Beyond The Valley (1959)

[Music] Heat. Heat. [Applause] [Music] My name is Louis. I am 28 years old. I am a Puerto Rican. I'd like to tell you something about myself and about Puerto Rico. This is our home. And here is our oldest one, Jose. He is a bundle of energy with an appetite like a lion. But I have to tell him to be back from play in time for lunch. And there is Maria, my wife. Every Saturday, Maria makes me an omelette for lunch with peppers. She is a wonderful cook. And finally, Abito. We think he's a cute little [Music] fellow. This is our family and our home. We live comfortably with many things. You know, we are able to buy Pabito fresh milk every day. I often think when I look at the children how things have changed in Puerto Rico. Yes, there are so many new things. Maria has a modern stove. We have a television set, running water. Yet, children can only take these things for granted. For they know only the world of the present. They have no knowledge of the past. and so have seen no change. Their world is a world in which there has always been television and running water. So it is with every child. And so it was with me when I was a boy. When my world was a world without a past. Yes, I [Music] remember. I remember the valley where I was born. I remember the sugar mill, the fields of sugar cane almost ready for harvest. Ever since I can remember, the valley had a special meaning for our family. Everything we needed, our house, our food, our clothing depended on the valley. The valley was our life. There is my father's house and there is one my sister's husband. Like so many men in the valley, one can find no regular work. Between jobs, he works in my father's vegetable garden and tries inventing things to make the garden produce more food for his family. His ideas aren't always successful, but Juan keeps trying. Someday perhaps he'll find a good steady job. There is my father and there is the house where we were born and there is my sister Carmen once busy with her daily chores. My father is a cane cutter as he was when I was a boy. And when Carmen and I were kids, like Carmen's children today, we too played our simple childhood games. Even then, a teen can was a wonderful thing. And my mother spend her time caring for us as she helps care for little Mercedes today. Yes. Today, life goes on in our valley pretty much the same as it did in those [Music] days. As I grew older, I began to think of the valley in a different way. The valley hadn't changed. The sugar cane, as always, came to ripe maturity early in the year. The samples taken for analysis would yield the knowledge nature knew full well that once again her time was near. And the sugar mills, as if to answer nature, gave the signal that day too would soon be ready. The giant machines that would process the cane began to wake from their annual [Applause] sleep. And the people of our valley waited for the call. That meant the end of the long months of waiting. For with the harvest once again there would be pork and bread and even perhaps pastel on our tables. This was the eternal cycle of the valley. The path our fathers had taken unresisting through the years. But I was of a new generation with its right to feel and think a new and I began to feel that we depended too much on the valley. Already my world had gone beyond our hills. For I had learned that our valley was not the only soil. Sugar cane was not the only crop. From as far west as Marika to the hills of Kario, up from Puelas, down from Utuad, there was coffee in the mountains in the west. here to other fathers and their families. The ripening coffee berry was the bright sign that meant the end of waiting for the private needs of roofing for the house or a kettle for the [Music] stove. And from Narangito in the north down the winding road to Cuamo in the south from the valley of La Plata all the way to Kagwas there was tobacco in the mountains in the east. And here to other fathers and other sons, the ripening tobacco was their own sign that promised grant of simple wants of clothing, canned goods or a catches meat. To all these people, to all of us who lived on the land and by the land and for the land, to the million who fashioned from the root earth our very existence, the soil was our heritage, the harvest our common wealth. And harvest time had come. Suddenly the valley was alive. Men cutting, loading, hauling sugar cane. How clearly I remember it. Machete swinging, cutting fat cane bursting with juice. Men and machetes in the cane fields on hot dry days raising the dust of the leaves. Dust that clings to sweating faces. Dust that rises and settles once again on the face of the earth. These things in our valley repeated in valleys all over the land. For in Puerto Rico, sugar is king. Coffee pickers work on many a mountain slope, picking berries to be hosted and dried and roasted. Coffee feeds and close a 100,000 people. But sugar is king. Tobacco covers many a gentle hillside. Bright green leaves to be hung and dried and cured. Tobacco feeds and clothes another 100,000. But sugar is king to a million. [Music] [Music] Canto is Fore! Foreign! Foreign! [Music] Cinderafe. [Music] [Music] tomorrow. I want [Music] to [Music] for the superior. But soon the harvest was over. Nature had added another year. Once again her benediction had come and gone. Suddenly there was no more cane to cut, no more cane to load, no more cane to grind. For the people of our valley, there was no more work. [Music] [Music] For the people in the mountains, there was no more coffee to pick, no more berries to wash, no more tobacco to cut, no more leaves to sew and hang and dry and sell. Why was there not enough work for all? What were the reasons? Was it because of too many people pressing on the land? Was it foreign competition or quarters or hurricanes? Or was it because too many depended too much on agriculture? We did not know and had no time for theories. We only knew we had a love for the land and the faith in the land and would stay with the land through all disaster. [Music] But we knew too that each year after the harvest was gone and the work was over that our privation was very real and that our questions had no answers. [Music] as the years went by, I began to understand