Puerto Rico: Its Past, Present, and Promise

Here is a short subject about Puerto Rico as it presented itself in 1965: working, progressing, and optimistic.

After a brief discussion of the geography and history of the island, there is a frank discussion of the problems of the island in the 1940s. More than 50,000 Puerto Ricans left the every year, most headed to New York, where there were as many as a million of them, mostly concentrated in Spanish Harlem. The island was poor in natural resources, agricultural, and one-crop economy: sugar cane, . The island's high population impoverished it further. But under the leadership of governor Luis Munos Marin, it began a program of education and seeking manufacturing by building the plants, and inviting American companies to use them, promising as much as 17 years of tax relief. It worked, and as the film ends, we see a promise of an even greater future.