Operation Bootstrap Case Study
T he Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is a political and economic anachronism.
Twenty-five years ago the establishment of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico was the official U.S. response to the worldwide process of decolonization. It was the "showcase of democracy" for colonial peoples and underdeveloped countries, the U.S. model of how a country could pull itself out of poverty "by its own bootstraps" through an intimate political and economic relationship with the United States.
By 1977, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico has become a source of embarrassment to the United States. Today Puerto Rico is one of the few colonies left in the world. It is an extreme example of social deterioration, with some of the world's highest indexes for drug addiction, …show more content…
capital to promote industrial development and almost totally devoted to production for export to U.S. markets was obviously incompatible with independence. One immediate effect of the adoption of Operation Bootstrap as an economic development strategy, however, was the new position taken by the PDP on the status issue. Autonomy - political, social and cultural - was postulated as compatible with economic integration: Puerto Rico, we were told, could have the best of both worlds.
This, of course, did not prove the case. Operation Bootstrap, which relied on U.S. capital and technology for the development of an industrial private sector, had an unstated, inbuilt dependence on U.S. funds - federal and private - to finance the social and infrastructure costs of economic development with a consequent enlargement of federal and bondholders' power which could only erode autonomy.
But political accommodation and Operation Bootstrap resulted in dramatic changes for Puerto Rico from the late 1940s to the late 1960s. Income per capita rose from a little less than $200 in 1950, to almost $1,200 in 1967.7 The industrial sector became dominant, and the economy was transformed from an agricultural to a modern, industrial
Twenty-five years ago the establishment of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico was the official U.S. response to the worldwide process of decolonization. It was the "showcase of democracy" for colonial peoples and underdeveloped countries, the U.S. model of how a country could pull itself out of poverty "by its own bootstraps" through an intimate political and economic relationship with the United States.
By 1977, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico has become a source of embarrassment to the United States. Today Puerto Rico is one of the few colonies left in the world. It is an extreme example of social deterioration, with some of the world's highest indexes for drug addiction, …show more content…
capital to promote industrial development and almost totally devoted to production for export to U.S. markets was obviously incompatible with independence. One immediate effect of the adoption of Operation Bootstrap as an economic development strategy, however, was the new position taken by the PDP on the status issue. Autonomy - political, social and cultural - was postulated as compatible with economic integration: Puerto Rico, we were told, could have the best of both worlds.
This, of course, did not prove the case. Operation Bootstrap, which relied on U.S. capital and technology for the development of an industrial private sector, had an unstated, inbuilt dependence on U.S. funds - federal and private - to finance the social and infrastructure costs of economic development with a consequent enlargement of federal and bondholders' power which could only erode autonomy.
But political accommodation and Operation Bootstrap resulted in dramatic changes for Puerto Rico from the late 1940s to the late 1960s. Income per capita rose from a little less than $200 in 1950, to almost $1,200 in 1967.7 The industrial sector became dominant, and the economy was transformed from an agricultural to a modern, industrial