Word: rico
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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...
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...
...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...
...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...