue:
The Roots
From the early stages of the Latin American independence struggle,
In 1~16 Vene:u e lan
Bolfvar was interested in liberating Puerto Rico.
.
,
insurgent ships tried to invade Puerto Rico, and six mon ths l ate r Bolivar
~-· ~-
·- - .
---- -
54
himself came ashore in nearby Vieques Island, but sailed off and returned to
Venezuela.
In 1823 one of his lieutenants, Antonio Valero, designed a plan
for the independence of Puerto Rico and joined with Cubans to plead before
Bolivar's generals for a Caribbean expedition to liberate both islands.
Bol1var revived the idea in the Panama Congress, and also used the threat of
a Puerto Rican invasion to try to get Washington· to force Spain to · make peac e
with him.
In 1827 he wrote:
"The moment has come to make the desired expe-
dition to Havana and Puerto Rico," but, realizing England would not help him,
dropped the plan.
Britain and the United States had joined forces after the
proclamation of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823 to deter the plan, because it
would endanger the "tranquility" of the Caribbean.
Yet Bolfvar kept his pla;1
alive and hoped for it in his letters until his death in 1830.
Bolfvar was not th.e only prominent Latin American leader to take up
j
the cause of Puerto Rico's independence.
In the latter part of the nine-
,,,
.
teenth century, the founder of the Cuban nation, Jose Marti, worked f / om
early on to unite Cuban and Puerto Rican
against Spain.
~eparatists
in their struggle
Some of his top aides in that effort were Puerto
he sent to Venezuela in search of support.
!Vhen Mart1 sponsored the creati0r
of the Cuban Revolutionary Party in Florida in 1891, its Charter declared as
its goals the achievement of the independence of Cuba. and "to foment and
Cl.SSist that of Puerto Rico."
MartiI' gave some of the revolutionary clubs he founded in the United
States names like Las Dos Antillas, in reference to the two islands.
the last year of
~is
life, wl1en he joined the revolution
~f
Up to
1895 in Cuba, h e
.I
was predicting that this new revolt would also bring about Puerto Rican
independence.
After his death, late that year, the . Puerto Ri can
S~
ion
c:
....
-...-- ... .
--·-·-
~- --
...
·-- - --·- · ·-~ -· --- --
--
·•
-- .
55
the Cuban Revolutionary Party was organi ze d in New York to fight for Puerto
Rican independence.
Thus, two of the most prominent Latin American leaders of the
nineteenth century established a commitment in the region in favor of Puerto
· Rican independence.
It survives to this day.
The Origins of Internationalization
Although the annexation of Puerto Rico by the United States provokec
an adverse reaction in Latin America, it was not until the 1920's that the
case of Puerto Rico came to the fore again.
A
~~~?~g ~at~onalist
movement developed on the Island for the firs t
time, and the Nationalist Party, founded in 1922,
cow~issioned
Pedro Albizu
Campos (a mulatto Harvard ' Law graduate from Southern Puerto Rico) to visit
several Latin American countries to propagate the Puerto Rican nationalist
ideal.
He left in 1927 and returned in 1930 to be elected president of the
party.
He had developed a new strategy in nationalist ranks by traveling
extensively in Latin America in search of support for independence.
In his tour he visited the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, Mexico ,
/
Panama, Peru and Venezuela.
He spoke against "yankee imperialism," tried
t i
organize groups in sympathy with Puerto Rican independence, and preached
"ibero-americanism."
In Cuba he participated in the Seventh International
Congress of the Latin American press, prompting a strong debate on American
interventionism in the Caribbean.
However, his efforts to have the case of
Puerto Rico discussed at the Pan American Union were unsuccessful.
In the
early fifties, the arrest of Pedro Albizu Campos for ..leading a nationalist
uprising was met with a strong adverse reaction in Lat in America.
--- ·-- ·--- - -
.
-- - ------ -·- -
-·-
.
56
The United Nations, Decolonization
and the Case of Puerto Rico
With the establishment of the United Nations in the wake of World 11'2.
I I, decolonization became an important principle of the emerging world orde1
Chapter 11 (articles 73 and 74) of the United Nations Charter contained the
Declaration. Regarding Non-Self-Governing. Territories, which established th e
accountability of metropolitan powers in their
tories.
rul~
over dependent terri-
The United States included Puerto Rico in the List of Non-Self-
Governing Territories, with the issue being taken up in the Fourth
Cammi ttee.
The Cammi ttee rejected a request by the President of the Puert .1
Rican Independence Party (PIP) Gilberto Concepcion de Gracia, and another h
.
the Nationalist Party to be heard on the subject.
Several countries--most prominently India, Guatemala and Mexico-. expressed their satisfaction at the progress that had taken place in Puert c
Rico's quest foT self-government but manifested doubts that the Conunonweal t
of Puerto Rico, as it was established in 1952, fully complied with the
criteria for self-government established by the world body.
As the Indian
delegate put it:
... my delegation is not convinced that Puerto ~ico, under its
present association with the United States has become a selfgoverning territory. In our opinion, there can be no free,
just or valid compact, association or agreement between two
countries or territories except on a basis of equality. We
believe that independence should precede any voluntary association ....
Most La.tin American nations, however--most prominentl y Brazil,
Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Panarna--sided with t he Unit ed States.
Ch .~
:J I
in the November vote in the General Assemb l)·, the resolution ~o d ~ ~; ; ~
Rico f rom the List of Non -Self- Governin g Terri tories was adopted by : 6
to 16 , "·ith 18 abst entio ns.
~ a t es
The La tin ,\Jne ric.:rn nations ? rOYid c::d t he c:"c< ·: :J.l
support for the U.S. position.
Of th e La tin American countries,
or:~:,·
:Jc: xico
and Guatemala voted against the r esolution and Vene:uela and Argenti na ab stained; all other countries vot ed in . favor.
