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The islanders are passionate in their politics, and voting turn outs of more than 80% are common. Across one roadway in the mountains stretches a billowing summons to a rally for Hernandez's Popular Democrats; the symbol is a red silhouette of a peasant wearing the traditional farmer's straw hat, la pava. Outside a hovel flaps the ensign of the other major party, the New Progressives, a blue palm tree on a white background.
ROMERO: STATEHOOD SOME DAY
Hernandez's chief challenger for Governor is San Juan May or Carlos Romero Barceló, who heads the Nuevoprogresistas. The rivals have a few things in common. Both are young: Hernandez is 39 and Romero 43. Both come from prominent political families. Like most of the island's elite, both went to university in the States, Romero at Yale and Hernandez at Johns Hop kins. Each got a law degree at the University of Puerto Rico. Otherwise their personalities contrast.
Hernandez is relatively reserved.
Even when trudging in jeans and boots through the stench of a hill farmer's chicken coop, he conveys a sense of delicacy. Romero, good-looking in a husky, florid way, is a flesh presser in the Lyndon Johnson manner. He marches on a citizen, fixing him with large, intense eyes and a paralyzing grip. He cannot pass a garbage truck without leaning into the cab for a quick hello.
Romero's Nuevoprogresistas grew out of the old Statehood Republican Party, which was once linked to the G.O.P. as formally as the Populares still are to the mainland Democrats, but Romero and former Governor Luis Ferré broke that official connection. While the Nuevoprogresistas are still strongest among the middle and upper classes, the mainland tags of liberal and conservative do not hang neatly in the island's politics.
Calling for Puerto Rico's eventual entry into the Union as the 51st state, Romero argues that the biggest beneficiaries would be the poor. The new federal tax burden would fall mostly on the affluent, he says, while the lower classes would benefit from increases in federal social programs. To those who object to statehood because of the income tax, he answers: "We should be willing to take up the burden little by little until everyone in Puerto Rico who is able to pay tax bears the same burden as any U.S. citizen."
This philosophy appeals at least to a sizable minority of Puerto Ricans who fear the radicalism of the independentistas and crave the security resulting from the American connection. When a mill worker explains his New Progressive palma flag by saying it is mas Americano, he does not mean that he wants his children to stop speaking Spanish, the official language. Rather he wants to be able to count on his cupones now and his Social Security check later. Says a pharmacist in Gurabo: "I was in the Army and I know America. We feel threatened by Cuba. Our best chance for security and stability is statehood."
THE RADICALS: BOMBS AND BOMBAST