III.1.8 DIGITAL ARCHIVE 1055544
Luis Muñoz Marín, the first democratically elected governor of Puerto Rico, delivered this speech to the General Assembly of the Association of Teachers on December 29, 1953. He urged the assembly of educators to adopt as its chief mission the dissemination of Puerto Rican culture grounded in Spanish language and Hispanic traditions, and he emphasized the great importance of this project and how culture could improve the lives of Puerto Ricans. Puerto Rican culture is special, he explains, because of the island’s position as a bridge between the United States and the rest of the Americas. Muñoz Marín describes the Caribbean island as a dynamic, energetic land, and his countrymen as sensitive citizens. A poet and journalist who became a politician, Muñoz Marín helped found the PPD (Popular Democratic Party) of Puerto Rico in 1938. In 1949, he was elected governor and held office consecutively until 1964. During his administration, he also drafted Puerto Rico’s constitution of 1952, which is still in force, and he thereby became the founding father of the U.S. Commonwealth now known as the Estado Libre Asociado (or the E.L.A., the Associated Free State). This translation is from the original pamphlet distributed by the Puerto Rican government on the day of the assembly [Luis Muñoz Marín, “La personalidad puertorriqueña en el Estado Libre Asociado,” folleto distribuido por el ELA durante el discurso pronunciado por el Gobernador de Puerto Rico, Hon. Luís Muñoz Marín, en la Asamblea General de la Asociación de Maestros, el martes 29 de diciembre de 1953 (San Juan de Puerto Rico; official publication, 1953), 3–14].
THERE COULD BE NO BETTER TIME OR PLACE than this great assembly of teachers during the Commonwealth’s second year of existence to express some ideas on how we might expect Puerto Rican culture to evolve. I am not referring to culture in a strictly literary, scientific, or artistic context but in the broader sense that includes all the attitudes, habits, and values to be found in a human community. Though this culture should be everyone’s concern, no group of men and women have a greater opportunity and responsibility to influence it than you do. There is no better time than now. I believe we are on the verge of a moment in history when—if we do not deliberately take control of our cultural process by examining it and asking ourselves what it should be—we could lose our Puerto Rican identity in endless distractions that make little sense. And when a nation loses its identity it loses its life, even though it may continue to exist and multiply and improve its skills and knowledge. I think the life of a nation’s persona should be protected just as a man’s life is protected. When a nation’s persona dies, something of value is lost. It is a loss to a nation’s sense of self. It is a loss to the wider human community in which it is involved. In Puerto Rico’s case the loss, other than to the country’s self-esteem, would affect its contribution to the American Union as a Latino country, as a cultural border zone, and as a bridge to understanding and goodwill in relations between the Americas.
We are deeply concerned by this matter. How are we to decide upon a definition of the Puerto Rican man? This is not the same as defining his political status. Some might feel inexplicably unwilling to be involved with something of such importance if they confuse it with the issue of political status. That would not be a helpful reaction because this question of the particular culture we want demands an extremely open-minded attitude if it is to be handled well. Before going any further, and since the subject involves the cultural relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States—including what is and has been worth adapting from that great culture, and what is not and shall not be worth adapting—please allow me to say the following:
I believe very sincerely in our association with the United States and am fully aware that I enjoy solid, overwhelming support in that regard from the Puerto Rican people. I believe in it because I believe in the great human dignity and spiritual values that are, in many ways, embodied by the United States at this point in human history. The United States naturally has defects mingled with its virtues; it has a very superficial understanding of life but has depth in other areas. I also believe in this association because it is our country’s best hope for accomplishing our fundamental goal of eliminating extreme poverty among our people. Above all, I believe in our United States citizenship and the implicit allegiance that we have voluntarily merged with our allegiance to Puerto Rico, which we carry in our veins and in our laws. I also believe in the profound spiritual nature of the Puerto Rican people. I am confident that my feelings on this matter are shared by a vast majority of Puerto Ricans.
If that allegiance to our United States citizenship were perceived as subordination, if it meant feeling uncomfortable about questioning the easy cultural assimilation of language and customs and spirit—that is, questioning how a Puerto Rican should act as a Puerto Rican—, then yes, political status would be inextricably part of Puerto Rico’s cultural aspirations. But what kind of freedom would there be in a political status that made one feel awkward and anxious about being Puerto Rican?
