Popular Democratic Party (PPD)

Under the leadership of Luis Muñoz Marín, the Popular Democratic Party (Partido Popular Democrático, PPD) was established in 1938 from a splinter group of the Liberal Party. The PPD's emblem is the silhouetted head of a Puerto Rican peasant wearing a straw hat, with the slogan pan, tierra y libertad ("bread, land, and liberty"). The party leaders, combining elements of Latin American populism with New Deal policies on a platform of social justice, supported a program of industrialization, agrarian reform, and population control aimed at transforming the rural and agricultural Puerto Rico of the 1940s into an urban and industrial society.

The PPD maintained almost absolute control of most elected offices from 1940 through 1968, while benefiting from local autonomy granted by the U.S. government. The first elections for the governorship took place in 1948, when Muñoz Marín became governor. Muñoz Marín also led an elected assembly that drafted the constitution of the Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico (Commonwealth of Puerto Rico), coming into effect in 1952. After Muñoz Marín's retirement in 1964, Roberto Sánchez Vilella assumed the leadership of the PPD and became governor. In 1968 internal party conflicts and personal scandals forced Sánchez Vilella to abandon the PPD, resulting in the first election loss for the party.

Rafael Hernández Colón assumed PPD's leadership and reorganization and was elected governor in 1972. After losing the elections of 1976 and 1980, he regained the office in 1984 and was reelected in 1988. Another leadership transition proved difficult for the PPD, which lost the elections of 1992 and 1996. In 2000 Sila María Calderón, the PPD's candidate, became the first Puerto Rican woman governor. In 2004 Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, the party's former U.S. resident commissioner, was elected governor by a slight margin. Despite failed attempts to obtain more autonomy from the United States, the PPD has favored the continuation of Puerto Rico's commonwealth status with the hope of achieving future autonomy. Some minority sectors within the PPD support free association as defined by international law and UN resolutions.

See alsoCalderon, Sila María; Puerto Rico.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bayrón Toro, Fernando. Elecciones y Partidos Políticos de Puerto Rico, 1809–2000, 6th ed. Mayagüez, P.R.: Editorial Isla, 2003.

Morales Carrión, Arturo, ed. Puerto Rico: A Political and Cultural History. New York: Norton, 1983.

Trías Monge, José. Puerto Rico: The Trials of the Oldest Colony in the World. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997.

                                       Ismael GarcÍa ColÓn