Muñoz Marín, Luis (1898–1980)

Journalist and commonwealth governor. He brought New Deal funding to Puerto Rico as a Liberal Party member of the Puerto Rican senate (1932–38). After founding the Popular Democratic Party in 1938, he campaigned for land redistribution from large landowners to small farmers, becoming senate president (1938–48). Claiming islanders were not yet ready for economic independence, he began ‘Operation Bootstrap’, to attract mainland business investment through the Puerto Rican Industrial Development Corporation. As Puerto Rico's first elected governor (1949–65), he helped draft its constitution and in 1952 presided over its attaining the status of a self-governing Commonwealth. He received a US presidential medal of freedom in 1963.

Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the son of Luis Muñoz Rivera, who had helped to liberate Puerto Rico from Spain, Muñoz Marín was educated in the USA. While at Georgetown University, he began writing freelance articles, translating American poetry into Spanish, and published his own poetry, Borrones and Madre Haraposa, in 1917. Returning to Puerto Rico in 1926, he published La Democracia, championing Puerto Rican independence.