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As a result of such anxieties, Muñoz started Operation Serenity, "an attempt to give to economic effort objectives that commend themselves to the spirit." On a budget now running $315,000 a year, Operation Serenity restores old churches, houses and forts, rediscovers folklore and old music: Puerto Rico bursts with pride at being the home of such artists as Cellist Casals and the late Nobel Prizewinning Poet Juan Ramón Jiménez. But Serenity has not eased the pull on Bootstrap. Muñoz finally came around to the belief that "we must live like angels and produce like the devil."
Imaginative Lessons. For U.S. officials entrusted with reshaping policy after the warning-laden Nixon trip, the Puerto Rican advance is a textbook of imaginative lessons. In helping underdeveloped nations, the U.S. could well consider: ¶ A measure of tax forgiveness for corporations operating overseas, advocated by former Treasury Secretary George Humphrey to induce foreign investment. ¶ Support for big common markets—such as the proposed Latin American customs union—that will provide markets such as Puerto Rico has in the U.S. ¶ Official coolness to dictators, who are often corrupt and ultranationalistic. ¶ Greater tolerance for mixed economies in the Puerto Rican style, less insistence on making private enterprise a condition in granting loans. ¶ Any move toward freer trade.
In turn, underdeveloped countries could profit from Puerto Rico by: ¶Replacement of hostility to private capital with an outright welcome, using tax incentives and hard-sell promotion. ¶ Official honesty; greasing endless palms frightens many businessmen. ¶ Sound planning and statistics. ¶ Playing down nationalism, working toward what Muñoz calls "the post-nationalist world."
Most of the lessons demand radical wrenches from the status quo—but Puerto Rico's ground-breaking example is impressing the whole world. In the garden of a bungalow overlooking Amman in Jordan last week. Social Welfare Director Hussein Bushnak sipped Turkish coffee and spoke with warmth of his visit to Puerto Rico. "Before I went there, I had been told that work of great importance had been done." he said. "But I was astonished at the scope of what I saw." He added: "The Governor is an impressive man. He has achieved much."
*Catalonia-born Maestro Casals, who detests Spanish Dictator Francisco Franco so heartily that he will not play in Spain, moved to Puerto Rico in 1956 from his longtime home in self-exile in the French Pyrenean town of Prades. He played last April at the yearly Festival Casals in San Juan, is now in Prades for a reprise of the festivals he used to hold there. *A Reuters correspondent once needled Munoz with the question: "Yes, but when will Puerto Rico get economic freedom from the U.S.?" Shot back Munoz: "About the same time Britain does!"