The epicenter of the struggle for the public university in Latin America is Puerto Rico.

– José Carlos Luque Brazán, professor and researcher of political science and urban planning at the Autonomous University, Mexico City¹

Puerto Rico has historically been a laboratory for social, economic, political and scientific experiments. After the 1898 Spanish American War, the U.S. extended to Puerto Rico a newly crafted colonial system which had never been implemented in the mainland, eugenic programs were tested in the island, sterilization of women and the use of the contraceptive pill also used the island as a laboratory. Later, an export-based developmental model was crafted, euphemistically called “Manos A la Obra” translated as “Operation Bootstrap” (in Mexico called Maquiladora Program), which was later touted as a developmental model for the “Third World.” The use of emigration as an escape valve led 500,000 to migrate to the United States and other parts of the Americas.

After the Spanish-American War, the United States was confronted with a dilemma: what to do with the newly acquired territories, especially, Cuba, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico. Territories that were annexed earlier, whether the Louisiana Purchase, Alaska, Hawaii, or the incorporation of the Southwest after the Mexican American War, had relatively small populations which did not have a fully developed national identity. The colonization process consisted of moving white settlers into these regions and placing them into the path toward statehood. The United States was not building a classic empire; it saw itself as engaging in nation-building. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 basely guided a process to transform these territories into full fledged members of the union.

In Puerto Rico’s case, the experience was quite dissimilar. Puerto Rico had a clearly developed national identity, close to a million inhabitants, in U.S. racial terms mostly non-white, a literature, and a history of anti-colonial struggle. The white settler model would not work in the island. Elihu Root used the knowledge engendered by British anthropologists who had provided the ethnography used to structure the British colonial system. This was adapted to Puerto Rico and a series of cases decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, the “Insular Cases,” carved a legal space for legitimating something that was anathema to the U.S. experience: having colonies. The United States became an empire in the classical sense. Puerto Ricans are today second class U.S. citizens, who can be drafted into the military in case of war (like they were in World War II, the Korean intervention, and the war on Vietnam). However, they are unable vote for the president of the United States, the Commander in General of the U.S. armed forces. They have a delegate which sits in congress with voice but does not vote. Every federal law applies in Puerto Rico even when it might contradict the island’s constitution.

This is in an abbreviated form the historical context for the collapse of the U.S. colonial project in Puerto Rico. The most evident symptom today is the social movement to preserve public higher education which has, still hidden from the U.S. public, shaken the foundations of the colony. Today, the crisis is not only political, but it is also social and economic. It’s most recent reiteration is that for the first time since 1898, the population of the island has declined, according to the latest Census 2010 data. One of the causes of this collapse is another experiment that has used the colonial subjects of Puerto Rico as guinea pigs. The radical implementation of a program of neo-liberal measures that surpasses anything attempted before in Puerto Rico. While previous administrations tried a patchwork of privatizations and budget reduction measures, this is the first time a systematic effort to apply neo-liberal measures to “starve the beast” is being attempted on the island. The most obvious victim is the system of public education which had, until very recently, been a fairly good model of access to higher education and of its contribution to the development of the most educated labor force in Latin America. That all has changed.

Crisis in Public Higher Education in Puerto Rico

While some universities across the nation have increased tuition fees to address budget deficits, few universities have faced the persistent social and political turmoil that has gripped the University of Puerto Rico. With the exception of the 2010 student protests at the University of California at Berkeley, Los Angeles and Santa Cruz, most in the academic community have not organized a broad social movement to challenge the underlying ideology that appears to be leading this restructuring of the financing of public higher education. In some sense, as Laurel Weldon argues, a social movement for public education in Puerto Rico has provided a voice to a segment of society which felt powerless as an ideologically led government dismantles public higher education and creates the basis for the continuation of a seemingly permanent crisis.²

Since the founding of the University of Puerto Rico in 1903, the university, which has grown into eleven campuses, has had to face the political intervention of the state. The university was organized during a period after the United States military government ended; it was burdened with a centralized administration and a colonizing objective.³ The model for its structure came from the educational system created in the United States for the education of African Americans and Native Americans. This was a period when social Darwinism permeated American culture and some of the political and educational leaders felt that the natives of the newly acquired territories where inferior. This produced a system of higher education that had a paternalistic relationship with the colonial government. Unfortunately, the legacy of the past is still woven through the institutional norms and practice of the university.

In fact, it was the intense political intervention by the government in the university which led the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools to refuse accreditation to the university in 1937. This colonial origin, the government’s intrusion of partisan politics and centralized power are at the source of most of the recurring social conflicts that have pervaded the history of this institution. In 1942 and 1948, protests from the university community because of political encroachment led to two major strikes that closed down the university. Later throughout the 1960s and 1980s, the university life was punctuated by protests, calls for educational reform and debates about fiscal autonomy as a way to ensure a central role to the academic community in governance. However, while strikes and protests are relatively common throughout the history of the university, this is the first time when the protests have had the real possibility of challenging government policies. The coming together of a number of factors has created a potentially critical situation that could either crush the hope of a progressive educational reform or create the momentum for one in the not too distant future. These factors are first, the worst recession the island has experienced since the 1930s, one that began two years before in the mainland. Second, the reckless political intervention in university affairs by the pro-statehood New Progressive Party administration of Gov. Luis Fortuño. Third, the unrestrained use of force against the protesters.

After a year of instability, the social conflict taking place at the University of Puerto Rico is polarizing this island to such an extent that this United States’ possession, which used to be heralded as the “showcase of democracy” during the Cold War ideological struggles, is now sliding into a system of widespread civil and human rights violations. The University of Puerto Rico, for the first time in decades, is occupied by police: political demonstrations are banned; summary expulsions of student leaders are common; and hundreds of students have been arrested, beaten, and at times sexually assaulted or tortured. On February 9, after the riot squad violently intervened with students painting murals, 28 students were arrested, many were hurt and chaos ensued when pepper gas and batons were used to violently arrest students and bystanders. The police violence was of such magnitude that the faculty organization, the Puerto Rican Association of Professors, and the Brotherhood of Non-Faculty Employees called for a 24-hour strike, which was later extended. The university was closed and the president of the system, Jose Ramon de la Torres, after writing a letter requesting the removal of the police from the campus, announced he was resigning as president.

Presently, Miguel Muñoz, former chancellor of the engineering campus in the western city of Mayaguez is the interim president of the system. While there is a process to name the person who will permanently occupy the position, six of the universities refused to participate in the search. There is a great lack of trust because of decades of partisan intervention in university affairs. The legislature expanded the number of trustees which govern the system so it could have the opportunity of naming people loyal to the governing party. The legislature, under the full control of the New Progressive Party, had also increased the number of judges in the island’s Supreme Court to solidify its control of the institution. They also named a former FBI agent, Jose Figueroa Sancha as superintendent of the island-wide police department. The police force has been militarized and a number of new units, including the Unit for Tactical Operations (UOT), and the Special Arrests Unit (SAU) have been used in response to mostly peaceful student protests. Also surprising is the use of SWAT units with hoods, machine guns, shotguns, and the more widespread use of tazers, pepper spray, rubber bullets, shields by the police. Dr. Jorge Benitez says in his book on citizenship and exclusion that the state does not invest resources unless it feels that the movement challenges the status quo.⁴ The U.S. Department of Justice, in response to a request by both the United States and Puerto Rico’s chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union is investigating the police of Puerto Rico and it is expected that sometime this year some form of consent decree will be implemented because of the widespread violation of human and civil rights. The state of crisis even brought Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill), of Puerto Rican descent to denounce the violations in a session in congress.

