The independence movement in Puerto Rico has been formed in reaction to the cultural and economic dominance of the mainland, and thus it has been anti-Yanqui and anticapitalist. Radicals and nonfriends of the United States, from Castro through many Latin American and Third World leaders, have taken up the cause of Puerto Rican independence as one of the easiest ways, after Vietnam, of discrediting America. Puerto Rican advocates of independence express -themselves with bombs. But causes should not suffer guilt by association, and nonradical Americans might well reconsider the issue. It has been remarkably little examined in the American press except from a usually emotional leftist viewpoint, but there is a good case for amicable separation or divorce on grounds of incompatibility.