Abstract
The admission of Alaska and Hawaii into the Union as states has once again raised the question of Puerto Rico's constitutional status. Many islanders see the present commonwealth, very nearly the personal creation of Governor Luis Muñoz Marín, as a way station on the road to full membership in the American federal system. Independence sentiment, barring economic catastrophe, seems safely relegated to the realm of polemical fantasy. Thus the island's only tangible constitutional problem is its relation to the United States: should it be associated with, or an integral part of the mainland. No event in Puerto Rican history has been more important in shaping the course of the island's development than the grant of collective United States citizenship in the Jones Act of 1917. And no Puerto Rican politician of the era was more influential than Luis Muñoz Rivera, who embodied the dominant Unionista party in the same way that his son embodies the now dominant Popular party. Muñoz Rivera's role in the politics of the Jones Bill affords a revealing view of the difficulties of working within the framework of colonialism, and of being forced to reconcile aspirations with political realities.
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