Between 1949 and 1960s, a period in Puerto Rican history some scholars call the Muñozismo period, was marked by an ambitious wave of infrastructural and cultural reforms aimed at overcoming economic constraints inherited from the Great Depression, as the government pursued modernization through state-funded programs known as Operation Bootstrap and later Operation Serenidad. (Lazo, 2017) The administration of the first Puerto Rican elected governor, Luis Muñoz Marín (1898–1980), implemented a cultural program that positioned music at the center of state-building and national identity formation. Music operated between these programs: the internationalization of Puerto Rico through European-derived classical institutions and the curation of popular and traditional musics through educational media and heritage initiatives. This paper argues that during the Muñozismo period, two parallel but unequal musical priorities were institutionalized. An analysis of these asymmetries reveals a Eurocentric cultural logic embedded within Muñozismo, whereby popular and traditional musics were elevated as markers of national identity yet denied the same institutional permanence, prestige, and international projection afforded to the classical tradition. In this framework, European classical music became the primary vehicle through which the state performed modernity, legitimacy, and refinement on the global stage, while vernacular traditions were preserved as heritage—valuable but not institutionally sovereign within the same hierarchy of national representation. By examining funding structures, publicity campaigns, institutional archives, and interviews with affiliated individuals, this study demonstrates that cultural policy under Muñoz Marín organized a hierarchy of cultural value that shaped Puerto Rico’s national image and its place within transnational modernity.