An Ike-Assisted Take-Off

As President Eisenhower's jet took off from Ramey Air Force Base in Puerto Rico last week, it left a stream of political smoke behind. With Ike in the big, orange-trimmed plane for a friendly chat en route to Washington went Luis Ferre, 56, the millionaire industrialist, accomplished pianist and M.I.T. honor graduate who is running for Governor on the Statehood Republican Party ticket in the November elections. The trip got big Page One headlines in Puerto Rican newspapers, and Candidate Ferre beamed: "We talked as one Republican to another."

Ferre's opposition is durable Governor Luis Munoz Marin, 62, architect of Puerto Rico's commonwealth status and the Popular Democratic Party's unannounced candidate for a fourth term. Trying to counter the presidential boost for Ferre, Munoz declared that Eisenhower on his visit had "recognized the great value of commonwealth and the great economic and social progress registered under the present government of Puerto Rico." Some Munoz followers, taking a different tack, grumped that Ike's friendliness toward Ferre amounted to interference in Puerto Rican politics. Replied Press Secretary James Hagerty: "Can you imagine the President being against a recognized candidate of his own party?"

On the major issue of the campaign, commonwealth v. statehood, Ike was less helpful. Though Ferre argued hard on the trip for a Republican plank endorsing statehood, Eisenhower replied: "I think you'd have a better chance, Luis, if you could give the platform committee some indication of public opinion on statehood in Puerto Rico." Ferre found that Republican leaders in Washington generally favor keeping some form of the 1956 plank, endorsing the "fundamental principle of self-determination" of the Puerto Rican people. In his political campaign, Ferre will try to prove that self-determination means statehood sooner or later.

A Roman Catholic bishop in predominantly Catholic Puerto Rico last week jumped broadly into the statehood v. commonwealth debate. In a letter to the New York Times, James McManus, the Brooklyn-born Bishop of Ponce, charged that Munoz Marin, by saying repeatedly that Puerto Rico is "a proud, free, self-governing commonwealth, joined to the U.S. by her own choice," is eloquently ignoring the hard historical fact. The 1952 law that established the commonwealth, McManus pointed out, did not free Puerto Rico, but merely changed it from a "nonautonomous territory" to an "autonomous territory." In fact, said the bishop, citing the law, one of the necessary conditions for congressional acceptance of the 1952 law was the retention of federal relations originally established in 1917.

Concluded the bishop: "The people of our colonies should be given a fair opportunity to choose between independence or statehood. The present condition in Puerto Rico is that Governor Munoz Marin is, by his own will, imposing upon the people of Puerto Rico and on the Congress of the United States an independence which was never granted, and a 'voluntary association' which is absurd unless independence has been granted."

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