chance meeting when Tugwell visited Moscoso’s pharmacy in Ponce, Teodoro went to work in La Fortaleza as assistant for housing. The title was a formality in order to get Moscoso a salary for his work, but the actual duties were far broader. Another important event in Teodoro Moscoso’s life occurred in the summer of 1940 when Moscoso met Luis Muoz Marn. Muoz vision and unique personality convinced Moscoso, who became a member the recently founded Popular Democratic Party(PDP). This was the beginning of a long and fruitful partnership which in the long run transformed Puerto Rico from a rural-agricultural society to a mostly industrial and urban one. The island’s first factory was the glass bottle plant which was made to put the rum, a growing industry in Puerto Rico, in bottles. Also a cardboard plant was made to supply boxes for shipping the rum. Despite the failure in the glass factory, they kept on with the cardboard mill proposal and added two factories to the list: clay products and shoes. The lack of success of government owned industrial enterprises motivated Moscoso to arrange for their sale to private investors and to look for other alternatives to stimulate the development of the island’s economy. The new approach to lift the island from conditions of extreme poverty included: federal and local tax exemption for industries operating in Puerto Rico, “a massive exodus of Puerto Ricans from the island, equally massive programs on the island to vastly improve education, health, sanitation, and housing, plus `carefully selected industrialization’.” (p. 54) With the development of hotels and tourism and improvements in roads, ports, and airports the framework for Puerto Rico’s “economic miracle” was completed. With the establishment of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico in 1952, the island had a political vehicle to carry out economic reform. Another brill...