As one corrunentator has )'Ut it,
....
power politics rat he r th an strict l ega l logic carri ed the day.
.·
i ·'
.. . • '
For seven years there was little movement of the Puerto Rico i s s ue a:
the U.N. but with the entrance of new African and Asian countries the push
for decolonization acquired a new momentum.
Resolution 1514, the Declarati on
on the Granting of Ind epende nce to Colonial Countries and Peopl es , was pass ed
in 1960.
It was to become a crucial tool for Cuban effort s to bring :he case
of Puerto Rico to international attention in years to come.
The Role of Revolutionary Cuba
The Cuban Revolution had a strong imp a ct in Pu e rto Rico, as it did
throughout Latin America, and in 1961 the
~ !ovimi e nto
Pro Independencia
(MPI)--predecessor of the current Puerto Rican Socialist Party (PSP)--was
founded in San Juan.
The young, radical group soon established close ties
with the Cuban revolutionary government and asked to be heard by the recently
created De colonization Committee, or Committee of 24, s e t up by the United
Nations to implement resolution 1514.
The effort, opposed by the Unit ed
Stat es , failed.
To count er wnat i t saw as an emergi ng anti-colonialist camp aign on
Puerto Rico , Pr esident Kenn edy promp t ed :1 lunoz to hold a plebiscite.
t ri ed to us e th e oppo rt un ity to .'.lc i1ieve gr e.'.lter autonom >· for
,'lu11oz
t l ~e C o~::.1 • rn
•i eal th,
58
but without success, and the plebiscite was finally held in 1967, with
Commonwealth supporters out-voting statehooders 2 to 1 and independentistas
abstaining.
Cuba brought the case of Puerto Rico before the Second Swnmit
Conference of the Non-Aligned Movement in Cairo in 1964, with the conference
requesting that the Decolonization Committee take up the issue.
But it was not until 1972, after the United States and the United
Kingdom had withdrawn from the Decolonization Committee that Cuba achieved
~
major breakthrough as the Committee passed a resolution proclaiming "the
inalienable right of the people of Puerto Rico to self-determination and
independence in accordance with General Assembly Resolution 1514.''
The
Committee has discussed the case of Puerto Rico every year since then, wit h
Cuba taking the lead in introducing resolutions and· working for their
.approval.
Other Latin American countries have wavered in their position on th e
issue.
In 1973 Chile requested that the two pro-independence parties from
Puerto Rico be heard by the Committee, a motion that was approved, but the
Chilean delegation has sided with the United States since then.
Venezuela
abstained in 1972 and 1973, withdrew from the Committee in 1975, to return
in 1981 and vote in favor of the resolution on Puerto Rico in 1982 and 19 83
In March 1975 the U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations, John Scali
made clear that Cuba's role in the United Nations con·cerning Puerto Rico's
status would be .a decisive factor in evaluating the course of U.S.-Cuban
relations--a warning with little deterrent effect, as in Sept ember 1975 th E
First International Conference of Solidarity with Puer to Ri ca n Independenc (
was held in Havana.
Secretary of State Henry Kissin ge r l abe l ed it "an
.....
.-..-.---.......
., .........
59
unfriendly act, since it is a totally unwarranted interference in our
domestic affairs."
Up to 1976, however, the Puerto Rican issue at the United Nations
~a
seen as merely the effort of a single nation--Cuba--to embarrass the United
States .
Changes of administration in the United States and in Puerto Rico
were to bring about dramatic changes in that.perception.
The Carter Administration's Policy Change
With the advent of Jimmy Carter to the .Presidency of the United
States and the victory of a party favoring statehood in Puerto Rico a new
situation was created.
The Island-born advisors to the President on Puertc
Rican affairs during his campaign notified the 1\'hi te House in early Januar)·
1977 that they would join the effort at the United Nations to declare Puertc
Rico a "colony" of the United States and to prompt a process of decolonization.
In April 1977, the newly elected governor of Puerto Rico, Carlos
Romero Barcel6 met with U.S. Ambassador to . the United Nations Andrew Youn g
and refused to defend Puerto Rico's Commonwealth status before the United
Nations because of its "colonial vestiges . "
Prompted by a group of Carter
followers in the Island and on the mainland, the U.S . State Department announced in May 1977 through Assistant Secretary of State Terence Todman th2
,
the
Unit~d
States had decided to abandon the defense of the status quo and
l,
\
now opted for "self-determination and alternative futures" for the Puerto
Ricans, meaning that any of the three status alternatives would be
to the United States.
accepta ~
60
This policy change was prompted by State Department studies dating
back to 1974-75 and by the knowledge that petitioners from Puerto Rican
ideological sectors--led by Carter supporters--would appear and testify
before the Decolonization Committee in August.
Thus, another crucial breakthrough on the Puerto Rico issue at the
U.N. was reached in 1978.
No longer
w~re
Juan Mari
Br~s,
the leader of t h:
Puerto Rican Socialist Party and Ruben Berrfos, the president of the Puer t
Rican Independence Party (PIP) the main Puerto Rican speakers at the
Decolonization Cerami ttee Hearings.
Governor Carlos Romero Barcelfi and forr
governor Rafael Hernandez Col6n joined the independence leaders in testify·
before the Decolonization Committee.
As the Washington Post put it:
For the first time, virtually the whole spectrum of political
opinion in Puerto Rico has appeared before a U.N. committee
here this past week and criticized the Island's Commonwealth
status. All the speakers despite their otherwise conflicting
views, agreed that there are at least vestiges of colonialism
in Puerto Rico's current relationship with the United States.
The Puerto Rican Question at the United Nations had come of age.
longer could it be argued that all there was to it was Castro's attempt to
embarrass the United States.
