Jun 23, 2010
Jubilantly chanting, “Victory, victory, victory for history!” and “Eleven campuses, one UPR!” students at the University of Puerto Rico on the 58th day of their strike emerged from a final negotiating session with the Board of Trustees having won an agreement. It still has to be ratified at an assembly of the students as a whole.
What was won
The board accepted all four of the students’ main demands: no Certification 98, which would have eliminated tuition exemptions for students who also received a U.S. federal Pell scholarship for academic excellence; no privatization of the campuses under Gov. Luis Fortuño’s neoliberal decree on Public-Private Alliances, an attempt by the current pro-statehood government to privatize Puerto Rico’s heritage; no charges against the students, faculty and workers who, exercising their freedom of speech and assembly, participated in many demonstrations during the strike; and no imposition of a special quota in August that would have doubled the tuition.
The UPR administration, backed by Fortuño, is still determined to increase the tuition. The written statement from the BT read that “the Board of Trustees considers necessary the establishment of a quota starting January 2011.”
The students are equally determined to defend public education. They included a statement that “the aforementioned agreements should not be understood as an acceptance” by the students of the quota. The students have stated publicly that they will continue organizing, defending public education against any attempt to increase tuition in January.
This was necessary to break the stalemate that had prevented a conclusion of the strike. It allowed the university to open and the students to finish the semester.
What were the roadblocks?
It is interesting to note that most of the students’ demands have not changed since the strike began. Both UPR President José de la Torre and BT President Ygri Rivera had taken a thoroughly intransigent position against the students, preventing any effective negotiation. It took the imposition of a mediator by the Superior Court to get the BT to negotiate. The mediator, Pedro López Oliver, a former judge of the Appellate Court whose son is in the UPR School of law, was accepted by both the students and the BT. This helped bring all the trustees to the table — one of the demands of the students, who accused Rivera of speaking on behalf of the whole board while she kept them in the dark.
It turned out that this was entirely the case. Once the whole body of trustees was involved in the negotiations, the majority opposed Rivera and voted to accept the students’ demands.
Ygris Rivera has been a key player representing the island’s right-wing administration. She is well known for collaborating with the most repressive governors. In the 1970s, she was special aide to then Governor Carlos Romero Barceló in the area of “public security.” These were the years when an FBI undercover agent lured and killed two innocent pro-independence youth in what became known as the Case of Cerro Maravilla. She is now continuing that anti-people, anti-progressive, anti-independence role through her work as president of the BT.
This underscores the current colonial administration’s crucial role in this strike. Fortuño himself had declared that the quota was necessary. The students, however, have always stated that the UPR’s deficit did not emerge solely from the institution’s past and present failed fiscal administration. They targeted the failure to collect millions of dollars owed to the UPR by different governmental and nongovernmental agencies and, most importantly, the cut in funding under Fortuño’s Law 7.
This law, imposed to deal with Puerto Rico’s economic crisis, effectively cut the funding by 9.6 percent. Fortuño, they say, wanted to declare the UPR insolvent, thus making it easier to privatize under his Wall Street neoliberal plan for the island. The law backs a plan to repay Wall Street for an obscure figure of $700 million that the UPR supposedly owes in bonds issued for the construction of expensive buildings and other, undisclosed expenses.
One of the students’ initial demands was that the administration open the financial books. To date, the administration has refused.
National Assembly, the ‘road to history’
The agreement will be discussed in a National Assembly on June 21 in a stadium in the city of Ponce. Buses and car caravans will converge in what the students have called “the road to history.” Students from all 11 campuses will be present to ratify the agreement and to discuss the future actions and perspective for the coming academic year.
Shirley Rosado, president of the Ponce campus Students’ Council, was busy preparing for the assembly. She told WW: “We are coordinating the National Assembly, which is key to ending the strike we have had for 58 days. We have responsibilities to fulfill, to finish the semester. However, the students have shown and have expressed to the administration the concern we have and that we have been and will continue to be vigilant about everything that happens in the UPR and that we will be on the alert for the defense of higher public education.”
Assemblies have been an essential part of the strike; all the students’ voices are heard and taken into consideration by the National Negotiating Committee. Because of that there are now efforts by right-wing members of the Legislature from the pro-statehood, ruling New Progressive Party to destroy that capability. They are introducing a bill that would terminate the public assembly and in its place institute a system of consultations in secret, by e-mail, in order to prevent the gathering of students.
UPR’s history of struggle
They will not have an easy road, as has been demonstrated by the students.
The student body of the UPR has a rich history of class consciousness and anti-colonial struggle. Many famous strikes and mobilizations have been held there.
Papo Coss, a veteran student of the UPR in the seventies, reminiscences about the 1973 struggle. In an e-mail circulated through the Internet he writes, “The 1973 National Strike of the university students’ movement was also victorious. It lasted 30 days. The riot police invaded the campus and expelled us from the Río Piedras campus. We then occupied the male students’ residence, where we held educational activities. All campuses were paralyzed, including some private colleges.”
One thing is for sure: In Puerto Rico, under the current critical conditions, the struggle will continue.
The writer visited the striking UPR campus at the end of May. She can be contacted at bjceci@workers.org.
