Baltasar Corrada-del Río began his career as a
leading human rights advocate in Puerto Rico and
quickly became one of the island’s most influential
Resident Commissioners. A leading figure in the Partido
Nuevo Progresista (New Progressive Party, or PNP) and
a champion of Puerto Rican statehood, Corrada-del Río
took an active interest in the concerns of minority citizens
nationwide. Having helped found the Congressional
Hispanic Caucus (CHC), he worked to ensure that Puerto
Ricans and Hispanic Americans everywhere had access to
important federal programs. “To me,” he said toward the
end of his career in the House, “it is quite an honor to be
able to represent the interests of the Hispanic community.”1
Corrada-del Río was born on April 10, 1935, in
Morovis, Puerto Rico, to Rómulo Corrada and Ana María
del Río. He attended the Morovis public grammar school
until he was 13 and graduated from Colegio Ponceño de
Varones high school in 1952. He immediately enrolled
at the University of Puerto Rico in Rio Piedras, where he
earned a bachelor’s degree in social sciences four years later.
He remained at the university and completed a law degree
in 1959. That year he married Beatriz A. Betances. They
had four children: Ana Isabel, Francisco Javier, Juan Carlos,
and José B.2
Corrada-del Río was admitted to the bar in 1959,
quickly made partner at a leading firm, and began a long
and distinguished legal career. Unlike many Resident
Commissioners, Corrada-del Río shied away from
electoral office early on and often accepted leadership
positions behind the scenes. In 1969, for instance, as
the island’s administration faced accusations of political
suppression, Corrada-del Río was appointed to Puerto
Rico’s civil rights commission, which he chaired from
1970 to 1972.3 In 1970 alone he was a member of the
Advisory Committee to the Archbishop of Puerto Rico on Drug Abuse; the Puerto Rican Medical Association’s
Council of Public Health; and the Puerto Rican Bar
Examination Board, having been appointed by the
island’s supreme court.4
By the mid-1970s, Corrada-del Río was one of the
island’s most respected human rights lawyers, known as
“one of the bright young men of the New Progressive
Party.”5 He wrote a regular column for El mundo, a leading
island newspaper, and served as a member of the PNP’s
executive committee and as chairman of its committee on
political status.6
Just 41 years old in 1976, Corrada-del Río had
undergone a meteoric rise to become the PNP’s frontrunner
for Puerto Rico’s House seat in Washington.
After he was formally nominated, Corrada-del Río faced
incumbent Popular Democrat Jaime Benítez in the general
election that year. Benítez was a well-known educator who
had won by a landslide in 1972, but the island’s economy
had gone into a tailspin since his victory. “We think our
chances are quite good,” Corrada-del Río told the Baltimore
Sun as Election Day neared.7 In one of the closer elections in
recent memory, he defeated Benítez by only 2.9 percent.8
When Corrada-del Río arrived in Washington, he
broke with precedent to caucus with House Democrats.
Since 1971, when Resident Commissioners won the right
to vote in committee, they had essentially been required
to join a mainland party caucus. New Progressives had
loose ties to the GOP, and Jorge L. Córdova-Díaz, the
last PNP official to serve in Washington, had elected
to sit with Republicans. In the next Congress, Benítez,
who was a member of the Partido Popular Democrático
(Popular Democratic Party, or PPD), had caucused with
Democrats to maintain parity. But Corrada-del Río broke
that pattern, telling the Washington Post in 1977 that he
was a “longtime Democrat.” Paired with his membership in “the militantly pro-statehood wing of the [PNP],”
Corrada-del Río’s affiliation led him to support a strong
federal state and its attendant public programs. “I like the
Democratic Party[’s] stand on social and economic issues,”
he said around the time of his swearing-in, “and feel I
can accomplish a lot more for Puerto Rico by siding with
the Democrats.”9 Corrada-del Río was appointed to the
Committee on Education and Labor and the Committee
on Interior and Insular Affairs, both traditional posts
for Resident Commissioners. In mid-October 1977,
the House appointed him to the Select Committee on
Population, citing a need to study “the causes of changing
population conditions and their consequences for the
United States and the world.”10
Corrada-del Río’s tenure in the House marked a
new chapter in the island’s relationship with the federal
government, reinvigorating the New Progressives’ push
for statehood. Corrada-del Río favored the outgoing
Gerald Ford administration’s decision to delay action
on statehood, noting that he preferred “to be in power
when these matters were decided.” He refused to support
any statehood measure originating in Congress that was
not supported by an island plebiscite, and he criticized
commonwealth supporters who fought to keep the
government at a distance, only to structure insular policy
around federal appropriations.11 “Federal funds … must
be understood and used as a complement and not as a
substitute for Puerto Rican efforts,” he said in a statement
that dovetailed with his pro-statehood position.12 Corradadel
Río promised that statehood would do little to impinge
on Puerto Rico’s unique culture. “We would continue
doing the same things we do now,” he said in 1977,
“thinking, speaking, and praying in Spanish, without
underestimating the importance of being bilingual.… In
other words, we would continue practicing and enriching
our customs, our traditions and our culture.”13
For much of his first term in the 95th and 96th
Congresses (1977–1981), Corrada-del Río defended
Puerto Rico’s participation in federal social programs,
standing firmly in the vanguard of what became the PNP’s
standard policy in Washington: to convince Congress to treat Puerto Rico as if it were a state, especially regarding
appropriations for education, Social Security, and labor. He
opposed any cuts in food stamps, arguing such a decision
“flies in the face of equal justice under law,” particularly on
“an island suffering the pains of a deep recession,” he said a
month later.14 He championed bilingual education; sought
to protect the benefits of disabled veterans living in U.S.
