San Juan (Puerto Rico), 1898 – 1980
By Ángel G. Quintero Rivera
Luis Muñoz Marín was, without a doubt, the most important Puerto Rican politician of the 20th century. His father, Luis Muñoz Rivera, was also the most influential political figure of his time. As the father of “possibilist” autonomism, he served as Minister of Justice and Amnesty during the autonomist government at the end of Spanish colonial rule and later as a senator and resident commissioner in Washington for the Union Party of Puerto Rico. His mother, Amalia Marín, was the daughter of Ramón Marín, the illegitimate son of a wealthy landowner from Arecibo and an enslaved Black woman. Ramón Marín concealed his origins in Ponce and became one of the most respected journalists among the property-owning classes. He owned the Ponce newspaper El Cronista, which was later managed by his son-in-law, Luis Muñoz Rivera, under the name La Democracia. Additionally, at the beginning of the 20th century, Muñoz Rivera founded the Puerto Rico Herald in New York.
Muñoz Marín received his primary and secondary education in both Puerto Rico and the United States due to his father’s frequent political travels, making him one of the first fully bicultural and bilingual Puerto Ricans. In 1916, he abandoned his law studies at Georgetown University after his father’s death, which forced him to return to his homeland. In the following years, he led a bohemian life as a writer and journalist, composing poetry, short stories, and articles for various Puerto Rican and American publications. He befriended prominent writers and artists, including Luis Palés Matos. Within these literary circles, he met the American poet Muna Lee, whom he married in 1919 and with whom he had two children.
In the early 1920s, he was involved in the Socialist Party, but as the party leaned increasingly toward annexationism, he returned to his father’s political tradition. In 1932, he was elected senator for the Liberal Party and took over the management of La Democracia. During the 1930s, he developed a close relationship with American supporters of the New Deal, and thanks to these connections, reformist programs were implemented in Puerto Rico during that decade.
Opposing Senator Tydings’ proposal in the U.S. Congress, which suggested independence for Puerto Rico under economic conditions he deemed unsustainable, Muñoz Marín endorsed electoral abstention in 1936. This led to his expulsion from the Liberal Party, after which he immediately founded the Independent Social Action movement, which later became the Clean, Authentic, and Complete Liberal Party. For legal reasons, the party had to change its name and was rebranded as the Popular Democratic Party (PPD). In 1937, he also founded the Puerto Rican Association for Civil Liberties, where he met the teacher Inés Mendoza, a former member of the Nationalist Party who had led an intense campaign to defend Spanish as the language of education (between 1898 and 1935, English was the official language of Puerto Rican schools). Muñoz Marín began living with her, defying conventional morality. After divorcing his American wife, he had two daughters with Inés. One of them, Victoria Muñoz Mendoza, became the first woman to run for the Puerto Rican governorship in 1992.
In 1938, Muñoz Marín launched a strenuous political campaign in rural areas, accompanied by Inés Mendoza. During this time, he transformed his political discourse, shifting from flowery rhetoric to a didactic style with short sentences and popular metaphors, as reflected in his publication El catecismo del pueblo. In a clear example of the “possibilist” approach, he advised peasants to accept money offered by local bosses and major interests to buy their votes, but since voting was secret, they should “vote for dignity instead of money.” He also required all PPD candidates to solemnly swear before the people to uphold the social justice measures proposed in the party’s program.
In 1940, the PPD achieved a narrow electoral victory, leading Muñoz Marín to the presidency of the Senate. With the support of the newly appointed governor, Rexford G. Tugwell, a New Deal advocate, the PPD was able to implement its reform program. Its first law, challenging the Catholic Church and traditional social customs, abolished the legal category of “illegitimate children,” granting all children born out of wedlock full legal rights. The populist program primarily targeted the powerful sugar interests and agricultural capitalism, introducing agrarian reform that included land distribution to reduce dependence on large landowners; the 500-Acre Law, which limited corporate land ownership to 200 hectares; the classification of the sugar industry as a sector of state interest subject to government-determined minimum wages; the nationalization of certain plantations and mills; and the promotion of cooperatives and proportional-benefit farms. The program also encouraged the establishment of state-run industries as part of a modernization plan focused on import substitution, creating factories for shoes, bottles, cement, and paper. Under Muñoz Marín’s charismatic leadership, the PPD secured a landslide electoral victory in 1944 and continued winning elections until 1968, when Luis A. Ferré Aguayo won the governorship with the newly formed New Progressive Party (PNP).
After World War II, with the availability (and need) for American capital exports, the PPD shifted from its state-owned enterprise model to the Industrial Incentives Act (1947), which launched an “industrialization by invitation” strategy. At the same time, Muñoz Marín led the PPD to abandon its independence aspirations in favor of a “possibilist” negotiation with Washington for greater autonomy. This process led to the enactment of the Elective Governor Act in 1947 and culminated in the establishment of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (Estado Libre Asociado, ELA) in 1952. In the 1948 elections, Muñoz Marín became the first governor elected by Puerto Ricans, a position he won again in the next three elections (1952, 1956, and 1960). In 1964, he declined to run for a fifth term. He later led the campaign to defend the ELA in a 1967 plebiscite, which won 60% of the vote.
Throughout his tenure as governor, he promoted democratic reformism in Latin America in alignment with the United States and distinguished himself through his support for struggles against dictatorial governments. In the 1970s, he dedicated himself to writing his memoirs, which were published posthumously. He passed away in 1980, and his funeral was the largest ever seen in Puerto Rico.
