Ethnos_Boriquen

Contestación a Edgardo Rodríguez Julia Sobre Calle 13

2012-01-29T08:55:00.000-08:00

Me siento muy decepcionado con Rodriguez Julia, y su columna La calle al reves. Uno que se lanzo la marea con su obra sobre El Entierro de Cortijo elevando la cultural popular Afro Boricua y ahora con estas insolencias y sandeces? El dramaturgo Ramos Perea le da una certera leccion.

Contestación a EdgardoRodríguez JuliÁ

sobre el tema de Calle 13y el Ateneo.

Por Roberto Ramos-Perea

Dramaturgo Puertorriqueño

Asombrosa la columna “La calle al revés” del día15 de enero de este año en El Nuevo Día, del escritor Edgardo RodríguezJuliá. La discuto.

Calificar “el arte contemporáneo” como “mierda”,es prueba suficiente de que el compañero tiene algún resentimiento en el que seincluye con beneplácito en el oloroso apelativo, pues sus novelas ciertamenteson parte de eso que llamamos “arte contemporáneo”.

Señala este novelista que “basta que aalguien se le ocurra una idea, o un “concepto” y, ¡eureka!, se trata de unaobra de arte y un artista”. Bueno… ¿y no se supone que sea así? Todas lasgrandes reacciones a lo establecido como arte se han regido por ese sencilloprincipio. Así nació el renacimiento, la ilustración, el barroco, elneoclásico, el romanticismo, el realismo, las vanguardias y el arte posmoderno.Es decir, que este notable escritor elimina de un plumazo la naturaleza mismade la evolución artística. Desafortunada aseveración de un profesoruniversitario.

Para sostener su argumento exige que todoartista deba acudir a las aulas a educarse en los principios de su arte, -cosaa la que nadie podría oponerse- y sentencia que “quizá, algún día” esehipotético artista pueda convertirse en genio. Vaya, ¡tan largo me lo fiáis! Elartista según Rodríguez Juliá tiene que complacer los criterios y el gusto delos que dominan el oficio, pasar su censura, cedazo y gusto, para merecerllamarse artista. ¿Quiénes son esos y quién les dio la autoridad para decidircosa tan trascendental a la evolución del arte? ¿Se considera él, uno deellos? El, que concibió e intentó, como un ¡eureka! un arte de novelartestimonial que si bien agradó a muchos, también puso a desproticar aotros que consideraron que El entierro de Cortijo era “una mierda” denovela. Decir tamaña cosa sobre la necesidad del estudio para quedar autorizadoa la expresión artística nos llevaría a quemar las obras de Van Gogh, porejemplo, porque nunca tomó un curso de dibujo o la misma música de Cortijo,Maelo, y tantos soneros de los que el escritor es fanático, simplemente porqueno estudiaron en el Conservatorio de Música.

Dice este novelista que Puerto Rico “es unpaís a medio hacer” (juicio de Puerto Rico que es remedo del de Jacinto deSalas y Quiroga, poeta español “Puerto Rico es el cadáver de una sociedadque no ha nacido”. 1839.). Bueno, muchos creen con más asertividadque este es un país “a medio gobernar”. Si el compañero confunde los despóticosgobiernos que hemos tenido con las insuficiencias que el pueblo ha padecido poresa misma causa, entonces el compañero no conoce lo que es resistencia,nacionalidad, identidad y producción cultural a la que él mismo ha contribuidocon su quehacer. Si es el país y no su gobierno el que está “a medio hacer”,él mismo tiene buena parte de la culpa por apoyar a gobiernos que han “mediohecho” al país.

Se lamenta que “los puertorriqueñosinventamos el reguetón”. Si busca en el mismo Google a donde él nos hamandado, se dará cuenta de que no es una invención del todo nuestra, sino unafusión de muchos intentos y ritmos de otras latitudes que en el procesodinámico de influencias e intercambios, crea una singularidad que algunos hanllamado “nuestra” y que tiene todo el derecho de ser “machacona cantaleta”y a quien debe concedérsele, en aras de la “democracia” creativa, “la rabialumpen”. Hace tiempo que los intelectuales debieron dejar de usar lapalabra “lumpen” porque en su despreciable relatividad, dice más de nosotros,que de lo que realmente queremos cualificar. Sería bueno que Rodríguez Juliátuviese la pública oportunidad de definir ese “lumpen”. Sobretodo desde unaóptica socialista e igualitaria, y ante todo justa. Llamar lumpen al títere dela calle, al tecato, al asesino, al drogo, es ante todo un reduccionismocapitalista –e infantilista de izquierda- que desconoce las razones políticas,sociales y culturales de nuestra miseria moral. Pero esa frase ante todo, es undesprecio de blancos.

