SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO- Almost two years after the militant
student strikes that swept the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) for months in a
row, the $800 tuition fee hike that was one of the immediate causes for
controversy was repealed by the Board of Trustees of the UPR in a surprise move
last Saturday. There was an immediate
explosion of social media, while students agreed to take the college town of
Río Piedras by storm in celebration.
The delayed victory of the student movement of the UPR, along
with the recent victory of the students in Quebec, both having repealed the
tuition fee hikes imposed by neoliberal governments through militant prolonged
student strikes, stand as undisputed testimony of the fact that social
movements that strive in militancy, creativity, and respect for diversity of
tactics can be victorious, even against the most voracious neoliberal
foes.
For some commentators, the struggle of the UPR is a
premonition of things to come in the island.
Antonio Carmona Báez, former professor at Political Sciences Department
of the UPR, and current professor at the University of Amsterdam, commented on
a picture taken by the former student strikers who, while holding up their left
fists, hold a red flag that reads: “VENCIMOS”:
“These are no longer my students, but they are mine...I identify
with them. These are the students of the UPR who struggled, who were willing to
give their lives for future generations, who audaciously defended public
education confronting tyranny and the neoliberal lie. Victory has been
achieved, almost two years later. I am proud of you and forever grateful for
your example. Forward compañeros and compañeras! Yesterday the university, it
is now time to take the entire country.”
The student movement of the UPR, as we know it today began
in 2005, with a student strike that went on for over one month, over tuition
fee hikes. At that time students agreed
with the administration to get an extension of the period of payment and a five-payment
plan, for students that struggled with economic hardship. During the years between 2005 and 2009,
the students of the UPR, were active in different struggles, including the
defense of the Theater of the University from privatization, reclaiming the
need for more courses and the expansion of academic offerings, as well as the
preservation of the Social Sciences Book Reserve, and the protection of
services provided to students. In
addition to that, they exercised constant solidarity with the professor’s, and
workers’ claims for better working conditions.
Students were particularly instrumental in supporting the striking
Teachers Federation, one of the most militant unions in the island, in their
2008 strike as a part of the bumpy road to a collective bargain with the
government.
In 2009 a “state
of financial crisis” was declared in the Island. This gave way to cuts on government spending
and to the lay-off of over 20,000 government workers. Government imposed
neoliberal policies crippled all state-owned schools, and public services in
general. The student Movement in the UPR originally intended to organize a
massive general strike to fight back against the neoliberal government policies
of Republican Rising star, Luis Fortuño.
Structures were
born to organize students to fight this neoliberal offensive, not only in the
University but also with a macro-perspective, organizing for a nation-wide
general strike of all organized sectors. The social momentum ended as the
24-hour general strike was one of the most massive mobilizations in the last
years. As the union and civic leadership
backed out from the idea of a more prolonged strike, the student movement again
turned to itself, to the University and its issues.
The University’s
budget had been reduced by about 300 million dollars in the last 10 years. This had caused a deficit of about 200
million dollars. The Board of Trustees of the UPR, implemented policies
directly affecting students that received tuition waivers as a benefit for
their outstanding academic performance, or for their participation in Sports,
for example. There was also talk of
imposing raises in tuition fees to students was being discussed at the moment,
and also the possibility of privatizing University property through the Public
Private Partnership Model. By then, students and their allies were already
organized to fight back.
Students formed
Action Committees. Similar Committees eventually proliferated in a nation-wide
scale, and in the Río Piedras Campus.
They were constructed as a United Front of students from all political
backgrounds in Puerto Rico, who were willing to defend public education and
workers rights. Holding radical
democracy as a flag, against the dictatorial styles of the Board of Trustees,
administration, and the government, organized students took to the bases,
through information, and direct action.
Pickets and
rallies were held, hand outs were given out, public forums were organized and
documentaries were shown, guerilla billboards were put up, murals were painted,
letters were sent, and Buildings were occupied in protest. The 2010 student
strike was approved on 13th of April 2010 by an Assembly of
thousands of students and soon spread through 10 of the 11 campuses through the
island. It went on through mid-summer
2010 and received massive support form labor unions, the community and
religious groups, amongst others.
Students demanded and obtained the protection of the existing tuition
waiver system, a statement of the University Board of Trustees, in which they
agreed to not raise tuition fees or to privatize any of the Campuses in any
way, including Public Private Partnerships, and a general amnesty for all
striking students and workers. Students were clear that they had won the
battle, but not the war.
As the first
semester of the 2010-2011 semester came about, the Board of Trustees, insisted
on imposing a “fee” of $800 to every student, while reducing worker’s benefits
and services to students. The state
legislature had enacted laws to impose restrictions on Student Assemblies, and
passed a bill prohibiting strikes at the University. Action Committees were active organizing
protests against the most recent attacks on higher education.
