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This is a political study of how nationalism, socialism and ideas of modernization influenced the political status created in Puerto Rico during Luis Munoz Mar(')in's lifetime from 1898 to 1980. It analyzes Puerto Rican politics from various perspectives and looks into the diverse and conflicting perceptions of nationalism in Puerto Rico, the former colony of Spain acquired by the United States in the Spanish-American War of 1898. Although a Commonwealth since 1952, the Spanish-speaking Puerto Rican people are still struggling to resolve an old question over self-definition as a political entity with options to be independent from, associated with or formally joined to the United States as the 51st member of the Union. During the time Munoz Mar(')in was governor, from 1949 to 1964, he tried to convince all concerned that the Free Associated State solved the problem of colonialism. From the perspective of the 1980s the Free Associated State has solved neither the economic problems of Puerto Rico nor the political dilemma of its colonial nature.
This work is divided into five chapters. Chapter One reviews the literature of nationalism. The approaches founded on socialist and modernizing ideologies explain only partially the situation in Puerto Rico. Chapters Two, Three and Four focus on Luis Munoz Mar(')in and the events and ideas which swirled around the century's towering political figure of Puerto Rican nationalism. Munoz Mar(')in transformed his incipient socialist ideas into populism.
In Puerto Rico nationalism is related to two other powerful ideologies of this century: socialism and modernization. Munoz Mar(')in put Puerto Rico on the road to modernization and led it toward continued association with, and dependence upon, the United States. The fourth and final chapters address the question of decolonization by posing it as the central issue in Puerto Rico in the 1980s. Although there has been an increase in sentiment favoring statehood, both independence and autonomism remain powerful nationalist forces. However, as the debate over the political alternatives intensifies, the autonomist position is revealing itself for what this writer contends it is: a colonial solution in disguise.