Puerto Rico: An Explosion of People

by ROBERT C. COOK

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THE Caribbean island of Puerto Rico is a condensed object lesson in the population paradox of the twentieth century. Though on a comparatively minor scale, the population crisis there is one which is typical of many other parts of the world and which touches almost every other continent. In China, in India, in Italy, even in tiny El Salvador and in parts of the United States, shrinking naturaral resources are being called upon to support constantly increasing numbers of people. That is also what is happening in Puerto Pico, a small island where the plight of the people may well stand for the larger situation of more than a billion human beings living in other parts of the world.

The island has another significance. In 1898 it became a ward of the I nited States. What has happened since that time provides a measure of the failure of a highly advanced, industrialized mition to understand and to cope with a population problem. Moreover, through that failure, the United States has intensified the crisis. For fifty years the life pattern of most Puerto Ricans has been one of deepening despair. A well-intentioned but bungling use of the vital tools of public health, medicine, and sanitation has resulted in increasing misery and privation. Thousands of the beneficiaries of these new and humanitarian techniques are today ill fed, worse clothed, and almost literally with half a roof over their heads.

The situation has begun to alarm thoughtful Americans; the island bears heavily on the national conscience. New Yorkers, confronted with an immigration of thousands of Puerto Ricans into urban slums that cannot safely tolerate their numbers, have begun to wonder what drives these “undesirable” newcomers out of their homes and into a city where they are neither wanted nor needed. Yet there is no general admission that something is radically wrong with the national policy toward Puerto Rico’s problems.

Puerto Rico is shorter and broader than Long Island, with about twice the area— 3435 square miles. Where Long Island is mostly flat, with low hills along the north shore, Puerto Rico has a backbone of high mountains, with many ridges jutting out from it, like ribs, that extend nearly to the sea. Less than half the land area is arable. The principal crop, sugar caric, finds its market in the United Slates, where it enters tariff-free. Other crops — rice, tropical fruits, vegetables — are consumed mainly on the island. Much of the cultivated land is hilly. even mountainous, and dangerously subject to erosion. The Puerto Ricans have used the destructive milpa agriculture as practiced throughout Latin America. They burned the vegetation, gol a quick crop for a year or sit, and let the land go back to jungle. As the population increased. the burnings became more frequent, with a speed-up in erosion. The evil cycle thus spun ever faster and the land steadily deteriorated. Today the forests are almost gotle; only in the mountainous interior does the traveler ever hear a bird sing.

The Spanish-American War contributed a great discovery to tropical sanitation. In Cuba. Dr. Walter Reed of the Army Medical Corps made his famous experiment with human guinea pigs and yellow-fever-infested mosquitoes. The results left no doubt as to how yellow jack was transmitted. Victory over this deadly disease by elimination of the insect on which it rode from victim to victim marked the greatest forward step in controlling epidemic killers since Pasteur. General Gorgas used the discoveries of Reed, Ross, and others to make Panama safe for white occupancy, clearing the way for the building of the Panama Canal. The United States was in the West Indies to stay.

The Spanish had left the once jewel-like island of Puerto Rico in wreckage. Schools were almost nonexistent, sanitation was worse than primitive, and the population was on the verge of starvation. And as though four centuries of greed and mismanagement were not enough, nature took a hand. To speed the depart ing tyrants, a tropieal hurricane of unusual uniolence swept in from the sea. flattening much of the island. Clearly something had to be done for Puerto Rico.

Like a child with a bright new toy, the Americans were eager to bring the blessings of the twentieth century to this unhappy land. Schools, colleges, and experiment stations were constructed; a modest health program was instituted. Puerto Rico became an important center for the study of tropical medicine.

The stage was obviously set for success. Tyranny had been defeated and liberty brought to a benighted people, like light into a dark closet. Order had been restored, sanitation introduced, education launched, government established, public health inaugurated. An almost limitless export market awaited the island’s principal crop. True, the million Puerto Ricans were still on the verge of starvation, but economics, education, and sanitation would soon better their lot. The Lnited States was applying to Puerto Rico the same tools and techniques that had made the nation great. The triumph of good over evil was virtually assured; it was only a matter of time.

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TIME passed, but the island’s depression continued. Good intentions and very considerable outlays of cash to implement them brought onlv one major change in Puerto Rico: t he techniques of nineteenthcentury progress suddenly applied to an alien and tradition-bound culture set off a literal explosion of people. The Puerto Rican death rate dropped by one quarter, then by one half. But the number of births— already very high increased. The population began to grow, faster and faster. The million arable acres of earth from which these people had to draw their sustenance did not expand to meet these new demands, nor did the fertility of these acres increase. What did happen was that the increasing demand for land that could grow a crop became so acute that the people themselves became an increasingly erosive force. Carelessness and the overuse bred of desperation have by now destroyed many thousands of acres.

