Nixon, Ferre & Trigo on Puerto Rico and Latin America

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Well, President, good morning, all of you.

How are you?

Good to see you.

We've been friends for so long, but we're getting along.

Oh, all right.

I mean, exactly what you have here, the press always against the establishment, supposedly.

Sure, sure.

We have to find out.

But when I go out and make my balls, that's what counts.

And with most of our colleagues, I'm growing very actively in our strength.

And I have three big shoes on the next hour.

What is your next option?

It's the same as yours, basically.

Oh, it is.

It's a four-year term.

Four-year term.

That's good.

You better read it.

What is the opposition?

Well, the opposition isn't so very strong now.

Moon Young is away in Europe, you know.

Is he?

Yeah, he's been away for about eight months, and I don't think he's coming back here.

What is he doing over there?

He's writing his memoirs.

Writing his memoirs.

He's pretty good.

He has some good writers.

Very intelligent.

Very brilliant.

He's got a good book, Puerto Rico.

Yeah.

And he's got a book.

He's still very scotchy.

He smokes cigars.

And that's right.

All right.

Well, we've been getting a great deal of cooperation from you, Mr. President.

Mr. President, you said that we had a few little things.

First of all, I wanted to explain to you what I've been doing on this South Center idea.

Oh, yeah.

That's a lot of fun.

I'm going to have to do it easily.

And we are trying to, now this is going to get going.

It's been slow in getting going, but now it's leading into a great deal.

But besides that, I've started in Puerto Rico the North-South Center.

And I've got an interview with you on that.

And this North-South Center also has what we call the Institute of Social Technology.

And we're bringing in Latin Americans.

For example, right now we have 20 ophthalmologists.

We give them a course, not Americans, to improve their knowledge.

We bring in about 1,000 students.

And that will improve the whole industry.

We get this better understanding.

And we're trying to break through this wall of prejudice between the United States and South America.

We just had the convention of the radiologists, about 1,000 radiologists.

And that was very, very wise for the medicine.

And this whole continuous contact is really going to be very helpful.

Now, for example, taking September, we have the governor's conference.

What I did was that I asked the conference committee one day for Latin American understanding.

Invite them.

Pray.

I invited Carlos Plaza and Alberto Villas Camargo, who are the ex-presidents of these three republics, and three distinct leaders, Camilo Flores from Mexico, which has a majority in Venezuela, and Jesus from Brazil.

So these six leaders will have the whole morning to talk over things with the governors in the southern exchange of ideas, and this will, again, bring the governors more in contact with South America.

I think that by doing these various things in Puerto Rico, we can help in this understanding which I am looking at.

This north-south center, of course, is going to use more.

more of his antiques, his Spanish antiques to a larger area.

I have discussed this.

I had ex-president Alemán at one of his meetings here.

Oh, he has?

He's the former?

Former president, yes.

And we discussed this matter.

He was quite interested.

I discussed it with President Madagascar, who's been in Puerto Rico as my guest.

So we're making Puerto Rico this kind of a, of the, of the contact.

And I think it can be very useful because, as you all know, South America's a big product of Alan's presence.

We've got to do something positive to break it through.

We've got a terrible problem here in Puerto Rico.

First, the university is, uh, explosive.

And, uh, the, uh,

And of course the church is now, we've got all the radical priests that are blowing up the place.

And so is the military that used to be a stabilizing force is now, in many cases, unstabilizing.

So we wonder where they're going to go.

Because you know, that is why Puerto Rico is important.

Because we have done the revolution.

Puerto Rico has taken place peacefully.

We have made a change.

And all these Latin Americans, when they come to Puerto Rico, see what we have done.

We have a completely democratic society.

And a society that has a lot of changes.

A lot of middle class.

Middle class.

They can really appreciate that this thing can have a tremendous impression.

That is one reason why I think

I want to talk to you about, and that is, we have been given a legislation that has been discriminatory on all areas, on all areas of access, not from you.