Al llamar al reguetón “horriblemúsica”, no deja mucho espacio a la valoración justa de un género que puedeganarse todo nuestro disgusto, pero no podemos, en respeto a la inteligencianegarle su originalidad, su misión como vocero de realidades que no se conocenen Guaynabo City donde vive Rodríguez Juliá. ¿Por qué negarle el mérito de serexpresión genuina de la violencia de nuestras calles, de nuestros bajos fondos,de corrupción moral, de miserias y también, ¿por qué no?, de nuestrasesperanzas, sueños, sexualidad, anhelos, amores y afectos? ¿No es eso lo quehace el arte de la novela que practica el colega, y que practico yo en elteatro? Sí, obvio, pero no andamos por ahí, en respeto a nuestra inteligencia ynuestra capacidad crítica, vomitando lo “horrible” que es la literaturapuertorriqueña. ¿Por qué? Porque se trataría de meros y baratos gustos yopiniones y los años nos han enseñado que de gustos y opiniones no se discute.

El colega escritor remata con refinísimablancura aristocrática que “la popularidad global de Calle 13 sólo es pruebade que el gusto actual está en el mero “anus mundi”. ¿Dónde realmente quedael “anus mundi”? ¿En la antípoda del “anus blancus”?

Comparar las penurias y sacrificios de losjóvenes que componen la Sinfónica Juvenil de Venezuela “que dominaron elsolfeo”, con “chamacos frescos de la clase media puertorriqueña, versiónTrujillo Alto, que asaltaron la fama de los nueve Grammys latinos”, es unasímil traída por los pelos, pues hablamos de espacios sociales diferenciados eintervenidos por elementos foráneos que a su vez crean productos culturalespropios de su contexto, ¿por qué omitir esto tan obvio para marronear unargumento? Si no le gusta la canción Latinoamérica de Calle 13, derechotiene. Pero no me haga pasar su opinión como un criterio de excelencia.

Llamar “autócrata” a Chávez nos obligaríaa preguntar si el colega tiene algún otro autócrata en mente que hayainfluenciado a Calle 13, el país donde nació y la música que canta. Nos parececaprichosa y colorida la designación de un político que puede no ser simpáticoa mucha gente, pero ¡qué curioso!, mira de dónde viene el reaccionarioapelativo, de un escritor en un país donde ¿no manda también un autócrata, queno tendrá petróleo, pero ha sido todo un experto en el robo de fondos federalesy en la explotación de su pueblo?

El ataque al escritor Eduardo Galeano nos suenaa sangrado personal. Llamar simplista a una de las voces más potentes enel análisis de lo que es y ha sido la resistencia latinoamericana –cosa que élmismo no podría negar si realmente la conociera y la juzgara con sencillosprincipios y valores socializantes, es harto simplista. Digo, yo meimagino que Rodríguez Julia como intelectual y escritor ostenta en su escala devalores, valores socializantes y democráticos, me parece. Si no es así, queaclare a qué valores sirve su obra. Digo, para estar claros de con quiénhablamos, ¿no?

Si para este escritor puertorriqueño el imperioyanqui no es maligno, entonces enmudecemos por asombro… ¡nada más que hablar!,desde 1898, según él, hemos vivido en las papas. Y entonces, ¡ya apareció elpeine! Y lo justifica con la atroz generalidad de señalar que loslatinoamericanos prefieren ir a Estados Undios a ser esclavos, que luchar porsus países. Coño… esto es afrentoso, no solo contra los emigrantes a quienes hallamado menos que mierda, sino contra los millones de muertos caídos en lasluchas antiimperialistas latinoamericanas y puertorriqueñas, a quienes hallamado en palabras “finas”, cobardes y pendejos.

Entonces su simplismo se pone necio al señalarque tal lucha es una cursilería izquierdizante que convenció a los “sabios delAteneo” y a “Luis Gutiérrez”. Y luego de este derechismo fascista tanapabullante podría acabar nuestra discusión con una buena andanada de insultos.Pero prefiero recordar que este escritor fue el que un día entró al Ateneo yadmirando la Galería de Puertorriqueños Ilustres entre los que se encontrabaBetances, Albizu, Segundo, Tapia, Hostos, Julia de Burgos, De Diego, dijo condesparpajo insolente, “¿quienes son todos esos viejos chivús y qué habíanhecho para estar allí?” Y que no lo niegue porque soy testigo. Tal vezdesde allá vienen los resentimientos de este escritor con el Ateneo. Pues leinformo que sí, que en el Ateneo hay sabios. Los ha habido, los hay y loshabrá, si sabiduría es la iluminada presencia de la combinación entre lainteligencia y la sensibilidad, el respeto por el pasado, la comprensión delpresente, la compasión por el futuro y el compromiso de mejorarlo y sobre todola madurez de la tolerancia. De esta sabiduría, Rodríguez Juliá no tieneninguna y el Ateneo tiene 138 años de lucha y logro por la identidad de laNación puertorriqueña.

