Muñoz Marín, Luis
Muñoz Marín, Luis (1898-1980), long-time governor of Puerto Rico (1949-65), under whose leadership Puerto Rico made great economic advances and maintained favorable relations with the United States. Muñoz Marín was born in San Juan. He was the son of Luis Muñoz Rivera, who was instrumental in obtaining a measure of home rule from Spain in 1897 and U.S. citizenship for Puerto Ricans in 1917. Muñoz Marín was educated at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., and then worked in New York City as a free-lance writer and translator for ten years. In 1926 he returned to Puerto Rico, serving as editor and publisher of the newspaper La Democracia, which his father had founded. He joined the new Liberal Party, supported independence for Puerto Rico, and in 1932 was elected to the Puerto Rico legislature as a senator. After leaving the Liberal Party in 1937, he founded the Popular Democratic Party, dedicated to landless peasants and to close relations with the United States. In 1940 his party won control of the legislature and he became president of the senate. In 1948 Muñoz Marín became the first governor to be elected rather than appointed from Washington. Reelected in 1952, he thus became the first governor of the newly created Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. He was again reelected in 1956 and 1960. In 1968 Muñoz Marín was elected to a 4-year term in the Puerto Rican senate.
See: Puerto Rico