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Vol. 74/No. 30      August 9, 2010

 
Puerto Rico student
describes victorious strike
 
BY SETH GALINSKY  
NEW YORK—“The most important thing we achieved is that we showed it’s possible to fight and win,” said Gabriela Quijano. She was talking about the more than two-month struggle by students in Puerto Rico against attempts to increase fees and reduce the number of students eligible for tuition waivers at the state-run university system.

Quijano, 20, an anthropology major at the University of Puerto Rico’s Río Piedras campus in San Juan, was an active participant in the student strike, which ended June 21. She spoke to the Militant while in New York City July 25.

There are some 62,000 students at the university’s 11 campuses on the island, which is a U.S. colony. Over the last couple of years “there was a big drop in the number of courses students can take, a hiring freeze was imposed, and the book budget for the library was cut,” she explained.

The cuts got worse after Law 7, the “Fiscal State of Emergency Law,” was approved in March 2009, she added. It ordered the layoff of 17,000 government employees and a 10 percent across-the-board spending cut.

“We won support not just from students, but from university professors and from working people,” Quijano said. She described how at one point the police were ordered to block the delivery of food and drink to students occupying the campus. After a few days the police were forced to back down.

When it was clear the students had won broad support and would not give up, the University Board of Trustees agreed to maintain the tuition waiver program, and to not increase summer session fees or privatize any of the 11 campuses. It said no increase in general fees would take place before January 2011.

There are reports the trustees are considering an $800 fee hike. “That would double the costs of going to school,” Quijano noted. As part of the accord students reserved the right to reinitiate their struggle if the administration attempts to raise fees.

“The assembly that approved the accord had students from all 11 campuses, the first time there was ever an assembly like that,” Quijano said.

The university administration recently brought disciplinary charges against three students involved in the strike. “They are not allowed to return to class until the hearing,” she explained. “This is a violation of their constitutional rights.”

Students involved in the two-month struggle hold a wide variety of political views, she added. “There are independence supporters and socialists, supporters of the commonwealth [the name given to Puerto Rico’s current colonial status], and supporters of statehood.”

But the impact of the economic crisis and the student struggle “has meant that there’s more questioning of the colonial relationship,” Quijano said.  
 
 
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