Luis Muñoz Marín was the leading political figure of Puerto Rican history during the twentieth century. Between 1932 and 1964 he occupied a central role in Puerto Rican politics. As founder of the Popular Democratic Party, Muñoz Marín guided an economic and social transformation in the island of Puerto Rico after 1952 and was the leading architect of its current Commonwealth status.
Background
Luis Muñoz Marín was born in San Juan on February 18,1898. His father, Luis Muñoz Rivera, a journalist and a patriot, fought actively to end colonial domination of Puerto Rico. Through his journalistic work in the newspaper La Democracia, Muñoz Rivera played a role in the approval of the autonomic charter that gave more political autonomy to the people of Puerto Rico. Muñoz Marin's mother was Amalia Marin, who also came from a family of journalists and political activists.
Education
Muñoz Marin received his early education in the local public schools of Santurce, Puerto Rico. His father became Puerto Rican Resident Commissioner in Washington, and the family moved to New York City, where Muñoz Marin attended public school for a year before going to Georgetown University Preparatory School. He studied there until 1914.
After his father's death in 1916, Muñoz Marin traveled frequently between Puerto Rico and the United States and studied for a short time at Columbia University.
Career
He wrote a short story book titled Borrones (1917) in New York and wrote for La Democracia in Puerto Rico. He returned to Puerto Rico toward the end of 1917 and developed an interest in Puerto Rican affairs, interacting with some of the most important intellectuals of his time. One of them was the poet Luis Palés Matos. His friendship with Palés Matos brought him to the interior of the island, where he became acquainted with many of the social problems of the time and saw the importance of the political process in the resolution of social and economic problems. He developed an understanding of Puerto Rican jíbaros, the poor peasants who worked in agriculture in the countryside. In 1918 he once again returned to New York, where he published a literary journal known as Revista de Indias (Indies' Journal), worked as a journalist, and continued meeting with notable American and Puerto Rican intellectuals. He also wrote poetry.
Muñoz Marin's first incursion into Puerto Rican politics took place in 1920 when he joined the Socialist Party of labor leader Santiago Iglesias Pantin. His decision to work with Iglesias Pantin was problematic, as Iglesias favored Puerto Rican annexation to the United States and Muñoz Marin supported independence. However, Muñoz Marin was attracted to the party not because of the political status issue, but because of Iglesias Pantin's desire to improve the working conditions of Puerto Rican laborers. He toured the island with Iglesias Pantin and noted poverty and exploitation endured by jíbaros, who were employed by sugar and coffee plantation owners who were not concerned with the well being of their workers.
Muñoz Marin's association with Iglesias Pantin lasted only a short time. He spent the next ten years traveling between Puerto Rico and New York. He continued writing against the United States and met with many important socialist leaders of the time who were visiting New York City. He accepted the editorial directoship of La Democracia in 1926. The paper had strong ties with the Liberal Party of Antonio R. Parceló. While the party advocated Puerto Rican independence, Muñoz Marin's primary concern was restructuring the government to create social and economic changes to benefit the poor working class.
In 1946 President Truman appointed Jesus T. Piñeiro as governor. He became the first Puerto Rican governor in the island's 450-year history. The following year, the U.S. Congress modified the Jones Act to allow Puerto Ricans to elect their own governor. Muñoz Marin ran for governor and became the first Puerto Rican governor democratically elected by its people.
His first term as governor was influenced by the approval of Public Law 600 in the U.S. Congress. It gave Puerto Rico the right to its own internal government under the general terms of a Commonwealth, or a "Free Associated State." It asked that Puerto Ricans develop and approve their own constitution subject to the ratification of the U.S. Congress. This law led to formation of a Constitutional Assembly that wrote a constitution that was later ratified by Puerto Ricans. The document received congressional approval in 1952. By accepting this legislation and accepting Commonwealth status for Puerto Rico, Muñoz Marin perpetuated the colonial relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico. While Puerto Rico has the right to develop and enact its own laws, they have to be consistent with the American constitution. Puerto Ricans are subject to all federal laws yet have no representation in the U.S. Congress and do not vote in presidential elections. The adoption of the new status continued the controversy that exists to this day.
Muñoz Marín was reelected governor in 1952,1954,1956, and 1960. One of his major initiatives during the 1950s was Operación Manos a la Obra (Operation Bootsraps). This initiative created an economic infrastructure to promote the development of Puerto Rico as an industrial society, rather than as an agrarian one. The government gave priority to developing and strengthening more efficient systems of education, transportation, health maintenance, communication, and public utilities. It gave industrial incentives that made it attractive for American corporations to move to Puerto Rico. It also encouraged the migration of Puerto Ricans to the United States as a way to reduce unemployment. Muñoz Marin's government led a vigorous campaign to sterilize women of childbearing age as a means of controlling population growth.
Many of the elements of Muñoz Marin's vision for Puerto Rico finally materialized as Puerto Rico became highly industrialized. These changes had profound implications for Puerto Rican society and life. Muñoz Marin made significant advances in health and education. The quality of life of all Puerto Ricans generally improved. There was substantial parity among the social classes, and the exploitation of the poor jíbaros at the hands of wealthy landowners virtually disappeared. The sugar and coffee industries suffered, as people preferred to seek jobs in the industrial sector rather than in the agriculture. Muñoz Marin's policies were largely responsible for the migration of hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans. He was the social engineer that created a huge Puerto Rican Diaspora in the United States.
