Bootstrap included a program for building
cementos, inexpensive cement houses that
Puerto Ricans could buy for $300 each,
with 20-year mortgages guaranteed by
the commonwealth’s government.
Under Operation Bootstrap, private
investment in Puerto Rico grew 36 per-
cent per year from 1950 to 1954, and 46
percent per year from 1955 to 1959. The
general living standard rose, with average
annual per-capita income climbing from
$200 in 1940 to $2,000 in 1977, and
average life expectancy rising from 48
years in 1940 to 76 years in 1977. New
industries broke the island’s traditional
dependence on sugar exports. In 1972,
Puerto Rico’s top 10 manufacturing
industries included electrical equipment,
scientific instruments, and fabricated
metals—industries that had been absent
from its top 10 in 1949. By 2000, only 3
percent of Puerto Ricans on the island
still worked in agriculture.
By the end of Muñoz’s tenure in
1965, there was still much unemploy-
ment and poverty in Puerto Rico, partic-
ularly by American standards, and
conditions would grow worse during an
economic slump in the 1970s. But com-
pared with where they had started when
Muñoz took power, Puerto Ricans were
much better off and had made betterLA RAZA UNIDA 175Puerto Rican terrorist Lolita Lebrón is taken into custody. (Library of Congress)