October 26, 2021
“The University of Puerto Rico Is Not for Sale!”
By Sarah Burke
Thousands of student protesters in Puerto Rico are fighting against further austerity measures from a new bill, PC1003, that will drastically cut funding for public education.
By Rima Brusi
“They are stealing our present. The UPR is not for sale,” read a large banner at the gates of the oldest and largest of the 11 campuses that make up the University of Puerto Rico system. Early in the morning on Monday, October 18, students gathered to join the protests in front of Puerto Rico’s Capitol in San Juan, holding colorful signs: “They violated our past”; “They are stealing our present”; “They are mortgaging our future.”
On the other side of the island in the western town of Mayagüez, where the STEM flagship campus of the system is located, students were starting a one-day strike. Some had planned to join their peers in San Juan, but those who were unable to do the two-and-a-half-hour drive would attend local protests. The campus in Aguadilla organized a local march in support. Students from campuses such as Ponce and Cayey came to the Capitol in rented buses. They started with a march from the campus to the town hall and ended with plena music and an open mic. The night before, hundreds of students held a pleno—an informal, grassroots assembly—to make decisions and plan the day’s events, with thousands more joining virtually using social media. The discussion was orderly but emotional, and it went beyond the logistics of the protests and into a deeper conversation about the importance of resistance and showing up to the events of the day.
The pleno included comments like the following: “They are destroying our university. They keep hiking tuition costs. They want to force us to pay a debt that is illegal, a debt that is not ours.” “We are paying more for fewer services, but this is not just about us. It is also about the elderly, about the teachers, about everybody…. I don’t want my children to have to leave Puerto Rico like so many in my family have done…. What we are doing here is also about our children, our grandchildren, about the generations to come.”