Under pressure
from the Middle States Commission for Higher Education, risking the University’s
accreditation, and all kinds of pressure from the administration, three General
Student Assemblies took place. One to
elect our Committee of Student Negotiation, to begin engaging in talks to
prevent the conflict; as another group of students became involved in a
lobbying campaign, to get recurrent founds for the University. Another Assembly approved a referendum to
measure the student body’s opinion on the tuition hikes. 98% of students
opposed the hikes.
The State Supreme
Court declared the constitutionality of the law that prohibited student strikes
in the University. After that, the
police was called into the Río Piedras campus for the first time in over 30
years. Police occupied all of the
campuses that dared threaten to go on strike.
Then all kinds of expression and free speech inside Campus grounds were
banned by the administration. The riot
police enforced this in full force. As
the Administration did not respond to student’s demands, we went on strike
again. The second strike began the 14th
of December 2010.
Students had
everything against them, but still went ahead.
Constant marches in an around campus with hundreds of students were used
to implement the strike. They were
followed closely by every kind of police, from sharpshooters to common clothes,
to mounted on horseback police, to special arrest divisions. Sometimes, as marches were forced out of the
University, students took the streets.
Soon the student
press read: “from the beginning of the student strike, all kinds of speech has
been prohibited inside and outside of the University”, referring to the common
practice of police clashing with students and throwing their gasses even at
peaceful demonstrations outside university grounds. Police intervention with students was brutal
and ruthless since the beginning. As the
doors closed for the Negotiating committee, it was evident that the
administration had substituted dialogue with violence.
While students
were chased and arrested for handing out flyers during this second strike, many
others were pressured by their professors to take their final exams even in the
chaos of what some came to call the “police-campus”.
During January
2011, civil disobedience was practiced to continue implementing the strike,
with the numbers of arrested reaching more than 300. Excessive force of police
officers was met with active resistance by the support groups in a “new kind of
civil disobedience”, that tended to mix the usual non-cooperation with law
enforcement, with active resistance to officers in the field.
By February 2011,
the new semester had begun with a huge walkout that ended in a stalemate in
which a human chain of university workers and professors standing between riot
police and students prevented a bloodbath. On the second day of school,
students said enough. This time, the police got pepper sprayed and students
made them back down by the hundreds in a spontaneous march in which they
screamed “Fuera, fuera, fuera policía”.
The day after
that, the police intervened with students during the painting of a street
called “conscience street” inside campus grounds. After that, there was
absolutely no fear among the remaining student ranks. Students fought back ferociously. Thousands
marched. The police went, and then came back. Until students, after about two
years of non-stop struggle, decided to put the strike on hold in another
general assembly at the end of February 2011.
As they knew that they were in it for the long haul, they organized a
symbolic non-stop reading of Gabriel García Marquez’s Cien Años de Soledad.
It is now a
tradition in the UPR, that as the governments hand-picked President gives his
address to the graduating class, most of the students in the audience turn
around, giving their backs to him and the administration that has done the
same to the student body, during the last years.
As the strike
came to an end, almost two years ago, some students were able to pay, with help
from a scholarship fund that was approved by the state legislature under
student pressure. Many students were expelled for their participation in the
student strikes. Now, after two years of less-affordable education, and after
the materialization student’s predictions regarding the administration’s plans
to reduce the size of the most important public university in the country, the
newly elected majority of the state legislature, began this quarter responding
to student demands by assigning more recurrent funds to the UPR, as the student
movement had proposed since the very beginning.
The Board of Trustees has corresponded, in a
unanimous vote, eliminating the $800 fee that almost doubled the costs of
higher public education in Puerto Rico.
It is the first time in history that a tuition fee hike has been
repealed in the island, but students are clear that there is a long way to
go. There will be no rest for the
student movement, or for the powers that be, until the expelled students are
allowed to study in the UPR. Students
are also grounded in the fact that structural change is needed, and that the change
they refer to can only be achieved through a grassroots reform of the
University that makes it a truly autonomous and democratic institution. That
being so, students have made it clear that they will not stop, until public
higher education is declared a right, and not a privilege; until the University
must promotes access to the working class, and other
marginalized sectors and social groups to the student body, and until education
is freed from the invisible hands of
the market economy, to be finally understood as a process of liberation against
oppression, and for the achievement social justice.
Still, through the hallways
of my alma mater we can hear the
sirens wailing, and a uniform chorus of students that repeats “...no nos pararán, el que no crea que haga la
prueba”. “We will not be stopped, if you don’t believe us, just make the try”.