Presently, there is a lull in the protests, this retrenchment occurred after an incident where Ana Guadalupe, chancellor of the University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras campus, the largest university in the system, was attacked with water bottles and pushed by students. This incident occurs after a year of police brutality that exacerbated the tension. But even during the most active period of the protests in spring 2010 when students occupied 10 of the eleven universities, U.S. mainstream media coverage of this social movement is scant. Only Al Jazeera and Tele Sur (Venezuela) began to provide some international coverage. In order to break the silence, just as in Egypt, youth created their own media in order to organize and tell the world what is happening in this territory of the United States. They also created a radio station “Radio Huelga” (Strike Radio) managed and controlled by students, to cover the events and dialogue about the issues.

Hidden from the eyes of the world, and especially from the U.S. public, this island with 3.7 million inhabitants is experiencing the most intense struggle for democracy and public education since the 1960s. The leadership of the island-wide movement is provided by the academic community of the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras campus. This is a selective research intensive university and the most prestigious institution of higher education in the Caribbean, the system that provides 95% of the research and development in Puerto Rico. It has 20,000 students and 1,000 faculty. The system historically has produced the intellectual leadership of the island, in the sciences, arts and literature. Because of its selectivity, the system has the brightest and also the most creative and persistent defenders of educational reform and the expansion of public education. Unfortunately, ideology is guiding the government’s response to the educational and social crisis at the university.

Neo-Liberalism in Puerto Rico

Since his landslide election in 2008, Governor Luis Fortuño, of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, has implemented a series of neo-liberal measures, which have polarized the island’s population and increased economic inequality. Governor Fortuño is the first Puerto Rican governor who is an avowed member of the National Republican Party, despite the fact that the Republican Party as such does not participate in Puerto Rican elections. Despite his electoral promises, he has fired 17,000 public workers and reduced investments in social services and education. The unemployment rate in January 2011 was 15.7%, which is lower than it was at the beginning of the fiscal year (16.9% in July 2010), but the reason behind this decline is not an increase in jobs but the discouraged worker effect, that is, workers who are dropping out of the work force and either working in the informal economy or participating in social welfare programs. Puerto Rico, moreover, has one of the lowest labor participation rates in the world. The proportion of the able-bodied population that participates in the work force has declined dramatically. In July 1999, 47.8 per cent were in the labor force and in December 2010 it was 41.1 %. In contrast, the labor participation rate in the United States in January was 64.2%.

In the meantime, efforts to privatize segments of public services including education are being made through what the government calls “private-public partnerships.” These are ways of providing the private sector with public assets without the risks involved in the private market. Attempts to create these partnerships include the building of a gas pipeline through some of the most environmentally fragile areas of the island which are close to population centers. There is strong citizen opposition to this project, in light of the gas pipeline explosions in California, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, but the government is committed to its construction.

The privatization of higher education has involved another strategy to achieve the same objective. Funds for the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) since 1997 have been cut by $336 million. The university imposed an $800 fee hike (50%) on the students in order to solve the alleged financial deficit of the system. The Office of Financial Aid at the University of Puerto Rico calculates that the annual cost of attending the university $13,932, and a full-time student spends $1,674, now is spending, $2,474. What this increase will mean is that close to 10,000 students will not be able to attend the university. Given that there might be a further reduction in Pell grants, poorer and middle class students will be priced out of a public college education. What is behind the financial gutting of the university is the neo-liberal ideology supported by Governor Fortuño. From the academic year of 2001-02, to 2006-07, there was a dramatic decline in the proportion of public university students in the total university student population. In 2001-02, only 117,714 attended private universities while 73,838 attended the UPR. In 2006-07, 158,031 went to private universities and only 65,939 the UPR. Contrary to the United States, private institutions of higher education pale in comparison to the quality of the education at the University of Puerto Rico system. According to “Integrated Post Secondary Educational Data System” (IPEDS) of the federal department of education, graduation rates (2007-08) for private universities range between 18.15 and 45.3%. In comparison, graduation rates for the eleven universities of the public system range from 61.0% to 36.4%.

Ironically, if the government’s policy of cutting financial support for public education continues an even more economically stratified system of education will develop. Presently, economically disadvantaged students are more likely to attend private universities than public institutions. So in fact, the burden of educating the island’s youth has been and will be further shifted to private universities, relying more on federal Pell Grants. So, by expanding the role of private universities the neo-liberals are transferring Puerto Rico’s economic responsibility on United States’ taxpayers. In an island with a 47% poverty rate and a median family income of $20,425, a third of the United States median family income ($58,526), education is the only avenue toward upward mobility. These policies will further exacerbate the extreme unequal income distribution that already exists.

Poll ratings of Governor Fortuño are extremely low, a recent poll by the daily Nuevo Dia, only 25 per cent of voters would re-elect Gov. Fortuño. Yet he is steadfast in implementing draconian measures and supporting the repressive measures used against the university community. One reason behind his obstinate efforts may be that he is being courted by the National Republican Party as a way of attracting the Latino vote. Governor Fortuño attended a Heritage Foundation briefing in Simi Valley, California and a Koch brothers’ event in Rancho Mirage, California at the beginning of this year. At such venues he has been boasting of how he has established law and order in Puerto Rico. Most recently, on February 11, he was one of the speakers at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) 2011 meeting in Washington, D.C., where he touted his neo-liberal policies. Toeing the Tea Party line, he spoke about reducing government, emphasizing higher bond ratings, and about reducing the structural deficit of the government. While it was true that the structural deficit was reduced from $3,306 billion to $2,143 billion on the other hand, the island had received $6,800 billion in American Recovery and Re-Investment Act (ARRA) which are non-recurrent funds. These funds, together with bond emissions helped fill the gap. However, the public debt of Puerto Rico in the meantime has increased from $52, 947 billion in 2008 to $63,366 billion in February 2011. An increase of $10,419 billion more or a 19 per cent increase! A tax cut for multinational corporations that was effected 10 years earlier, based on the same ideology of neo-liberalism, cut $3,000 billion in general funds revenue from the island’s coffers. This is the sum of the structural deficit.

The colonial developmental model did not begin its slide into a crisis in the last few years; many economists date it back to the 1970s when the glowing statistics began to lose their luster. Economist James Dietz says that the economic convergence between the United States and Puerto Rico only lasted between 1950 through 1970s. While there was some improvement in the 1990s, ironically when less federal intervention was taking place in the form of federal exemptions to multinational corporations operating in the island’s enclave economy.⁵ One interesting datum provided by economist Francisco Catalá is that profits to foreign companies in Puerto Rico rose from 7.4 per cent of gross national income in 1970 to 56.5 per cent in 2009.⁶ Obviously, the colonial model had become a hemorrhage of resources away from the island. In 2009, according to the Puerto Rico Planning Board report to the governor, $35, 443 billion dollars were profits transferred out of Puerto Rico. The economy of the island has contracted a bit more than 11 per cent in the last 5 years. Today, 20 per cent of the Puerto Rican population receives 55.3 per cent of all income generated in the island, in the U.S. the top 20 per cent received 50.3. This inequality is higher than that of the United States which has one of the highest levels of income inequality in the world. But Gov. Luis Fortuño in its messages says that the bond ratings have improved.

Sadly, while the bond ratings have increased somewhat (although still considered risky) Puerto Rico’s social fabric is collapsing. Puerto Rico last year had 1,000 murders; this year, already in February, the homicide number in Puerto Rico reached more than one hundred. And yet the police are at the campus of the University of Puerto Rico, repressing freedom of expression. In the meantime, the population of the island, for the first time in modern history has decreased. It is calculated that more than 400,000 Puerto Ricans have migrated to the United States, the highest number since the great migration in the aftermath of World War II.

