Sondheim was nervous. “I can’t do this show,” he protested at first. “I’ve never even known a Puerto Rican.” His lyrics bore that out. In one draft, the characters fantasize, like the farmers and cowmen of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, about statehood. “When we’re a state in America, then we migrate to America!” they sing excitedly in broken English. Of course, Puerto Ricans were already citizens with the right to move anywhere in the country they chose. And, the commonwealth constitution having just passed, statehood was a dim prospect.
