Sublime

The principal cargo of the ships proved to be pineapples, most of them brought up from Cuba during the six- to eight-week season. Thirty-five hundred carloads of the fruit passed through Key West each year, and unemployed workers enjoyed a bonanza each “Pineapple Day” when a new shipment arrived.

By Muñoz Marín’s reckoning, it was worth it. Operation Bootstrap, as the campaign was called, drew hundreds of mainland firms to Puerto Rico. By the fifties, its economy was visibly shifting from agriculture to industry. Its gross national product shot up by more than two-thirds in that decade. At the same time, incomes rose, death rates fell,

synthetic fertilizer piled as high as snowdrifts. The