They know the risk that they face when they let the imagination run through books, how seditious the fictions become when the reader explores the freedom that makes them possible and that in them is exercised, with the fear and the darkness that lurks in the real world.

– Mario Vargas Llosa, 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature

The University of Puerto Rico was placed on probation last year by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools. Two of the main critiques were governance and its finances. The academic senate of the Rio Piedras campus submitted an addendum to the university report to the Middle States including the police brutality that occurred on that campus. Chancellor Ana Guadalupe refused to include it so it had to be sent separately. As to the financial health of the system, the government has failed to restore the funds that were taken. Finally, it seems that the space for critical inquiry and freedom of expression the university has historically provided is too threatening for the ideologues at the helm in Puerto Rico. It seems that the only strategy of neo-liberals in Puerto Rico is to shirk the social and public responsibility to provide for the Puerto Rican population by transferring segments of the population to the United States.

1. Stanchich, Maritza “More Violence in Puerto Rico as University Student Fee Is Imposed,” Huffington Post, January 18, 2011.
2. Weldon, S. Laurel. 2011. When Protest Makes Policy: How Social Movements Represent Disadvantaged Groups. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
3. Navarro Rivera, Pablo. 2010. “Democratización y autonomía en la Universidad de Puerto Rico: Mito y realidad.” Manuscript.
4. Benitez Nazario, Jorge and Astrid Santiago Orria. 2011. Ciudadanía y exclusión en Puerto Rico. Rio Piedras, P.R.: Centro Para Puerto Rico, Fundación Sila Calderón.
5. Dietz, James L. 2003. Puerto Rico: Negotiating Development and Change. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
6. Catalá, Francisco. “Anosognosia en la colonia.” Conference on April 27, 2010.

The epicenter of the struggle for the public university in Latin America is Puerto Rico.

– José Carlos Luque Brazán, professor and researcher of political science and urban planning at the Autonomous University, Mexico City.¹

The social conflict taking place at the University of Puerto Rico is polarizing this island to such an extent, that this United States’ possession, which used to be heralded as the “Showcase of Democracy” during the cold war ideological struggles, is now sliding into a system of widespread civil and human rights violations. The University of Puerto Rico, for the first time in decades, is occupied by police, political demonstrations are banned, summary expulsions of student leaders are common, and hundreds of students have been arrested, beaten and at times sexually assaulted or tortured. On February 9, after the riot squad violently intervened with students painting murals, 28 students were arrested, many were hurt and chaos ensued when pepper gas and batons were used to violently arrest students and bystanders. The police violence was of such magnitude that the faculty organization, the Puerto Rican Association of Professors and the Brotherhood of Non-Faculty Employees called for a 24-hour strike which was later extended. The university is closed and the president of the system, Jose Ramon de la Torres, after writing a letter requesting the removal of the police from the campus, announced he was resigning as president.

The coverage of this social movement by U.S. mainstream media is scant, and only Al Jazeera has begun to provide some international coverage. In addition, just like in Egypt, youth have created their own media in order to organize and tell the world what is happening in this territory of the United States. Hidden from the eyes of the world, and especially from the U.S. public, this island with 3.9 million inhabitants is experiencing the most intense struggle for democracy and public education since the 1960s. Since early April 2010 students of the most prestigious institution of higher education in the Caribbean, the University of Puerto Rico, are involved in a struggle to preserve a system of public higher education. This is the system that provides 95% of the research and development in Puerto Rico.

Neo-Liberalism in Puerto Rico

Since his landslide election in 2008, Governor Luis Fortuño, of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, has implemented a series of neo-liberal measures which have polarized the island’s population and increased economic inequality. Gov. Fortuño is the first Puerto Rican governor who is an avowed member of the National Republican Party, despite the fact that the Republican Party as such does not participate in Puerto Rican election. Despite his electoral promises, he has fired 30,000 public workers, and reduced investments in social services and education. The unemployment rate in December 2010 was 14.7% which is lower than it was at the beginning of the fiscal year (July 2010 16.9), the reason behind this decline is not an increase in jobs but the discouraged worker effect, that is, workers who are dropping from the work force and either working in the informal economy or participating in social welfare programs. Puerto Rico also has one of the lowest labor participation rates in the world. The percentage of the able-bodied population which participates in the work force has declined dramatically. In July 1999, 47.8 per cent were in the labor force and in December 2010 it was 41.1 %. The labor participation rate in the United States in January was 64.2%.

In addition, efforts to privatize segments of public services including education, are being implemented through what the government call private/public partnerships. These are ways of providing the private sector public assets without the risks involved in the private market. Attempts to accomplish these partnerships include the building of a gas pipeline through some of the most environmentally fragile areas of the island and close to population centers. There is strong citizen opposition to this project, in light of the gas pipeline explosions in California, Pennsylvania and Ohio but the government is committed to its construction.

The privatization of higher education has involved another strategy to achieve the same objective. Funds for the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) since 1997 have been cut by $336 million. The university imposed an $800 fee hike on the students in order to solve the financial deficit of the system. What this increase will mean is that close to 10,000 students will not be able to attend the university. What seems to be behind the financial gutting of the university is the neo-liberal ideology supported by Governor Fortuño. From the academic year of 2001-02, to 2006-07, there has been a dramatic shift in the proportion of students who attend the public university. In the first period, only 117,714 attended private universities while 73,838 attended the UPR. By the second period, 158,031 were attending private universities and only 65,939 the UPR. On an island with a 47% poverty rate and a median family income of $20,425, a third of the United States median family income ($58,526), education is the only avenue toward upward mobility. But worse, the burden of educating the island’s youth will be shifted to private universities who rely more on federal Pell Grants. So, by expanding the role of private universities the neo-liberals are transferring Puerto Rico’s economic responsibility on United States’ taxpayers.

Ironically, poll ratings of Governor Fortuño, are extremely low yet he is steadfast in his implementation of draconian measures and in supporting the repressive measures used against the university community. The Department of Justice sent investigators in response to a request by the local branch of the American Civil Liberties Union and other interested parties for an investigation of civil rights violation by the Puerto Rican Police Department. But one reason behind his obstinate efforts may be that he is being courted by the National Republican Party as a way of attracting the Latino vote. Recently, Governor Fortuño attended a Heritage Foundation briefing in Simi Valley, California, he also attended the Koch brothers event in Rancho Mirage, California last month and has been proudly boasting of how he has established law and order in Puerto Rico. Last February 11, he was one of the speakers at the CPAC 2011 meeting in Washington, D.C. where he boasted about his neo-liberal policies. Toeing the Tea Party line, he spoke about reducing government, about how bonds’ ratings were higher but not about the collapse of the social fabric caused by his measures. Last year, Puerto Rico had 1,000 murders; already in January Puerto Rico has reached more than one hundred murders, and yet the police are at the campus of the University of Puerto Rico repressing freedom of expression. In the meantime, more than 200,000 Puerto Ricans have migrated to the United States, the highest number since the great migrations after World War II.

It seems that the strategy of neo-liberals in Puerto Rico is to transfer the social and public responsibility of providing for the Puerto Rican population by transferring segments of the population to the United States.

