Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration
Falling under the authority of the Department of the Interior and the Farm Security Administration (FSA) its primary goals were to establish long term economic stability in Puerto Rico during the Great Depression through job creation, land distribution, public works projects, as well as environmental and health initiatives.
[6] While American companies expanded and profited, sugarcane and other agricultural workers saw little to no change in wages between 1898 and 1920 and Puerto Rican laborers generally experienced a poor standard of living.
Malnutrition, poor sanitation, lack of sewage systems, and dangerous working and living conditions led to high mortality rates due to workplace accidents and diseases such as dysentery, diarrhea, malaria, and tuberculosis.
The 1920s brought a dramatic drop in Puerto Rico's two primary exports, raw sugar and coffee, due to a devastating hurricane in 1928 and the plummeting demand from global markets in the latter half of the decade.
[14][15] High unemployment rates and low wages at the start of the Great Depression led to increased labor unrest in Puerto Rico, which alarmed American officials and business interests.
Beginning in August 1933 and lasting through the next two years, numerous violent strikes broke out among roughly 16,000 workers in the textile, stevedore, tobacco, taxi, and sugar industries and boycotts were called against American petroleum and electric corporations.
American officials were also alarmed by the radical labor organizing leadership of Puerto Rican nationalists Albizu Campos and Jose Enamorado Cuesta who also called for independence from the United States.
[16][17] These factors combined with the economic fallout of the depression prompted the Roosevelt Administration to create relief, recovery and reconstruction policies specifically aimed at Puerto Rico.
Under its directors, the Roosevelt appointee James Bourne, and the island's governor, the American Robert H. Gore, the PRERA received only $770,000 from the federal government due to oversights in application processes.
The central intent of the plan was to break the monopolies of American corporations, diversify the economy, and to utilize available labor in the promotion of locally sourced industrial and agricultural development with the hope of raising the overall Puerto Rican standard of living.
[19][20][21] On May 28, 1935 the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration (PRRA) was created by President Roosevelt under executive order 7057 and would operate under the authority of the Department of Interior and its secretary Harold Ickes.
With the $35 million in allotted federal funds it received in late 1935, the PRRA instituted a variety of initiatives that were mostly experimental in nature, but geared toward changing the Puerto Rican socioeconomic infrastructure.
[30] Although another initial intention of Chardón-influenced PRRA was to seek enforcement of the 500-acre law and aid in land distribution among Puerto Rican citizens, the agency took no steps in this regard as it was not within its legal power to do so.
[33] From its inception other problems such as minor financial mismanagement, opposition from members of the U.S. Congress and sugar companies also plagued the PRRA, and it was also criticized by the Puerto Rican Republican-Socialist coalition for purported political and economic corruption.
