Word: rico
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Legend. Muñoz came to politics almost by birthright. His father, Luis Muñoz Rivera, often called Puerto Rico's George Washington, headed the colonial government in the latter days of the Spanish rule, and in 1897 obtained from the Madrid government a charter which provided some autonomies (e.g., the right to make trade treaties with foreign nations) which Puerto Rico does not have now. After the cession of Puerto Rico to the U.S., Muñoz Rivera was invited to take a cabinet post in Madrid. He declined. He chose to stay in Puerto Rico, later...
...years gave. Muñoz a good command of English, a sound understanding of U.S. intellectual and political life, and friends in New York and Washington who were later to help him in his work for Puerto Rico. In 1926 he moved back home. Muñoz had hoped that life might be cheaper and more spacious in the land of his birth, but the poverty and slackness that met his eye in San Juan shocked him. He made up his mind in a hurry: "No Puerto Rican has the right to be a literato unless he first does something...
Thin Victory. In the 1940 election, Muñoz' Populares squeezed out a thin victory. He became Senate president and, in effect, the real ruler of Puerto Rico...
...next year Rex Tugwell was appointed Governor and, teamed with Muñoz, began what became known as Puerto Rico's Little New Deal. Some of the laws behind it were already on the statute books; Tugwell and Muñoz breathed life into them. Among the important agencies that went into operation were the industrial-development and farm-development corporations, and the Puerto Rico Planning, Urbanizing and Zoning Board. The Land Authority tackled the job of enforcing a 40-year-old law limiting holdings of real estate by corporations to 500 acres...
Tugwell and Muñoz also tackled Puerto Rico's desperate need for new housing. In San Juan, for example, handsome, tropical-style homes line many an avenue, but many are close to the dismal slums of packing-box houses like El Fanguito (Little Mudhole) that stretches two miles along the tidal flats. The government's answer was the San José Housing Project, now almost complete, which will provide shelter for 6,200 families from El Fanguito. So far only a few families have been moved out, and officials privately admit that it may be necessary...