1. “More Violence in Puerto Rico as University Student Fee is Imposed,” Maritza Stanchich, Ph.D. Associate Professor of English, UPR, Posted: January 18, 2011 05:01 PM, Huffington Post

Then, all the men of the land surrounded him;
the sad corpse saw them, excited; stood up slowly,
embraced the first man; and walked…

– César Vallejo (1937)

For more than fifty-six days, students at the University of Puerto Rico system, have peacefully occupied ten of the 11 universities in support of a series of measures that could challenge efforts to privatize this public university. Student struggles in Puerto Rico historically have repercussions in the broader society and are woven with the major economic, political and social issues in this United States’ colonial possession. While some social analysts saw this millennial generation as somewhat less militant and political, these events have surpassed any previous social struggles in creativity, strategy and in its use of participatory democratic processes since the founding of the university 107 years ago. Given Puerto Rico’s peculiar colonial status, in a world where colonies are almost extinct, every social struggle becomes, an anti-colonial process. But in this case, this process also becomes a struggle against the neo-liberal policies which have again resurfaced in the policies of the current colonial government to address the extreme economic precariousness of the United States’ colonial project in Puerto Rico. This student struggle exists within the historical context of an anti-colonial struggle in Puerto Rico. When people thought social movements were dead, they somehow stood up and walked.

Origins of the Oldest Colony

Since the Spanish-American War of 1898, Puerto Rico has performed a hidden but strategic role in United States’ foreign policy. One of the outcomes of the war that for the first time in U.S. history, lands that were conquered or annexed did not become a territory on its way to incorporation as a state as was suggested by the 1787 Northwest Ordinance. Instead, the United States Supreme Court in the early twentieth century, in a series of decisions called the “Insular Cases” “carved” a special legal space which formally transformed Puerto Rico into a colony and the United States into an empire. This contradictory legal space also gave the U.S. total control of Puerto Rico’s economic, political, and social dynamics. In this new political status, an “unincorporated territory” of the United States, Puerto Rico became a testing ground, a laboratory for medical, military and social and economic policies that were later implemented as part of U.S. foreign policy around the world.

The first two years of U.S. control over the island (1898-1900), a military government implemented economic policies which coupled with the natural devastation caused by tropical hurricane San Ciriaco in 1900, led to the collapse of what had been the most dynamic sector of Puerto Rico’s economy, the coffee industry. This industry had well-developed markets in Europe and Cuba, whose populations preferred the high quality coffee produced in Puerto Rico’s highlands. The economic policies of the military government, the incorporation of Puerto Rico into the United States’ tariff structure closed access to European and Cuban markets. In turn, the United States market was already controlled by Brazilian coffee. The devastating effects of the hurricane contributed to the island’s social, economic and political crisis. The thousands of displaced peasants then became entrants into the global labor market when labor brokers from the Hawaii sugar industry began to recruit thousands of Puerto Rican peasants. One of the strategies of Hawaii’s sugar elite was to create an ethnically divided labor force to avoid the consolidation of unions in the sugar fields. Unwillingly, the displaced Puerto Rican peasants, most of whom had no experience in sugar cane agriculture, became pawns in the sugar elite’s drive to control labor.

In the following decades, population planning policies (some led by U.S. groups connected to Eugenics ideology), assembly plant industrial development policies (maquiladora model), militarization of the island, the testing of napalm and Agent Orange in various parts of the island, the use of depleted uranium shells in the island of Vieques all were facilitated because of Puerto Rico’s inability to protect itself. These policies and practices were later promoted in other countries around the world. Colonial governors were appointed by the president of the United States until 1947. Puerto Rico’s only voice in congress, was and still is a sole “resident commissioner” who only has voice but has not been a voting member of congress which has complete control over policies to shape the island’s political, social and economic dynamics.

In addition, congress and its colonial representatives implemented a cultural policy of assimilation, which given the island’s colonial nature, had an imperialistic effect while also furthered a Puerto Rican national identity and culture of resistance. In 1903, the University of Puerto Rico was founded as a school to prepare teachers for the public educational system. The use of English as the medium of instruction was imposed throughout the developing educational system being developed by colonial authorities. The university’s role would be to create the cadres for the process of assimilation that was promoted among the island’s one million inhabitants. Instead, Puerto Rico’s national identity, which under Spain was created in tension with Spain, now began to be centered on the Spanish language and Puerto Rican culture. Ironically, United States policies contributed to the development of a more clearly defined Puerto Rican national identity, this time vis-a-vis the United States. This tension with the United States at times led to a nationalism that romanticized the Spanish past, at the same time, with all its contradictions became the core of a culture of resistance against U.S. colonialism in Puerto Rico.

During the 1930s and until the 1950s, the pro-independence movement was the second largest political force in the island. But its influence was also strong within the dominant political party, the Popular Democratic Party (PPD), who later on went to win the elections and created in 1952 the Estado Libre Asociado (Commonwealth). This is the present political system that defines the relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States. Not much of the colonial relationship was changed by the new political facade, and Congress still holds control over all aspects of the island. But the dominant party, most of whom were former pro-independence politicians, used the symbols of Puerto Rican nationalism to get the consensus of the Puerto Rican population for their political project. The flag of the new political entity, became the nationalist flag, the Commonwealth’s national hymn had also been the nationalist hymn and the rhetoric used by the Popular Democratic leaders continued to, in contradictory ways, echo the nationalist discourse.

Because of student and faculty struggles, Spanish was reintroduced as the medium of instruction in the public educational system in the 1940s and the University of Puerto Rico, instead of becoming the uncontested site for the assimilation of the emerging professional class became the battle ground for a national culture of resistance. In 1948, pro-independence students led a strike at the University of Puerto Rico which led to the closure of the university and to the expulsion of many of the student leaders. Many of these leaders would finish their higher education elsewhere and later become political leaders in island pro-independence politics. With this strike, the University of Puerto Rico became, not only an ideological battleground between hegemonic forces and anti-colonial forces, it also became a launching ground for national resistance to imperial policies. The colonial government efforts, under the control of the Popular Democratic Party, to steer the university after the defeated student strike toward the formation of a technocratic apolitical professional class for the emerging program of industrialization failed. While the pro-independence forces lost its influence on the electoral arena, they maintained their influence in the island’s social struggles and the university. The anti-imperialist struggles in the Third World and the Cuban revolution (1959) became catalysts for another stage of anti-imperialist struggles.

Student Struggles at the University of Puerto Rico

During the 1960s, the Vietnam War and the presence of the Reserve Officers Training Corp (ROTC) at the University of Puerto became the issues that sparked social movements, not only on the campuses but also throughout the island. The University of Puerto Rico, especially the main campus in Rio Piedras, was the site of much conflict including violent confrontations between anti-colonial and pro-establishment forces. Political repression, emigration and economic transformation led to the decline of the electoral strength of pro-independence forces. The university then became a major site of struggle for those who contested colonial policies in Puerto Rico. In some way, struggles at the university of Puerto Rico served as the spark for Puerto Rican national struggles.

While in the United States “draft-dodging” was the principal means of challenging the Vietnam era draft, in Puerto Rico resistance to induction became the main tactic. In fact, the refusal of thousands of Puerto Rican youth to be drafted, especially of university youth, led to the collapse of the Selective Service System in Puerto Rico. While some early resisters were arrested and a few served time in prison, the majority did not. The massive nature of the protest made the incarceration of thousands a political impossibility for United States’ colonial authorities.

Also, the University of Puerto Rico, following the Latin American autonomous university model begun at the University of Cordoba, Argentina in 1918, has a veneer of autonomy. In 1966, the University Reform law created a space for an autonomous university and limited co-government of the university. The university would later receive a fixed percent (9.6 per cent) of public funds in order to prevent it from falling prey to the vagaries of island politics. This precarious autonomy did not have its full intended effect, since the dominant parties gave their supporters positions in the university administration as part of the political spoils, however, its ideological effect on students and faculty was quite distinct. Students, particularly, took seriously the autonomy of the university and defended it through their struggles. In the Fall of 1967, after a protracted struggle for the elimination of the ROTC from the University of Puerto Rico campus, Puerto Rico’s police intervened in a struggle between pro-statehood students and pro-independence students. The pro-independence students, who stayed within the confines of the university, tried to impede the entrance of the police into the campus as a way of protecting the autonomy of the university. In the battle between police and students, Adrian Rodriguez Fernandez, a taxi driver who was looking for his daughter, a student at the university, was killed by the police.

