Word: latinizing
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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ARECENT TIME article on Puerto Rico carried the obligatory and classic photograph of a Latin American city. In the foreground stand shacks, slum alleys, and ragged brown children; in the background rise white concrete and glass office buildings. One can find such an image of inequality in Caracas, Lima, Mexico City, or San Juan. It appears to make a profound statement about contrasts in underdeveloped countries, until one recalls the famous photo poster of the Sixties showing dilapidated shacks, broken streets, and ragged black children. In that case, however, the city was Northeast Washington D.C., and the structure...
...contrast of wealth and poverty so apparent in most Latin American countries is less stark in Puerto Rico. Between the shacks and the skyscrapers lies a buffer zone of crackerbox concrete housing developments with a Volkswagen in every garage. Twenty years of industrial development as a self-governing commonwealth under American rule have created a large middle class whose veneer of prosperity conceals the extensive poverty that afflicts large sectors of the island's population...
Most Puerto Ricans still live in pauperized rural communities or urban slums. Abandoned when the agricultural economy collapsed in the 50s and never involved in the industrial expansion of the 60s, they have remained on the margins of subsistence. Though Puerto Ricans have the highest per capita income of Latin America, 63.4 per cent of the population had incomes below the federal poverty level in 1970. The recent recession had a devastating impact on Puerto Rico: unemployment is officially 20%, but unofficially admitted to be 35%. Even when employment is available, the average industrial wage, $2.29, is half the comparable...
...labor force works in the public sector. The failure of this system of stimulating the economy would have been manifest much earlier, but about a third of the population migrated to the United States over the past two decades--a unique "safety valve" that is unavailable to other Latin American countries...
...official U.S. view is that there is no reason, military or economic, not to return the 51-mile-long canal. Neither supertankers nor the biggest U.S. aircraft carriers can squeeze through it. Yielding the waterway, moreover, would remove a major irritant in U.S. relations with Latin Americans, who have long resented the second-class status of Panamanians in the zone. But in return for giving up the canal and increasing payments to the Panamanian government for its use, the U.S. wants operating control at least until the beginning of the 21st century...