The spiral of interacting forces grew tighter. By 1928 the population had grown to 1.5 million; by 1943 it had passed 2 million. Today the population density is some 700 people per square mile. Slightly more than one third of an acre of farm land, much of it deteriorating from overuse, must provide food, clothing, and shelter for each Puerto Rican. By 1948 the Puerto Rican people reached an alltime high in rate of increase — and one of the highest recorded in human history. The present population of 2.2 million will at this rate double in about twenty-four years. The good intentions of 1898 have now proved their inevitable consequences. By 1948, just fifty years after the battle of San Juan Hill, the symbol of American success in good works was 200,000 families each averaging five members — many of which were in desperate need of even the most primitive shelter. Today the slums and hovels in which they live bring tears to the eyes of those who have seen them.

The biggest of these slums are on the outskirts of San Juan and are called El Fangueta (“The Little Mire”) and La Porla ("The Pearl”). Horrible as they are, they are daily growing worse. Currently the insular government is desperately trying to better this deteriorating situation, but to afford any living quarters at all it has had to extend “The Little Mire” out over the ocean. To furnish conventional sewage and water is prohibitive when so many must be cared for. So El Fangueta, which houses 50,000 people, is unique — a burlesque Venice of the Caribbean.

Along the shores of Puerto Rico the stilt like mangrove trees put out into the sea, and in shallow bays they gradually win back from the ocean a few swampy acres. Over such a mangrove swamp “ The Little Mire" stretches out toward the sea. Piles have been driven down and planks nailed to them to make a rickety framework. Here the people live in one-room hovels. There is no sewerage system the sea takes care of that, but not by the clean tidal scouring of Venice canals. Caught in the mangrove roots the excrement and garbage of a city make a frightful stench under the tropical sun. For cooking and drinking water, there are hydrants on the shore — a half mile distant.

Like white blood cells around an infection, a social crisis like that in Puerto Rico always draws a flock of commissions and committees to “investigate.” The investigations and subsequent reports may salve consciences, but they are a waste of time and effort unless they lead to effective action.

With variations, these reporlsecho the same tune. All review the elements it would be simpler to hold responsible for this horrifying crisis of excess fertility: hurricanes, political chicanery, imperialism, trade discriminat ton, lack of indust rializaion, ed ilcation, and any other real or imagined factor that can be nominated. But in the end every report comes back to the real — but still untouched cause of the trouble: too many people. This was the conclusion of the commission appointed by the Puerto Rican Legislature in 1943; of the Planning, Zoning, and Urbanizing Board of Puerto Rico in 1944; of the U.S. Tariff Commission in 1945. Said the last report: —

“Inability of Puerto Rico to find adequate remedies for its economic problems is traceable primarily to the low ratio of its resources and productive capacity to the size of the population. It is doubtful whether there is anywhere in the world another area primarily dependent on agriculture (with the possible exception of a few parts of China, India, and Egypt) which has as high a ratio of population to arable land as Puerto Rico. . . . Unless unforeseen technological developments occur, the maintenance of even the present low standard of living in the island will probably be dependent on continued aid from the outside, irrespective of the political status of t he island.

In 1947 the then President of the Puerto Rican Senate, Luis Muñoz Marin (later the first Puerto Rican governor of the island), put his finger on the thing that runaway population does. Even though the dollar economy improves, the per capita income does not. And for a great many people the standard of living declines.

“In no place in the world can 630 persons per square mile subsist, except at very low levels, on an agrarian economy, the present legislature of Puerto Rico . . . is trying to deal with the economic problem of Puerto Rico along the following lines: increased agricultural production and industrialization . . . to keep up with the growing population . . . and to improve the standard of living of the common man to the point where, through education and other factors, the birth rate begins to decrease. (In this connection it should be pointed out that the size of Puerto Rican families is smaller above the 800 dollars a year level of income than below that level. But 70 percent of Puerto Rican families are far below that level still.) ... It is along this line that we expect to accomplish the hard task of developing our production to the point where 3 million Puerto Ricans — the probable figure — can by 1990 support themselves without aid other than their own effort, without a lag of chronic unemployment, and at a level, modest but sufficiently decent, to bring about a decrease in the birth rate. . . .”

The difficulties in the way of this program are enormous. Although the island birth rate begins to decline after the family income reaches 800 dollars, it is not until it reaches 1500 dollars per family that births come into approximate parity with deaths. Meanwhile, four out of five Puerto Ricans average less than 10 dollars per week of income. What is required, therefore, is to raise the income of more than 280,000 families at least 500 dollars per annum — a total of 140 million dollars per year.