The conflicts at the university intensified and in 1970s, a university student, Antonia Martinez Lagares, was killed while standing on a balcony in the Santa Rita neighborhood where many students lived. She had been denouncing the police as murderers because of their attacks of students protesters in the street facing her apartment. One of the officers proceeded to kill her. Today, the transmission booth of the University of Puerto Rico striking students low watt radio station, “Radio Huelga” is named Antonia Martinez Lagares in her honor. Also, in many of the demonstrations her name is raised in banners.

The continued intensification of the conflict at the university continued and on March 11, 1971, as students attacked the ROTC building, Chancellor Pedro Rivera called for the riot squad to enter the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras campus. The entrance of the riot squad so incensed the students, that at the end of the day, one ROTC cadet Jacinto Gutierrez had died, a police officer and the commander of the riot squad Juan B. Mercado had been killed by snipers.

In recent years, another large student strike occurred in 1981-82, this process precedes the current strike in terms of the issues and the characteristics of the social movement. Issues related to the national question were not as salient as in previous decades. The main issues were of an economic nature. The raising of tuition fees would make the university less accessible to many Puerto Rican students. The role of Christian groups and the visible role of women as leaders was also a characteristic of that process. The student leaders were also broader in ideological terms although the role of pro-independence and socialist was crucial. The repression of the student strikers by the police was intense and was followed by the summary suspension of a significant number of the student leaders. These measures left this process of struggle as an unfinished social conflict. Despite the massive nature of the student movement, the strong external support and the broad basis of the leadership the process ended in a short-term defeat of the movement. But in many ways as a response to the lessons of the 1981-82 period the university adopted a formal policy of “no confrontation” that has helped the university avoid the level of violence experienced during the previous era.

Today: The Political, Economic and Educational Crisis Converge

Today, partially hidden from the mainstream United States media, a long (56 days June 15), and creative process of social struggle to preserve higher education began on April 13, in San Juan Puerto Rico. Echoing in diverse ways the 1968 San Francisco State strike and the National Autonomous University of Mexico strike in 1999, this is a clear and eloquent counter attack on neo-liberal thinking about the role of the public university in a capitalist society. But also, this social struggle has revealed, again, the precarious nature of the colonial model in Puerto Rico and the impeding need for its transcendence.

The University of Puerto Rico system, with its 65,000 students and more than 5,000 faculty members is the largest public system in higher education in this island. More than 33 per cent of Puerto Rico’s 25 years and older population has some post-secondary and/or university education. This is higher than more developed nations like Finland and New Zealand. Puerto Rico, with a population close to four million has developed a philosophy about the need to have an accessible system of public higher education. Ironically, this is also a contradictory outcome of some of the early colonial reformers who were members of the Popular Democratic Party. They developed policies, some reflected in the islands’ constitution that in some respects are more advanced than in the United States. Education, at least from k-12, is established as a right in the constitution. Access to higher education, while not enshrined in the constitution is also considered a right and not a privilege by most Puerto Ricans. The state support and relatively low tuition attest to that philosophy.

This has enabled Puerto Rico to have a higher bachelor degree rate than three states, Mississippi, Arkansas and West Virginia, despite having a lower high school degree completion rate than any state. At the same time, according to a study by Cruz Rivera (2008) the University of Puerto Rico produces 95 per cent of the research carried out in Puerto Rico and produces 10,000 new professionals every year. Just one of its universities, the University of Puerto Rico in Mayaguez produces 606 engineers every year which is more than Texas A & M, Florida International University of Texas, Austin and California State University, Pomona combined. With limited resources its six year persistence and graduation rates are higher than the University of Wisconsin, Texas A & M, University of Washington and the University of Minnesota. It also has increased the percentage of its faculty with doctorates from 66.5 per cent in the 1999-00 academic year to 79.4 per cent in 2007.

Unfortunately, part of its success has to do with the changing demographics of its students, from 1998 until 2007, the percentage of students entering the University of Puerto Rico from the public school system has decreased from 50 per cent to 41 per cent. While still 57 per cent of the students still qualify for federal aid, increasingly, the new entrants are from middle and upper-middle class families, while ironically, private universities are the ones who increasingly are providing a university education to lower income families. The persistence and graduation rates of these private institutions are dramatically lower than those for the University of Puerto Rico system.

Its tuition, comparatively speaking, is lower than most universities in the United States and the colonial state support is also comparatively higher than for public institutions in the U.S. For example, while only six per cent of the budget of the University of Puerto Rico depends on tuition, at similar public universities in the United States, 31 per cent of their operating budgets are derived from tuition. On the other hand, state appropriations provide 65 per cent of the operating budget for the university of Puerto Rico while for public universities in the United States the corresponding share is 41 per cent. But gradually, after the defeat of the student strike in 1981-82, the share of the operating budget derived from tuition has gradually increased. According to the office of the vice president of academic affairs report, from 1981-2001, the state appropriations were reduced from 45.6 per cent to 35.6 per cent while the share of income from tuition increased from 12.9 per cent to 18.1 per cent.

In a nation with a median family income of $20,425, a third of the United States median family income ($58,526), every tuition increase excludes working and middle class students to the most important social mobility tool the state provides, a university education. The poverty rate in Puerto Rico in 2008 was 45.4 per cent which is three times as high as the rate of the United States overall. Any state policy that limits access to students from lower socioeconomic levels will increase the social and economic inequality in a country that already is extremely unequal.

In 2008, the new colonial government elected was the New Progressive Party, a political party that is neither new nor progressive and which represents the most conservative strata of the island social and economic elite. This party supports statehood for Puerto Rico and through a platform which promised to solve the economic crisis that has been revealing itself in the colonial model since at least the 1970s, was able to get massive support. The previous Governor Anibal Acevedo Vila, was indicted on more than 20 counts of fraud by the Federal Court in Puerto Rico during the electoral year. Some have argued that it was punishment for the timid efforts of its government in investigating the FBI assassination of a prominent leader of the Ejercito Popular Boricua-Macheteros, a guerrilla organization that had remained relatively dormant during the previous 15 years. Filiberto Ojeda Rios, was shot by an FBI Hostage Rescue Team sniper. He bled to death because the FBI did not allow medical teams to provide medical assistance. Surprisingly, while most Puerto Ricans do not support independence there was a strong national response to the assassination and his funeral was attended by thousands of mourners. The electoral weakness of the Popular Democratic Party led it to take timid steps to keep the support of those pro-independence voters who in order to stop the electoral advance of the proponents of statehood were voting for the colonial party. Ironically, Acevedo Vila lost the election and Luis Fortuño won the elections in a landslide. Surprisingly, soon after Governor Fortuño took office in 2009 all the federal charges against former Governor Acevedo Vila were dropped.

The new governor was active in Republican Party politics in the United States. Contrary to most of the other recent New Progressive Party governors, like former governors Pedro Rosselló and Carlos Romero Barceló, who were members of the Liberal wing of the Democrat Party, Governor Fortuño is closely linked to the island’s social and economic elite and to the conservative wing of the Republican Party in the United States. While there is no Republican Party in Puerto Rico, there is a political structure that participates in the primaries and sends delegates to represent Puerto Rico’s “Republicans” in the Republican National convention.

