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Overview
"Fascinating.... (Maldonado's) extensive interviews of Moscoso are unique and help make this a highly original work.... He deserves this amount of attention as the man who, next to Luis Munoz, was the dominant figure in the Puerto Rico renaissance of the 1950s". -- Thomas L. Hughes, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace"Long overdue and of superb quality, this book examines the contribution of Moscoso (the architect of Operation Bootstrap) to the politics and economics of Puerto Rico. Describes the man, the times, and the place with illuminating stories. Valuable discussion of US-Puerto Rican relations, US-Latin American affairs, and the impact of industrialization on the society. Rich in detail"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 57.
Synopsis
A. W. Maldonado tells the story of Puerto Rico's extraordinary climb from poverty to economic success. Operation Bootstrap, a program conceived, promoted, and implemented by Teodoro Moscoso (1910-1992), succeeded in attracting worldwide capital investment that by the mid-1950s had transformed the island from an economic backwater into a bustling industrial society. Though much of the credit went to Puerto Rico's governor, Luis Munoz Marin, Maldonado focuses on Moscoso to describe how and why the economic miracle took place. Moscoso was deeply involved in all aspects of the Puerto Rican economy and culture, and Maldonado follows his relationships and battles on a number of fronts, from his initial differences with Rexford Tugwell, the last American governor of the island, to conflicts with Governor Munoz, who was constantly concerned that Moscoso was pushing change too quickly. In the worlds of business and culture, Maldonado shows how Moscoso employed advertising guru David Ogilvy to propagate the image of a people engaged in a cultural renaissance. He also highlights Moscoso's decisive actions at critical junctures (such as his success in pushing tax exemptions and tourism in the late 1940s) and his personal persuasiveness, as with Pablo Casals, who at the age of eighty was persuaded to establish his Casals Festival at San Juan. Maldonado shows that Moscoso was the architect of the "economic miracle" that economists and presidents believed could not happen in Puerto Rico. His account sheds new light on the man who provided U.S. administrations with a democratic success story to counter the allure of the Cuban revolution and who was called on by President John F. Kennedy to organize and head the Alliance for Progress.