On July 25, 1978 President Carter issued the presidential proclama
tion--included in the U.S. International Law Digest as the official positi
of the United States--adopting self-determination and alternative futures
(improved Commonwealth, statehood or independence) for Puerto Rico.
In the ·wake of these developments a new wave of Latin American sup
port for Puerto Rican independence ensued.
The Second Solidar ity Confere:•.
with Puerto Rican Independence was held in MexicQ City in 19 79 .
In Oaxaca
61
another Solidarity Conference with Puerto Rico was held, under the sponso"!·
ship of Latin American Social Democratic parties.
The Reagan Administration and the United Nations
On the Puerto Rican status issue, President Reagan has come
the side of
statehood~ ·
do~~
o
But at the United Nations, his administration ha s
continued to insist, as all previous ones, that the Puerto Rico issue is
~
strictly domestic affair, that it stands by self-determination for Puerto
Rico and that it is up to the Puerto Rican electorate to determine the fu1
of Puerto Rico--an electorate that, as the argument goes, has shown littl t
support for the independence parties.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick has taken
leading role in trying to keep the Puerto Rico issue off the agenda of th·
Decolonization Committee and the General Assembl y , with mixed success.
1982, for the first time since the first Cuban breakthrough at the
Decolonization Committee in 1972, the case of Puerto Rico was brought be:'
the General Assembly.
Although the Steering Committee voted not to incl l
it in the Agenda, and the General Assembly its elf ultimately supported t :'
Committee's decision by a vote of 70 to 30 with 43 abstentions, in the n1
cedural debate substantive issues on Puerto Rico's situation were addres :
among other countries, by Chile, Ecuador, Uruguay, Brazil, Venezuela,
Grenada, Argentina and Nicaragua.
I.
After the vote, Panama, Venezuela and
Mexico addressed the issue of Puerto Rico in the speeches of their
representatives before the General Assembly a few days. later.
'
Panama, which had promised to vote for inclusion of the Puerto R
case in .the General Assembly agenda during the Non- Aligned Conference he
... --.. ·---·--·-·-
- -- -
62
the previous June in Havana, ultimately changed its position, leading Vice
President Jorge Illueca to state:
Independence for Puerto Rico is one of the deferred tasks of the
liberating revolution of Latin American nations ... The issue of
Puerto Rico has historical roots. The ~act that it was not
included in this year's agenda is not~ solution nor is it
evidence that the problem <lo~s not exist. It would be naive
to think that votes cast here for reasons : of state are sanctioned
by Latin American public ·opinion.
Mexico had also promised to vote for inclusion of the Puerto Rican case on
the General Assembly agenda, but once its economic crisis erupted, it
abstained.
Venezuela, which had wavered on the Puerto Rico issue in the
Decolonization Committee in 1981, but voted in favor of inclusion in 1982 ,
had this to say in the words of Foreign Minister Jose Alberto Zambrano:
Puerto Rico has constituted a special concern of the Venezuelans
since -the beginnings of the struggle for Latin American freedom
led by our Liberator Sim6n Bolfvar. Among Venezuelans there is
a deep sentiment identified with the ideal of the father of our
country that Puerto Rico should be a member of the Latin American
family.
The Puerto Rican Question has thus come to the forefront as the l a
colonial issue in U.S.-Latin American relations.
Whether it will poison
Inter American relations the way Vietnam did with Washington's global pol j
remains an open question.
What is certain is that it will not go away.
- - -- -- ·-------
FIVE
FACING THE PRESENT
On February 24, 1982 President Ronald Reagan unveiled before the
Organization of American States one of the most significant foreign policy
measures of his administration:
The Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI).
~Almost· as an afterthought, . the sixth and final p_
o int of the CBI' s economic
program referred to Puerto Rico:
"Given our special valued relationship
with Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, we will propose special measures to insure that they also (our emphasis) will_ benefit and prosper from
this program ... "
From a showcase of democracy under ·the Alliance for
Progress, Puerto Rico has become an addendum to the CBI.
The Caribbean Basin Initiative
In establishing a one-way free trade zone with the nations of the
Caribbean Basin and granting a variety of tax and investment . incentives for
U.S. firms to establish themselves in the region, the CBJ ·(signed into law
in the swmner of 1983) in effect attempts to set up "one, two, many Puerto
Ricos" throughout the lands washed by the Caribbean Sea.
It is ironic that
the Initiative came into being precisely at the time when Puerto Rico was
undergoing its worst economic crisis :since the Great Depression, and that i t
centerpiece, by granting to the Caribbean and Central American nations alm 05'
unlimited access to the U.S. market, is likely to worsen Puerto Rico's economic plight.
But the central points underscored by the CBI as regards Pue :
Rico have to deal with political rather than economic policy .
The CBI is, in effect, only one among a
scar~
of measur es
underta ~e ·
by the Reagan administration which have already seriousl:• har.ne d the Puert o
63
64
Rican economy or have the potential to do so in the future.
The massive
tax-cuts--particularly of the corporate income tax--enacted in 1981 and 1982
have decreased the attractiveness of investing in Puerto Rico, which has
based its economic development program on the ultimate tax incentive:
percent exemption from federal and state taxes.
social pro.grams were also enacted:
100
Drastic reductions in feder ;
1
the elimination of the CETA program cost
Puerto Rico 25,000 jobs; the Food Stamp Program's allocation for Puerto Rico
was cut back from over one billion dollars to 825 million, and frozen at
that amount; many other programs, from ·rural housing to public education,
were similarly affected.
These measures are also significant because of the political contex t
in which they were implemented.
Candidate Ronald Reagan made a strong en-
dorsement of statehood for Puerto Rico in a Wall Street Journal article in
February 1980, yet the policies of President Reagan seem almost expressly dL
signed to make impossible the re-election of .Governor Carlos Romero
Barcelo--an ardent statehooder.
