[News] Puerto Rico Student Strike Intensifies, Public Education and Civil Rights at Stake

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Posted: December 15, 2010 03:12 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maritza-stanchich-phd/puerto-rico-student-strik_b_797233.html


<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maritza-stanchich-phd/puerto-rico-student-strik_b_797233.html>Puerto 
Rico Student Strike Intensifies, Public Education and Civil Rights at Stake


Coincident with massive, at times explosive, 
student protests in Rome and London, University 
of Puerto Rico has again become a flashpoint with 
a student strike beginning Tuesday that turned 
the main campus into a militarized zone of 
police, riot squad, and SWAT teams, complete with 
low-flying helicopters and snipers. What began as 
a conflict over a steep student fee hike is now 
seen as a larger struggle to preserve public education against privatization.

Resistance to the imposed $800 student fee has 
triggered repressive state measures: police have 
occupied the main campus for the first time in 31 
years and Monday the local Supreme Court, 
recently stacked by the pro-Statehood political 
party in power, outlawed student strikes and 
campus protests. More than 500 students defied 
the ruling by demonstrating on campus Tuesday, 
brandishing the slogan "They fear us because we 
don't fear them" ("Nos tienen miedo porque no 
tenemos miedo"). This current strike revisits 
accords to negotiate the $800 fee, which in June 
ended a two-month shut down of 10 of 11 UPR 
campuses, as UPR faces a $240 million budget 
shortfall precipitated by the state not honoring 
its own debt to the institution.

Civil rights groups have declared a state of high 
alert in the wake of disturbances last week and 
statements by leading public officials seen as 
creating a hostile climate that inhibits free 
speech rights. In response, about 15,000 UPR 
supporters marched on Sunday from San Juan's 
Capitol building to La Fortaleza governor's 
mansion, under a balmy bright blue tropical sky 
in this U.S. Territory of about four million U.S 
citizens, though little known to most Americans 
beyond being a tourist destination.

In the standoff leading up to this week, top 
university officials have repeatedly threatened 
that a strike may prompt them to shut down the 
main campus at Río Piedras, which serves 20,000 
plus students, employs about 1,200 professors and 
5,000 non-teaching staff, and hosts millions in 
scientific research funding (system-wide the UPR 
serves about 65,000 students). In addition, 10 of 
11 University of Puerto Rico campuses remain on 
probation by its accrediting agency, The Middle 
States Association, in the areas of long-term 
fiscal viability and effective administrative 
governance, of which the current student 
mobilization is a symptom, not a cause.

Tensions mounted last week leading up to a 
two-day student walkout when Capitol Securities, 
a private security firm contracted by the 
university for $1.5 million, demolished entrance 
gates to the campus. Hired guards were young with 
little or no training or evaluation, bore no 
identification badges and some were armed with 
sticks and pipes in a climate of intimidation 
perhaps not seen since dockworkers strikes of the 
1940s. Many of the guards had been recruited from 
marginalized Afro-Puerto Rican communities, such 
as Villa Cañona in Loíza, which has been the site 
of documented police abuses, lending a disturbing 
dimension of institutionalized racism, according to community leaders there.

Several violent incidents were reported, 
including a student who was seriously beaten and 
injured by guards. One video purportedly of 
students breaking security van windows was 
repeatedly aired in the local media as the 
justification for the police occupation of the 
campus, just as students had peacefully concluded 
the two-day walkout last Wednesday evening.

"UPR has a long history of infiltrators and 
saboteurs involved to instigate such incidents," 
said William Ramírez, Executive Director of the 
Puerto Rico chapter of the American Civil 
Liberties Union. The purported incident capped 
off a series of provocations. Gov. Luis Fortuño 
in a televised appearance openly declared that 
leftists would no longer be tolerated on the 
campus. His Chief of Staff Marcos Rodríguez Ema 
publicly taunted that students and professors who 
dare protest will get their asses kicked out ("vamos a sacarlos a patadas").

The university administration has also designated 
areas limiting protests to outside the campus, 
and on Monday Chancellor Ana Guadalupe formally 
prohibited all protests or group activities of 
any type on the campus through January 15. The 
chancellor also issued an edict this week 
requiring all students to carry their student 
identification cards at all times.

According to Ramírez, Fortuño's public statements 
targeting leftists, designated protest areas off 
campus and protest prohibitions are violations of 
constitutionally-protected First Amendment 
rights. The police presence and heavily-equipped 
riot squads also create a climate of intimidation 
that restricts expression, he added.

