Puerto Rico--A Partial Developmental Model.

The article reports on Puerto Rico, island in the West Indies which, with small nearby islands, constitutes a commonwealth associated with the U.S. Some 650 persons a square mile make Puerto Rico crowded, and its 3,400 square miles make it the smallest of the Greater Antilles. The other three are Jamaica, Hispaniola and Cuba, with area square mileages of 4,400, 30,000, and 44,200. To the island come Peace Corpsmen for training to serve in Latin America, officials of former colonies to hear of Operation Bootstrap, Caribbean unionists for brief courses, and in the winter Mainland policy makers who depart with warm sentiments. With poor soil and a serrate-dentate terrain, a sea that owing to great depth supplies few fish, hurricanes, and minerals and forests of commercial insignificance, Puerto Rico has a more narrow resource base than did Ireland during the potato famine. Meager resources keep it from being a developmental model. A British Commonwealth nation is a sovereign State. The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is not. Stressing nationalism, most sovereign nations have serious misgivings about a non-independent area being a first-rate developmental model.