by: Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
[This article is an excerpt from PUERTO RICO NEWS #16]
By all accounts, the students of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) have made themselves invaluable to the struggle against privatization and neoliberal policies through their tenacity and commitment. On Wednesday September 10, the students of the Río Piedras campus (last issue I called it the San Juan campus. They're actually the same. Río Piedras is a town that was incorporated into San Juan) held an assembly which approved resolutions in opposition to the privatisation of the PRTC, in support of the October 1 national work stoppage, and for the creation of a University Front Against Privatisation (FUCP) composed of students, professors and non-teaching employees. To make their solidarity clear, they also resolved to shut down UPR on the day of the stoppage.
Then on Tuesday September 16, UPR students organized a spontaneous protest against governor Rosselló, who had entered the campus unannounced and accompanied by dozens of policemen and die-hard supporters of his New Progressive Party. The riot caused by the governor's forceful visit, far from frightening and discouraging the student activists, seemed only to have the opposite effect.
In the afternoon of Tuesday, September 30, the day before the national stoppage, UPR students held a march in downtown Río Piedras and afterwards returned to the campus to celebrate their first University Festival in Support of Working People. The lively event featured speeches by representatives and leaders of political, student, civic and labor organisations, as well as performances by national celebrities like comedian "Sunshine" Logroño and singer-songwriter Antonio "El Topo" Cabán, jazz instrumentalist Pedro Guzmán, and the rock group Fiel A La Vega, whose commitment to progressive causes is undeniable. I stayed until midnight. At that moment, a lot of artists still hadn't gotten to perform yet and the campus seemed as crowded as during broad daylight in a weekday. The event carried on until two in the morning.
Once the festival ended, a large group of students camped out in the campus green in order to be ready to shut down the university at the crack of dawn. At about four in the morning they began to help the maintenance employees lock all the entrances to the campus, and before seven o'clock the campus was effectively sealed and a rally was in full swing in front of the west side entrances. It seemed that no transportation would be available from the UPR to the rendezvous point at Dos Hermanos bridge. The drivers of the "carros públicos" (privately-owned pickup vans that supplement the public bus system) had been threatened by the Education Department with cancellation of their contracts with the public school system if they participated in the demonstration. But at about 9:30 dozens of "carros públicos" appeared in defiance of Education Department threats. Their drivers flung their vans' doors open and gave us free rides to Dos Hermanos bridge.
Just before ten, the "carros públicos" began to move slowly in a noisy caravan to Puerta de Tierra to meet with the other protesters, some of whom had come in caravans of their own from all over Puerto Rico. Some of the students did the whole trip on foot without losing any enthusiasm!
"If there is one thing that encourages the workers, it is the tenacity shown by the UPR students", said Jorge Farinacci, former political prisoner and spokesperson for the Socialist Front. "This afternoon the telephone company employees salute the Puerto Rican youths and university students, who have been exemplary in their commitment with the values of Puerto Rico", said HIETEL president Annie Cruz in her speech in front of the capitol.
Yesterday at noon secretary of state Norma Burgos entered UPR unannounced and went to the Social Sciences faculty building. Precisely the epicenter of opposition to the government's neoliberal, right-wing, anti-national policies! Hundreds of students immediately surrounded the building to protest her presence and repudiate all she stands for. A few minutes later, the stormtroopers entered the campus for the first time since 1981, beating students, professors, reporters and even the UPR's own security force. A police helicopter with a sharpshooter overflew the campus during the incident, and an unmarked car with undercover agents toting AR-15 machine guns was seen entering campus.
TV footage of this near tragedy clearly shows professors Rafael Bernabe and Julio Muriente doing everything in their power to prevent a confrontation between the stormtroopers and the protesters. Luckily, no one was hospitalized or arrested.
El Nuevo Día, Puerto Rico's leading daily, energically repudiated Burgos's
recklessness and the regrettable behavior of the stormtroopers in a fiery
editorial today:
"The ill timing of (Burgos's) visit can only be conceived of as a provocation…The sudden presence of the stormtroopers in the University campus leads one to think that her visit was not just a simple provocation, but a premeditated and intentional act…By tradition, and according to the University's own regulations, only the campus dean (the Rector) can call the police into the campus…What happened yesterday in UPR could have been avoided if instead of governing by brute force, the government had turned to dialogue and consensus."
Point well made. Everything seems to indicate that the government is carrying out these acts of provocation in order to create a case for an authoritarian regime that will carry out the neoliberal program in spite of the democratic opposition.