Still, the apparent paradox of a United States President on record ::
favoring statehood for Puerto Rico, but whose
poli~ies
seem almost designed
to cause serious setbacks : to the Puerto Rican statehood movement is not
difficult to explain. · There is no need to impute some grand design to mak e
image.
Puerto Rico get away f:ror.<. '.i ts :1.'.\folfare .Island;· u~s.A: · ~·;. Organizational anc
bureaucratic processes offer more fruitful perspectives than political or
1.
partisan motivations in this regard.
The fact is that the executive branc h
of the United States government is almost totally unpr:_epared to deal with
Puerto Rico.
There is, of course, no single office wit h r esponsibility
coordinating United States relations 1>ith Puerto Rico.
fc ~
A l arge number of
65
federal .agencies are involved in program administration and investigative and
regulatory activities on the Island.
But U.S. relations with Puerto Rico on
a more general level fall into a gray area which is not part of the domestic
or the international policy-making apparatus, a classic "inter-mestic"
issue.
W\lile the State Department's Office of International Organizations
has filled part of this
ga~,
there is no single uffice with integrated,
day-to-day responsibilities to deal with Puerto Rico.
The Need for a Policy
It is not surprising then that domestic
and foreign
economic policy are designed and implemented with little consideration for
Puerto Rico.
Its basic economic structure is a very different one from that
of the states of the Union, with federal tax exemption being a key developme ;
incentive, the public sector playing a decisive role in economic activities
and employment and the proportion of net income derived from federal
trans± ~
payment programs being much higher than in the states of the Union.
On the
other hand, given Puerto Rico's relation with the United States, it is, by
definition, in a very different position from other Caribbean nations, as
Puerto Rico is unable to set its oKn tariffs, enter into commercial
treatie ~
with other nations or set monetary policy.
Only a policy specifically designed for Puerto Rico will therefore
~
But U.S. policy toward the Island over the past three decades has been piec r
meal and ad hoc, at best characterized by "selective inattention," at worst
"benign neglect."
·:- ·
·---------
--~
-- -·-
66
Self-Determination as Evasion
"Why are you worrying about statehood and independence? ... You will
get either or both as soon as you are ready," said House of Representatives
Speaker Joseph Cannon in an address to a joint session of the Puerto Rican
Legislature in an April 1919 visit to the Island.
The timeless nature of h ·: .:
words, which could have perfectly well been uttered by a visiting U.S. Congressman in the. early 1980' s, dramatically illustrates both the continuity :..
U. S'. "non-policy" and the static nature of Puerto Rico's status debate.
Mc ;-
importantly, it is an antecedent variant of the comfortable if self-serving
position U.S. officials take on Puerto Rico today.
In 1948, President Harry S. Truman inaugurated the
self-det e rminat ~ ( :
policy on Puerto Rico stating :that.; "The .Puerto Rican people shoµld have th e
right · to determine for themselves Puerto Rico's political relationship to t ..
continental · United States."
In 1953, President Eisenhower sent a message to the United
Nation ~
General Assembly, then discussing the case of Puerto Rico, saying that "if
any time the Legislative Assembly of Puerto Rico adopts a resolution in fa v.
of more complete or even absolute independence, he (President Eisenhower)
will immediately recommend to Congress that such independence be granted . "
As recently as January 11, 1982, President Reagan, in a statement reiterat i
his support for Puerto Rican statehood, repeated that "We recognize the r1 ;
of the Puerto Rican people to self-determination."
I-
Who can quarrel with this position?
commonsensical one?
Isn't it the most sensible a:-..
Wouldn 't it be a return to the c.:-a ssest f orm of
colonialism for the United States to impose unilaterall y i t s preference on
67
Puerto "Rico's status, rather than wait for the Puerto Rican people to make u
their
o~~
minds about it?
There are two basic problems with this line of argwnent.
one arises from historical experience .
The first
It is simply not true that the Unit e
States is prepared to grant to Puerto Ricans greater powers if they so
des i ~
As Table I (p.21) shows there have been at least three major attempts to re vise and upgrade the present Commonwealth status (in 1953, 1959 and 1975)
several less significant ones.
All of them came to naught because of
tion within various branches of the U.S. government.
a~
oppo s ~
One may agree or dis-
agree with the wisdom of the political strategy followed by the Government c
Puerto Rico to obtain passage of the "culminated" Commonweal th bills, but t i·
fact is that, in this resp ect--in projects counting with the full support
the Puerto Rican voters, let alone the
Legislature~-the
oi
United States has n
1
stood by the principle of self-determination.
The second problem with what. we might call the "self-detemination
evasion" position is procedural.
One of the reasons there is a political
stalemate on status in Puerto Rico is because the Puerto Ritan people do no·
know the consequences of their plebiscitary endorsement of one status optio
or the other.
All they know is that once it happens, the U.S. Congress wi l
decide, and there is no guarantee that it will accept that option, or
uncle ~
what conditions it will do so, matters that are central for determining sur
port of one option over the other in the first place :
Beyond the Three-Ring Circus
'
In this cont ext, then, it is easy to understan d t he pe rpetuation o:
Puerto Rico's status debate.
The perennial fora and exchange s on the subj
68
tend to obfuscate rather than illumina te the issue:
as Puerto Ricans engage
in exceedingly abstract discussions of the comparative advantages of each
status alternative--statehood, Corrunonwealth or independence--North Americans
take again and again the comfortable position best expressed as "let Puerto
Ricans reach agreement among themselves first, and then come to us."
is precisely this attitude that has made
progre~s
Rican Question an apparently impossible task.
And i t
in resolving the Puerto
In the name of self-deter-
mination, Washington shrugs off all responsibility for initiating change i n
Puerto Rico's colonial condition.
