Luis A. Ferré

Puerto Rican politician and philanthropist

• Born: February 17, 1904
• Birthplace: Ponce, Puerto Rico
• Died: October 21, 2003
• Place of death: San Juan, Puerto Rico

Ferré founded the New Progressive Party (PNP), the main political party advocating Puerto Rican statehood. From 1969 to 1973, he served as the third democratically elected governor of Puerto Rico. His election marked the first transition of the island’s governorship from one political party to another.

Early Life

Luis Alberto Ferré Aguayo (feh-RAY) was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, to Maria Aguayo Casals, a cousin of cellist Pablo Casals, and Antonio Ferré, a wealthy industrialist and the owner of the Puerto Rico Iron Works. Ferré’s paternal grandfather, a French engineer who participated in the ill-fated French attempt to build a canal in Panama, settled in Cuba after the French company building the canal went bankrupt.

Ferré studied civil engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1924 and a graduate degree in 1925. While in Massachusetts, he also studied piano at the New England Conservatory of Music. After returning to Puerto Rico, he helped his father expand the family’s business holdings, thus making the Ferré family one of the wealthiest on the island. Ferré acquired a small newspaper during the 1940’s and turned it into El Nuevo Día, one of the most widely circulated newspapers in Puerto Rico. During the 1950’s, in an attempt to capitalize on a construction boom, Ferré purchased two cement companies.

Life’s Work

In 1940, Ferré ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Ponce, his hometown. Partially in response to his positive educational experience in Massachusetts during the 1920’s, Ferré, who saw the benefits of a closer political and economic relationship with the United States, was an early advocate of Puerto Rican statehood. He was an active member of the Republican Statehood Party (PER); however, in 1951, against the wishes of his party, Ferré boycotted a referendum initiated by the U.S. Congress to determine the possibility of drafting Puerto Rico’s first constitution. He believed that the process would merely reaffirm Puerto Rico’s colonial status. Regardless, once the referendum was approved, Ferré, who eventually saw that commonwealth status could be a stepping-stone toward statehood, participated in the constitutional assembly. In 1952, Ferré won election to the Puerto Rican House of Representatives. He consistently argued that commonwealth status, as advocated by Governor Luis Muñoz Marín, made Puerto Ricans second-class citizens.

In 1967, in anticipation of a referendum on the island’s future political status, the leadership of the Republican Statehood Party chose not to participate because the results of the referendum would not be binding. Ferré, angered by this decision, left the party to establish the New Progressive Party (PNP). In the 1968 gubernatorial elections, a split in the ruling Popular Democratic Party (PPD), which favored commonwealth status, facilitated Ferré’s election. Since the 1968 elections, the governorship in Puerto Rico has been dominated alternatively by the pro-statehood and pro-commonwealth factions.

Ferré defended the federal minimum-wage laws and the Latino custom of granting Christmas bonus checks to workers. He also visited Puerto Rican troops fighting in Vietnam, created the Puerto Rican Environmental Quality Board to protect the environment, and greatly expanded Puerto Rico’s highway system. He lowered the voting age to eighteen and actively sought the participation of young Puerto Ricans in the political system. In 1972, however, he lost his reelection bid to PPD candidate Rafael Hernández Colón. Ferré, who had a close working relationship with the U.S. Republican Party, remained active in politics and was elected to the Puerto Rican Senate in 1976, serving two terms. From 1977 to 1980, he served as president of the senate. Ferré died of respiratory failure in San Juan on October 21, 2003.

Significance

On November 18, 1991, President George H. W. Bush awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Ferré, one of only a few Puerto Ricans to have received such an honor. Although he is best known as the preeminent champion on the Puerto Rican statehood movement, Ferré also was a philanthropist. In 1959, he established the Ponce Museum of Art with seventy-one paintings from his family’s private collection. The museum, whose collection has grown to more than three thousand pieces, is one of the largest and most important art museums in the Caribbean. In recognition of his dedication to building the island’s infrastructure, the main highway between Caguas and Ponce, one of Puerto Rico’s main transportation arteries, was named in his honor. His daughter, Rosario Ferré, is one of Puerto Rico’s most famous writers.

Bibliography

Ayala, César J., and Rafael Bernabe. Puerto Rico in the American Century: A History Since 1898. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. An excellent guide to the history of Puerto Rico during the twentieth century, this source also is of value to students seeking new topics to research on Puerto Rican history.

Dietz, James L. Economic History of Puerto Rico: Institutional Change and Capitalist Development. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987. Dietz contends that Puerto Rico’s industrialization campaign has failed to solve the island’s economic and social problems.

Morales Carrion, Arturo. Puerto Rico: A Political and Cultural History. New York: W. W. Norton, 1984. Although the author’s pro-commonwealth stance is obvious, his discussion of Puerto Rican politics is well-researched.

Thornburgh, Dick. Puerto Rico’s Future: A Time to Decide. Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2007. Former U.S. Attorney General Thornburgh contends that Puerto Rico’s current political status denies its citizens the basic right of self-determination.

Trias Monge, José. Puerto Rico: The Trials of the Oldest Colony in the World. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999. The author highlights the debates surrounding the nature and future of Puerto Rico’s political relationship with the United States, the most contentious issue in Puerto Rican politics.