Dice además que “René y Calle 13, quiencuenta entre sus grandes virtudes patrióticas haber insultado a Fortuño einsinuado la afición al dulce de coco por el alcalde Santini”… bueno, talvez entre las grandes virtudes patrióticas debería estar la expresión de laindignación y el ridículo para el que ostenta el poder “autocráticamente”. Quebien estaría si todos expresáramos la reacción fuerte, vigorosa, insultante yclara contra el que nos ofende y nos ultraja… y no la petulancia de creerseestar por encima de la indignación con una herramienta tan pueril como lasoberbia intelectualoide, la indiferencia y la indolencia. ¡Ojalá y todospudiéramos insultar y ridiculizar al Gobernador en el espacio público que él lohace todos los días!, y aún haciéndolo, no igualaríamos jamás al insulto,ultraje y desvergüenza que Fortuño y Santini han derramado sobre su pueblo entodos sus años de desgobierno.

Sobre si Oscar López merece más la medalla queCalle 13, bueno, sobre eso no hay discusión sino una aclaración. Oscar López hadado su vida por esta patria, y por esa razón, el Día de la Bandera, la máximaactividad de afirmación identataria que hace el Ateneo, se le dedicó a OscarLópez Rivera. En su nombre se izó una bandera que es la bandera de todos lospuertorriqueños, -puede ser que no sea la de Rodríguez Julía-, pero sí es la detodos. No hay medalla –llámese como se llame- que supere ese honor que elAteneo otorga. Y ese honor lo recibió ese inmenso patriota que es Oscar LópezRivera, a quien el Ateneo ha honrado, no solo ese día, sino en varias otrasocasiones que Rodríguez Juliá desconoce por su encierro en su finísima Torre deMarfil.

El izamiento de la enseña nacional se le hadedicado al Movimiento Estudiantil de la UPR, a muchos otros patriotas y a labandera misma. El que el Ateneo acuñe una medalla con el rostro del Padre de laPatria, es precisamente un símbolo de que quienes la reciben, viven y luchanpor las mismas cosas que Betances luchó. Calle 13 ha integrado a Puerto Rico alalma latinoamericana a través de su canciones y su insobornable compromiso conlas luchas igualitarias de nuestro continente latinoamericano. Esto ha sidoreconocido, no solo por el Ateneo sino por todos las hermanas repúblicaslatinoamericanas. Aquí, este “gobierno” a medio hacer, no le permite un concierto.

¿Ganó notoriedad el Ateneo por esta acción?Después de 138 años de lucha por la identidad nacional, después de izar labandera sola en los jardines del Ateneo, después de sobreponernos a gobiernostiránicos como el de Roselló y Fortuño, y ahora a las sabidurías inamibles deLiza Fernández, ¿necesita el Ateneo “la notoriedad y celebridad de los nueveGrammys”? No creo.

En el ejercicio de su libertad, (o mejor decir:porque le dio la realísima gana), el Ateneo ha hecho este merecido homenaje aCalle 13 y se refirma en él. Aunque yo no puedo hablar en su nombre porque soysolo uno en una Junta de 17 personas de criterios diferentes –como instituciónde tribuna libre y democrática- , sentencio desde mi criterio, que esto es así.

Tras años de status quo con respecto alrol del Ateneo ante la sociedad, el nuevo Ateneo ha decidido que se debe a supueblo más que sus intelectuales. Ha decidido democratizar su labor a la gentea la quien sirve. Esto no se pudo hacer por mucho tiempo, pues presidió elAteneo una forma de pensar muy blanca y elitista, para quien Calle 13representaría lumpen, incultura y poca finura. Ahora, con la nueva Junta, elpueblo puertorriqueño recibe al Ateneo como lo que siempre debió ser, la Casade la Patria, no una égida de intelectuales blancos, temerosos del gobierno,dedicados a escucharse entre ellos mismos. El Homenaje a Calle 13, alprisionero político Oscar López y la colocación de la estatua del proscrito Betances,ratifican ese compromiso inalienable del Ateneo con su pueblo.

Creo que el frívolo es Rodríguez Juliá, el quenecesita revisar sus nociones de puertorriqueñidad es él, ya que sus ideaspolíticas han hablado con inmensa claridad sobre el olímpico salto que acaba dedar. Es una pena. Por esta misma razón, las futuras generaciones tendrán quebuscar a Rodríguez Juliá, no en sus obras, sino en el “Rincón del vago”, enGoogle.http://www.elnuevodia.com/columna-lacallealreves-1165438.html

“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition” Surprise, Fear and Fanaticism in Tucson

2012-01-16T11:57:00.000-08:00

Rudy is one of the founders of Chicano Studies as a discipline in the USA, also founder of the largest department in Chicano Studies in the nation, at Cal State Northridge.

Rough Draft

“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition”

Surprise, Fear and Fanaticism in Tucson

Rodolfo F. Acuña

Oneof the little pleasures I have in life is waiting for the Saturday mail tobring The New Yorker to my door.Reading the magazine gives me a couple hours of escape; it is well-written andI can never predict the direction its conversations will take.

Forinstance, this week (Jan 16, 2012) the InquiringMinds section reviews “The Spanish Inquisition.” The article is introducedby a Monty Python sketch where one of the members of the group, Michael Palin,announces “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.”

