Puerto Rico’s students defend university and people
By
Berta Joubert-Ceci
Published Dec 15, 2010 9:50 PM
Some 15,000 people marched through the streets of San Juan, Puerto Rico, on
Dec. 12, ending at La Fortaleza, the governor’s residence. They demanded
the elimination of the $800 special quota the University of Puerto Rico
administration imposed that would increase student’s tuition starting
January 2011. Red balloons throughout the march symbolized the 10,000 students
who would have to abandon their studies if the quota takes effect.
Puerto Rico’s students fight for the whole country.
Photo: Puerto Rico Indymedia
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Students and professors called the demonstration as part of the continuing
struggle against the colonial government’s attempt to privatize public
education and other essential services. A week earlier, students held a 48-hour
system-wide stoppage to try to force the administration back to the negotiating
table.
Last summer students occupied most of the 11 UPR campuses throughout the
island. That occupation ended in a student victory, with the promise from the
government that the campuses would not be privatized and the special quota
would be dropped in August. But the government immediately tried to overturn
the agreement.
In a fast-track imposition, Governor Luis Fortuño increased the number of
members of the UPR’s Board of Trustees from 13 to 17. He appointed four
people close to his administration so he could have more leverage to overturn
the June agreement. The students vowed to continue the struggle, and today it
is clear that they are keeping that promise.
The university struggle is related to the class war the island’s current
neoliberal governor launched against the Puerto Rican people. This relationship
is revealed in the ubiquitous slogan “UPR es un país” (UPR is
the country). The student’s struggle has the support of their families,
high school students, teachers, unions, social organizations and the vast
majority of the people on the island who see the UPR struggle as not only
affecting students but involving other demands such as jobs and services for
all.
Both the UPR administration and the island administration use the worldwide
economic crisis and Puerto Rico’s financial crisis as a pretext for this
attack on public education. They say that there is no money. But this is far
from true. The students have issued a detailed, workable proposal to rescue the
university, but two administrations have rejected it.
In a Fortuño interview on Dec. 9 with Radio Noti Uno, he revealed the
government’s real intentions: “The University of Puerto Rico must
be a place of academic excellence where our future generations obtain their
dream, not a place of political activism of the left.”
Fortuño tried to justify the current police presence on the campuses.
Police had been barred from the campuses after the bloody confrontations in the
late 1970s when police killed students during a strike. In a very ominous
precedent, the government has again opened up the danger of criminal violence
against students by removing fences that secured the university, making the
campus a dangerous, open zone.
Interview with student leader
On Dec. 13, the day before an indefinite university strike is scheduled to
begin, Workers World spoke with Giovanni Roberto, a student leader from the Rio
Piedras campus. Roberto commented on the police presence and students’
actions in the future.
He said that according to the media, UPR President José de la Torre is
willing to negotiate with the students, but not with those representing the
participants in the struggle. Instead, he’ll meet with student councils
presidents who are not involved in the struggle. Roberto warned that the
administration will declare the strike illegal.
Roberto continued: “There is a new scenario now. It has changed since
last summer’s strike. First, there are no gates and those that remain
have been welded. When the students occupied the campus last Wednesday night
[Dec. 8], there were many police inside a mobile police headquarters, and they
talked a lot about installing security cameras. This is their modus operandi in
the poor neighborhoods, and it is important to show this class link. This is
the way they operate against the opposition, the poor, the marginalized and
against the Blacks in this country.
“With all probability this strike is not going to be like the last
strike. It will not be a strike of gates because there are no gates. It is not
going to be a strike of barricades inside the campus as we did during the
48-hour stoppage. With all probability it is going to be a very movable strike.
It is going to be a different strike.
“We are calling now for a week of solidarity with the UPR, and we are
going to establish two peoples’ encampments, one in front of the Ponce de
Leon Avenue and another behind. They are going to be permanent during this
week. We are calling on the people to come and support those encampments, so
that the people can keep watch to see what happens inside the
campus.”
A message to students in the U.S.
Roberto ended with a message to the students in the United States who are also
struggling against privatization. “Do not dismay. It is important in
spite of the highs and lows that the processes of struggle have, that a core of
people keep that process alive, so that the possibilities of that core becoming
a larger mass movement become a reality. For us this has been very instructive.
Sometimes the core is reduced, and the number of people who come to a
demonstration is reduced. But it is important to keep up the propaganda. When
the moment arrives to agitate, that propaganda is cumulative, and it becomes
agitation. It is very important to simply stay in the fight.
“If there are plans to have a strike, there is a need to talk with as
many people as possible and to explain why that process is the necessary one to
stop the advance of the government, the privatization offensive.
“As a socialist and internationalist, I find the international links very
important. For me, the struggle of all the oppressed sectors is the same fight
wherever one is, and those links are there, even if they have not materialized
in coordination. It is important for us that if there are similar struggles in
other places, global capitalism’s offensive against public education
becomes weaker.
“Fortuño is using the examples of the universities of the United
States to put police inside the campuses. That is what he says. This is going
to look more and more like a university in the U.S. As long as there are
students in the U.S. also demonstrating, who do not want that same privatized
university, that university full of police, the struggle is
strengthened.”
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