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THIS problem of how to shift from an agrarian economy to a more specialized economy while the population is doubling each generation has brought forth some touching examples of wishful thinking. Such thinking reaches its highest point in the writings of certain liberals, some of whom manage to attribute the predicament of the island entirely to imperialistic exploitation: America has taken all and given nothing; it has left the people to starve.

The alleged “imperialistic milking” of the island occurs mainly through the payment of dividends to foreign investors. Since the income from the sale of sugar and sugar derivatives is used to diversify the Puerto Rican diet, this largest industry of the island is a very important element in the Puerto Rican economy. During the fiscal year 1949 the volume of exports from the island ($194,903,000) failed to balance imports from the mainland ($326,295,000) by $131,392,000. The largest Puerto Rican purchases abroad were for lood ($105,238,000) and they amounted to S3 per cent of the largest export items, sugar, rum, and molasses ($130,300,000).

The dependence of Puerto Rico on foreign sources of food is astonishing. In the first eight months of 1949 Puerto Rico imported from the United States 292,801 sacks of dry beans, 67,365 cases of fresh eggs, 30,070 eases of codfish, 36,400 sacks of chickpeas, 2,891,400 pounds of garlic, 4,711,000 pounds of fresh meat, 505,740 cases of evaporated milk. 450,227 cases of powdered milk. 200,051 sacks of onions. 1,251,800 pounds of bacon, 719,810 30pound tins of lard, 5,531,600 pounds of ham, 615,325 sacks of potatoes, 1,799,810 sacks of rice.

A U.S. Tariff Commission Report in 1946 analyzed the dividend payments in this way: In 1942 the dividends taken out of Puerto Rico by U.S. investors totaled 9 million dollars; in 1943, 5 million dollars, balancing this are tax payments by the federal government to Puerto Rico. In 1942 ihe U.S. government turned over to the government of Puerto Rico over 14 million dollars in excise taxes alone; and over many years the total government expenditures amount to at least 50 million annually. The Tariff Commission went so far as to raise the question of who was really the “victim" of our “imperialism" — the people of Puerto Rico or the American taxpayer.

In addition, private philanthropies and military establishments have made very large investments in the island. It has been estimated, in a published statement that has not been refuted, that since 1898 the people and government of the United States have expended over a billion dollars on ihe island.

In the light of these facts it can hardly be said that our good works have consisted merely of lip service, or that we have been niggardly in our efforts. Neither would it appear that imperialism was the kind of crime that pays. Instead, the United States has made a continuing net investment in Puerto Rico for a half century without recovering its capital or earning any interest on it. And now the time has come when, like Br’er Rabbit and Tar Baby, it is very difficult to let go.

There is complete agreement on what is the central core of Puerto Rico’s problem. And yet no concerted action of importance is being taken to solve it. Such action involves a technique — or, rather, a series of techniques — which awakens the bitterest kinds of controversy, and unfortunately much of the bitterness is not derived from the teachings of the Christian religion in any of its major sects, but from the instinctive obsession with fertility which is as old as man himself. This obsession is linked with the most powerful human emotions and drives. To very large numbers of people in both the United States and Puerto Rico the subject is not even considered open lor discussion. Effective and intelligent action in any area governed by such obsessive emotion is peculiarly difficult.

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MANY people today clearly see the need for some new approach to the problem of fertility. Too often, however, they let themselves be misled into the fallacious excuse that “religious bigotry is all that stands in the way of a change of policy : “And you can’t change Church policy.”History has proved again and again that this contention is not true. The prelates of any church are conservative, but if the church authorities find that they are standing alone in a policy that is obviously injurious, they are not incapable of changing their minds. The crisis in Puerlo Rico has been supported by men of prominence in many fields; by public health authorities who still fail to see that tomorrow’s health, as well as today’s, is in their care; by politicians who fear ecclesiastical disapprobation. The issue in Puerto Rico is not by any means a clear case of religious bigotry.

Even today, many churchmen believe that any attempt to control human fertility is an impermissible “meddling with life.” They do not realize that the very effective “meddling” with death which science and technology have practiced during the past century makes a balancing of births and deaths imperative m the present age. The ono program is no more “unnatural” than the other.

In nature a rigid balance of numbers in any species is the rule. When the balance is upset and a rapid multiplication lakes place, this growth is usually a prelude to disaster, when natural agencies restore the pre-existing balance by a sharp increase in deaths. The doctrine of “naturalness” could be cited to support the thesis that a high death rate is the “natural” way to prevent runaway population increases. Few liberals or ecclesiastics would be willing to carry the principle of “naturalness” that far.