Theauthor Adam Gopnik explores the history of the institution, relating thelessons to today; taking it from “Torquemada[i]to Dick Cheney, and from Guantánamo to Rome,” asking where were the others“when Giordano Bruno is burned to death…”[ii]

Thetheme of the Gopnik piece is that society always looks to the past for symbolsof cruelty which inevitably are based on “surprise, fear…and fanaticaldevotion.” The gestapo, the K.G.B., the Stasi share similar profiles. Gopnikincludes Guantánamo and the “more than twelve hundred government organizations[in the U.S. that] focus on national-security concerns…they have a forebear inTorquemada and the men in the red hats.” Like in the past, today’s torturersalways act with surprise, fear and fanaticism, covering their actions withexcuses of regret and necessity.

Gopnikis not an apologist for the Inquisition, commenting on the work of arevisionist historian, he writes, “his mordant point is not so much that theInquisition doesn’t deserve its reputation for cruelty as that its victimsdon’t deserve theirs for moral courage.” There is always complicity with cruelty in the name orthodoxy such as inthe case of Arizona.

Anti-Semitism,racism, and fanatical nationalism are imbedded in the oppressors’ culture. “TheSpanish Inquisition didn’t have any real interest in saving the Jews’ soul;they just wanted their houses and their money.” Thus, the purpose of theInquisition was not to erase Jewish identity (or that of the Moslems) but toremove them as competitors.

Thistreachery can be compared to the abolishment of the Mexican Studies program inTucson – civic leaders really don’t care if Mexicans go to school, just as longas they keep on making money off them and they learn what they want them tolearn. Anti-Mexican feelings, racism and fanatical nationalism are imbedded inTucson’s Torquemada culture. The truth be told, Latino identity a barrier tothe inquisitors ends.

Actsof surprise, fear and fanaticism are hidden under the cover of regret andnecessity. “The point of an inquisitionis to reduce its victims to abstractions, and abandoning the effort to calltheir pain back to particular life…” Bruno’s sin was that he included a plurality of worlds with equalweight.

Evento this day the Pope says he is sorry that the Inquisition occurred. That isnot acceptable to critics who want the Pope to say he is ashamed. Likewise it is not enough for society to saythat it is sorry for slavery, and the lynching of blacks, browns and Asians. Itis not enough to be sorry for keeping blacks and browns uneducated, societyshould be ashamed of it, just the same as Americans should be ashamed of AbuGhraib, the pissing on the bodies of dead soldiers, the abolishment of theTucson Mexican American Studies program, and the censorship of books.

Intypical Torquemada fashion Tucson Unified School District inquisitors, MarkStegeman, Michael Hicks, Miguel Cuevas and Alexandre Borges Sugiyama abolishedthe district’s highly successful Mexican American Studies program at thedirection of the lord inquisitors in Phoenix. Now they are banning books.

Amongthe censored books are Leslie Marmon Silko, RethinkingColumbus, William Shakespeare, TheTempest, Paolo Freire, Pedagogy ofthe Oppressed, Rodolfo Acuña, Occupied America, Arturo Rosales, Chicano!: The History of the Mexican CivilRights Movement and Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Critical Race Theory, in addition to adozen other books.

Thusfar, there has been no comment from the American Civil Liberties Union orprogressives in the United States. Apparently they do not see the parallel in what is happening in Tucson,and what happened in South Africa under apartheid, the burning of the books bythe Spaniards in Middle America, or, for that matter, Germany in the1920s and30s.

Censorshipis criminal. We live in a world of knowledge; books and education give usaccess to that knowledge; if we are deprived of it, the inquisitors deny us theright to make rational choices.

Arizonaschools have abandoned its mission to educate students; they have intentionallydenied Mexican American students access to knowledge. Consequently the Arizonabureaucracy has deliberately kept them in the fields, the mines and the prisons,hoping to deny them alternatives.

Thepurpose of critical thinking is to give students alternatives and to dispelmyths and repel blind allegiance to those who deny them alternatives.

Accordingto the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, “Censorship reflectssociety's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.”

Themotivation of the TUSD Trustees cannot be explained in terms of greed alone. Itcannot be rationalized by culture alone. Money and personal gain play a role. “Nobody expects the SpanishInquisition,” but it’s there.

Ofthe Tucson gaggle the only honest one is Hicks, who is openly a racist andlimited intelligence. The failed scholar Stegeman is stuck on the promotionladder. He’ll never make it to full professor without support ofpoliticos. Sugiyama is a bad scholar anda worse teacher; his only chance for a full time position is to sell hisposterior. The pitiful Cuevas just wants acceptance from rich white people inthe city.

MontyPython and others can laugh at the fanaticism of the past; however, it is hardto laugh at today’s inquisitors. It is easier to turn the other way, La zorra nunca se ve la cola (The SkunkDoesn’t See Its Tail).

So,what can we do? We have no choice but to “Fight Back!”

[i]Tomás de Torquemada was the first GrandInquisitor of Spain, appointed by the pope in 1483.

[ii]Giordano Bruno was an Italian 16^th century Dominican friar who theRoman Inquisition found guilty of heresy for writing that the sun was not onlythe center of the universe but a star in a universe of other inhabited planets.Bruno was burnt at the stake.