The Collapsing Colonial Economy

Puerto Rico has been in a recession for more than four years. The Gross National Product has declined by more than 10 per cent (Lara, 2009). Governor Fortuño surprised many when in response to the grave economic recession and the large budget deficit facing the island he gathered a group of the financial elite to develop a plan to address the economy. Partially in response to the plan, legislation was approved (Law 7, March 2009) which allows the state to eliminate more than 20,000 public sector jobs, privatize public sectors of the state, through a gimmick called “Public-Private Alliances.” Law 7 also allows the state to bypass collective bargaining agreements, create the private public partnerships and enable the state to institute cuts in government operational costs of more than $2 billion. These “partnerships” would allow the private sector to take over the most profitable segments of the public sector and run them as profit-making enterprises. Every previous efforts to privatize public sectors of the state have ended up in disaster. The Telephone company of Puerto Rico, one of the most profitable and modern public enterprises in the island was privatized by the administration of Governor Pedro Rosselló in 1998, this led to a general strike that was unable to stop the process. The phone service today is worse than it was before and the stream of income that was used to finance education was lost and the income from the sale was used to poorly finance a very expensive health care system that has dragged down the economy of the island. The Autoridad de Acueductos y Alcantarillados (AAA), a public agency with manages water and sewers, also experienced privatization as have many formerly public services. Scandalous frauds and inefficiencies have marked all these privatization efforts.

Puerto Rico today has one of the highest private and public debts in the world and an infrastructure that is in need to a major investment. The murder rate is one of the highest in the world and the drug trafficking related violence forces working and middle folks to live inside of home with gates and security. Contradictorily, United States corporations operating in the island, from pharmaceuticals to enterprises making medical instruments have benefitted from Puerto Rico’s highly skilled labor force transferred $33,330 billions in profit to their main headquarters in the United States and only paid $27.4 millions in taxes. The island has one of the lowest corporate taxes in the world.

It is in this context that the administration of the University of Puerto Rico decides to place the burden of a $280 million deficit on the backs of the students by proposing a tuition increase. This deficit is in part due to the effect of Law 7 and the elimination of funding streams that previously had gone to the university and the fact that close to $300 million in debts owed to the system have not been collected. The students, who already had been participating in the social movement against the neo-liberal cuts and the firing of thousands of public workers joined the labor movement in a national general strike on October 15, 2009. The university of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras was closed on that day of protest. Given the political and social context it is not surprising that the students decided in one of the largest student assemblies ever gathered at the UPR to strike. Initially for 48 hours and later, if no response was received from the administration, an indefinite strike would begin. The administration, did not take the students seriously and the students began an indefinite strike. Through a careful process of organizing the strike spread through the 11 campus system and a national negotiating committee was selected to represent all the universities in the system. The only campus that did not close was the Medical School although they held a number of limited strikes. The role of medical students in teaching hospitals and clinics led many to limit their role in the strike.

Contrary to the 1960s and building on the strategies used by UPR strikers in the 1981-82 process, a policy of “no confrontation” was strictly adhered to, forms of participatory democracy were utilized. The students created social networks in Facebook, Twitter, My Space and also created a low watt radio station (Radio Huelga) which transmits across the world on US STREAM. This station rapidly became the best source of music and news developing in the course of the strike. The role of culture as a way of promoting the strike and enabling the spirit of struggle to be maintained was also strategic. Performance art, guerrilla theater, musical concerts, and a broad array of international and national support reached levels never experienced in previous struggles. For the first time LGBT organizations were visible participants in the strike and the clear and visible role of women leadership was clear and important. Parents of the students organized, the Bar Association, labor unions, religious organizations organized events supporting the students. The faculty union and the clerical workers union decided to not cross student picket lines. The faculty of all the 11 universities gathered in the campus of the University of Puerto Rico, Cayey and voted to strike if violence was used against the students. While violence was used at various time against the strikers it was not as systematic as it was in previous decades.

In recent days, Governor Fortuño ordered police forces out of the university confines (intense use of the police at the university gates led to increase in crime rates), the governing party, New Progressive Party Resident Commissioner in Washington, D.C. publicly disagreed with university authorities and called for negotiations and no sanctions for the students.

The negotiations between students and the university are advanced, a mediator agreeable to both parties was named and it is expected that one of the longest strikes that has challenged neo-liberalism in Puerto Rico will soon end with a student victory. Neo-liberalism experienced a defeat, but the struggle is not over. Contrary to ivory tower social analysts who had argued that the national identity of Puerto Ricans had diminished in its strategic role in Puerto Rico or that students should be pragmatic and bend to the necessity of the present times, this strike showed that what seemed dead was resting for a new day.

Poor Mexico, so far away from God but so close to the United States.

– Porfirio Diaz

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

– Santayana

Just like we have learned earlier from the Katrina disaster, it is important, while we share our solidarity and our support for the tragedy being endured by the courageous people of Haiti, not to forget the historical and social context that frames this most recent disaster in the Haitian experience. After hearing the news and the self-congratulatory speech of President Obama about the “historical ties” of Haiti and the United States, I could not but recall a different narrative of “historical ties” than the one the media is conveying. This counter narrative is more congruent with a famous quote from former Mexican Dictator Porfirio Diaz which applies to the Haitian experience in an ominous way. Dictator Diaz in the last half of the 19th century opened Mexico to foreign capitalists, especially U.S. investors and created the precursor of today’s neo-liberal policies in that country. By the early part of the twentieth century half of Mexico’s wealth was in foreign hands. Today, Haiti is under the total control of the United States and its institutions. A country that used to produce its own rice, now imports it from the United States.

One aspect of these “historical ties” that are not told in United States’ high school history textbooks is that Haiti, by being the first independent country in the Americas, led by people of African descent, created fear in the white slave holding elites throughout the world. Haiti was the most prosperous European colony in the Americas and one that brought to France a significant amount of the wealth that catapulted it to the rank of a developed nation. But, France’s and the United States ascent to the developed world were rooted in the sentencing of Haiti to centuries of economic despair and political instability. This is the story we are asked to forget.

In 1804, Haiti declared its independence from France under the leadership of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who succeeded the brilliant military strategist and former slave Toussaint L’Ouverture. In the preceding years the Haitian army defeated the most powerful European army in Europe, Napoleon Bonaparte’s army of tens of thousands and at different times defeated smaller attempts by the British and the Spanish to subdue the Haitians.

Europe and the United States never forgave Haiti for becoming a model of freedom against the infamous system of slavery and after Haiti was in a state of political weakness because of internal strife imposed economic blockades (like in Cuba). Ironically, France collected “reparations” for its loss of “property” (slaves) during the Haitian war of liberation and Haiti was isolated (worse than Cuba is today). The United States waited sixty years before it granted recognition to the nascent republic. What today we call the global north, dominated by the United States created the conditions for perpetual Haitian underdevelopment. The example of an African nation which was prosperous in the Americas was too much to swallow for the slaveholders of the United States and Europe. In fact, President Jefferson initially supported the French efforts against Haiti until it discovered that Napoleon wanted to then expand the French empire beyond the Louisiana territory. After Napoleon’s defeat, it sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States dramatically expanding the United States’ empire. So thanks to Haiti’s victory, the United States began its modern phase of territorial expansion. We paid them with economic sanctions.

Unfortunately, Latin American nations in struggle for their own independence from Spain, also betrayed the nascent Haitian nation. Simon Bolivar, the liberator of the most of Latin America, received military support and weapons from the Haitian revolutionaries in 1816. Yet, in the end Bolivar denied support and recognition to Haiti when they needed it. Their own fear of a pardocracia (government of the people of color) instilled more fear in the Bolivarian revolutionaries than the Spanish or the United States imperialists. Brazil did not abolish slavery until 1888, being the last country in the world to do so.

