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The minds of men in underdeveloped lands all over the world were turned last week to a crowded Caribbean island that flies a proud one-star flag beside the Stars and Stripes. To men in New Delhi, Accra, Bangkok and Morocco, tiny Puerto Rico, which has clawed its way in 15 years to a nearly doubled standard of living, spoke an urgent message of hope through self-help—and spoke it with the special clarity of a teacher who is only ten pages ahead of the class.
Durga Das, who as editor of India's Hindustan Times visited Puerto Rico last year, marveled: "The face of the island is being changed." Ghana, which modeled its civil-service training on Puerto Rico's, was getting advice on industrialization from two of the island's experts. Prabha Prachasubhaniti of Bangkok Technical Institute copied in his school a workshop setup he had seen in Puerto Rico. Mehdi ben Barka, president of Morocco's Consultative Assembly, took inspiration for his development program (TIME, Sept. 9) from a look at the island last fall.
At La Fortaleza, the Governor's mansion in San Juan, the architect of Puerto Rico's progress was forthrightly proud of the foreign plaudits. Under Governor Luis Munoz Marin (pronounced Moonyos Marine), the Puerto Rican government spends some $770,000 a year helping observers and students from abroad to come to the showcase island; since the program began, the total is 5,000. But Munoz is by no means satisfied with his accomplishments. Asked "Where do you go from here?" he exploded: "Man, we are not here yet!"
"Arriba Nixon!" Only 15 years ago a Democratic Senate committee investigated Puerto Rico and pronounced its problems "unsolvable." Only twelve years ago Puerto Rico's retiring New Dealing Governor Rexford Guy Tugwell chose The Stricken Land as the title for his book about the island. Today Puerto Rico: CJ Boasts a per capita income of $443 (v. $742 for West Germany, $2,009 for the U.S.), which is surpassed in Latin America only by oil-rich Venezuela. ¶ Costs the U.S. Treasury next to nothing. ¶ Governs itself in orderly democracy within an imaginative new "Commonwealth" relationship to Washington. ¶ Gives the world, anxiously watching Algeria and Cyprus, a shining example of an experimental colonial policy that turned out well.
Last month, when Vice President Nixon left rioting Venezuela in saddened haste, he flew to San Juan. That night he spent 40 minutes wading four blocks through cheering Puerto Ricans ("Arriba Nixon!") to the wrought-iron gates of 400-year-old La Fortaleza, where Muñoz gave him a state dinner in the ancient fort's great candlelit dining room. Said Nixon: "I couldn't think of a better place to be." Said Muñoz: "Mr. Vice President, está en su casa [you are in your house]."