Shortening the gap between the two Puerto Rican camps

2012-01-08T08:38:00.000-08:00

De mi amigo Edwin Melendez, Universidad de Puerto Rico. Interesante propuesta.

Shorteningthe gap between the two Puerto Rican camps

Héctor Meléndez

According to thelast census there are now more Puerto Ricans in the United States than on theisland. How could this demographic change provide for an original electoralaction linking the two camps of the Puerto Rican people, that of the island andthat of the mainland? Could it be possible a network devoted to elect UScongressmen and state legislators familiar with Puerto Rico and able tocontribute to a new relation of political forces both on the island and in US?

Luis Gutiérrez, aPuerto Rican and congressman for Illinois, has intervened in Puerto Rico’spublic debates denouncing the gas pipeline project and violations of civilrights by the police in the island. Could more congressmen/women be elected,and, like Gutiérrez, take a stand on the problems of the Hispanic island? Itmay be a new means to relate Puerto Ricans on the island with those living inthe States.

New waves ofmigration have modified the Puerto Rican community in the US. Many of the newmigrants bring to the US labor market new levels of productivity, manifested onacademic degrees and intellectual-technological work. Traveling back and forthis common among Puerto Ricans, thereby constituting, as some authors put it, acommuting nation. In the meantime the island increasingly lacks an economy ofits own.

Young in average,Puerto Ricans share features of the so-called global postmodernity: a fluidityof empirical and material life vis a vis old solid structures which used toorganize time and space universally; “vaporizacion” of society or “liquidmodernity” given a reduction of the weight of institutions on individuals and adeclining moral legitimacy of the ruling classes and government; individualismand even narcisism rooted in consumption and technology; submission to imageand telecommunications; and integration into a new globalized, inter-ethnic,skeptical, and more insecure and exploited proletariat.

But Puerto Ricansalso share a specific tension of their own, related to the frustration of theirnationhood. They want to put forward a common historical existence, and thusimpulses for collective action and civic mobilization come out, if oftenshort-lived. Perhaps a silent feeling of orphanhood, so to say, exists amongPuerto Ricans: a need of love and a stable community of their own, the want ofa home. This absence may provoke discontent, even rage, which in its turn seemsto relate to daily social violence.

American citizenshipwas granted in 1917 to individual Puerto Ricans, not to a collective nation ora Puerto Rican community. Citizenship reinforced US rule on Puerto Rico andformalized rights and obligations of Puerto Ricans insofar they wereindividuals taking part in the US market and armed forces. In the so-calledinsular cases of early 20th century, the Supreme Court maintained that PuertoRico belonged to, yet it was not a part of, the US. Thereby it insisted on thesubordinated (colonial) status of Puerto Rico, while recognizing rights of PuertoRican individuals. For the US government, then, Puerto Rico is not a bodypolitic. It is a social and cultural body only in so far is an object offederal bureaucratic, strategic or budgetary decision-making.

Now, the USgovernment prevents Puerto Ricans living in the US from voting in the island’selections. (They will not vote in the upcoming plebiscite, President Obamastated in 2011.) By contrast, many other countries facilitate the vote of theiremmigrant nationals. The Dominican Republic, for instance, last year approved alaw not only reassuring the right of Dominicans residing in foreign nations tovote in the Dominican elections, but also granting their right to electrepresentatives of their communities in the US, Puerto Rico, Spain, France, etc.to the Santo Domingo parliament.

Preventing PuertoRicans on the island to vote in the US elections indicates the federal conceptthat the island is not a part of the US. Preventing Puerto Ricans living in theUS to vote in the island’s elections indicates the federal concept that PuertoRicans, including their huge migrant mass, do not constitute a social-politicalcommunity in their own right.

This mechanical anddisdainful approach from the American government is partly made possible by thegap created between Puerto Ricans of the island and those living in the States.

Puerto Ricanmigration into the US mainland was stimulated by US policies from early 20thcentury onwards. It may be said that the conservative aspects of Puerto Ricannationalism, as it emerged historically, and a culture of localism and “criollismo” daily promoted on the islandby the media, have contributed to the gap between Puerto Ricans in the US andthose in the island. These factors, however, fit into Washington’s policy, whichassumes “Puerto Rico” is the island alone.

In US law, then,rights exist for Puerto Rican individuals but not for Puerto Rico. It is a bigcontrast with the American continuous celebration of its own nationalcollective ego. Discussing Puerto Rican issues in Congress and the stateslegislatures could be a means to approach the diaspora-determined reality ofthe Caribbean country.

(The author teaches social sciencesat the University of Puerto Rico.)

Published 8 January 2012 in the PuertoRico Daily Sun.

The Puerto Rican Diaspora and the Political Status of Puerto Rico

2012-01-02T08:08:00.001-08:00

Note:Who should decide Puerto Rico's future political status? As all Latinos know,and some non-Latinos, the term "Latino" or "Hispanic" ismerely an umbrella term to lump all Spanish-speakers together. Unfortunately,in lumping Latinos all together, there is an assumption that Latinos are allthe same.