The economic disaster created by United States and Europe policies of isolation, let to the creation of one of the first debtor states. Haiti, in what was latter debt peonage, was forced to endure a period of formal colonialism when the United States marines invaded Haiti in 1915. After 19 years, they left the country neatly re-organized to become a neo-colony of United States. In order to assure obedience and discipline to the imperial requirements, the United States military trained the Haitian National Guard (like in recent years the formerly called “School of the Americas” trained Latin America’s military) and left the military forces that would lead to the eventual dictatorship of Francois Duvalier in 1957, probably (together with another U.S. protégé in the other side of the island, the Dominican Republic’s dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo) one of the most cruelest and murderous in the Americas.

In recent decades, after the end of the Duvalier dynasty period of bloody control, the Haitian nation has attempted to stand on their own feet and establish a democratic and prosperous nation. Each time their efforts have been thwarted, this time again by the United States and the support of Europe. Father Bertrand Aristide, who despite his weaknesses, was by far a step in the right direction for Haiti. He was elected democratically by the Haitian people twice and twice removed by forces supported and directed by the United States. The last time, in 2004, President Bertrand Aristide, was overthrown by former military forces influenced by the Duvalierists and other forces allied to the light-skinned elites who have ruled Haiti for decades in alliance with the United States. Marx said that history repeats itself, the first as tragedy the second time as a farce. The first tragedy was that President Bertrand Aristide was kidnapped by United States agents, placed in a United States military plane and whisked away to the Central African Republic. Today he lives in exile in South Africa. Summer 2009, President Zelaya from Honduras was also overthrown and later kidnapped and exiled in a sequel that seems more like a farce. Today, he is still in exile.

Someone has said that “Americans are the people with the most access to information and the least informed.” As we watch the coverage of the Haitian tragedy and we hear President Obama’s words, the first African American president, let’s not forget white supremacy is alive and kicking in the United States. The main networks are in a self-congratulatory mood about how we are the first responders and celebrating the spirit of giving of the nation. The United States people are a generous people and they will respond but we should not forget the reasons why this disaster has been amplified. The government and the infrastructure of Haiti are so inefficient and non-existent that the coordination of efforts will be more difficult.

Ironically, corporate media in the United States, because they are monolingual and do not read Spanish or Creole, are cheerleading the arrival of Canadians and U.S. planes late on Wednesday, the fact is that the first responders came from Venezuela, which sent its air force with medics, food and equipment a few hours after the tragedy. Cuba, which already had 344 medical doctors on the ground, sent more teams with 151 more specialized medical doctors (including the Reed brigade that was offered to the Bush administration to help in New Orleans) that arrived (Cubans already had two tent hospitals serving 800 wounded), the Dominican Republic which sent a 20 member Urban Rescue team, and through which Puerto Rico attempted to coordinate and sent a team of three helicopters, dozens of urban rescuers (who had earlier served in New York during 9/11 attack) and 20 structural engineers. However, Puerto Rico was unable to send them as quickly as they wished; at least until last night (1/16/2010) teams of technicians with water purifying systems, communications and military police did not receive permission from the Southern Command. As a colony of the United States, they had to wait for approval from the U.S. Southern command. God forbid Puerto Ricans and Latinos upstaged the U.S. rescue efforts.

The Imagined Latino Community

The media that focuses on the Latino communities in the United States has contributed to a pervasive misperception that exists about who Mexicans, Puerto Rican, Cubans, Salvadorians and other groups of Latin American descent are in the larger context of United States society. While the Anglo media has always perpetuated stereotypes about “latinos,” the “latino” media, in order to expand its markets beyond the ethnic niches of the various Latin-American origin groups, has also contributed to the idea that all Latin-American origin groups are alike. While there are many similarities among these groups there are also significant differences that are revealed in the discourse about the selection of a second generation Puerto Rican to be the first “latina” in the Supreme Court.

It is ironic that this process of racialization (erasure of the cultural and historical differences between ethnic groups) that has created a “Latino” pseudo-racial group is occurring at a time when a color-blind ideology is dominant in political, legal and pedagogical discourse in the United States. Although race is still the essential pivot around which American society is constructed and its hierarchies developed, the courts, politicians and the educational system are negating the role of race and racism in the inequalities that persist in our society. This ideology is so prevalent that it has become common sense and unexamined and is dominating our most important institutions. In the educational system, for example, Janet Schoefield, in study done in a school in 2001, revealed that white students did not know Martin Luther King was an African American. The courts have narrowed the use of race in redressing racial inequalities and politicians do not dare utter the word racism in the public sphere. Most recently, section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, while not overturned, was interpreted in a narrower, individualistic way opening the door to another possible examination by the Supreme Court in the future. Judge Sotomayor, will likely have, if approved, a crucial role in that future decision.

The recent election of President Barack Obama has led many to talk about a “post-racial” United States. Yet, the same inequalities exist, the same hate crimes exist and children of the various Latin American heritages continue attending substandard and underfinanced schools. Recently, evidence suggests we may be at the dawn of a new “post-racial” “Latino” politics emerging across the nation. Los Angeles Mayor Villaraigosa has increasingly distanced himself from appearing too ethnic, the California 32nd congressional district, until recently represented by progressive Hilda Solis — a majority “Latino” district — will no longer be represented by a politician of Latin American origin and in San Antonio Julian Castro became mayor following a similar strategy to broaden his appeal. In some sense, could it be that Peter Skerry, who wrote Mexican Americans: The Ambivalent Minority might be right? Are “Latinos” just another temporarily racialized group on its way to becoming mainstreamed (which in the U.S. means white)?

However, the cacophony of strongly negative comments about Judge Sotomayor made by the Republican Party’s right wing, especially Tom Tancredo, Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich reveals the power of race and racism in contemporary America. Judge Sotomayor’s mistake, in their view, is that she affirmed her social experience as a “Latina” woman and how it provides her a rich perspective to add to the various other world views that abound in mainstream legal discourse. In a culture where the “color-blind” ideology is dominant any enunciation of ethnicity or race is taboo. However, the reality is that Judge Sotomayor is not too far from mainstream legal thought.

Their stance also might place the party in a more difficult place as it tries to recruit among the emerging actors in the political arena. The Republican Party is increasingly becoming whiter and ideologically extreme. In terms of Latin-American voters, it only received 31 percent of the “latino” vote in 2008, down from 40 percent in 2004. Since, today, 22 percent of all American less than 18 years of age are “latinos” the future of the party seems tenuous at best.

Legal Background

President Obama, in announcing Judge Sotomayor’s nomination for a seat in the Supreme Court, mentioned a case that involved the baseball major leagues in 1995. Dave Zirin’s article in The Nation (“Sotomayor is a Sporting Judge,” May 29, 2009) argued that Judge Sotomayor “saved” the capitalist owners of the baseball franchises from themselves. She basically saved them from their own short sightedness and greed. In fact, her decision to squash the bosses’ lockout helped baseball grow from a business that produced $1.3 billion to one that produces $7.5 billion.

A recent analysis of her judicial decisions by the McClatchy news agency revealed that Judge Sotomayor has been in the Court of Appeals since January 2002. Since that time, in criminal cases she has decided 65 of 90 instances in favor of the government. In 450 cases she presided over, she was only revised in six cases; none of them were criminal cases.

What is not clear is her position on abortion. None of the cases she has been involved in have had anything to do with an interpretation of Roe v. Wade (1973) and in other cases tangentially related her decisions were diverse. Right wing conservatives like Rush Limbaugh are hoping that her Catholic background will determine her position on abortion. Five of the judges are Catholic and only Anthony Kennedy strayed away from an anti-abortion stance in 1992 when he supported the right of a woman to an abortion. It is ironic that those who critique Judge Sotomayor for being honest about her background and experience as a Puerto Rican woman now place their hope on that background for a particular interpretation of the law.

