Puerto Rico’s Luis Muñoz Marín: Poet,Politician, and Paradox

Some revere Luis Muñoz Marín (1898–1980); others condemn him. The author lived years of her childhood and adolescence in Puerto Rico, when prosperity—to a great extent the result of Luis Muñoz Marín’s leadership—promised a socioeconomic reality different from the current one. To understand his life and legacy, she interviewed in San Juan his daughter Senator Victoria Muñoz Mendoza (1940– ), spoke with professors, authors, and a spectrum of other individuals, and spent time at the archives of the Luis Muñoz Marín Foundation. The Foundation is a welcome oasis in an island where, despite its natural beauties, 21st century quandaries and traffic jams abound. Landing in the international airport named in Muñoz Marín’s honor, she heard a Puerto Rican airline employee say that today Muñoz Marín is a fish out of water.