Luis Fortuno Quotes
Some people called me a fascist. That's mostly over, but there will be more attacks from the unions.
Fortuño, Luis. Interview by Mary Anastasia O'Grady. "The Caribbean Reagan." The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company, 21 Nov. 2009.
“Operators” referred to an Executives of the Coal Mining Companies most of whom were grossly impolite and unconstructive in the mediation sessions. The President was a very fit man who boxed and wrestled several times a week for exercise and could get very physical as well as social and intellectual.
It was fairly common at the time for the management of a company undergoing a strike to hire goons and gunmen to beat up and even murdering strikers to intimidate the strikers. But some state and locall governments supporting private companies began to do that as well. Sometimes they even used the police and the state national guard.
While Ray was very sympathetic towards the strike, his father’s attitude was typical of that of business men across the nation. A picket line or demonstration was a “mob” and mobs should be broken up before they do physical damage to people or property. “Grape” and “canister” were types of ammunition for cannon that was used against personnel in war. One shell could kill 20-30 men in a crowd.
Most Republicans at the time regarded labor unions as negative forces in American society and backed and passed much anti-union legislation. The labor movement in America considered the Republicans to be their major enemies, yet the Republicans of the era were almost always supportive of labor unions especially if they were an opposing force to communist governments as in Poland.
Ironically, this view was also held by many of the capitalist “Captains of American Industry” who believed that all unions were revolutionist regardless of the views of the union’s membership or leadership. Even today, there are some who still equate trade unionism with communism and revolution. The majority of the unions and the left never believed that, but the extreme communists and extreme capitalists did than and some do today.
Luis Guillermo Fortuño Burset is a Puerto Rican politician who served as Governor of Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States, from 2009 to 2013.
