Independence!

The sad-eyed, barrel-chested roost-ruler of Puerto Rican politics bellowed with pain. This time, for a change, his three big rivals came out with echoes. How could they lose? The issue was everybody's sweetheart.

"I cannot see any reason to justify why, in a good democracy," cried Senate President Luis Munoz Marin, leader of the dominating Popular Democratic Party, "Puerto Rico should be denied the right to have complete self-government without limitation." Independent-sounding amens came fast from all other party leaders--Union Republicans, Socialists, whatnots.

The noise of agony arose over what the U.S. Senate had done to a Home Rule Bill. Into a subcommittee the bill had gone in pretty, thought Puerto Rican politicos, and had come out hagridden. But the U.S. Senate promptly approved it; sent it to the House last week.

The new Home Rule Bill, as edited by Democrat Dennis Chavez of New Mexico, committee chief, provides; > For an elective Governor -with power to appoint his own Cabinet. > For an Attorney General by local election instead of by Presidential appointment.

>For an island Coordinator of Federal Agencies instead of a more dictatorial Commissioner General.

Edited straight into the wastebasket was a Joint Advisory Council (containing Puerto Rican members) to initiate changes in the island's political status. The subcommittee stood stanchly on its assertion that the U.S. Congress must "determine for itself at the proper time . . . the ultimate political destiny of the Island." The Puerto Rican politicos cried in pain. Forthwith, the political campaign began. The great popular cause between now and the November Puerto Rican elections would be complete self-government, so far as the politicos were concerned. The issues closest to the hearts and stomachs of the two million hard-pressed people were still the economic and social problems of living jampacked into 3,435 square miles of an unindustrialized, one-crop country. Likeliest candidate for the new governorship was Roost-Ruler Marin, who has maintained his prestige by plugging for social and economic reform.

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