Nottrue. There is one sub-group of Latinos that actually has US citizenship,though they're born in their own country. They are the only "Latinos"who have this privilege -- Puerto Ricans. For years, there has been an ongoingdebate on the island of whether or not Puerto Rico gains its independence orbecomes a U.S. state. Until now, the debate has primarily taken place either onthe island or among Puerto Ricans.

OnSeptember 13, 2011, the debate was finally taken to Congress. For the firsttime ever a political forum regarding the status of the island was organized inCongress by the community group, The University of Puerto Rico Alumni andFriends Abroad Association (UPRAA). The forum was a discussion and not apolitical hearing. The event, held on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, featuredrepresentatives of the three parties' ideologies of the island: those in favorof statehood; those in favor of the current status and those wantingindependence.

Settingthe stage for the discussion was Dr. Edwin Meléndez, director of the Center forPuerto Rican Studies at Hunter College (CUNY), New York. Dr. Meléndez explainedthe island's evolving history and the unique situation it finds itself in thesedays that has the potential to impact any debate on the future political statusof Puerto Rico.

Thefollowing is Dr. Meléndez's opening presentation for the Sept. 13 forum"Puerto Rico at its Political Crossroads: A forum to discuss the politicalfuture of the island."

--- LatinaLista

ThePuerto Rican Diaspora and the Political Status of Puerto Rico

By Edwin Melendez

Latina Lista (September23, 2011)

There is no topic that incites asmuch passion among Puerto Ricans as the political status of the island.However, very rarely do stateside Puerto Ricans get an opportunity to discussthis topic with Puerto Rican leaders from the island.

Today I will examine the politicalstatus of Puerto Rico from a perspective acknowledging the role and rights ofthe Puerto Rican people in diaspora.

The origins of the Puerto Ricanmigration to the United States can be traced to the Latin American wars for independenceand to the development of trade networks in the Northeast cities of New York,Hartford, and Boston during the early nineteenth century.

Shortly after the Spanish governmentlost Puerto Rico to the United States, the American government activelypromoted migration as a solution to unemployment and poverty on the island.

By the end of the Second World War,advances in air transportation and economic policies induced the first ofseveral significant exoduses from the island. It is estimated that over 400,000Puerto Ricans migrated to the United States in the late 1940s and 1950s. Evenlarger waves were estimated for the 1980s and over the last decade.

All in all, today the majority ofPuerto Ricans reside in the United States, not on the island of Puerto Rico.According to the 2010 Census, there are 4.6 million Puerto Ricans in the U.S.,with only 3.5 million on the island, excluding foreigners. About one-third ofthose currently residing in the United States were born in Puerto Rico.

Puerto Ricans are dispersed acrossall states, with concentrations in New York, Florida, and New Jersey. Thoughthe majority of Puerto Ricans still reside in New York, demographic projectionssuggest that by the end of this decade the number of Puerto Ricans in Floridawill surpass those in New York.

The PoliticalStatus and the Diaspora

The question for consideration todayis what role, if any, stateside Puerto Ricans should or could play in thedetermination of the future political status of Puerto Rico?

For the first time in history, thequestion of the future status of Puerto Rico is being discussed when a majorityof the Puerto Ricans do not reside in the territory. In other words, I willexamine whether 57 percent of the Puerto Rican people will have a voice andvote in the determination of their destiny.

Stateside Puerto Ricans play acritical role in the political process for any congressional action. Excludingthe Resident Commissioner, who is elected to that body by the island population,there are currently four members of the United States House of Representativesof Puerto Rican descent.

Besides the direct connection of thecongressional delegation to Puerto Ricans in their districts, there is a vastnetwork of elected local officials and other civic leaders who greatlyinfluence Congress and public opinion on this matter.

Stateside Puerto Ricans, whetherthey are born in Puerto Rico or not, are critical stakeholders because theyinfluence the political process in the United States well beyond thecongressional legislative process. Puerto Ricans have been elected to city,county, and state offices and they are active leaders in both the Democraticand Republican parties.

Then there is the potentialparticipation of stateside Puerto Ricans in a referendum. To date, the House ofRepresentatives has undertaken the question of Puerto Rico's status andapproved legislation on two occasions; the Senate has considered but neverpassed legislation on this matter.

The prevailing view as stated in themost recently approved legislation in the House of Representatives supportsthat all United States citizens born in Puerto Rico but residing in the 50states would have a vote in the plebiscite, but not those who were not born inPuerto Rico.

Stateside Puerto Ricans also arecritical stakeholders because they maintain economic and social ties with theisland, which are critical to its economy and social fabric. Using tourism asan indicator of the constant flow of Puerto Ricans to the island, abouttwo-thirds [63.4 percent in 2010] of visitors to the island stay in otherplaces than hotels. [This number excludes visitors to the island who are notsimply in a cruise ship stop or transient military personnel].