Yet in Puerto Rico itself, more and mor e
the issue has become decolon1zation, a process that, by definition, ·require s
an active involvement of the colonial power, in this case, the United Stat es
All change implies some ris ks, and U.S. policy-makers being what
.
j
I
l
!
l
are, would rather live with Puerto Rico's status quo- than become involved
a complex process of status change.
th ~
: . r.
And it is true that change toward any ,
the preferred alternatives of Puerto Rico's leading political parties
rai s ~
not insignificant constitutional, economic, strategic and ultimately politi cal questions within the U.S. political system.
Granting to Puerto Rico all or some of the many powers Corrunonweal t l~
have been clamoring for--say, control over irrunigration of foreigners (non-l 1
l
r
citizens) into Puerto Rico--raises a myriad of legal questions as to the
rights of states versus the federal government, as do many of the other
powers (like the right to enter into commercial agreements with other
nations) Commonwealthers have been asking for.
admission of
j
as political.
Pue~to
The issues raised by the
Rico as the Slst state of the Union are not so much l eg
Would half of the st a te Congressi onal delegatio ns be
will i n ~
to vote for admission for a state that would have a lar ger Congr essional &:
69
Electoral College Delegation (with 9
me~bers)
than they do?
Would a
Spanish-speaking state with a culture that is very different from the
on~
predominating in the United States be accepted as a full-fledged state of the
Union?
And what about the disruptive potential of the pro-independence
minority that would continue its struggle, but this time within the Union?
The independence option, on the other hand, raises for some the
specter of "another Cuba."
What would happen to the extensive U.S . military
installations in the Republic of Puerto Rico?
Given Puerto Rico's current
economic dependence on the United States, would it be able to make it on its
own?
How much aid would it need from Washington and for how long?
What
would happen to the U.S. citizenship of Puerto Ricans?
Even from this brief list it should be apparent that change will not
be easy, and that reasonable people can differ on which of these options is
the best or least bad one for the national interest of the United States.
A
much more productive approach for the United States would be to disengage
itself from the support of substantive outcomes in the resolution of Puerto
Rican status--and in this regard the July 1978 "alternative futures" policy
statement of President Carter is particularly relevant--and develop a
two-pronged policy toward Puerto Rico aimed at facilitating an eventual
transition to any of the three preferred status option-s.
This would mean, on
the one hand, to take action on a mmber of very specific current problems
.posed by Puerto Rico's relationship with the United States, and on the
other, to initiate a process leading to an eventual resolution of the status
question--shelving.self-determination and moving toward what Robert Pastor
. has called mutual determination.
---....----
_,.
..
-···---· .. ------
-- ---·--·- .. -
- ···--·- ~
70
Some Key Issues
h'hat is needed, then, is an approach that responds to Puerto Rico's
needs and is compatible with U.S. interests in Puerto Rico, the Caribbean,
and Latin America more generally.
We would like to single out some key
policy areas in which relatively rapid changes can be implemented, thus
easing an eventual status transition and diffusing present potentially dangerous trends.
The Economic Conundrum:
From Food Checks to Block Grants
As was indicated in Chapter 3, despite all the progress that has
taken place in Puerto Rico over the past decades, in the early eighties
tr ~
Island is facing some very serious economic problems.
High unemplo}1Tient, d.
creasing investment rates, a negative personal
rate and· an excessi v'
savi~gs
dependence on federal funds are some of the most critical problem areas.
There have been some imaginative efforts by the Government of Puert
Rico to open up new avenues for economic activity over the past few years;
most significantly a new emphasis on agricultural development leading to
)
I
commercial rice production--a standard Puerto Rican staple--and the develc ,
ment of some agribusinesses using state-of-the-art cultivation techniques c
l
fruits and vegetables.
But, by and large, there is no overall economic
d <; -
velopment strategy; Fomento's program continues to be predicated on the
attraction of U.S. manufacturing firms who set up assembly plants in Puert <
Rico to produce for the U.S. market.
pillars of
growt~
Construction and tourism, the two ot 1
from 1950 to 1970, declined dramatically during the
seventies, with the total number of hotel rooms dropping from 7,792 in 19 7
to 5,954 in 1983, and the number of construction permits droppi ng by two- T
from 12,825 in 1970 to 4,694 in 1982.
71
Federal assistance programs to the Island hav e mushroomed, with gro s
federa l expenditures r eachin g ov er 4 billion dollars in 1982.
But these
programs are mostly transfer payments to individu a ls rather than funds gear t
toward economic development, thus creating a more or less permanent addictic
to the ·federal purse.
Substituting half of that amount (some. two billion dollars) for
block grants to the Puerto Rican government--earmarked for economic develo p
ment projects--would allow Puerto Rico to use these funds to build and
develop its own industrial structure--rather than depend almost exclusive.I; ·
on externally-owned assembly plants.
Investing in transport and communica
tions infrastructure with the rest of the Caribbean and helping to create
industries geared for local consumption and for expor t s to ot her countries
the Caribbean Basin could start to put Puerto Rico ·on its own economic feet ,
and make the transitioR to any different status alternative considerably
easier.
Such an approach entails distinct advantages over the present
situation, in which federal allocations to Puerto Rico have grown because ._,
national domestic policy rather than out of an evaluation of Puerto Rico's
economic development needs and priorities.
should be the goal; job
cr~ation
Greater economic
self-sufficie ~ ·
the immediate objective.
U.S. Military Interests
The crisis in Central America has put a halt to a steadil y declini :-_
U.S. interest in the Caribbean Basin region.
In the geometry of strategi c
and military analysts, the Ni caraguan and the Grenadian Re volutions threat t
to counterpose a pro-Soviet triangle--with lines ru~nin g fr om St. George' s
the Eastern Caribbean, to Havana and Managua--to the tr aditional U.S. mi li t
72
triangle whose vertices are the Guantanamo base in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the
Panama Canal.
