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285 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. vii (1953)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0285 and id is 1 raw text is: FOREWORD WHEN James Boswell returned from a tour of Corsica in 1765 he wrote: It is indeed amazing that an island so considerable, and in which such noble things have been doing, should be so imperfectly known. The same might be said today of Puerto Rico. Although more familiar to the general public in January 1953 than it was in January 1941, when noble things began to happen in the island, Puerto Rico is still imperfectly known in the United States. The purpose of this volume is to remedy that defect. The essays attempt not only to describe in some detail the remarkable doings of the last twelve years but also to explain their significance for the world at large. Puerto Rico's achieve- ments are significant because its problems are at once common and grave. They are to be encountered in many parts of this troubled globe, and nowhere are they being attacked so confidently or so successfully that lessons cannot be drawn from the Puerto Rican experience. Like so many other places, Puerto Rico is an underdeveloped area. Before 1941 its economy was almost exclusively agricultural and devoted primarily to the cultivation of a single crop; its resources were meager save for manpower, and that was inadequately used; its widespread poverty was apparently endemic and ineradicable. Since 1941, however, strenuous and imaginative efforts have been put forward to raise the standard of living, to introduce industrialization, to di- versify and increase agricultural production, and to discover new resources and make the most of those that were known. Again like many other parts of the world, Puerto Rico has a population prob- lem. A steadily high birth rate combined with a steadily declining death rate during the first four decades of this century had pfoduced a tidal wave of hu- manity beating ever more destructively against the economic foundations of the, island. Virtually unrecognized twelve years ago, the population pressures are to- day the object of serious concern and constructive planning. In yet another sense Puerto Rico exhibits a not uncommon modern problem: that of accommodating a long-established culture, basically Old World in character, to the unsettling forces of rapid Americanization. Spanish in language, culture, and outlook for four centuries, the island suddenly in 1898 became subject to strong influences from the United States. The impact of these influences has increased each year, but the conflict between the old culture and the new has gradually les- sened as patterns of adjustment have worked themselves out. During the last decade the island has become a training center for Latin American and other seek- ers after North American know-how. Finally, Puerto Rico presents (or rather did present until recently) a fairly typi- cal instance of the world-wide problem of colonialism. From the early sixteenth century until the day before yesterday, the political status of the island was that of a dependent area. Under the jurisdiction of the United States since the close of the Spanish-American War, Puerto Rico learned the theory and (to the extent allowed by its American governors) the practice of democracy. Knowledge of de- mocracy bred aspirations for self-rule; but awareness of economic difficulties in- herent in the traditional goals of independence or statehood led to the creative vii

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