After constant refusals from the U.S. Congress to increase autonomy, Muñoz Marin decided not to run for governor in the general elections of 1964, believing that Puerto Rico needed a change. He became a senator-at-large until 1968, when he retired from politics and made only sporadic appearances on behalf of his party.
On his definite return to Puerto Rico in 1931, Muñoz Marin joined the Liberal Party. Lie was elected to the Puerto Rican senate in 1932. Although he still believed in independence, he became attracted to the potential positive impact that Roosevelt's New Deal policies could have on Puerto Rico. Because Muñoz Marin attributed the underdevelopment of Puerto Rico to the former economic and political policies of the United States, he saw the New Deal as a way for the United States to help Puerto Rico. He slowly drifted away from his pro-independence stance and saw the importance of having a better relationship with the United States. He lobbied officials in Roosevelt's government to include Puerto Rico in the New Deal projects. The introduction of federal programs that provided free food for poor Puerto Ricans and the availability of American technical assistance for farmers gave him hope.
At this time, Barceló and Muñoz Marín grew apart ideologically. Their differences were exacerbated when Muñoz Marín supported an American legislation known as the Tydings Bill. The legislation was a response to the nationalist vio-lence that had occurred in Puerto Rico in 1936. The legislation provided for independence of Puerto Rico over a four-year period. Members of the Liberal Party saw the bill as an opportunity to obtain independence for Puerto Rico. Muñoz Marín did not support the bill and tried to gain control of the party. With this, his relationship with Barceló soured and Muñoz Marín was expelled from the party in 1937. He was considered responsible for the Liberal Party's overwhelming de-feat in the 1936 elections.
Muñoz Marin founded the Popular Democratic Party on July 22, 1938, in an attempt to distance himself from the contentious issue of Puerto Rican political status. Instead, he developed a political platform based solely on an effort to build Puerto Rican society and provide economic equality for all Puerto Ricans. At the time, more than one third of Puerto Rican families had a yearly income below $200. Sugar processing companies were the island's largest landowners, and the island's economy was in ruins. Puerto Rican jíbaros lived in deplorable conditions, and illnesses such as anemia, malaria and tuberculosis were rampant. Muñoz Marín wanted to build an economic infrastructure that would allow the government to improve the quality of life for its people. He hoped to receive assistance from the United States in order to accomplish his goals.
In 1938, Muñoz Marín started a fierce island-wide political campaign that promised poor Puerto Ricans that voting for him could offer a democratic process of change that would lead to a better society. He wished to put an end to a corrupt political system in which poor peasants were often forced to sell their votes without receiving any useful support from the government. Using powerful rhetoric, Muñoz Marin traveled to every town on the island and met with thousands of poor Puerto Ricans. He could relate to the Puerto Rican jíbaros like no other politician had done before.
The Popular Democratic Party won the elections, caphiring almost 38 percent of the vote (Bayrón Toro 2000) and taking control of the Puerto Rican house and senate. Muñoz Marín became president of the senate.
Views
Quotations:
"Remember this, " he said, "You can have justice, or you can have two dollars. But you can't have both. "
Personality
In a recent documentary on his life, Muñoz Marin said that immediately after the elections, he started to push for a series of political reforms that included: the creation of a land authority; the approval of a minimum wage law and a law that restricted the work day to eight hours; improvement of the educational system, including better salaries for teachers; price controls on basic needs; the approval of laws that allow for collective bargaining between workers and employers; a more equitable tax system; and improvement of health services. Muñoz Marin was able to accomplish these changes because New Deal federal money became available.
Quotes from others about the person
Munoz led a movement and created a party, which consolidated the latent power of the stricken Puerto Rican mass and used it to force into being a disciplined program for rejuvenation. This effort has significance beyond itself. It soon became a wonder of a world looking for the means to lift backward peoples from the stew of poverty and demagoguism, which has become so characteristic of all the old colonial area. He was the creator, as much as one man could be, of a new status for a whole people and a new relationship among political entities. The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico was a brilliant invention and its bringing into being a remarkable achievement.
Connections
On July 1, 1919 Muñoz Marín married Muna Lee, an American writer from Raymond, Mississippi who had grown up in Oklahoma. Lee was a leading Southern feminist and a rising writer of Pan-American poetry. They had a daughter and a son together, but often lived apart before separating in 1938.
Before his campaigns of 1938 and 1939, while he was still legally married, Muñoz Marín met Inés Mendoza. A teacher, she became his mistress and was fired for complaining about the prohibition against classes in Spanish. They agreed that substituting "one language for another is to diminish that country's capacity to be happy". Muñoz Marín asked Mendoza to "stay with him all his life."
In 1940, a month after his election as President of the Senate in Puerto Rico, Muñoz Marín and Mendoza had a daughter, Victoria, named to commemorate his success. He and Mendoza officially married in 1946, and they had a second daughter, Viviana.
In the 1980s, their daughter Victoria Muñoz Mendoza became active in Puerto Rican politics. In 1992, she became the first woman to run as a candidate for the governorship of Puerto Rico.