The Casals Festival was, from the beginning, as much an economic strategy as an artistic one. Teodoro Moscoso, the architect of Operation Bootstrap -- Puerto Rico's aggressive industrialization program -- enlisted advertising legend David Ogilvy to rebrand the island's image for foreign investors and tourists. Classical music in the tropics was part of that pitch: a signal that Puerto Rico was modern, cultured, ready for business. Carlos Passalaqua, writing to adviser Abe Fortas, put it plainly: "The Casals Festival is, in a way, part of Operation Bootstrap." Historian Rafael Aponte Ledee argued the festival's primary role was providing cultural activities familiar to the wave of foreign investors settling on the island during industrialization. Fomento, the government development agency, wholly owned the festival entity. The format replicated Prades. The musicians, for the most part, flew in from the mainland United States. The festival was planned and staffed from New York, with performers assembling in San Juan for three weeks of concerts before departing.

Ricardo Alegria, president of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture, had helped bring Casals to the island, but he grew into one of the festival's sharpest critics. The money flowing to an all-foreign orchestra, the absence of local compositions from the program, the dismissive attitude toward Puerto Rican talent -- it stung. When the festival orchestra participated in an ICP-sponsored concert, Alegria had to threaten the director to include Amaury Veray's De Profundis on the program. The director's response was visible disgust. In 1959, the University of Puerto Rico chorus performed Beethoven's Choral Fantasy at the festival closing and earned a ten-minute standing ovation. The following year, assistant director Alexander Schneider replaced them with the University of Maryland chorus at a cost of at least $25,000 to the government, justifying the expense by saying he wanted "a good chorus from the States." Schneider would later say, in an interview that crystallized the tension, that it "was not a Casals Festival of Puerto Rico, but a Casals Festival in Puerto Rico."

The contradictions deepened through the 1960s and 1970s. Jose Buitrago wrote to Governor Munoz Marin in 1963, accusing Schneider of blocking Puerto Rican talent and lobbying to separate the Conservatorio and Sinfonica from the festival entirely if local musicians were allowed in. Puerto Rican musicians at the Conservatorio demanded equal pay with foreign performers. Lawsuits were filed over discrimination and contract violations. Abraham Pena, president of the Federacion de Musicos de Puerto Rico, brought demands to the legislature. Casals himself died on October 22, 1973, and his widow Marta continued as music director until 1977, when she and festival president Elias Lopez departed amid organizational turmoil. By May 1979, a strike by the Sinfonica forced the cancellation of the upcoming festival. Out of the wreckage, the legislature created separate legal entities for the orchestra, the conservatory, and the festival itself -- untangling the institutional knot that had generated two decades of conflict.

The Casals Festival survived its crises. By the time it celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2006 -- with the Philadelphia Orchestra performing under Christoph Eschenbach at the Luis A. Ferre Performing Arts Center in San Juan -- it had become something closer to what Alegria and Buitrago and Pena had fought for. The artistic direction passed to Puerto Rican hands: pianist Elias Lopez-Soba and bass-baritone Justino Diaz. By 1970, the majority of the festival orchestra's members were already Puerto Ricans. The roster of conductors who have stood on its podium reads like a hall of fame: Mstislav Rostropovich, Leonard Bernstein, Zubin Mehta, Eugene Ormandy, Yehudi Menuhin, Krzysztof Penderecki. These names honor Casals. But the festival's deeper story is not about the famous visitors. It is about Puerto Rican musicians who fought for a place in their own island's most prestigious cultural institution -- and won.