And of course, it has been found that there is only appropriations.

We don't pay taxes.

The idea is we don't get enough, the same treatment for all the US citizens.

Now I think that that theory is not right because if we are US citizens, we should get the same treatment because we have the same problems.

In other words, you cannot cure a cancer in Puerto Rico.

You have the same treatment that you cure a cancer in New York.

So I feel that even though Houston involves more federal funds, and you've been very kind, you have increased these appropriations to some extent.

but not to the full amount of the State of the Union.

And particularly education is where we are interested.

Education.

And also to the goal of our industrial development, because if Puerto Rico succeeds, and it must succeed, and it is succeeding, that would be the example to be set to Latin America.

But if Cuba succeeds, then it is Cuba that will be the... What do you think about Cuba?

I remember them, well I see a lot of them in Florida now, but they were always so close to Puerto Rico and the U.S.

and sophisticated, able people.

Sure, it's in the park, I mean, but to think of them for ten years now.

Forty thousand of them are in Puerto Rico.

We have forty thousand Cubans in Puerto Rico.

You have what?

Ten thousand people.

But they work hard, don't they?

They work hard.

In Florida, they do the same thing as a matter of fact.

One of the problems in Florida at the present time is the Cubans have come in and they work so hard that the Negroes don't.

are, I don't mean it, you can't generalize, some are some lazy Cubans, and there's some hard working Negroes, but kind of see, Negroes in the outhouse don't work very much, you know what I mean, they just don't, they end up dry, the Cuban is done dry,

He's determined, and particularly the ones that came out the first, they're determined they're going to make it.

They don't say we're going to make it.

They've got wonderful facilities, buildings, hotels, and so forth.

They're even competing with the, not just me, but they're raising money on some of these things.

And I'm glad of it.

I think they're good for it.

Can I ask you this about Puerto Rico?

How about your university?

How are you doing?

We're doing all right.

We haven't had any trouble with the university.

Well, we have a lot here.

Do you think it's coming along fairly well?

Very well.

I think we're stabilizing it.

Yeah.

It has gone through, of course, the same kind of...

But you're affected by everything that happens to us.

You know that.

But we have a very good man in charge of our... You don't have the same problems that some of the, like, Venezuela and others have.

Universities are off limits and all of those kind of things.

Oh, thank you so much.

Yeah, your university is... My daughter is a student at the university.

I enjoy it very much.

That's good.

You're a graduate student, aren't you?

Yeah.

Good.

That's good.

That's good for you.

And that way I keep my fingers prepared also.

I started at a big university.

Do you know that?

It's very close to your department.

How big is it?

$27,000.

That's what I meant.

A big $27,000.

They're all too big.

We divide them.

We run them straight up.

What are your versus, as you know, when they run up to State University, $35,000, $40,000, $45,000, they lose their sense of, you know, their human values, you know, those big bills.

And if I think about it, so that everybody's got this feeling of spirit, of belonging to something.

Did I hear that Bobby Everett couldn't go on to the university when he came to New York?

Maybe.

He lived there.

Hmm.

He came out here to drive people.

Oh, I think it was Bobby.

I think it was Bobby.

You see, I have a lot of good relations with the Honeworthy people, because the people here are the tops of the ratings on television.

Troy, I'm one of the candidates, I'm going to meet you.

Right.

Because we've had this good relationship.

What about me?

Maybe I don't know anything about this president.

But if you want to tell me one thing.

Nothing wrong with me.

Nothing bad.

That's it.

It was a dense population.

It was a dense population, you know, it's a sunny town.

This is the president of the governor's office there.

They had the difficulty to consider the fact that Haiti and South America share the same land.

And it's just like you go from one part to the other.

And of course, it does, yes, to a certain extent, do one in black and the other in Spanish.

And the one side, I mean, despite all the terrible problems, San Domingo is going to truly be infinitely better than Haiti.

Haiti is so hopeless.

You know, they're nice people, kind people, but in and of themselves, it's just nothing.

