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MARCH/APRIL 2011
O
N
MARCH
10,
ACLU
EXECUTIVE
DIRECTOR
Anthony Romero issued an open let-ter to the Civil Rights Division of theU.S. Department of Justice on the question of po-lice brutality in Puerto Rico. In the letter Romerocalled on the Civil Rights Division, which has beeninvestigating the Puerto Rican police since 2008,to complete its investigation and take into accountreports of widespread abuses committed againstUniversity of Puerto Rico student protesters.“Students have been mercilessly beaten,maced with pepper spray, and shot at with rub-ber bullets,” Romero wrote. “Police have alsoapplied torture techniques on immobilizedstudent protesters, including the illegal use of nightsticks to provoke serious and permanentinjuries, and the application of pressure in theneck, eye and jaw of the protesters to provokepain and cause unconsciousness. At most eventsyoung women are the first to be targeted for po-lice violence and have also been sexually ha-rassed, groped and touched by police.”
1
The police violence unleashed against thecontemporary Puerto Rican student movement,which emerged in spring 2010, has turned theUniversity of Puerto Rico (UPR) into a testingground for the neoliberal state. Beyond quellingthe students’ exercising their rights of free speechand association to contest “austerity measures”imposed by the university administration un-der the cover of the island’s “financial crisis,” thestate seems to be probing how much violence it
The University of Puerto Rico: A Testing Ground for theNeoliberal State
Rima Brusi-Gilde Lamadrid is acultural anthro- pologist and an Associate Professor of Social Sciences at theUniversity of PuertoRico–Mayagüez.
R I C A R D O A L C A R A Z /
D I A L O G O D I G I T A L
NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS
can get away when dealing with pro-tests that undermine its agenda.In a way that has become familiararound the world, state violence inPuerto Rico complements broad, fast-paced neoliberal reforms.
2
This wasmade evident soon after the 2008 elec-tions, when governor-elect Luis Fortuño(of the pro-statehood New ProgressiveParty of Puerto Rico, or NPP, and the Re-publican National Committee) startedappointing the members of his cabinet.For the island’s police superintendent,he named a former assistant FBI direc-tor, José Figueroa Sancha, who quicklyannounced his commitment to “zerotolerance” policing (known in PuertoRico as
la mano dura
, or, roughly, theiron fist). After Fortuño took office in January 2009, the NPP-dominatedLegislative Assembly passed PublicLaw 7, which declared a state of fiscalemergency and authorized the govern-ment to fast-track the dismissal of some17,000 public employees, while ex-panding private contracting (includingwith companies hired to manage thelayoffs). Public Law 7 also cut funds tothe public university system.The following August, the govern-ment of the capital city of San Juandecided to strictly enforce existingregulations against public drinking. Inan ominous precursor, large numbersof Puerto Rico and municipal police,including riot police, were mobilizedto target Avenida Universidad, directlyin front of the UPR campus in RíoPiedras, a subdivision of San Juan. In-stead of simply fining violators up to$500, as the law stipulates, the officerschased students down the street andtear-gassed them, in one case sendinga young woman to the hospital with abadly wounded thigh.
3
In April 2010 the UPR admin-istration announced that tuitionwaivers, traditionally given to ath-letes, band and choir members, andhonor students, would be eliminatedfor students eligible for Pell Grants,which are granted on the basis of fi-nancial need. This was touted as partof the solution to the university’s cri-sis; its budget was already depressedbefore the passing of Law 7, and theadditional cuts have spelled disaster:The university now faces an estimatedannual deficit of between $240 mil-lion and $300 million.
4
Students responded by launchinga strike. Originally planned as a two-day stoppage, the strike ended uplasting almost 10 weeks. Althoughone would hardly know it from theU.S. media, the students’ massiveprotests repeatedly paralyzed PuertoRico’s 11-campus, 65,000-studentpublic university system. They notonly organized large demonstrationsbut also developed new participa-tory forms of decision making andcreated their own media—includingsome that are still going strong, forexample the online newspaper
RojoGallito
, websites like Estudiantes dela UPR Informan, and online radiostations like Radio Huelga.
5
After the student strike began,Fortuño framed his administration’sposition toward the UPR strike. In aspeech, he called the student strikers“members of a tiny minority” drivenby selfish, “ideological” motives, as op-posed to a “silent majority” that “reallywants to study.” He referred to public,affordable higher education as a “privi-lege” that Puerto Rico provides to itsstudents at no small cost to its citizens.“Tuition paid by students covers hardly3% of the university’s budget; the restis paid by us taxpayers,” he said, con-trasting responsible citizens with theprotesting students. “That is why ourpeople—a just and noble people, butalso respectful of law and order, andbelieving in democracy—get upsetwhen they see what we have all wit-nessed at the university.”
6
Officials and public figures—including ex-governor RomeroBarceló, Police SuperintendentFigueroa Sancha, chief of staff MarcosRodríguez, and UPR Board of Trusteespresident Ygrí Rivera—echoed thegovernor’s sentiments, portrayingthe students as selfish, privileged,disorderly, and ideologically driven.Disparaging the students and theircause, politicians and administratorsspeaking to the media, especially ra-dio, frequently described them as so-cialists, leftists,
anarcolocos
(anarchistcrazies), and even terrorists.
7
Yet by June, popular opinion seemedto side with the students. Editorials inmajor newspapers urged the univer-sity administration to negotiate withthe students, as did San Juan SuperiorCourt judge José Negrón Fernández,who named a mediator. Sixty-ninedays after the strike began, the stu-dents ended it and an agreement wassigned by a majority of the trustees thatincluded some important victories: Tu-ition waivers would remain in place;the imposition of an $800 annual feewas postponed, pending reexamina-tion and discussion; and universityemployees and students who partici-pated in the strike would not be sub- ject to administrative sanctions.