It is this changing politico-strategic environment, then, that puts a
premium on Puerto Rico as a U.S. military bastion in general, and on the
Navy's Roosevelt Roads base, located in Southeastern Puerto Rico, in
par~icular.
Puerto Rico has traditionally played a significant role in U.S.
military strategy because of its key location at the very center of the
Caribbean archipelago, and continues to do so at the present time.
Al thougl·.
a significant number of military facilities were closed during the seventiesmost significantly Ramey Air Force Base in 1973--some of them are being
reconditioned and prepared to be used again.
With the loss of full U.S.
control over the Panama Canal, some argue that Puerto Rico's role
;
'
~ "/
·-
has become even more critical for U.S. naval interests ·in
..·.., · ·.:.._ ·_
the Caribbean.
In the context of Puerto Rico's recently heightened military
significance for the United States a critical issue arises.
I.
As
~he . Status
Comm.i ssion Report of 1966 pointed out in its inventory of federal agencies
with offices in Puerto Rico, the presence of the branches of the U.S. Armed
Forces in Puerto Rica sµffers from a weak legal basis.
For example, the
Commission was unable to determine the legal basis for the presence in Puert
Rico at the time of Ramey Air Force Base, of the Antilles Command of the
Department of the Army (except for unidentified "joint statutes" by the U.S.
Congress and the P,uerto Rican Legislature) or the 10th Naval District of th E
U.S. Navy (except for Presidential Proclamations of 1899 and 194 1).
argument has been made that the Puerto Rican
..
Legisla~ur e
The
gav e a "generic
73
corisent'' to their presence in a 1952 legislative resolution .
However, the
issue of the legal bases for U.S. military installations in Puerto Rico remains to be settled.
The case of Vieques Island, Puerto Rico's Gibraltar,
prominent.
~s
the most
A relatively small (51 square miles) island located some seven
miles southeast of Puerto Rico, it has been ,taken over almost in full by t r.
U.S. Navy since 1941, with 22,000 of its 34,000 acres being under control c
the U.S. Marine Corps and the Navy.
Since the Navy's takeover and consequ E
curtailment of many economic activities, it has declined steadily, with it _
population dropping from over 11,000 in 1940 to 7,700 in 1970 despite considerable population growth in Puerto Rico.
The use of Vieques as an unrestricted weapons training complex
the Atlantic Fleet has been the main reason
publi~ly
fo ~
offered by the.Navy =
steady refusal to give up what it considers to be the only place where
th ~
Fleet can undertake the full range of exercises under simulated combat cor,
tions--although with the range of uninhabited islands available in the
Caribbean that seems a questionable proposition.
Not surprisingly, Viequ
is the one place in Puerto Rico where constant friction and
confrontatio n ~
between U.S. military personnel and Puerto Ricans take place on a regular
basis.
Vieques fishermen are irked by the Navy's restriction of their
fishing areas; Marines get into regular brawls with Viequenses, and eco nc
development of the island--be it through agriculture or tourism--has
be e ~
effectively halted by having two-thirds of the island's territory under
control.
Governor Carlos Romero Barcel6 filed suit in 19 78 to enjoin the ~
from using Vieques for weapons training
purposes~-to
no av ail, and
the ~ .
74
use of Vieques r emains to this day a sore point to Puerto Ricans of all
ideological stripes, from statehooders to ind ependentistas.
In any future
status transition, the issue of Vieques will come up, in close linkage with
'
the continued operation of all U.S. military installations in Puerto Rico.
One of .the single most important steP,S that the United States coul d
take to indicate its commitment to the princip.le of
se~f-determination
is t .
squarel y face, and clarify by mutual agreement, its military presence in
Puerto Rico.
Languag e and Culture
If there is any lesson to be learned from the first fifty years of
U.S. presence in Puerto Rico--and the innumerable efforts to Americanize
Puerto Ricans by making English into the official language--i t is that
S~anish
is here to stay and will continue to be Puerto Rico's language.
On this, there are no differences among the various political par t
and statehooders have repeatedly stated that Spanish is not negotiable in
any future transition toward statehood.
Although English has long ceased to be the main language of
instruction in the schools of Puerto Rico--as it was for many decades of
this century--there is one place in Puerto Rico where only English is spok
a place where crucial 4ecisions are
District Court in San Juan.
~ade
on a daily basis:
the federal U.
Al though its judges are all Puerto Ricans, b°'·
law all of the court's proceedings have to be carried out in English.
Again, this is an area where a remarkable consensus exists in Puerto
Ri~ o :
'
it is an affront
to Puerto Rican lawyers, their clients and th e general
public to have to use a lan guag e that is not Pu erto Rico ' s pr ecisel y when
some of the most central issues facing the Island-- ranging fr om environmE
75
safety st~ndards to the nature and limits of freedom of expression--are being
argued.
For example, an act of Congress making official the use of Spanish in
the San Juan U.S. District Court would be one way to demonstrate that the
United States is truly committed to respect Puerto Rico's vernacular language.
Congressional failure to do so would be an indication to the ·contrary.
At a time when Spanish has become de facto the dominant language in
many areas of the Southwest and barrios of the Northeastern United States
("The real question in Arizona is whether English will remain as the second
language, or slip into third place, after Spanish and Navajo" has said
Governor Bruce Babbitt), Spanish as Puerto Rico's vernacular should. be
accepted as a fact of life.
Puerto Ricans on the Mainland
The plight of mainland Puerto Ricans is, to this day, one of the
great tragedies of the relationship between the United States and Puerto
Rico.
For a variety of circumstances related to the lack of education and
training of many Puerto Rican migrants, the decline of the industrial areas
of the Northeast most of them migrated to and the discrimination they have
encountered because of their color and their language, mainland Puerto Ricans
find themselves today at the very bottom of U.S. society--perhaps only
slightly better off than the most recently arrived Haitians--as survey after
survey indicates.
