Negotiating Paradise: U.S. Tourism and Empire in Twentieth-Century Latin America

6. A Cold War Mirage: Puerto Rico in the 1960s and 1970s

six A Cold W ar Mirage Puerto Rico in the 1960s and 1970s e For one glamorous evening in November 1961, visitor-host roles reversed. It was Puerto Rico Night at the Kennedy White House, and America’s handsome first couple played host to Puerto Rican governor Luis Muñoz Marín; his wife, Inés María Mendoza; and Puerto Rico’s adopted son, the incomparable Pablo Casals. The president dressed in white tie and tails; the First Lady donned a sleeveless gown. The event featured a state dinner in honor of Muñoz, followed by a concert performed by Casals. The eighty-one-year-old cellist had last performed at the White House in 1904 for President Theodore Roosevelt and guests and had since refused to play at functions sponsored by governments that maintained relations with Francisco Franco, the 1930s dictator who still haunted Casals’s native Spain. The cellist made an exception for Kennedy, a gesture of trust in the young president’s commitment to democracy. The concert, which featured pieces by Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Couperin, was broadcast live on abc and nbc radio. Like any savvy host, the president used the visitor’s presence to project an idealized national identity. ‘‘Art is an integral part of a free society,’’ Kennedy noted. America stood tall as a world power that lauded both artistic creativity and political liberty.∞ The celebration bespoke the administration’s hope-filled beginning and Puerto Rico’s special status inside the Kennedy White House. Despite the setback su√ered by U.S.-backed Cuban commandos at the Bay of Pigs the previous spring, the administration moved forward with one of the most ambitious inter-American initiatives in history, the Alliance for Progress. The bold exercise of soft power centered on a pledge to pump ten billion dollars into the region’s development over the next decade. To guide the new program , the president called on an army of professionally trained social scientists , most of whom adhered to some variation of modernization theory. The 212 A Cold War Mirage On Puerto Rico Night at the White House, 13 November 1961, U.S. president John F. Kennedy and Puerto Rican governor Luis Muñoz Marín chat with cellist Pablo Casals. Puerto Rico’s First Lady, Inés María Mendoza, is to the left, and Jacqueline Kennedy stands to the right of Muñoz. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Boston, Massachusetts. core ideology, not entirely at odds with old-fashioned dollar diplomacy and the postwar Bretton Woods philosophy, prescribed U.S. leadership and public funds to encourage Latin American states to embrace free markets, private investment, and democratization. Puerto Rico played an important role in the new program. To help formulate and implement the plan, the Kennedy White House drafted two prominent commonwealth o≈cials: Muñoz foreign a√airs adviser Arturo Morales Carrión served on the Latin American task force that drafted the initiative, and Fomento director Teodoro Moscoso became the alliance’s first administrative coordinator.≤ Puerto Rico served as a frequent point of reference for alliance o≈cials who touted the island as a model for U.S.-backed modernization . The underlying assumptions held that the island had absorbed U.S. capital, trade, technology, and cultural values, especially a faith in hard work, democracy, and liberal capitalism.≥ Puerto Rico Night at the White House carried special symbolism. The concept of Puerto Rico as a model for reform and development, of course, had derived in no small part from its decadelong buildup as a tourist oasis. Although many North Americans still conceived of the island primarily as an A Cold War Mirage 213 exporter of undesirable immigrants, the visitor-host relationship had also nurtured more flattering cultural constructions. A forward-looking government had pulled an agricultural society up by its bootstraps and in addition to building factories had erected luxury hotels, landscaped the island’s sandy beaches, and restored its quaint, aged cobblestone. The tourist gaze juxtaposed the island’s tropical allure and its material progress, its Old World ambience and its advanced consumer o√erings, its historic landmarks and its modern architecture, its yearning for change and its stability. In short, Puerto Rico shone as a new Cold War paradise, an outpost for capitalist development in a world seemingly tempted by the promises of communism. In 1969, ten years after the Cuban Revolution and nearing the end of the alliance...