A RESEARCH PROJECT ON RURAL COMMUNITIES IN PUERTO RICO.

Puerto Rico's social problems which led to the passage of the 1941 Land Law are described. This act provided for the resettlement of landless farm workers (agregados) in new, "planned" communities. Each family is given a small plot of land for subsistence farming. A "community action plan" of mutual aid and sell-help among the settlers is encouraged. One highly successful and one less successful settlement were selected in each of three agricultural regions--the coffee area, the sugar-cane area, and the tobacco-and-minor-crops area. The pairs of communities were matched on as many factors as possible. Half of the settlers, randomly selected, were interviewed in each community. The degree of success of the communities was found to vary at a diminishing rate from the sugar-cane region to the tobacco-and-minor-crops area to the coffee region. For the most part, there was a high degree of satisfaction within resettlement communities. In the successful communities, the professional leaders had been most effective in stimulating natural leadership. The successful and unsuccessful sugar-cane communities were compared in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]