Even when we do not consider thosePuerto Ricans who stay in hotels, it is reasonable to assume that a significantportion of the island's tourism is from stateside Puerto Ricans who arevisiting family, on vacation, or conducting business. We go on vacations, wepurchase merchandise, and we visit restaurants. We are renting former primaryhomes, we have second homes or other real estate property, or we invest inbusinesses.

Some of our children take advantageof the island's educational system. And after retirement, some of us plan tolive or spend a significant portion of our time on the island. In short, we area significant group of consumers and investors in the island economy.

Given recent trends in migration,the economic impact of stateside Puerto Ricans on the island's economy islikely to grow over the next decades. All things considered, it is in the bestinterest of Puerto Rico's residents to strengthen the ties that bind us to ourhomeland.

In this context, one can make theargument that the active, broad engagement of stateside Puerto Ricans, whetherisland born or descendants, is critical for a resolution to the question of thestatus of Puerto Rico.

Stateside Puerto Ricans should beencouraged to become involved in the decision- making process of the status ofPuerto Rico question. Consequently, all U.S. citizens of Puerto Rican descentshould also participate in any referendum.

Referendums onthe Status Questions

So what is the historical record ofstateside Puerto Ricans' participation in Puerto Rico status referendums?

Since the creation of theCommonwealth in 1952, there have been three local referendums on the politicalstatus of Puerto Rico [in 1967, 1993, and 1998], and a referendum held in 1991seeking to amend the Puerto Rican constitution to ensure certain rights orprinciples when deciding Puerto Rico's political status.

Stateside Puerto Ricans did notparticipate in any of these local initiatives. However, Congress has examinedthe status question on several occasions, and these processes have opened thedoor for the consideration of the role and participation of Puerto Ricans whodo not reside in Puerto Rico.

In 1989, Senators Johnston andMcClure introduced the Puerto Rico Status Referendum Act (S.712) which calledfor a referendum to be held in 1991. Though this bill died in congressionalcommittee and never reached a vote, it served as the foundation for subsequentlocal efforts in 1991 and 1993, and more significantly it ignited theengagement of the stateside Puerto Rican community on the question of thestatus of Puerto Rico.

In 1998, the United States-PuertoRico Political Status Act (H.R. 856) passed in the House but not in the Senate.It stated that Puerto Ricans would not be allowed to vote in the election.

Congressman Serrano presented anamendment to allow U.S. citizens of Puerto Rican descent residing in the 50states to vote in the plebiscite, but it also was defeated, by a vote of 356 to57.

In 2007, the Puerto Rico DemocracyAct of (H.R. 900), a successor of H.R 856, never had enough votes to carry adebate.

In 2009, the Puerto Rico DemocracyAct (H.R. 2499, a successor to H.R. 900 from 2007), was passed by the Housewith bi-partisan support. Under this act, all United States citizens born in PuertoRico would have been eligible to participate in the plebiscite, but not thoseof Puerto Rican descent.

An unsuccessful referendum bill thatwas proposed by Senators Johnston and McClure in 1991 (S.712) provides a casestudy for the potential role of the stateside Puerto Rican community in futureplebiscites on the status of Puerto Rico. With the active endorsement andparticipation of the Puerto Rican political leadership, the CommitteePro-Puerto Rican Participation (CPPRP hereafter) was created to insure theright of the Puerto Rican people "to vote in the Puerto Ricanplebiscite."

In addition to advocating for theparticipation of all Puerto Rican people born on the island, the committeeadvocated a key principle in the resolution of Puerto Rico's political status:that the results of the plebiscite would be binding to the U.S Congress. Thecampaign was nonpartisan with respect to the status options and a broad rangeof civic and political leaders actively participated in it.

The reasons for advocating the rightof the stateside Puerto Rican people to vote in the plebiscite were simple yetpowerful. Foremost, the committee advocated for a clear defense of the right toself-determination, as understood by the international community.

The Puerto Rican people are one,whether they reside in the island or elsewhere. The referendum was consideredan important event that transcended local elections because it provided aframework for the future of the country, and by implication of all the PuertoRican people.

The results of the referendum werelikely to have a significant impact on the social and cultural conditions ofall Puerto Ricans, including those residing in the United States (whether theywere born there or in Puerto Rico). The committee issued several reports andwas able to score several important political victories, including the holdingof congressional hearings in East Harlem, New York.

The political leadership in PuertoRico was ambivalent, to say the least, about the participation of statesidePuerto Ricans. Early on in the process, Governor Hernandez-Colon declared hissupport, but a few months later he opposed an agreement reached by the sponsorsof the bill in the House of Representatives.

The agreement was crafted byemissaries from Puerto Rico's three political parties (including the Governor'sown party), and the CPPRP leadership. Despite opposition from the islandpoliticians, the efforts of the CPPRP were successful in establishingexpectations for future negotiations on the status of Puerto Rico in Congress.The most recent bill - the 2009 Puerto Rico Democracy Act recently mentioned,recognizes the right of all Puerto Rico-born citizens to participate.

Latino Diasporasand Transnational Politics

Before providing some concludingthoughts, I would like to address an important element in the new politicalenvironment that directly affects transnational politics between Puerto Ricoand the United States.