8
Theagreement, however, was not signedby either Rivera or UPR president JoséRamón de la Torre.The government, meanwhile, didnot miss a beat. Aggressively pursuingtheir agenda, Fortuño and the legis-lature set about undermining demo-cratic governance at UPR, both in theadministration and among students.On June 21, Fortuño signed a law thathad been fast-tracked through the leg-islature the same day, expanding UPR’sBoard of Trustees from 13 to 17 mem-bers, and announced the names of thenew members the very next day.
9
(Toput this in context, UPR, with fewerthan 60,000 students, now has almostas many trustees as the New York Stateuniversity system, with more than400,000.) Attuned to the legislature’sactivities, members of student media,
MARCH/APRIL 2011
unions, and environmental groups at-tempted on June 30 to observe a legis-lative session in which several key newlaws would be discussed—includingone that would criminalize certainprotests and another that would ef-fectively abolish student assembliesand replace them with an anonymouselectronic voting system.
10
But theCapitol that morning was closed to thepublic and surrounded by riot police,despite the fact that the legislature’s ses-sions are open to the public under theConstitution. Numerous incidents of police brutality against demonstrators,as well as members of the press, weredocumented that day by both main-stream and alternative media.
11
During the ensuing months thenew majority on the Board of Trust-ees installed chancellors on severalcampuses who were openly rejected byfaculty assemblies and search commit-tees. At the Mayagüez campus, the newchancellor declared that any demon-strations or protests were to take placein a new “public expression zone” lo-cated in an old athletic track, far awayfrom campus buildings—and potentialaudiences. The Puerto Rican satiricalonline newspaper
El Ñame
wonderedwhether such a move was not, after all,equivalent to sending protesting stu-dents to the moon, to “freely” expresswhat nobody would hear.
12
Finally, in December, Fortuño signedthe law that made student voting elec-tronic, effectively eliminating open,public debate in student assemblies.
13
Soon after, the trustees ratified the post-poned $800 fee, to be implemented in January, without so much as a glance atstudent and faculty proposals—someof which even agreed to allow studentsand employees to shoulder more of theuniversity’s financial burden, as long asthe trustees agreed to demand that thelegislature undo the cuts to the univer-sity budget mandated by Law 7, as wellas to direct monies owed by other gov-ernment agencies, estimated at $300million, to the university.
14
All theseproposals were ignored, however, andthe student fee simply implemented.These developments promptedthe students at the Río Piedras cam-pus to mobilize for a second strike,beginning with a 48-hour stoppageon December 7–8, with the option tobegin an indefinite strike December14. Then, in the early-morning hoursof December 7, when the two-daystrike was to commence, private secu-rity guards hired by the university de-molished the gates to the Río Piedrascampus to prevent the students frombarricading themselves in, as they haddone earlier in the year.
15
Many of theprivate guards were young men fromimpoverished communities with littletraining and education, hired—in asurreal turn of events—by the ex-wrestler Chicky Starr, well-knownyears ago for his cheating ways in thering and now a recruiter for the Capi-tol Security company.By December 9, private guards,riot police, and Puerto Rican policehad virtually occupied the campus.They have, with few interruptions,remained ever since. The police occu-pation of the UPR campus beginningin December marked the first timethat the police had entered universitygrounds in the decades since the draft-ing of the No-Confrontation Policy,created to promote non-violent ne-gotiation between conflicting groupsat the university in the late 1980s,following violent confrontations be-tween police and students. It requiredthat the police stay off campuses.Further crimping students’ rights,the Supreme Court of Puerto Ricoruled on December 13 that universitystudents do not have a right to go onstrike. Because students are not em-ployees, the Court argued, what they“call ‘strike’ is simply an organizedprotest.” As a consequence of this de-cision, the UPR administration wasnow legally empowered to “regulatethe orderly exercise of free speech andassociation within the university com-munity.”
16
Immediately after the Court’sruling, the chancellor of the Río Piedrascampus circulated a letter announcingthat large gatherings and demonstra-tions on campus would not be per-mitted until January 12, when classeswere to resume, in order to “preservesafety.”
17
The chancellor’s decision waslater found unconstitutional.
18
Despite the students’ efforts in defi-ance of the crackdown on their rightto protest, the $800 fee has remainedin place. It is expected to bring in anannual $40 million. Meanwhile, theBoard of Trustees in April decided torequest a $75 million line of credit fornew construction projects that will beoutsourced to private developers. Oneof the projected buildings will housethe Army ROTC, a program that willserve only about 100 students andwhose presence on campus has histori-cally been criticized and resisted.
19
A
LTHOUGH
STUDENTS
AND
THEIR
supporters have faced po-lice violence since the firststrike began, it intensified in the win-ter, once the $800 fee was institutedand students defied official limits ontheir expression. Now there wereincidents every day, and numerousstudents were arrested, with many of the women reporting being gropedby the arresting officers.
20
In January,UPR professors joined the chorus of denunciations, condemning the tech-niques used by the police during thearrests as torture.
21
In February, riotpolice attacked demonstrators at asit-in at the Capitol with rubber bul-lets, arresting more than 150.The same week, a “paint-in”—in which students gathered at theuniversity to paint slogans againstthe fee and the police presence oncampus—ended in chaos, after thepolice attacked the demonstration,and dozens of student activists, as
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