Running Unscared

With the relaxed confidence of an old master, Puerto Rico's Luis Munoz Marin, 58, campaigned this month for a third term as the island's governor--a job first held (in 1509) by Juan Ponce de Leon. Wearing the usual rumpled seersucker, Munoz Marin stopped at roadsides, walked into rural shacks or perched on fences to trade ribald banter and homely philosophy with the jibaros (country folk) who support him. He called meetings of local committees of his Popular Democratic Party, and around tables loaded with bottles of beer and rum chatted with the politicos until long after midnight. Occasionally, discarding his tie and his habitual melancholy expression,-he made a hoarse oration.

This year Munoz Marin is challenged by a man renowned enough to cut down the 65% majority Munoz Marin earned in 1952. Luis Ferre, 51, is a member of Puerto Rico's most important and progressive industrialist family. Master of a fortune earned in cement, glass, shipping, tile-making and trucking, he believes that "industry is not a collection of machines and tools and buildings. It is a social entity that has the responsibility of realizing the happiness of those who work in it." Ferre industries were famed for paying a $1-an-hour minimum wage long before it was ever required. An honor graduate of M.I.T. and an accomplished pianist, Ferre has been campaigning hard and speaking on television every week.

The significant, underlying issue of the election is Puerto Rico's relationship with the U.S. Ferre's party wants the island to ask Congress for statehood--which would give Puerto Ricans the vote in U.S. elections, but would subject them to the income tax. Munoz Marin sticks by his self-designed commonwealth status, under which Puerto Rico has substantial home rule along with tariff-free access to the U.S. mainland market, plus the common citizenship with the U.S. that lets the island's unemployed migrate freely. The majority of Puerto Ricans seem to like the commonwealth plan, and those who do not are split between Ferre's Statehood Party and the diehard Independence Party. With that advantage, Munoz Marin had little reason to run scared.

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