Puerto Rican university students rally against cuts

Comité Boricua en la Diáspora

Marching behind a banner saying, “Why don’t the guilty ones pay?” some 1,000 students from the University of Puerto Rico protested at the Convention Center in San Juan March 31 against the crippling cuts Washington’s Financial Oversight and Management Board seeks to impose on the university, its teachers and students. The cuts aim to generate funds to help the government of the U.S. colony pay its $70 billion debt to wealthy bondholders.

The fiscal board, called “La Junta” in Spanish, was meeting for the first time in Puerto Rico, following several sessions in the U.S. The board — which was appointed by President Barack Obama with dictatorial power to overturn any economic or financial decision made by the Puerto Rican government — is demanding $450 million in cuts out of the university.

“The government’s proposal is to close about five of the 11 campuses from now to 2021,” university student Verónica Figueroa Huertas told the Militant in a phone interview April 2. “People are having a difficult time right now and what the government is planning to implement will affect our lives even more. For me, the motivation of this fight is not just about dollars and cents, it’s about social justice.”

Three days earlier hundreds of students organized by the General Council of Students began a campus occupation and boycott of classes. “Our fight has received support from professors and other campus workers,” Figueroa said.

The working class is the central target, with cuts demanded in jobs, health care and pensions, as well as a freeze on wages of government employees until 2020.

Teachers rallied at the Department of Education offices in Hato Rey March 31 against plans to slash public school funding. “We came to tell you clearly that we are increasing our fight,” Puerto Rico Teachers Federation (FMPR) President Mercedes Martínez told Caribbean Business. “On May 1 we’re going to the streets and this is just the beginning of a united fight.”

— BRIAN WILLIAMS