I do not see it that way. I do not think any Puerto Rican should see it that way. That would be a colonial perspective, which would prompt renewed discussion on the issue of status (in highly emotional terms), when the people have already decided that the issue has been settled by the Commonwealth’s dynamic ability to grow in its own way within its association with the United States, which is closest when it is most free.
I believe that, while we clearly express our allegiance to our United States citizenship, which is sincerely meant in terms of our affection as well as our responsibilities, no one should be surprised when Puerto Ricans express their thoughts on the cultural values that make their lives more satisfying, add meaning to their contribution to the American Union, and provide depth to their efforts to promote better understanding of Latin American language, views on life, and sense of self—all much needed throughout the continent. Our allegiance is one of free men. It is the allegiance of free Puerto Ricans! Not free men from somewhere else, of some other race, who speak a different language, but specifically and unmistakably free Puerto Ricans. This is not the allegiance of subjugated colonials! Though it is an allegiance of equal countries, it is not one of similar countries. It is an allegiance of equals who are different—which is more sincere than a colonial version, and no less sincere than an allegiance between similar nations. It is the only one that, under our particular circumstances, allows Puerto Ricans to honor our United States citizenship with all the moral commitment that it deserves. A colonial allegiance would dishonor the word. An allegiance among similar countries is founded on historical conditions that, in our case, simply do not exist.
The problems of our culture should not, therefore, be confused with the issue of political status. Our country is not suggesting that we modify our status, although we are always interested in expanding the situation that was established by your votes and based upon its potential for improvement. By its very nature, this expansion would lead to a situation in which the closeness of the relationship would be in direct proportion to the level of freedom involved. An apparent curtailment of freedom is the only thing that could weaken the association.
My support for the Puerto Rican way of life should not be misconstrued to mean that I would like it to remain static. It is not static and should not be so. I do not advocate a nostalgic yearning for the good old days of the nineteenth century. It is fine to remember them and love them dearly, but not to miss them inappropriately! I’m talking about Puerto Ricans becoming more informed and aware and preparing themselves to live in the present and in the future in accordance with their native Puerto Rican genius. A nation will become static if it rests on its laurels and does not change. Nations can also become static if their inertia allows their culture to be influenced by customs that nobody is deliberately trying to impose and that are not at all necessary. Dynamic nations trust their natural genius to adopt great and worthy customs from other cultures and adapt them in their own, positive way. Creative nations use their own originality to develop superior ways of life and cultures. Neither static and nostalgic for the past, nor inert and servile in the present, but imbued with an energetic, humble sense of self—that, in my opinion, is how we should imagine and create the Puerto Rican man.
Culture should be able to adopt and reject. It should not yield to inertia. It is not a sign of inferiority for a culture to adopt valuable things that it does not possess, and it does not depersonalize a culture to do so. Those who decide that a foreign institution is better than theirs and deliberately adapt it to their cultural heritage are not guilty of inferiority but are demonstrating good sense and self-confidence; whereas those who allow their culture to be overrun with artificial features and are proud of them are guilty of a lack of self-assurance.
How should we define a Puerto Rican? How should we picture him in a dream? I don’t use the concept of dreaming to imply a sentimental form of vagueness, but to identify one of the great forces in life.
Let us consider the facts about this Puerto Rican in our dream. What are his financial goals? Sources indicate a minimum of two thousand dollars per year per family. This would include a home of a certain basic quality; it would include a high minimum level of education, health, and recreational facilities. It means intense industrialization, demanding greater production from the land, and making a little more land available where possible. It means re-education in the area of business procedures. It means re-education in terms of work-related customs and habits. We do not dream of a utopia of abundant riches—since they are not very necessary in a culture that values serenity—but we do dream of abolishing extreme poverty and eliminating the lack of resources that chokes and numbs, or chokes and frustrates our people.
We can clearly see that there will have to be certain cultural changes if we want to achieve these economic objectives; that is, we will have to change our way of doing and seeing. We need greater discipline in our working environment, which should be guided more by understanding and custom than by oversight; in our use of the land we must be willing to consider knowledge instead of just tradition; and we need to change our commercial distribution systems for items of general consumption in order to lower their cost as far as the original purchase price will allow.
Although there is undoubtedly satisfaction to be gained by doing those things well, these are cultural changes that serve our economic objective. Some are already in progress; they are all urgent. But the economy itself should serve the nation’s lifestyle; it should influence how a nation wants to live. . . .