Their lot -will only improve once they establish greater political
'
power than they have until now; and their fate is also intimatel y linked to
the economic prosperity or lack thereof in the
have overwhelmingly settled in.
~ortheaster n
urb an areas they
76
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i
J
Despite this rather bleak picture there is one specific area where
I
administrative measures can start to redress some of the injustice mainland
Puerto Ricans have had to go through.
Affirmative action progr3.ffis aimed at
increasing the number of Hispanics in universities, businesses and the
fed~ral
government have in most cases left open the possibility of using
mainland or Island Puerto Ricans to fill student ·or hiring quotas.
As data
from Puerto Rico's Engineering School show, it is becoming corrunon for federa l
agencies or big U.S. corporations to hire large nwnbers of often upper class
Puerto, Rican college recruits who fill their minority hiring quotas.
Al -
though, as U.S. citizens, Puerto Ricans on the Island have the full right t L
be considered for federal appointments or jobs in U.S. industry as any othe r
U.S. citizen would be, affirmative action programs in the United States wer . ;
set up to help disadvantaged mainland Puerto Ricans. · Affirmative action
should be directed at ·improving the educational and employment
opportuniti e ~
·and the quality of life of mainland Puerto Ricans.
Toward a U.S. Policy for Puerto Rico
As the brief discussion of some key issues in U.S.-Puerto Rican
relations has shown, the Puerto Rican Question cannot be reduced to the
status issue;
th~re
are a variety of areas in which measurable progress can
be achieved without necessarily getting into either the substantive or procedural problems raised by a status change.
But our point is that making
good progress toward resolving the aforementioned issues would pave the way
for a smoother and easier resolution of the current impasse.
The
followin ~
sections will deal specifically with the ways an American policy toward Puer
Rico can be shaped to cut through the Gordian Knot "of th e s t atus issue.
-
-- - - -- -- ··--·
77
The Locus o{ the Problem
Even a cursory review of U.S.-Puerto Rican relations since the
establishment of the Estado Libre Asociado in 1952 will indicate that the
United States has followed a "policy-of-no-policy'' toward the Island.
The .
numerous efforts to upgrade the Commonwealth by expanding its powers and
autonomy failed not so much because they ran counter to U.S. interests or
policy positions, but because of the absence of an overall policy toward
matters Puerto Rican.
Individual U.S. executive agencies, the Congress and
the judiciary thus acted simply to protect their own turf.
The lowest
common denominator was to do nothing, so as not to reduce the bureaucratic or
programmatic or legal prerogatives of the Navy, or Interior, 9r Treasury or
Congress.
This absence of a policy is related to the low priority Puerto Rico
received by top policy makers, but also to the absence of some permanent
locus for Puerto Rican affairs withiri the federal government.
This has made
it impossible to build and develop the sort of human, organizational and
informational resources needed for
analysis~
evaluation and diffusion of the
data and knowledge available on Puerto Rico.
The 1983 proposal of a Senate Select Committee on Puerto Rico was
thus an important step in the rignt direction.
It should allow for a
permanent professional evaluation of the many conflicting issues. emerging in
U.S.-Puerto Rican relations.
Anchoring
~
Policy
With the territorial clause of the Constitution dictating the principle of Congressional government over Puerto Rico,_ the location of a
federal unit on Puerto Rican affairs in the U.S. Senate is appropriate and
78
conveni ent.
The next step, then, is to develop a policy toward the Puerto
Rican Question that will engage it before the situation on the Island
deteriorates to the point of no return.
Such a policy should be based on the following cardinal pririciples:
• Make Pu erto Rico Economicall y Self-Sufficient
Low investment rates and the Island 1 s depen.d ency on federal funds
have reached dangerous leve ls.
A program of block grants such as the one out-
lined above should go a long way toward rebuilding Puerto Rico's economic
development base.
By taking half of the current 4 billion in federal funds
going to Puerto Rico and making it into a 20-year entitlement program,
subject to be raised only according to the inflation rate, Puerto Rico could
lay the foundations . for solid, self-sustaining economic gro wth irrespective
of its political : status.
• Watch Process--Not Substance
The conclusions reached by the United States-Puerto Rico Status
Commission in 1966, that any of the three status alternatives is equally
acceptable to the United States should be still valid today .
U.S. political
parties, the President and the Congress should disengage themselves from the
business of supporting one or the other status options and commit themselves
to ensuring that the process by which a decision is ultimately reached is
fair and equitable to all.
• Search for Agreement by Consensus-- Not Fiat
Any approa6h toward breaking through the status stalemat e must be
full y bi-partisan, encompass all three branches of the fede ra l government and
involve all Puerto Rican political parties--a true proces s of mu t ua l
79
determination can only succeed of all relevant actors are involved--including
the international corrununity in the form of international observers from the
United Nations for any plebescite to be held in the future.
•
Make a Plebiscite an End Result,
~ot
a Starting Point
After a. period in which Puerto Rico has started the long road
toward greater economic self-sufficiency and away from the single-minded
integration with the U.S. economy that has characterized the development over
the past four decades, a bi-partisan, bilateral, U.S.-Puerto Rican process
should be initiated to work on an agreement with extensive Congressional and
Executive Branch consultation and input--on the conditions under which statehood, independence or a "culminated" CoIDP.lonwealth .would be acceptable to the
U.S. Congress.
This would overcome the most serious obstacle to any plebiscite on
the status issue in the present circumstances:
Voters in Puerto Rico today
simply do not know under what conditions each of the status alternatives will
be implemented.
A "Guinea-like," punitive independence is likely to be as
unacc eptable to Puerto Ricans as an "All-American" statehood in which
English became the official language and federal taxes were imposed swiftly
and curtly or a powerless Corrunonwealth.
Once the conditions attached to each status option are clearly
spelled out the Puerto Rican electorate can embark on determining the
nature of the relationship Puerto Rico is to have with the United States.
