Diario las Américas Newspaper, November 25, 1956, Page 23

COMERIO WHAT A PUERTO RICAN VILLAGE THERE IS AN AIR of anticipa- tion today in the little. town of Comerio, high in the mountains of central Puerto Rico.. Smiles wreathe the faces of people on the streets. Men in the plaza slap each other on the back in high good spirits. Women at market converse animatedly. The at- mosphere is electric, It hasn’t always been this way. Until recently Comerio looked like a doomed community. For years there has not been enough work to support the five thousand in- habitants. Tobacco harvesting, the sole industry, provided jobs for on- ly six months of the year. The an- “nual earnings of a tobacco work- er came to only a quarter of the thousand dollars a year that sur- veys show is needed to support an average family of six in Comerio. Residents were leaving, to resettle where they could find employment. The population dropped by near- ly a thousand. Worse yet, it was the young people who were mov- jing; only the older ‘ones remain- ed. “Operation Bootstrap,” the Puer- to Rican Government develop- ment program, has brought a fac- tory to almost every community in the Commonwealth by offering new industries such special incentives as ten years’ tax exemption, gov- ernment loans for machinery, and personnel trained at government expense. But it had not helped Comerio. Many industrialists came to look over the town as a pos- sible plant site, but that was the last that was heard from them. Mayor Maximino Préstamo wrote to the Puerto Rico Economic De- velopment Administration, ,asking it to erect a modern factory build- ing in Comerio, as it had else- where, which could be-offered to industrialists for low rentals. The government industrial promotion people were sympathetic, but to Reprinted from AMERICAS, monthly magazine published by the Pan American Union in and Portu- English, Spanish guese, draw industry they had to build factories on sites that appealed more to manufacturers, In desperation, the Mayor ap- pointed a committee of townspeo- ple to find out how to create jobs for the unemployed. It was a reat cross-section — a doctor, an agri- cultural engineer, a welfare work- er, the school superintendent, a priest, the police chief, a druggist, a farmer, a car salesman, and a ta- xi driver. They investigated the possiblity of expanding agricul- ture. This was.a dead end.. Less than 8 per cent of the surround- ing countryside was found to be arable, and most of that was al- ready under cultivation. The local farming methods were antiquated, and the committee found that me- dernizing them was impossible be- cause the steep slopes of the ter- rain .prevent the use of most machinery. It looked like a factory or nothing, so the committee set out to determine just what was causing Comerio’s industrial hali- tosis. They questioned plant own- ers who had passed the town by. Why? Some complained of bad roads, some of poor telephone ser- vice, others of lack of hospital faci- lities, One by one the town began to tackle these problems. Help was solicited from the Department of Public Works in resurfacing the main road to Comerio. Construe- tion was started on a new hospital. The telephone company was induc- ed to improve and modernize the phone system. A park was built to brighten up the town. Then the committee sat down and took a good look at Comerjo’s natural advantages. It had a pool AOIDISIDIIDIDIIIDIID IDS ppp bbb bb pbbbtt is the difference between the two countries’ academic systems. But since the visits are arranged to coincide with the guests’ school vacation + July-August for the North “Americans and December- January for the Mexicans — any variations im study pace do not matter. The students can visit one another’s classes knowing that they are not working for credit, that they have already completed their studies for the year. The only really serious obstacle in the entire program is one that Professor Palma does not _ talk about. More generous than a Me- xican teacher’s bank account makes feasible, he reaches deep into his own pocket so that his “child” as he calls the exchange, may thrive. To pay the expenses of coordina- tion — office rent in México City, telephone bills, correspondence — a twenty-five-dollar fee is request- ed from each participant. But 40 per cent of the students who have participated failed to pay the fee. Te LC enn ‘Mexican And Professor Palma never minds them. } Yet he has big plans. Mentally far ahead of the program as it stands today, he hopes to carry the exchange to other Latin American countries and to Europe. (A Hon- duran, a Swiss living in México, a Cuban, and a Puerto Rican have already participated.) More than that, he would like “some other dreaming people” — a millionaire or an educational institution — to help him create an International House in México City. Words of appreciation for Pro- fessor Palma’s practical contribu- tion to international understanding have come from government offi- cials like Manuel Tello, Mexican Ambassador in Washington, and William O’Dwyer, former U.S. Am- bassador to México. But the most important tributes are those of students who have participated. One U. S. girl wrote to her adopted family: “I miss every- Tre- thing.” SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1956. DID FOR ITSELF of a thousand people available for employment, two hundred of them with previous factory experience. There was an abundance of electric power from a near-by dam. The- high elevation provided an_ in- vigorating cool climate. The ad- vantages looked attractive, but no more so than was the people’s will to work. The Mayor and his committee took their,report to the officials of the Economie Development Ad- ministration. The officials were impressed, as much by this evi- dence of the town’s will to work as by its accomplishments in mak- ing itself attractive to industry. When-they brought out representa- tives of the Evy Shoe ompany of New York, who wanted to expand their manufacturing facilities, the shoe-company officials were equal- ly impressed. The other day the cornerstone was laid for the new shoe factory. One worker who attended the cere- monies pretty well summed up the town’s attitude when he - said, “Everybody is happy that one fac- tory has come to Comerio, but we need many more.” Dr. Hiram Lé- pez Morales, chairman of Comerio’s go after more. But Comerio has already come alive again. HEMISPHERE ; Breaking ground for Comerfo’s shoe factory. Comerfo needs industry since hilly terrain prohibits farming. River in foreground runs into Lake Comerio, site of hydroelectric power project. For close-up of town, see inside back cover, At left, Dr. Hiran Lopez Morales, chairman of town’s industrial committee, New factory under construction. Town boasts one thousand avail able employees, two hundred with previous experience, Pege 11