However, it is revealing that this dialogue, which pivots around this “latina” woman, is contradictorily being used to both reproduce the fiction of a “Latino community” and on the other hand to extol the culture of meritocracy that permeates American culture. “Latino” is a category that is still empty of content although it might truly become a social reality in the future as diverse Latin-American origin communities intermarry and begin to develop a hybrid “latino” culture and identity. But in the meantime, the real ethnic groupings are the Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican and other communities with their unique historical experiences and cultures. A recent survey (June 4) by Quinnipiac University indicated that 49 percent of whites and 66 percent of Jewish Americans support Judge Sotomayor for the court. Close to 85 percent of African Americans contrasted with 58 percent of “latino” showed support for Judge Sotomayor’s selection. Some have argued that a large number of conservative Cubans may have biased the survey.

In another survey by McClatchy news (May 28-June 8), which had a larger sample than the Quinnipiac University survey, “latino” support for Judge Sotomayor is 72 percent. If the media continues to emphasize her “immigrant” working class background it may continue to elicit the support of Latin-American communities. But ironically, the way this message has been communicated presents her story as a “rags to riches” epic without any social context that helps make sense of her achievement. It is important to acknowledge her efforts and at the same time nuance the individualistic message that is being used to explain her success. Her mother, Celina Sotomayor, an important figure in her life, led her to appreciate Puerto Rican culture, which nurtured a sense of place and significance in a society that was not always hospitable to differences. Also, it is important to acknowledge that she grew up in a New York where the struggles of the Puerto Rican and the Black community opened doors to Latin Americans to new opportunities. Organizations like the Young Lords, ASPIRA and others forced the powers that be to provide access to education, health care and housing. This fertile context of social struggles is the stage that catapulted the intelligence and determination of this Puerto Rican woman into the public sphere.

Her achievements, rightly so, belong to her and to those on whose shoulder many of us have been carried into the present.

The application of United States frameworks and perspectives to understand Puerto Rican politics and society always derive distorted results. To apply the same lenses we use in the United States to understand political dynamics in Puerto Rico will lead to failure. The historical record is full of examples of how misinterpretation of local social dynamics derived from the frames used to interpret them.

The United States Bureau of the Census learned this when the 2000 decennial census staff was preparing to develop items for the questionnaire to be used in Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico, since 1958, as a result of former Governor Luis Muñoz Marin’s negotiations with the U.S. Department of Commerce determined a process to develop the survey instrument to be used in the island. The process would consist of an inter-agency committee, led by the Puerto Rico Planning Board, that would include “consumers” of census data and would determine which kinds of survey items are needed in Puerto Rico. One of their decisions was that the question of race, would not be included in the survey instrument to be utilized in the 1960s census. Since the 1950s the question of race has not been included in the Puerto Rican census.

In 1980, the Legal Services Corporation (legal advocacy group) requested that in order to ascertain the level of racial discrimination in the island some data gathering about race was needed. The Supreme Court of Puerto Rico eventually decided there was no need for the gathering of such data in Puerto Rico. The climate for considering questions about race changed dramatically after the 1992 election of Governor Pedro Rossello, of the New Progressive Party (NPP) and a supporter for statehood for the island. In the years previous to the 2000 decennial census, the Inter-Agency committee, chaired by Lillian Torres, director for the social and economic planning for census activities with the Puerto Rico Planning Board discussed the need for data on race but decided not to use the items in the United States Census. They proposed to develop items more in line with the social reality of the island. Their decision was rejected and Governor Rossello himself made the decision to use the entire U.S. census survey instrument without any modification in tune with the social, economic and political reality of Puerto Rico. The outcome, in an island with a strong African and Taino cultural and phenotypical influence, resulted in 80.5% of the population self-identifying as white. Therefore, Puerto Rico is “whiter” than the United States.

The bureaucratic decision of former Governor Rossello basically enabled a “whitening” process that was accelerated by Puerto Rico’s colonial status. Since the Spanish-American War, Puerto Rico, while it has not experienced a dramatically large black emigration (or received white immigrants to the island in large numbers) however, Puerto Rico’s “white” population has grown from 48.5% (1802) to 80.5% in 2000.

The colonial experience has also been a racializing experience that has internalized even more the ideas that white is better (the colonial power is white). Also, the system of race is more fluid and elastic. In contrast with the polarized binary nature of the United States system of racial classification, between white and nonwhite, like in most of Latin America the system is more like a continuum where color gradations and other factors create a larger number of racial categories. While the system still is constructed along the two poles of white/black, the system, in sorting people, works quite differently than in the United States. The “one drop rule,” which guides racial classification in the United States, does not operate in the same way in the island. In the United States, for example, at one point in the state of Louisiana, a person who had 1/32 African ancestry would be considered “colored” regarded of his/her physical appearance. This makes African ancestry a very powerful factor in determining the racial classification of a person. The United States’ system adds to the nonwhite side of the racial ledger. In contrast, in Puerto Rico, the complex combination of color, type of hair, socioeconomic status, and gender give European ancestry more weight in the racial classification. A person of high socioeconomic status, high education, whose skin is not extremely dark would be considered white and his peers would consider him white too. “Whiteness” is a very elastic category in Puerto Rico as part of a system that adds to the white side of the racial ledger.

For example, to assume that “ugly racial fissures”¹ can be read from CNN exit polls in Puerto Rico is reading too much on data that is not very reliable. The only thing we can glean from this last election is that we are not quite sure about the role of race unless we do much focused research into what happened. Also, given that racial dynamics in Puerto Rico are so different from Latinos in the United States (even among mainland Puerto Ricans) comparisons or extrapolations run the risk of being unanchored in any empirical certainty.

For example, the turnout for this primary is one of the weakest in recent Puerto Rican political history. Only 16 per cent of the registered voters participated in the primaries despite all the hoopla around the local visits by Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama. In the 2000 and the 2004 general elections, 82.4% and 81.7% of Puerto Ricans voted, a much higher rate than in the electoral process those years in the United States which were 51.2% and 56.7% respectively.²

Also, a majority of those who voted were overwhelming pro-statehood (and conservative). 59% of voters identified as favoring statehood supported Sen. Clinton by 81% while those who favored Commonwealth divided themselves among both candidates. Sen. Clinton also received widespread support across age, income and education groups. However, many union activists and left of center voters (which could have potentially supported Obama) were involved in a march that Sunday against the primaries (including some left of center members of the local governing party and a new environmentalist party). Many activists felt that it was ludicrous to participate in an electoral contest without having the right to vote in the final electoral process.

Ironically, as Matt Barreto, a political scientist from the University of Washington discussed in a recent posting of the Latino Section of the American Political Science list serve, those who said race was an issue were more likely to vote for Obama (63% Clinton and 37% for Obama) On the contrary, those who said race was not an issue were less likely to vote for Obama (71% Clinton and 29% for Obama). This is contrary to the experience in the United States where those that responded that race was an issue had much higher percentages of support for Sen. Clinton. Another problem with the CNN exit poll is that it does not ask people to identify themselves on the basis of race (as in the U.S. exit polls), so we cannot ascertain what racial dynamics might be behind these numbers.

But the main ideological factor that clouds any understanding of race and politics in Puerto Rico is the pervasiveness of a color-blind ideology in the island. Until we understand what sustains this denial of race and racism in Puerto Rico, and until we do not apply external paradigms that are not rooted in the Puerto Rican social formation we will reach the wrong conclusions.

1. Nikolas Kozloff, “The Puerto Rico Primary: Obama’s Latino Problem Getting Worse,” Counterpunch, June 2, 2008.
2. See Manuel Alvarez Rivera, Electoral Panorama, 2008.