"Rather than responding to violence, they have 
created a violent environment," Ramírez said, 
adding that under such conditions, in which a 
police occupation is deployed as a preemptive 
measure, "it is almost guaranteed that violence will occur."

In response to the campus police presence, a 
majority in a meeting of about 300 professors 
Thursday voted to refuse to hold classes on 
campus while under siege, with senior professors 
recalling the trauma of deadly campus police 
violence during the last occupation in 1981. On 
Saturday, Police Chief José Figueroa Sancha 
announced plans for a permanent police precinct 
on the campus, using drug interdiction as the 
justification despite common knowledge that drug 
puntos or selling points operate a steady 
business a short distance from the university. 
Normally the campus operates with its own contingent of security guards.

Some student leaders who are not pro-strike have 
also voiced complaints about the police takeover 
of campus. Omar Rodríguez, Student Council 
president for the College of Education and 
founder and editor of the 30,000+ members-strong 
Facebook page Estudiantes de la UPR Informan, 
reported that he was attacked without provocation 
by private security guards and that the police 
stood by and laughed when he pleaded for their intervention.

"The exaggerated police presence is unnecessary 
and intimidating," he said, adding that it was 
pedagogically absurd to expect students to 
concentrate properly on their studies in such an environment.

Making the best of these tensions, student strike 
leader Giovanni Roberto reached out to dialogue 
with Capitol Security guards in working-class 
solidarity. "They brought us the youth who are 
precisely the reason we are struggling, so that 
they could have access to the university," he said.

It is estimated that the new $800 fee will force 
10,000 UPR students to leave the university, 
though the state legislature and the Fortuño 
government have enacted last-ditch efforts to 
create funds for student jobs and scholarships. 
Numerous proposals from credible sources 
detailing fiscal alternatives to the fee seem to fall on deaf ears.

The strike itself has yet to build broad support, 
however. Widespread concern that a strike will 
jeopardize the institution's survival has 
mobilized some against the strike, including 
students, despite majority opposition to the $800 
fee. While students from other UPR campuses held 
walkouts or approved strikes, yet other campuses 
recently voted down such measures. And 
non-striking students at the Río Piedras campus, 
including previous strike leaders, signed a 
public proclamation to keep the campus open and classes running normally.

Nevertheless, strike organizers are gambling that 
the blunders of the administration will win 
support for the students as well as mobilize 
other groups. The largest professors' 
organization, Asociación Puertorriqueña de 
Profesores Universitarios, and the non-teaching 
staff union, La Hermandad de Empleados 
No-Docentes, issued standard calls to members to 
respect pickets. And president of the UTIER 
electrical workers union, Ángel Figueroa 
Jaramillo, issued a public call for support from 
Tuesday's campus demonstration.

Whether or not this current conflict has the 
potential to destabilize the Fortuño 
administration depends in part on a broader 
context of economic well being. Fortuño and a 
legislative majority from the extreme right came 
to power with a broad mandate to punish the 
previous party in power for the worst economic 
downturn in decades, with no mid-term or recall 
elections in Puerto Rico as a check on current policies.

A self-described Reaganite, Fortuño has become a 
darling of the Republican Party for imposing 
highly unpopular austerity measures through 
legislation called Ley 7 (Law 7), laying off 
20,000 public sector employees; targeting 
government agencies, including UPR, with 
crippling cuts aimed at perceived ideological 
enemies; and declaring null and void all public 
sector labor contracts for three years. Such a 
move, reminiscent of President Reagan's firing of 
striking air traffic controllers, should have 
stateside unions wary of Republican Party policy interest.

It has also been reported that the Fortuño 
administration has already begun negotiations to 
sell off -- or long-term lease -- UPR campuses to 
private colleges, including those owned by major 
contributors to his campaign. And this just as a 
student loan default crisis associated with 
mediocre private colleges in the United States 
threatens to spiral into as costly a mess as the mortgage crisis.

The events unfolding cohere with the popular 
thesis of Canadian author Naomi Klein, known as 
"disaster capitalism." However, students are 
mobilizing in Puerto Rico and worldwide around 
deep cuts to public higher education and 
subsequent privatization, in movements that may 
just be getting their first wind.

"From San Diego to Rome, from San Juan to London 
and Amsterdam, 2010 will be remembered as the 
year of student protests internationally," 
commented Antonio Carmona Báez, Ph.D., a 
political science lecturer at the University of 
Amsterdam. "Not since 1968 have university 
students stood up around the globe -- 
simultaneously -- against authority, this time to save public education."

Maritza Stanchich, Ph.D. is an Associate 
Professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico.





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