(8 of 9)
One result of the population rise is heavy pressure for birth control, and early in Bootstrap the government unabashedly provided free contraceptives from 160 dispensaries. Under attack from the dominant Roman Catholic Church, the regime dropped word to clinic doctors not to push the practice. But postnatal sterilizations, at the request of the mother, are common; one estimate is that a fifth of all women 15 to 40 have been sterilized.
Since 1940, the birth rate has declined sharply; Puerto Rico's population rise lately is due entirely to a drastic drop in the death rate, which is now lower than the U.S.'s.
U.S. Migration. The safety valve for Puerto Rico's population pressure has been migration to the U.S. Puerto Ricans like their sunny island, but until jobs there are more plentiful, many of them will continue to yearn for the U.S. as it is described in the Broadway musical West Side Story:
Pink Oldsmobile in America, Chromium steel in America, Wire-spoke wheel in America—Very big deal in America!
Fomento executives freely admit that migration to the U.S. has given Bootstrap a more successful look than it would otherwise have, and they willingly aid migrants to go. But compared to the recent migration of 2,274,000 persons from the U.S. South to the North and West, the
Puerto Rican yearly average migration of 50,000 is a trifle. In New York City some Puerto Ricans have managed to gain for the rest an outsize reputation as gang fighters. West Side Story-style; actually, Puerto Ricans form 8% of the population, and their share of the crime rate is only slightly more than 8%.
In other U.S. cities Puerto Ricans have moved in with little furor. Some 6,000 Puerto Ricans live in Lorain, Ohio, drawn by work in the National Tube Co.'s mills. Says Carl Longwell, president of the United Steelworkers' local: "They are definitely as efficient as any other workmen"—which suggests that cutting Puerto Rican migration to the U.S. is no particularly desirable objective for anyone.
Operation Serenity. Characteristically, Muñoz no sooner had Bootstrap going well four years ago than the poet in him came out. Was Puerto Rico turning materialist, losing its gracious leisure, abandoning its soul? Recalls a member of his staff: "He began talking about how industrialization was raising cities but destroying old values. He used to push a statue of Gandhi toward Moscoso while Moscoso was talking figures, rates, profits. One day Moscoso exploded: 'Stop shoving that statue at me! If I take it seriously, we will have no economic progress.' "
Says Munoz: "The supreme utility is freedom with reasonable comfort. The human being should have a passionate wash to be free rather than a passionate wish to be a possessor. In the old days you lived a good life, served God and went to Heaven. What are we living for? To beat the Russians? Own one automobile, two, three, four?"