territories; pushed to establish a minimum wage scale for
Puerto Rico that was comparable to the mainland’s; and
actively backed raising the budget for executive agencies
that helped Puerto Rico’s rural communities, including the
Farmers Home Administration, the Rural Electrification
Administration, and the Agricultural Stabilization and
Conservation Service.15
While only a handful of Corrada-del Río’s bills ever
made it out of committee, his activism resonated well
beyond the Beltway, and his participation in the national
fabric of Hispanic political activism surpassed his
predecessors’. “Hispanics,” he pointed out in 1979, “are
becoming a force in almost every State and in almost every
congressional district.”16 A founding member of the CHC,
Corrada-del Río sought to reach an even broader audience
by organizing the group Hispanic American Democrats
(HAD).17 As with the CHC, Corrada-del Río used HAD
to push for greater political leverage. “If we Hispanics are
to make it in the United States we must obtain an entrance
to the front door of the economic temple,” he said. “And
that can hardly be arranged if we lack the political means,
which is voter registration and the age-old practice of
getting to the polls on voting day.”18
A large part of Corrada-del Río’s agenda concerned
Puerto Rico’s education system. In 1979 he supported a
bill to create the U.S. Department of Education, a cabinet-level
agency, to oversee the quality of the nation’s schools
and expand access to bilingual instruction “so that the
high hopes … engendered in the hearts and the minds of
those who need it are not thwarted.”19 Corrada-del Río’s
more notable successes included increasing federal funding
for Puerto Rico’s schools by more than $50 million and
helping to augment the amount of money set aside by the
government for college scholarships.20
In the buildup to the 1980 election, party infighting
threatened to undercut the PNP’s control over the insular
government and nearly cost Corrada-del Río a second
term. He found himself an unwitting pariah after Puerto
Rico’s secretary of state refused to attend an honorary
dinner with President James Earl (Jimmy) Carter because
he objected to a proposed immigration measure that
was somewhat controversial. News of the secretary’s
snub traveled quickly, and while most PNP officials
supported the president’s rebuke, Corrada-del Río feared
it might undermine communication between San Juan
and Pennsylvania Avenue.21 The Resident Commissioner
publicly admonished the PNP administration for
condoning the gesture, and while the party faithful
responded in kind, Corrada-del Río tried to work past
the criticism before Election Day.22 He stumped on his
record in the House, taking credit for sustaining the
island’s public works programs and school system with
federal money.23 Corrada-del Río complained about his
opponents’ “negative and confusing” campaigns attacking
him for creating a “dependence” on federal funding, or
“a welfare mentality.” “One of the biggest errors we hear
is that federal aid breeds dependence,” Corrada-del Río
responded. “We maintain these funds have been a blessing,
not a substitute for our own development.”24
Corrada-del Río won re-election by less than 1 percent
in 1980, and ended up fighting many of the same battles
he fought in his first term.25 He was more vocal on the
House Floor in his second term, fighting for access to
food stamps and encouraging his colleagues to invest
in the Caribbean Basin, even as the Ronald Reagan
administration considered cutting billions from the
national budget.26 “Linked firmly to the U.S. economy,
there is an axiom in our island that when Uncle Sam
sneezes, Puerto Rico gets pneumonia,” Corrada-del Río
said in 1981.27 In the scramble for federal aid, he warned
that if the House targeted the island for block grants and
across-the-board cuts—and it eventually did—Puerto
Ricans would be singled out as “second class citizens …
not deserving of equal treatment.”28
With island unemployment still hovering above 20 percent, Corrada-del Río tried to help bolster the federal
aid received by Puerto Rican sugar farmers, tuna canners,
and rum sellers.29 Hoping to protect both employers and
employees, he took a firm stance on unauthorized labor,
sponsoring an amendment to an unsuccessful immigration
bill that required businesses to verify their employees’
citizenship or face stiff penalties.30 He also worked to
extend unemployment benefits while backing the Job
Training Partnership Act (H.R. 5320), which he described
as a “comprehensive, coordinated approach to employment
training,” especially for underserved communities.31 He
continued to push for broader access to bilingual education
and sought to bolster Puerto Rico’s food stamp program, as
he had for the past seven years.32
Corrada-del Río retired from the House at the end of
the 98th Congress (1983–1985), opting not to run for
re-election. Elected to serve Puerto Ricans, he took pride in
promoting the concerns of Hispanic Americans throughout
the United States.33 The next year, Corrada-del Río was
elected mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico’s capital and largest
city, and served as the president of the PNP. In 1988 he
waged an unsuccessful campaign for governor of Puerto
Rico. Corrada-del Río was later appointed the island’s
secretary of state and eventually served as an associate
justice on Puerto Rico’s supreme court.34 He retired from public service at the age of 70. Baltasar Corrada-del Río died on March 11, 2018, in Fort Myers, Florida.35
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
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