80
Conclusion
The Puerto Rican Question indeed embodies a fundamental challenge to
the American soul.
The Puerto Ricans are a nation.
effective way to bring progress and
I_
chang~
Commonwealth has been an
but its own evolution has brought
about a serious crisis .which has now transcended to the international arena.
I
To face the present, the United States · needs to formulate a policy on Puerto
Rico.
In its design, it should heed the advice of "Macho" Camacho, the main
character in . Puerto Rico's most popular novel, who favors "those lyrics that
I
speak truths, those lyrics that speak realities, those lyrics that speak of
i
things the way they are and not the way you want them to be. r.1
I
I
I
l
j
l
!
•'
_ ..,J , ; . . \ . •
,....,_ ,.,._:.•~. · - - ··· · · · .
.. ;•-, . . _
.. ........ : .. ...
. .. .
_•,,' y.,~ .-.J · •-· • ... .i. • •
~: · · "-
. .. .
TALKING IT OVER
--In what ways, if any, are the turn-of-the-century debates in American
society between the "imperialists" and the "anti-imperialists" relevant to
contemporary U.S. relations with its overseas territories?
--The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico was widely hailed in the fifties as an
imaginative and forward-looking entity.
dissatisfaction with its condition.
Today there is widespread
What happened?
--What were the reasons behind the success of Puerto Rico's industrialization
strategy from the late forties to the mid-sixties?
--The case of Puerto Rico seems to pose an intractable conflict between the U.S,
interpretation
of
the principle of self-determination, on the one hand, and
the principle of decolonization on the other.
In what ways can this
conflict be resolved?
--Discuss the following proposition:
Even if the United Nations General Assembly were to approve a resolution
calling for a decolonization process in Puerto Rico, the United States
should do nothing until Puerto Rican voters themselves have manifested
their desire for changes in the present U.S.-Puerto Rico relationship:
--Should the United States help to enhance Puerto Rico's economic self
sufficiency?
j
If so, for what r_easons and in what ways?
•
81
READING LIST
Berrios, Ruben. "Independence for Puerto Rico: The Only Solution."
Foreign Affairs, Vol. 55, No. 3 (April 1977), pp. 561-583. A
statement by Puerto Rico's leading pro-independence advocate.
~~-,-='--~~~~
Bhana, Surendra. The United States and the Development of the Puerto Rican
Status Question, 1936-1968. La\-.irence, Kansas: University of Kansas
Press, 1975. A first-rate, richly documented study of U.S. policy
toward Puerto Rico in that period.
Bonilla, Frank, and Ricardo Campos . .''A Wealth of Poor·: Puerto Ricans in
the New Economic Order." Daedalus, Vol. 110, No. 2 (Spring 1981),
pp. 133-176. A rigorous, critical piece on the political economy
of U.S.-Puerto Rican relations.
Clark, Truman. Puerto Rico and the United States, 1917-1933. Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1975. A well-rounded history of a
much neglected, but decisive era in U.S.-Puerto Rican relations.
Garcia-Passalacqua, Juan M. Puerto Rico: Equality and Freedom at Issue in
the Caribbean. New York: Praeger, forthcoming. A provocative
analysis of Puerto Rican politics and U.S. pol icy 1n the seventies
and eighties.
Heine, Jorge (ed.). Time for Decision: The United States and Puerto Rico.
Lanham, Maryland: North-South, 1983. Possibly the most comprehensive examination of key political and economic issues in U.S.-Puerto
Rican relations.
Hernandez Colon, Rafael. "Guiding Principles for the Development of the
Commonwealth ii:_ Permanent Union with the United States of America."
Testimony before the Ad Hoc Advisory Group on Puerto Rico, San Juan,
Puerto Rico, Apr i 1 27, 1974. A
defense of Conunonweal th status
and i~; £uture development by former Governor Hernandez Colon.
Lewis, Gordon. Puerto Rico: Freedom and Power in the Caribbean. New York:
Monthly Review Press, 1963. A wel I-written, standard work on Puerto
Rican history and society from a pan-Caribbean perspective.
Lopez, Adalberto (ed.). The Puerto Ricans: Their History, Culture and
Society. Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1980. A collection of some
very good, concise and informative essays; one-third of the book is
devoted to Puerto Ricans in the United States.
Morales Carrion, Arturo. Puerto Rico: A Political and Cultural History.
New York: W. \I/. Norton, 1983. An excellent
·· survey by
Puerto Rico's leading historian.
Romero Barcelo, Carlos. "Puerto Rico, U.S.A.: The Case .for State hood ."
Foreign Affairs, Vol. 59, tfo. l (Fal 1 1980), pp. 60-81. Gov ernor
Romero makes his case.
- ----- . --. -· ~·
.....
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...·~-;o.-.....
83
Sanchez, Luis Rafael. Macho Camacho's Beat. New York: Pantheon, 1981.
· witty, mordant novel on life in modern San Juan.
Steward, Julian. The People of Puerto Rico. Urbana, Ill.: University of
11 l inois Press, 1956. A major anthropological study of Puerto Rican
society in the immediate post-war period.
Tugwell, Rexford. The Stricken Land. New York: Doubleday, 1947.
Fascinating memoirs of Puerto Rico's last American governor.
I1
U.S. Department of Commerce. Economic· Study of Puerto Rico (2 vols.).
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979. The most
comprehensive study of the Puerto Rican economy. Section on
manufacturing is particularly thorough.
fI
Wagenheim, Kal (ed.). The Puerto Ricans. New York: Praeger, 1973.
Selection of documents and essays providing rich insights · into
Puerto Rican history~
i
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Wells, Henry. The Modernization of Puerto Rico. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1969. The most systematic and sophisticated
interpretation of the rise of Munoz and the emergence of the
Commonweal th ..
- ·