They never had a good government.

Never.

Right.

They're completely not.

They, of course, they made it.

They made it.

Santo Domingo wants to.

So Santo Domingo is very much scared of them.

I know they are.

Yes, it's true.

They're scared of them right now.

Well, there's so many of them.

They're pressured, of course.

Let me tell you one thing I want to mention, Mr. President.

When I went back to public a few weeks ago, at the United Nations, the delegation in Cuba,

made a statement that they wanted to investigate Puerto Rico because I was repressing them in this movement.

So when I got there, I made the following statement.

I would like to invite Mr. Castro, with whatever number of people he wants to come to Puerto Rico, to investigate what he's complaining about, provided he permits me to go back to Cuba and do the same thing over there to check what he's doing.

Now, I've left that thing there, but we feel that we might be able to think if we can use this in some way to have some kind of a break

If we can find a way to break into this Cuban thing, I don't know how, I just, I just... Let me ask you, aren't you actually doing, what you're doing right here, north-south center, you're trying to build something like the Hawaiians, all right?

East-west center.

But even more, what I want to do is to meet more people.

You know, it's a little worse better than that, because basically Hawaii,

and the east-west center has Japanese, Chinese, and indigenous people of different languages and, frankly, very different backgrounds, but you have a whole culture.

Yes.

Yes, that is right.

The thing about Latin America has great problems, but at least there is, there's a common language we'll preserve, of course, but many people, many people actually who

and can understand Portuguese.

Sure.

It's very easy to understand Portuguese, and only Portuguese can use English and understand it.

My friend, my man who works for me, Manolo Sánchez, he lives in Chile, and he has some Spanish.

Oh, obrigado.

Well, he's close to Portugal.

That's right, yeah.

Well, Mr. Whitaker and our staff and our expert has a view on that.

He's briefed me on all these things and all these problems you've got.

If you've got one with us, do you think that we can help you get in touch with him?

Well, it never happens.

I'm not working on it, sir.

I don't want to do it with you.

If you will, and if you don't have me, then do the follow-up.

Do the follow-up.

People in the press believe that, as you and I met, that you and I talked, we raised all these problems, even though we may not discuss them, or you say you present up these problems with actually great understandings, which I have great concern for the problem.

I think it's very important that

to Puerto Rico be successful in its peaceful revolution, which is what it is.

It's peaceful revolution and peaceful progress.

We want to have in mind your Commonwealth status.

We want to cooperate every way we can.

That's what we're going to do.

And we'll help in every way that we can.

We've actually got to get to Congress before long in time, and that isn't always possible.

Well, we certainly wish you well.

I was thinking you have children.

Yes, three.

When you go to Puerto Rico, I've got to come sometime.

I've been there.

That place that the rock ballers have, what do they call it?

He said, I haven't played golf much anymore.

But I always liked your portals.

Yes.

I like that porch on there one this morning.

I sat there one night.

Oh, he keeps it right up there.

I have a job right now.

Beautiful sight.

You do that.

She's got a good job over there.

She's helping me to restore it until it's old.

She has no beauty in the place.

Thank you.

The governor, I always came about this.

I thought I'd bring you over to this factory.

All right.

Now let's see what we can find for you.

I want your girls.

All right.

Do a little catcher.

Boys, boys, boys, 100 boys in the coal rally.

10 and, no, we're going into 5 and 8.

5 and 8, hey, where are the tires?

I think that there's a tight one.

Wait a minute, I just didn't know.

That's where it is.

There's the boys.

And here's the paperweight for you.

Thank you, Mr. President.

And for your secretary.

I'm sorry you don't believe little children.

These are very nice.

President, here's what we signed.

There we are.

For your children.

And this is for your secretary.

If we walk out here, I will start you in the car.

That would be a good picture up here.

What do you think?

Sir, we have a picture with you.

If it doesn't rain, I will walk you out.

Nixon, Ferre & Trigo on Puerto Rico and Latin America

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on May 28, 1971

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