Posted on 07/01/2003 2:39:12 PM PDT by PJ-Comix
Newswoman Ruby Black was a friend of Muñoz's wife, Muna Lee, and a confidant of Eleanor Roosevelt. She became Muñoz's valuable source of inside information from Washington. Black was responsible for Muñoz's successful confrontation with Puerto Rican Governor Robert H. Gore. (He had been appointed governor in July 1933).
Ruby Black was the first to break the story that Governor Gore required undated letters of resignation from appointees to the Puerto Rican cabinet posts. The governor denied this, and Muñoz, with Black's help, wrote an English editorial in El Mundo headed "Governor Gore You Are A Damn Liar," in which he carefully proved his case. By the fall of 1933, again with the help of Ruby Black, Muñoz visited the White Houseto discuss Governor Gore "over a cup of tea with the U.S. President." At this rather casual meeting with F.D.R., the president "gave his promise that Gore would resign." Gore's resignation was tendered in December 1933 and accepted on January 12.
Muñoz returned to Puerto Rico on January 22. "Hailed by a wildly enthusiastic populace, heralded on the front pages of the island newspapers," and considered by all as the one responsible for getting rid of the unpopular governor, "he found thousands of people waiting to welcome him at the dock as the triumphant conqueror," a situation very much like his father's triumphant return from Spain following the 1897 Charter of Autonomy.
Anyway I found this excerpt in a book about Puerto Rico while doing some of my own research on Operation Bootstrap at the library today. Territorial Governor Robert Hayes Gore was considered the WORST governor Puerto Rico ever had. I did some checking and this Gore was born in Kentucky. Does anybody know if Robert Hayes Gore was related to Al Gore? I do know there have been a lot the Gore family in politics.
Yes, a lot of you probably put your fingers out of joint clicking on this thread due to its title but please check out info about Operation Bootstrap. I don't know why conservatives have overlooked this.
I don't know. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go put my fingers back in joint.
FMCDH
Dirty pool, old chap ;)
Even though Muñoz Marin claimed to be a Socialist in his younger years, he was, above all, a pragmatist.
Conservatives would do well to study Operation Bootstrap..... Paging Newt Gingrich!
.....Was Puerto Rico cursed? So it seemed. This beautiful island had remained mired in social and economic stagnation for the four centuries following Christopher Columbus's landing in 1493 and Juan Ponce de León's colonization. Nothing seemed to work on the island, not the Spanish dominion nor the arrival of the Americans in 1898 promising the "blessings" of American democracy and prosperity and not, three decades later, the extraordinary efforts of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to extend the New Deal to this "disgrace to the American flag." The supremely confident Roosevelt could lift his nation from the Great Depression and was about to lead the free world in defeating the scourge of fascism, but he too felt defeated by Puerto Rico's problems.
"As for Puerto Rico," Roosevelt told the director of the Division of Territories and Island Possessions, Ernest Gruening, "that place is hopeless, hopeless," raising his arms above his head for emphasis and in resignation.
The hopelessness existed in the minds of Puerto Ricans and Americans, but it was grounded in the island's realities. Puerto Rico possessed none of the conditions considered indispensable for economic development.
When the Americans arrived in 1898, the 3,435-square-mile island was already critically overcrowded with 899,820 people: its population density was five times that of Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Only 25 percent of the land was suitable for modern, mechanized agriculture. There were no exploitable minerals. The island's geographic location, a thousand miles from the U.S. mainland and sixteen hundred miles from New York, was ideal for a naval base but patently absurd for large-scale industrialization. The infrastructure that existed was primitive, roads were inadequate, electric power scarce and costly.
The Puerto Rican workforce was poorly educated, untrained and unskilled. Puerto Rico's Hispanic, rural, "mañana" culture was seen as another insurmountable obstacle to economic development, as was the nature of Puerto Rican politics—at times idealistic, at times vicious, personalistic, and destructive.
By the 1950s an economic miracle was taking place in Puerto Rico. For it was indeed a remarkable economic transformation. From a centuries-old rural-agricultural country with all its traditional socioeconomic characteristics, within a generation and within a democratic framework, Puerto Rico became a modern urban-industrial society. In practically all economic and social indices—from per capita income to life expectancy—Puerto Rico joined the ranks of the "developed countries" of the world.
The credit went to Luis Muñoz Marín, the extraordinary leader who carried out a "democratic revolution" on the island. In 1948 he was described as the "Bard of Bootstrap" on the cover of Time. In the words of Abe Fortas, quintessential Washington insider for a half-century who served on the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1960s, Muñoz was a "spectacularly great figure." 6 But he was not the originator of or the force behind Operation Bootstrap, the industrialization program that actually lifted Puerto Rico from the long centuries of extreme poverty. Bootstrap was the work of Teodoro Moscoso.
