Partisan Politics, Neo-Liberalism, and Struggle for
Democracy and Public Education in Puerto Rico

by Victor M. Rodriguez Domínguez / April 4th, 2011

http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/04/partisan-politics-neo-liberalism-and-struggle-for-democracy-and-public-education-in-puerto-rico/

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. []

Victor M. Rodriguez is Professor and former Chair of
the Department of Chicano and Latino Studies at
California State University of Long Beach. Among his
published works is Latino Politics in the United
States: Race, Ethnicity, Class and Gender in the
Mexican American and Puerto Rican Experience (Kendall
Hunt, 2005). He can be reached at: [log in to unmask]
Read other articles by Victor, or visit Victor's
website.

This article was posted on Monday, April 4th, 2011 at
8:00am and is filed under Activism, Civil Liberties,
Classism, Colonialism, Democracy, Education, Labor,
Media, Neoliberalism, Police, Puerto Rico, Students,
Torture. ShareThis

Dr. Victor M. Rodriguez

Professor

Department of Chicano and Latino Studies

California State University, Long Beach

1250 Bellflower Blvd.

Long Beach, CA 90840

562.985.8560

http://www.csulb.edu/~vrodrig5/index.html

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