As part of its cultural relationship with the United States, Puerto Rico has adapted a number of very valuable customs, such as an excellent political democracy, superior economic, mechanical, and administrative systems, and a wider interpretation of a woman’s role in society that, through the dramatic mid-century upheavals and uncertainties have in some ways strengthened our natural Hispanic sense of human equality.
This is deliberate adopting and adapting; it is what it means to belong to our great Western civilization, whose internal components give and take and mutually enrich each other. On the other hand, which parts of United States culture are not compatible with the idea of the Puerto Rican man that we have proposed? I would say that the main ones are a certain confusion about whether or not economic activities are an end in themselves and consumer habits that can make even a very rich country feel poor or insufficiently rich. These of course cannot be justified in a poor nation where the acceleration of economic production might correct injustices or might make them academic; though that may be true or nearly true over there, it is not so in a place like Puerto Rico. . . .
Puerto Rican culture evidently has an inactive side, a facet we might call lazy, that permits an imposition of habits that no one is even attempting to impose; it allows others to attach habits to it with pins and attach attitudes with flour and water paste; in other words, it tolerates being depersonalized. Through a number of unnecessary imitations, the culture absorbs many trivial customs whose only value might be to indicate an alarming weakness that could mean that no Puerto Rican can ever achieve his dream of himself. This might cause his personality to become warped.
One example is the extraordinary, irrational use of English names in countless situations that have no practical justification in a Spanish-speaking country. Thus we see “Auto Supplies,” “Beauty Parlors,” “Drugs,” “Barber Shops,” names of residential developments and theaters, and many advertisements with text in both English and Spanish. Thus people now use the word “drink” when they mean what in good Spanish is “trago” or “copa,” and what in good Puerto Rican is referred to by very expressive names, such as “palo” [stick], “matracazo” [wallop], and “juanetazo” [knockout]. Obviously, what we call things like this is not intrinsically important; that is, it is not very important in and of itself. What is important is the attitude of a recessive culture, of a cultural inertia that seems to suggest that it is used far too often. In a town on the Island I saw a place with a sign that said, “Agapito’s Bar.” Why did you do that, Agapito? Surely there are no English-speaking customers on that street in that little town from one year to the next! Do you feel better saying it in a language other than your own? If you are disdainful of your language, aren’t you also being a little disdainful of yourself? And if that attitude is prevalent among thousands and thousands of people who, without thinking, do as Agapito did, where will this nation find the spirit to continue providing a respectable culture for itself that it can also contribute to the United States and to the Americas, and to the Western world?. . .
Puerto Rico cannot be the voice of the United States’s anti-colonial spirit if, through no fault of the latter’s, we speak to Latin America in papiamento [creole]—that is, in a superficial, impoverished mixture of languages.
Obviously, none of what I am saying here is applicable to Puerto Ricans who emigrate and make their home anywhere in the United States. The United States was created by people just like them, who adapted to the culture they found there and contributed to it and enriched it. Puerto Ricans who settle in the United States have to adapt to their new community just as their Irish, Polish, Italian, and Scandinavian predecessors once did. I am talking about Puerto Rican culture in Puerto Rico, which has so moved the many distinguished co-citizens from the North who have chosen to live among us that they have adapted to it.
Language is the spirit’s way of breathing. A nation’s language is created by generations of speakers in that nation and the one it came from. Language is the result of an extremely close connection between word and spirit. So, when people speak their language they breathe, they don’t translate—and, above all, they don’t have to translate their way of being or feeling to be able to talk. A nation’s knowledge is enriched by the addition of another language; but the partial substitution of its vernacular with another language, by invasion or inertia—where encroachment is disorganized and unintentional, and the host culture is unaware—denies people a substantial amount of freedom to express themselves to their full potential, denies them part of their spiritual vitality, and diminishes to some extent their capacity for happiness.
Eventually we will be—we must be—bilingual. But let us agree not to be semi-lingual in two languages.
Language is the spirit’s way of breathing. Let us not make that breathing asthmatic. We cannot carry our burden uphill if we have asthma.
In conclusion, I think it would be helpful to clarify ideas and define concepts. We know that Puerto Rican culture and North American culture are and will continue to be part of our great Western culture. But there is no such thing as a Western man who is not from somewhere in the West. If we are not Westerners with Puerto Rican roots, we will be Westerners without roots. And a nation needs roots to remain vital. We are Westerners who act according to our roots. We are Americans from the United States, and Americans from the Americas, and Westerners from the West. And we embody all these things as Puerto Ricans from Puerto Rico. . . .