Sila María Calderón Serra was bom in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on September 23, 1942, to Sila Serra and César Augusto Calderón, a mechanical engineer whose strong partisan views towards commonwealth status is said to have encouraged Sila Calderon's interest in politics. Other members of her family were also business owners, a field that would serve as her stepping-stone into the political arena.
She graduated with honors from the Catholic Colegio Sagrado Corazón in Santurce in 1960. At 18, she left the island for Purchase, New York, where she received her undergraduate degree in political science from Manhattanville College in 1964. On her return to the island, she attended the University of Puerto Rico's Graduate School of Public Administration from 1970 to 1972.
Her education and her experience working for a major bank and as president of an investment firm on the island prepared her well for her tenure in government. She has served in leadership positions in both the public and private sectors of Puerto Rico for most of her professional life. Her political career began in 1973 when she was appointed executive assistant to the labor secretary and special assistant to the governor. From 1973 to 1976, under the leadership of then governor Hernández Colón, Calderón served as special assistant to the governor in charge of economic development. She returned to the private sector after the 1976 defeat of the PPD to the pro-statehood New Progressive Party (PNP), which remained in power until the 1984 elections.
In 1984 re-elected governor Hernández Colón once more called on Calderón, this time appointing her chief of staff of his administration, the first woman to serve in that capacity in Puerto Rico. In 1986, the position of chief of staff was modified by the legislature and attained cabinet ranking. The governor named Calderón secretary of state in 1988, a position that was the constitutional successor to the governor; again she was the first woman to hold this position. She held both posts simultaneously until 1989.
In 1989, in addition to serving as member of the board of directors for Banco de Ponce and Banco Popular, she returned to her family's businesses. At the same time she worked as a volunteer toward the recovery of the Cantera Peninsula, one of the poorest neighborhoods in metropolitan San Juan, which had been devastated by Hurricane Hugo. Under her leadership, the Corporation for the Development of Cantera was created with the purpose of pursuing the social and economic development of that area. Through her administrative skills and political connections, she was able to accelerate the reconstruction of this underdeveloped neighborhood.
In 1994 she organized her campaign for mayor of San Juan, and in January 1995 she announced her candidacy. Among the first to announce their support for her was the newly formed Mujeres con Sila (Women for Sila), an assemblage of women from diverse professional sectors of the metropolitan area. With the support of women and many of the residents of Cantera and the metropolitan area, Calderón captured 91 percent of the primary vote, the highest ever in Puerto Rican politics. One of the reviews of the primaries described Calderon's candidacy for mayor in relation to her party's candidate for the governorship: "Sila is running for San Juan, but she is better qualified for the governorship of the country than even Acevedo" (Dávila Colón 1995,69). Criticizing the political and legal scandals that had rocked the island, she ran on a platform that had as an objective reforming government, advocating that it is necessary to re-establish with great clarity, government's moral purpose and legal responsibility" (Dávila Colón 1995, 69). In 1996, after winning the election with 51 percent of the vote, Calderón became mayor of San Juan.
Her first two years in office saw an effort to increase the political power of Puerto Ricans and other Latinos in the United States. Calderon's visible involvement with mainland politics in 2002 was widely criticized. However, many credited her savvy political instincts in courting both Republicans and Democrats during such an important election year as a way of securing the island's legislative agenda, regardless of who won control of the Congress. In the end, the Republicans won enough seats to control both houses of Congress and her strategy paid off. Also in 2002, through her government's Federal Affairs Administration offices, Calderón embarked on a non-partisan campaign to register hundreds of thousands in the ten largest mainland cities with Latino populations, thus to increasing the political muscle and influence of this growing population.
During her career Calderón has been the recipient of a number of distinctions including the Distinguished Woman of the Year conferred by the Puerto Rico Products Association in 1986, Leader of the Year Award from the Puerto Rico Chapter of the American Association of Public Works, and the Order of Queen Elizabeth by the Spanish government in 1987. In 1997 she received an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from her alma mater Manhattanville College.
As mayor, she reinstated biweekly meetings with the people, similar to the practice that had been started by San Juan's first woman mayor, Felisa Rincón de Gautier. In addition, she increased taxes moderately to finance large infrastructure projects that included the restoration of public buildings, beautification and renovation of San Juan's public squares or "plazas," and augmentation of public services such as police and garbage collection. Her tenure for mayor was not without controversy. Throughout her years as mayor, particularly when she began to campaign for the governorship, her opponents accused her of using public money to foster her political image in the press and media. In addition, because of her family's immense wealth, and more markedly when she has run for public office, Calderón has found herself fighting off her "woman of privilege" stigma while emphasizing above all else that she is a public servant.
The centerpiece of her platform in her gubernatorial bid was the pledge to clean up the corruption that had plagued previous governor Pedro Rosello's administration. In addition, Calderón also ran a patriotic campaign calling for a quick exit of the U.S. Navy from Vieques. As governor she called for an immediate referendum on Vieques in which residents would choose between requiring the navy to leave by May 2003 or allowing it to stay indefinitely in return for $50 million in economic aid. Preempting the June 2001 referendum, the administration of President George W. Bush announced that the navy would permanently leave Vieques in the year 2003.
Governor Calderón has also announced her intention of addressing a historically and politically sensitive issue, one that the former governor enacted as law during his administration: recognizing English as an official language in Puerto Rico. Her administration's new policy recognizes both Spanish and English as official languages. This pro-commonwealth administration differs from the pro-statehood administration that was defeated after eight years in power. For months before the elections, Calderón had been trailing in the polls. Political pundits declared that the key to her victory would be pledging to root out political corruption, rather than concentrating on whether Puerto Rico should become the 51st state. There seemed to be consensus among Puerto Rican political analysts that the electorate's indignation with the political dishonesty associated with the previous administration was instrumental to her successful campaign. Calderón not only won the election, but her party won majority in both houses. As governor, her administration has drafted various bills intended to curb corruption. The administration has also called for a referendum in which the Puerto Rican people can decide what the final status of the island should be.
Calderón was married to engineer Francisco Xavier González Goenaga from 1964 to 1975. They had three children together: Sila María, Francisco Xavier, and María Elena. Both Sila María and María Elena are attorneys, and they served as "First Ladies" of the Commonwealth during Calderón's governorship. Francisco is an investment banker at RBC Capital Markets.
In 1978, Calderón married entrepreneur Adolfo Krans. They divorced in 2001 after 23 years of marriage.
Calderón married again, during her tenure as governor, with Ramón Cantero Frau, her former Secretary of the Department of Economic Development. The wedding was celebrated on September 10, 2003. They were divorced two years later.
