Quiet Revolutionary

Arriving in the wake of Fidel Castro's screaming motorcade and impenetrable entourage of security officers, Luis Munoz Marin, Governor of Puerto Rico, signed in quietly yesterday at the Statler-Hilton with only a handful of personal friends and secretaries in attendance. However, when the glamour of the present hardens into the more searching mold of history, Munoz will surely have as good, and probably a far better claim to fanfare than Castro. Munoz is the creator of a new and unique political relationship within the old bonds of Federalism. He was the driving force behind Puerto Rico's achievement of "commonwealth" status in 1952.

Until 1950, Puerto Rico had been ruled by an appointed governor. In that year, Munoz succeeded in convincing the United States Congress that an elected governor would better serve the interests both of the Puerto Ricans and the residents of the United States. In 1952 he added the final step in the creation of this new entity by convincing the Congress to pass the new Constitution of Puerto Rico, which made the island an "estado libre asociado." Puerto Ricans now had virtual home rule, protection of the United States, and continued exemption from the burden of federal taxes.

Puerto Rico had managed to achieve both of its objectives--political autonomy and economic unity--while giving up nothing for either of them. How did this come about? Rexford G. Tugwell, the last of the regularly appointed governors of the island, calls it "The Grand Conception of Munoz Marin." Munoz had the challenging task of rallying a people split widely between the two views of statehood and complete independence, and then convincing the U.S. Congress that his solution was the correct one.

Munoz went to work on the Puerto Ricans by holding to a middle course between the Republicanos and the Independentistas. In 1938 he established a third party the Partido Popular, and in 1940 the party won its first electoral victory in the insular senate. In these years of the late '30's and the early '40's Munoz had very carefully identified himself with the collectivist tide that had swept the mainland in the shape of the New Deal. The Republicanos who opposed the collective measures discredited themselves by being in the unenviable position of opposing a source of financial aid. The Independentistas, on the other hand, discredited themselves because it seemed that their course might lead to complete estrangement of Puerto Rico from the United States, financial suicide, in effect. By the time the new Constitution took effect, Munoz had so solidified his position that he could afford to create artificially an opposition where none actually existed.

His bout with the Congress was a brief one. Munoz clearly had virtually unanimous Puerto Rican support of his "estado libre asociado." With his keen political instinct Munoz was able to tell just when to push the Congress hard and when to ease up on his demands. In July 1952 Munoz walked out of the Senate with the plum in his hand. Puerto Rico had been granted commonwealth status. As Tugwell later explained it, "What Commonwealth meant was that there were arrangements between two equals, mutually satisfactory, which both desired to maintain. Munoz explains it in more concrete terms, "We have in common: citizenship, defense, market, international relations and currency."

Speaking with the deliberateness of an academician but the incisiveness of a lawyer, Munoz yesterday explained to those assembled in his top-floor suite at the Statler-Hilton that he considered himself a Federalist, but of a new kind. Puerto Rico is allied with the United States in the framework of a larger and looser federal structure than the one originally conceived of in the Union, he feels. "We have initiated a contribution of a new and different kind in the American constitutional system. It is the first new development since the thirteen original states. We want to be the 14th new development, not the 51st old development."

On the subject of Castro and the Cuban situation the Governor said, "The Cuban Revolution is one of the greatest in the history of Latin America. It is great because it has significance. First, a people defeated a well-equipped army, a situation that has never occurred before in Latin America. Second, it was a real democratic revolution. It happened during a period of prosperity. Therefore, it had a very genuine moral content. The intentions of the revolution are clearly to establish a good democracy in Cuba."

The economics of living are still Puerto Rico's greatest problem. Unemployment has decreased over the last few years, Munoz explained, but not as much as is ideally desirable. At present, 12 per cent of the labor force is unemployed.

On the question of the Godkin Lectures, the Governor was non-committal for the first time during the morning. All he would say was that Nationalism, in his view, is becoming obsolete, that it doesn't go in a nuclear-power world. Considering Munoz' unique achievement in the field of applied political theory, his views on the subject should be well worth the trip to Sanders Theatre.