LA RAZA UNIDA 1731898 Luis Muñoz Marín, son of Luis Muñoz Rivera, the Puerto
Rican freedom fighter and diplomat, is born in San Juan,
Puerto Rico. The same year, the United States captures
Puerto Rico from Spain during the Spanish-American
War.
1917 Passage of the Jones Act gives Puerto Ricans U.S. citi-
zenship and allows men of military service age to be
drafted into the U.S. military and serve during World
War I.
1922 Muñoz Marín publishes an article in the magazine New
Republic condemning the exploitation of Puerto Rican
laborers by American businesses. The article prompts
U.S. president Warren G. Harding to ask for the resigna-
tion of an appointed governor who had mocked the
Puerto Rican independence movement.
1924 Puerto Rico’s Republican and Socialist Parties, once
rivals, unite in support of Puerto Rican independence.
The unified party is dominated by the Puerto Rican
upper and middle classes.
1928 U.S. president Calvin Coolidge declares that Puerto
Ricans can never achieve independence because of a
“lethargy of body and soul [which] is the offspring of
moral and physical vices that drag down the spirits and
lead peasants to such a state of degradation.”
1931 Muñoz Marín returns to Puerto Rico to take over the
editorship of his father’s old newspaper, La Democracia.
1932 Muñoz Marín joins the Liberal Party and is elected to the
island’s senate for the first time. He gains a national rep-
utation, again by attacking the appointed governor,
who is forced to resign within the year.
1936 President Franklin D. Roosevelt pledges $40 million for
the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Agency, a social and
economic assistance program. Dr. Ernest Gruening, an
ally of Muñoz Marín, is appointed commissioner. When
a gunman from the radical Nationalist Party kills Puerto
Rico’s chief of police, E. Francis Riggs, Gruening asks
Muñoz Marín to condemn the assassination; he replies
that if he is to make such a statement, he will also con-
demn the police, who had subsequently killed the
arrested man under suspicious circumstances. A bill is
introduced in Congress to cut all aid to Puerto Rico and
grant it independence. Although he supports inde-
pendence, Muñoz Marín argues that it would be foolish
to ask for it immediately since the island needs U.S. sup-
port. He declares he will sit out the 1936 election if it is
to become a referendum on independence. When he
does so, the Liberal Party loses and blames him for the
loss.
1938 Forced out of the Liberal Party, Muñoz Marín founds the
Popular Democratic Party (PDP).
1940 In order to get the PDP on the ballot, Muñoz Marín col-
lects signatures directly from Puerto Rico’s jibaros, or
rural poor. He runs a successful campaign for the Puerto
Rican senate. During the campaign, he argues that the
primary issue for Puerto Ricans should be not the polit-
ical status of the island—whether as an independent
nation or as a U.S. state—but the problems of poverty,
malnutrition, and poor education. Muñoz Marín wins
the election and becomes president of the Puerto
Rican senate.
1944 Muñoz Marín wins reelection in a landslide. At the same
time, he begins to express doubts about whether inde-
pendence is the best solution for Puerto Rico, having
found that many jibaros fear what that prospect would
mean for them economically.
1945 He leads a delegation to Washington, D.C., to press
Congress to resolve Puerto Rico’s political status. After
studying legislation drawn up to grant the Philippines
independence, he concludes that independence would
greatly harm his efforts to alleviate poverty in Puerto
Rico. Instead, he calls for the islands to become a self-
governing commonwealth of the United States.
1947 Muñoz Marín initiates Operation Bootstrap. Through
the program, he encourages U.S. companies to invest in
Puerto Rico by offering them a 10-year exemption from
taxes. That same year, Pedro Albizu Campos, leader of
the Nationalist Party, is released from an Atlanta,
Georgia, prison and returns to Puerto Rico, where he
attempts to begin a nationwide revolt.
1948 Although his rejection of independence splits the PDP
and leads to the formation of the Puerto Rican
Independence Party, Muñoz Marín becomes the first
popularly elected governor of Puerto Rico.
1950 President Harry S Truman signs a law allowing Puerto
Ricans to write their own constitution. Nationalists near-
ly assassinate Muñoz Marín. Two days later, two
Nationalists attempt to shoot their way into Blair House
in Washington to kill President Truman. (Truman and his
family are living there during a renovation of the White
House.)
1952 Congress approves a constitution under which Puerto
Ricans are given control over virtually all internal affairs.
1954 Nationalists wound five congressmen on the floor of the
U.S. House of Representatives.
1964 In order to test his party’s ability to maintain power with-
out him at the helm, Muñoz Marín retires from the gov-
ernorship.
1967 In a public referendum, 60 percent of Puerto Ricans vote
in favor of continuing Puerto Rico’s commonwealth sta-
tus, 39 percent vote for statehood, and 1 percent for
independence.
1980 Muñoz Marín dies in San Juan.LUIS MUÑOZ MARÍN AND PUERTO RICAN SELF-RULE