Born into a wealthy family, educated to carry on the family business, Moscoso dedicated his life to public service in Puerto Rico and the United States. He was influenced principally by three men—Rexford Tugwell, the professor of economics who formed part of Roosevelt's "brain trust," who first recruited Moscoso into public service; Muñoz Marín, Puerto Rico's first elected governor and its principal leader for forty years, who led and inspired Moscoso throughout his life; and John F. Kennedy, who placed enormous trust and responsibility on him.
Moscoso created and ran Fomento, Puerto Rico's Economic Development Administration, "the most successful government development corporation in the Western Hemisphere."7 He pioneered the craft of aggressive industrial promotion. Fomento's organization and techniques were imitated by state governments on the U.S. mainland and in foreign countries from Ireland to Taiwan. He converted Puerto Rico into a laboratory of Third World development for over ten thousand foreign visitors under President Harry S. Truman's Point Four program.
Moscoso was relentless, driven, in a breathless race against time. His impatience "set teeth grinding" in San Juan and later in Washington. He took risks at times amazing to those below and above him. He earned lifelong loyalty and respect, but he moved through life so fast that even his closest associates felt that his core as a human being had escaped their grasp. He was creative. David Ogilvy, the British-born U.S. advertising "genius," wrote that Moscoso was the most inspiring man with whom he had ever worked.
Moscoso's impact on Puerto Rico was second only to that of Muñoz. Moscoso covered the island with huge signs announcing, "This is another Fomento plant." Every Fomento employee proudly wore a Fomento pin that made him or her a member of the "elite" in the Puerto Rican government. He created and ran a multimillion-dollar communications strategy that transformed the image of Puerto Rico throughout the United States and the world. From Beardsely Ruml, the outspoken New Dealer and originator of the "pay-as-you-go" income tax mechanism who went on to a successful business career in Macy's and other large businesses, to Conrad Hilton, whose hotel in San Juan launched Hilton International, to David Ogilvy and David Rockefeller, Moscoso created a network of admirers in corporate America always willing to come to Puerto Rico's aid.
In Moscoso's eyes the greatest tribute to Operation Bootstrap appeared in an article by economist Kenneth E. Boulding, published in June 1961 by the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions: "There is a type of revolution which does not fit into any type of . . . category and which may be the most important of all in the long run. I call it the Fomentarian Revolution . . . in honor of a remarkable institution in Puerto Rico which embodies it, known as 'Fomento.'" The democratic transformation in Puerto Rico, Boulding wrote, the intriguing mixture of strong government direction and incentives for private capital may prove the best model for economic and social change in the world.
The Fomentarian Revolution, Boulding continued, required two kinds of leadership: "The charismatic but unrealistic leader may awake the people out of their apathy and give them a sense of identity and purpose. For the revolution to be accomplished, however, a new type of leadership may be necessary—more sober, less dramatic, and with a clearer and more realistic vision." The Fomentarian Revolution was Moscoso's revolution.
In 1961 President John F. Kennedy, aware of the global implications of what had been accomplished in Puerto Rico, recruited Moscoso to play a central role in a dramatically new U.S. policy toward Latin America. First the president named Moscoso ambassador to Venezuela to help Rómulo Betancourt become the first elected head of state to complete his term in office in the country's history. Then Kennedy brought Moscoso to Washington to organize and run the Alliance for Progress.
It was in 1940 that Kenneth Boulding's "two kinds of leadership" essential for democratic development came together. Luis Muñoz Marín, the "charismatic but unrealistic leader," met for the first time a young pharmacist from Ponce who was desperately seeking a cause to which he could dedicate his life and enormous energy. That meeting changed Teodoro Moscoso's life and became a turning point in Puerto Rico's history. For it was the ensuing Fomentarian Revolution that turned Father Juan Perpiñá y Pibernat's prophecy of the San Ciriaco "curse" into the "blessings" of Puerto Rico's golden era and the period of its economic miracle.
As with any economy that depends on "buying" development, Puerto Rico failed to develop its own internal economy. When tax breaks end, the transient industry closes up and moves elsewhere. We've seen this with the furniture and textile industries that left the North for Carolina and which are now moving on.
Under union pressure, Washington imposed a minimum wage on Puerto Rico -- which, at the time, hadn't either the skilled labor or even the costs of living to support the wage. This just served to hold employment down.
Also, under union pressure, foreign shipping companies were prohibited from transporting products between Puerto Rico and the rest of the U.S., thus forcing business to use very expensive American shipping lines.
Operation Bootstrap ended up being as successful as the efforts of American cities who now fight with each other to steal business from each other rather than figuring out how to develop it themselves.
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