From Vieques to the University of Puerto Rico: The Struggle Continues
by Héctor Rosario, PhD
hrosario@math.uprm.eduIt’s before dawn and already almost thirty students are assembling to begin the takeover of an Army ROTC building at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez Campus. It’s been planned for weeks, with both legal and professional advice. The morale is high and the determination to oust the military program from their campus is resolute. Harvard and Yale expelled their programs in the sixties and they don’t have the additional problem of being located in one of the few remaining colonies of the world. But there they are, following on the footsteps of their predecessors at the University of Puerto Rico in Río Piedras, who also attempted to oust the program, with the difference that now their successors have resolved to complete the task left unfinished in the sixties.
As soon as the ROTC officers open the heavy wooden doors of the beautiful structure the Army occupies but belongs to the UPR, the students swarm the building: four do a sit-in inside the administrative office, half-a-dozen paint anti-war and anti-ROTC murals on two of the outside walls, while the rest hold the doors to keep control of the main lobby. The officers are upset but feel powerless in front of a group of highly organized and disciplined nonviolent demonstrators. The ROTC personnel are puzzled as to what to do in such circumstances. They wish for a more favorable scenario where they can employ their violent skills. What a great disappointment.
Security officers come quickly to the scene but soon realize, as expected, that the symbolic takeover is a new tactic of the same group of students that has kept a civil disobedience encampment for the past four months at the foundations of an Air Force ROTC structure being rebuilt. Certainly, the construction there stopped and it will not be allowed to continue until there is a commitment by the university administration to return the building to the broader college community. But back to the Army ROTC protest, here they are again, quite a few students accompanied by professors.
The day goes on and tensions rise. The cadets are angry and aggressive but the students claim this as their building, a building that was meant for the education of a country not for the military training of its citizens that will eventually participate in the massacres of children and the destruction of infrastructures in Iraq, Afghanistan, or any other “pre-emptive” war. Not in our name. Not with our resources. Not anymore!
At night, we hold a vigil and have an open-house for the university community. We watch documentaries about Iraq and the School of the Americas, while another group fraternizes with music. It’s time to rejoice but not much. We recall that while we taste a small victory, Iraqis are resisting the occupation and many of them are dying. Yes, many soldiers fighting in US uniform, including over 3,000 from Puerto Rico, are also dying. Even though they made that dreadful choice and must be held accountable for it, we still have to bear the pains of the families disrupted by death, mutilation, and disease.Morning comes and it’s time to pack and go…for now. We declare a temporary victory: we took over the building, reclaimed it as cultural patrimony, and left peacefully. We will now face the consequences of our actions, whatever those may be. The administration seems clueless and feeble in front of our ingenuity and resolve. What they don’t understand is that the successful demilitarization campaign of Puerto Rico did not end with Vieques. There’s still work to be done.
Civil disobedience and direct action protests will continue until the demilitarization of the University of Puerto Rico is attained. The encampment that students have maintained since the beginning of the fall semester at the former Air Force ROTC structure stands proudly today as a symbol of dignity and perseverance. At the site, a small concrete lot, the students meet, eat, sleep, and coordinate their next move. All throughout, the students have braved everything from hostile administration officials and security officers to inclement weather and lack of basic needs like water and electricity. But again, there’s still work to be done.
We urge anti-war activists across the United States to help us disseminate our message. We must fight the insanity of war from every angle. This requires ending all ROTC programs and their recruitment activities on our college campuses.
Frente Universitario por la Desmilitarización y la Educación (FUDE)
fude_rum@hotmail.com
(787) 969-0494
The University Front for Demilitarization and Education (FUDE) Takes Over Army ROTC Building!
January 20, 2004
This morning a group of students from The University Front for Demilitarization and Education entered the Army ROTC building at the University of Puerto Rico campus at Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, which is located in front of the Mechanical Engineering Building.
While this peaceful demonstration was taking place none knows the number of innocent lives that have been taken because of the war in Irak, nor the number of hungry, homeless and jobless families that wonder through the streets due to the bombings. Unknown to date is also when the so-called weapons of mass destruction that we were told Irak has will appear. We only know that the number of soldiers killed from the invading army goes beyond 500 and that more than a dozen of these are Boricuas. We also know that the vast majority are poor whites, Blacks and Hispanics and that those who have order them to commit murder are sitting comfortably in their air conditioned offices at the Pentagon or the While House. We also know that scores of our university students have had to completely leave their studies to go to serve in the front lines of a war that by all accounts is unjust and whose only real cause lies under Iraqi lands: OIL for the rich.
You may ask yourself, “What does all this have to do with the ROTC?” The ROTC represents at our university campus the U.S. military forces, an institution which a multi-billion dollar budget that seeks to continue using our universities’ facilities to recruit. Disguised under a program that they have the gall to call “Military Sciences”, they instruct in the “art of war” and train our students, men and women, in order to take them to die wherever Uncle Sam sees fit. Negating the critical thinking that we should be at the university to cultivate, they program you to obey orders without question. While our campus needs more and better study rooms, computer centers, classrooms, parking areas, daycare centers for students, a theater, etc., our university administration given them our buildings and provides them with funds.
For more than 4 months the University Front for Demilitarization and Education (FUDE) has maintained a camp in the foundation for construction of a building that the administration of our campus plans to pay for the Air Force ROTC at a cost of $151,000.00. Today, this demand for peace and for more and better spaces for the university community is extended to the ARMY ROTC facility in front of the Mechanical Engineering building. We ask that you come by the building and educate yourself.
Dustin S. Langley
www.join-snafu.org
International Action Center
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