Students, workers strike in Puerto Rico

Aquadilla, Puerto Rico--After over 50 days, the student/worker strike at the University of Puerto Rico was successfully ended this past month. Nearly all of the demands were won, but then the administration went back on its word to not persecute the strike leaders.

Students, professors, administrative staff, janitors and maintenance staff were all on strike over a rise in tuition, an extra quota for new students, cutbacks in pay, and other workplace issues. The situation was similar to the University of California, Berkeley, strike. Students effectively took over the main campus in Rio Piedras, as well as other campuses around the island. The University administration has been trying to apply the "ley 7" (see "Workers fight ley 7," March-April 2010 N&L). Law 7 has neoliberal measures to cut spending by cutting social services, including education. The governor of Puerto Rico had money for a big cocktail party for his corporate and political friends, where the students immediately mounted a picket line of protesters, but there is no money for education.

The University of Puerto Rico is the only institution of higher learning that low-income students can afford. The neoliberal policies of the local colonial government would change that by privatization. The striking students, professors and staff held firm, giving a lesson in how to carry out a struggle. The students maintained the campuses clean and secure, and gave seminars on labor law, civil rights, history, music, art, and theater. This was organizing from below.

Now the administration is going forward with court actions against the students. This has put the agreement that ended the strike in danger. The strike could be renewed.

Another horrible problem here has been a war on women, especially in June. Thirteen women have been brutally murdered by their spouses or ex-spouses in a wave of "machista" violence since January. In June, five women were murdered--one set on fire with gasoline, another shot and killed while she was making breakfast for her five-year-old son who witnessed the murder.

Neoliberal austerity; a narco-war similar to Mexico where every morning the streets are left with mostly young men shot, sometimes burned in their cars; hate crimes against gays on the rise; and now violence against women--it has all become epidemic. This kind of news does not get attention from the mainland media. Scaring the nice tourists would be bad for business.

--Teofilo

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