<--PREV Doc #658  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #660 Document #659; January 12, 1954 To Luis Raul Esteves Series: EM, AWF, International Series: Puerto Rico ; Category: Personal and confidential The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XV - The Presidency: The Middle Way Part IV: "Pushing ahead along the broad center"; December 1953 to March 1954 Chapter 8: A world "racing toward catastrophe"   Dear Steve:1 Henry Cabot Lodge's statement before the United Nations (in which statement he was authorized to quote me) was simply to make clear that the United States did not, by force or compulsion, hold any possessive or other relationship with any other area or country in the world.2 I have made no proposals for United States initiative in changing the relationship existing between our two countries. With warm personal regard, Sincerely 1 Esteves, an adjutant general in the Puerto Rico National Guard, had been a West Point classmate of Eisenhower. The U.N. section of the State Department and the Department of Interior approved the President's reply (see Whitman to O'Day, Jan. 12, 1953, AWF/I: Puerto Rico). 2 For background see no. 572. Esteves had expressed his concern that the President's statement made before the United Nations regarding independence for Puerto Rico had created a negative reaction among those who "hoped to continue for ever under the STARS AND STRIPES." "While I and many Puertoricans realize your high democratic intentions," he wrote, "this statement has been used by the minority who favors independence . . . as propaganda to the effect that the United States does not want us and is ready to turn the island loose" (Esteves to Eisenhower, Jan. [1], 195[4], AWF/I: Puerto Rico). Bibliographic reference to this document: Eisenhower, Dwight D. Personal and confidential To Luis Raul Esteves, 12 January 1954. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 659. World Wide Web facsimile by The Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission of the print edition; Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/presidential-papers/first-term/documents/659.cfm <--PREV Doc #658  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #660

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