Lack of biological training makes the conservative altitude of these churchmen not surprising. te Bishop Wilberforces are present in everv age, and religion is generally a conservative force so far as social institutions are concerned. Yet many church leaders and some church doctrines approve in principle the need for fecundity control. The Catholic Church in the United States, whose position is so often misrepresented, approves so-called “natural” methods of fertility control: namely, the use of continence plus the rhythm method. That this technique is theoretically sound but often practically ineffective is unlort unate, for it has forced the Church into a posilion of opposing measures essential to some of its other goals. The British Royal Commission on Population quotes from a formal statement on the Catholic position with regard to a balance between mouths and resources:

“The charge must not, however, be brought against Catholic teaching that it is in favor of what the fanatical defenders of birth control call ‘avalanches’ of babies. This attribution to Catholics of a desire of population growth to an alarming extent and at every hazard is a mere rhetorical flourish. It has neither sense nor meaning. Catholic teaching, if loyally adopted, cannot possibly lead to an excessive and haphazard population, for the Catholic husband is taught, provided the moral law on marital relations is preserved, to exercise selfcontrol in marriage, not to overtax the strength of his wife, not to procreate more children than he can hope to educate and rear healthily, and to make suitable provision for every child he has, so that all his children may become healthy, vigorous, and loyal citizens.”

The responsibility of parents to beget only children who have a chance to grow into “healthy, vigorous, and loyal citizens” is the crux of the Puerto Rican crisis. It is a good point of departure in working out a true perspective on the unrealism of the doctrinaire slogans: “Not resources but resourcedulness"; “Right of the unborn to life”; and all the rest. Such evasive mental action has encouraged some churchmen to continue a hopeless struggle that in the end is doomed to failure.

The weight of responsibility for a policy so obviously inhuman and futile will break t the determination of even a fanatic. No “liberal,”however obsessed with the cult of fertility, will be able to survive the onus of his own myth-driven irresponsibility. It is certainly true that no genuine liberal, and no Christian churchman, wants to return to the cruel, wasteful, and futile cheeks which Malt bus prophesied would eventually stop a runaway population: starvation, epidemics, and war.

The policy of drift where fertility is concerned is deeply ingrained in the human subconscious. In 1950, with control of death in infancy and childhood increasingly effective, such a policy ceases to be mere “drift. It becomes a prelude to disaster.

Puerto Rico’s crisis grows more acute with each passing month. In 1947, the death rate fell to 12 per thousand, a figure which nearly equaled that of the continental United States thirty years earlier. During the twenty years from 1947 to 1947 the birth rate rose from to t-2, and is non twice that of the United States prior 1O 1045 (when a temporary increase to 25 occurred). If the present trend continues, by 1970 the population of Puerto Rico will touch the 4-million mark: 1400 people for every square mile of the island, one sixth of an arable acre of land per person, Given a continuation of the existing social and economic situation of the island, there is no possibility by any means now known for such a crowded mass of humanity to achieve a good life in the sense that it is defined in the United Stales.

All over the world the trend in population is toward a very rapid increase in numbers, but the note is not uniform in every country. To balance the tinder areas like Puerto Rico, India, Italy , and Egypt, there are regions where population growth has leveled off without a crisis. In Ireland, in France, and in Sweden, rapid growth has given place to stabilization or imminent decline. These countries are omens of hope. People do not multiply indefinitely. A century ago, Ireland was playing the part of Puerto Rico; 8 million Irishmen faced starvation on the Emerald Isle. Today, reduced to 3 million, the Irish live much better than their British neighbors, whose catchword “austerity” has been made necessary by a swing of the population pendulum far beyond the limits of subsistence, even in the ago of the iron horse and the iron ship. The Irish, be it noted, are both an island and a Catholic people.

The mad breeding to the limit of subsistence that worried Malthus and today alarms President Muñoz is not inevitable. Human beings are not mice, but men. Given the facts, they can take honest and realistic thought for the future. It is hard to reach people who are blinded by superstitions or badgered by police, but it can be done.

If the experience of Puerto Rico has taught nothing else, it should have made one lesson clear to the most backward scholar and to the most idealistic administrator. Meddling in the life patterns of a human population is tricky business. A complex interplay of many forces is involved, and the stakes are thousands or millions of lives. In Puerto Rico, United States administrators and humanitarians began to use certain vital tools of our age before they were aware of all the rules which applied to the case in hand. They compounded the error by failing to apply the rules as they were revealed by experience and analysis. The unhappy island is paying for this temerity today, and must inevitably go on doing so for decades.

Bad as it is the plight of Puerto Rico does not have the fate-driven inevitability of a Greek tragedy, The present crisis is the fruit of human action. The action of the people of Puerto Rico can even yet correct the balance. And the United States, which has contribuled to their predicament, must help them.