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HERNANDEZ: AUSTERITY AND OPTIONS
To attract new employers, Hernandez has lately started stressing productivity. In his annual message to the legislature last month, he demanded that wage raises be limited to the amount of productivity increases and hinted that legislated fringe benefits would be reduced. "The progress of some," he declared, "cannot be at the cost of others' misery." Sounding like California's Jerry Brown, Hernandez declared that sac rifice rather than new miracles is on tomorrow's agenda. He said that his own government "overspends, is highly inefficient, unresponsive to the calls and needs of the people and is all but impossible to control and direct." He promised a thorough over haul of both the bureaucracy and the island's weak education system.
Hernandez has been pushing land reform. The government has been buying underutilized acreage and selling it in small parcels on easy terms to landless peasant families. To promote the program, Hernandez occasionally pays visits to the farm towns, during which they festoon themselves as if for a saint's day. The lean, handsome Governor draws lots to match each young family with its new farm. "It is economic necessity and has great social value as well," Hernandez says. "We must give the people options."
The Governor wants the people to stay with the commonwealth option as the best means of maintaining their identity while pursuing development. The present arrangement, overwhelmingly approved by the voters in every election since it was adopted in 1952, will probably be changed somewhat this year. A joint commission headed by Muñoz and former Kentucky Senator Marlow Cook and strongly sup ported by the Hernandez government, has proposed a new compact, which is now be ing discussed in Congress. The island would be explicitly recognized as a sovereign entity voluntarily choosing union with the U.S. Puerto Ricans would remain U.S. citizens but, unless they live on the mainland, still could not vote for fed eral offices. Most important, Puerto Rico would gain full autonomy in specific areas, perhaps including the setting of minimum wages, environmental controls and tariffs, and regulating immigration. It would be able to import some goods without paying duties.
But those Puerto Ricans who want U.S. statehood argue that the compact is a cosmetic means of perpetuating the island's present dependency and strengthening the Hernandez regime. Mean while, those who want full independence say that it is merely an other disguise for colonialism. The new compact will go to a referendum—if Congress acts by midsummer, then the vote will be later this year—and it is expected to pass overwhelmingly.
A referendum would further enliven what is already a contentious election campaign. In November, Puerto Ricans will elect a Governor, a legislature and municipal officials. For the first time the Communists, organized as the Puerto Rican Socialist Party, will run candidates.