why the valley was not enough to supply our needs. Take a land of mountains that offers poor soils and limited land resources. Add two million people with a rate of increase of 35,000 a year. Give each man, woman, and child one half acre of arable soil and tell them they must live primarily by the products of their scrap of soil. What is the result? A land with a per capita income of $122 a year. A land forced to import 40% of its food. A land whose very poor had been pushed to a swamp. A river's edge their last frontier. That was Puerto Rico in 1940. What was the answer? Simply this. We had to keep our people working all year round. Agriculture alone could not do it. We needed industry in the valleys and the cities and the towns. We needed hundreds of factories. Factories all over Puerto Rico that would put many thousands to work. Factories that knew no season. Factories that would give us income the year round. But Puerto Rico could not do this all alone. We needed help. the help of outside capital, companies with foreign markets for our goods. If only we could persuade private enterprise to build new factories in Puerto Rico. What attractions did we have? Our island has an ideal climate, semi-ropical, tempered by the trade winds and a temperature close to 75° winter and summer. Our ports are within easy shipping distances of United States and Latin American markets. 1,600 miles to New York, 1,700 m to New Orleans, 550 m to Karakas. There are no trade barriers between Puerto Rico and the United States. No visas or passports. A free exchange of goods, people, and a common currency. For we in Puerto Rico are United States citizens, too. And here is a labor reservoir of thousands eager to learn, looking for work. These were great attractions. But in addition, our government could offer private enterprise something special, a powerful incentive to build new factories. They could offer qualified private investors long-term freedom from corporate income, property, and municipal taxes. Freedom from taxes here, we hoped, would be the keystone of our success. The work had begun. [Music] To help new industries, the Economic Development Administration or Fmentoto was created. In addition to offering tax incentive, Fmentoto helped investors select the best manufacturing sites, evaluate industrial prospects, and secure economic data. For many factories, there were advantages in locating near one of the three principal cities, San Juan, the capital, Pon, the second largest city, and May on the west coast. For other factories, there were incentives for locating inland in rural areas. Industry was new to Puerto Rico, and many problems arose. But we had begun slowly. At first, the plans for the factories, the people who would build them began to merge. If a cane cutter could find no work for his machete, he was given a saw. If a coffee picker's work was over for another season, he turned to a [Applause] hammer. If a tobacco worker had no more crop to harvest, he found a shovel ready. [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Applause] [Music] There is I hear [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] But factories needed people to run them, power to operate the machines, roads and ships to carry raw materials and finished products. So we build vocational schools to train draftsmen, woodworkers and [Music] electricians. Train men to work on the machines of our industries, the bridges and the factories. Better roads for the people for industry. Roads to carry men, machines and materials. [Music] men and machines and materials to work on stores, offices, and the homes for the factory workers. Better ports for industry. Ports for the ships to bring in the raw materials. ships to carry out the finished products of our [Music] industries. New dams for industry. Giant reservoirs to catch the water from the skies. Water from the mountaintops and the cut over slopes. Water to work for power. Power for the machines. Power for the people. power to make the factories work. From San Juan to Pon, from Auadia to Guajama, from Magu to Macau, side by side with King Sugar, factories began working in the valleys of our land. Total 1950 98 factories, aluminum parts, riets and washers, skillful hands that had picked the coffee had learned to use a gauge. Total 1951, 132 factories, women's clothing and accessories, nimble hands that had sewn tobacco leaves now run a seam on cloth. Total 1952, 188 factories, shoes, gloves, bathing suits, and hats. Strong hands that had swung a machete were getting the fill of a [Music] machine. Total 1953, 262 factories, fountain pens, and automatic pencils. The right workers for a job selected by modern aptitude tests. Total 1954, 294 factories, radios, television sets and electronic equipment, women home trained in fine needle craft showed high aptitude in small precise work. Total 1955 350 factories, hoseries, sweaters and men's shirts. Thousands had graduated from government schools trained in special tasks. Total 1956, 452 factories, plastics for bottle caps, toys and electrical parts. On assembly lines, workers were setting many production records. Total 1957, 542 factories, nails, wire, and wire mesh. Private enterprise had imported machines by the thousands. Total 1958 over 600 factories, China, pottery and glassware, and they had helped create work for tens of thousands. New factories in Puerto Rico, new factories in the cities in San Juan, Pon, and Maju. New factories in the towns and in the valleys from the Atlantic to the Caribbean. There is no factory yet in our valley. Perhaps someday there will be. There are still the old familiar scenes of my childhood. There the sugar mill and here the young cane beginning its new growth. The eternal cycle of the valley repeating once again. But today I am no longer a child. And today I would say to my father, "My world has [Music] grown. I will always remember my valley, but it is my world no longer." For our generation has looked past the hills. We have gone beyond the valleys to make progress and change. So it has been with my generation and so it must be with our children. And that is why they must grow strong in mind and body and spirit. For theirs will be the new mind and body and spirit of Puerto Rico. [Music]