I am referring to the growing Latinopopulation and how the CPPRP efforts opened pathways for other populations indiaspora to engage in local politics in their countries of origin.

The fact that Puerto Ricans are U.S.citizens is well known, certainly among the audience in this forum. However,the concept of dual citizenship is relevant to the question under examination.

Immigrants who become naturalizedAmerican citizens, for example, have dual citizenship. They can carry twopassports and travel freely within their native and naturalized countries. LikePuerto Ricans, they can go back and forth to their country of origin to work orlive as they see fit.

Dual citizenship is becoming morepopular in many countries, for good reasons. Citizens with dual citizenshipstrengthen the economy of both countries by promoting trade and investment,transferring technology and knowledge, and facilitating access to a broaderpool of human resources.

Countries like India, thePhilippines, and Mexico are liberalizing their citizenship laws to takeadvantage of the benefits of dual citizenship.

Dual citizenship is a commonpractice among U.S. Latinos. Some examples of countries that encourage and takeadvantage of dual citizenship include Columbia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic,Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, México, and Peru.

An important component of dualcitizenship among U.S. Latinos is that it enables them to participate in theircountry of origin politics. Two recent examples are:

In May of 2004, for the first timein history, Dominicans in the U.S. voted in the presidential elections of theDominican Republic. Roughly 52,000 throughout the United States registered tovote in the elections.

In 2006, for the first time,Mexicans in the U.S. were allowed to vote by absentee ballot in the Mexicanpresidential election. About 4 million of the 10 million Mexican residents inthe U.S. were eligible to participate.

The importance of these processes to the Puerto Rican case is evident. For one,they dismiss the idea that the logistics of the electoral process are toocomplicated or costly. Like Puerto Ricans, these Latino communities aredispersed all over the U.S., but they have the political infrastructure andhave been able to get the cooperation of stateside governments to implementelectoral processes for transnational politics.

But perhaps more important, the growing politicalpresence of Latinos in Congress will add support to initiatives of concern toPuerto Ricans and boost a more powerful coalition to resolve the status ofPuerto Rico than in the past.

The Latino leadership in Congress understandsperfectly the implications of the rights of the Puerto Rican people toparticipate in deciding the future political status of the island.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the environment is becoming moreconducive for stateside Puerto Ricans to play a larger role in the statusquestion.

The fact that the majority of Puerto Ricans now livein the United States is a game changer: How can the future of the island bedecided by a minority of our people? How can the rights of the people be deniedwhen the political influence of the stateside Puerto Rican community isbroader, more diverse than ever, and growing?

The fact that Latinos have a growing influence in thepolitical process is a game changer as well. A broad Latino political coalitioncan finally induce Congress to recognize the rights of all Puerto Rican peopleand to make a commitment, prior to any plebiscite, to enact a bill which willbe binding to the U.S Congress.

Finally, it is very important that stateside PuertoRicans become part of the dialogue and political process about the future ofPuerto Rico.

We are at a historical juncture when more and more ofour families are divided, when our extended families have bilingual childrenand are becoming more culturally diverse, and when we seek greater connectionsto those living afar.

It is well known to all of us participating in thisforum that there is a general lack of understanding of the stateside PuertoRicans among the Puerto Ricans residing on the island.

I am hopeful that our participation in any referendumon the status of Puerto Rico will help strengthen social and cultural bridgesbetween the two communities: Para los de aqui y para los de allá.

I am also hopeful that today we will engage in a civicdialogue that will mark a turning point towards the goal and aspiration of UNSOLO PUEBLO.

I leave the panelists with this question:

Do you support the right of all Puerto Ricans to votein a status referendum?

Dr. Edwin Meléndez is director of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College(CUNY), New York. He has authored or edited ten books and has managed overthirty-five research, outreach, or demonstration projects. Dr. Meléndez was thedirector of the Mauricio Gastón Institute for Latino Community Development andPublic Policy at the University of Massachusetts Boston as well as a facultymember in the Economics Department and the Ph.D. Program in Public Policy. Healso served on the faculties of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology andFordham University.

¡Basta Ya! “Cuando el tuerto en el pais del ciego es rey”

2011-12-28T10:10:00.001-08:00

¡Basta Ya! “Cuando el tuerto en el pais del ciego es rey”

Please Stop! “When the one-eyed man in the country of the blind is king”

GretchenSierra-Zorita Huffington Post Primer on Latino Politics

As someone who writesand teaches Latino politics, as a Puerto Rican/Latino activist, I am appalled atthe persistent efforts of U.S. media to give authority and credence to analysesof Latino politics that are superficial, inaccurate and which have a hiddenagenda. These pieces are not efforts to elucidate, reveal truths butadvertising/public relations efforts to mold public opinion. While fortunatelythey are ineffective in the long run in the short term they might lead to someconfusion among those who are not familiar with the complex nature of theLatino communities in the United States. One basic lesson that all of us whohave studied these communities for decades have learned is that “one size doesnot fit all.” Corporate America and their mouthpieces have for decadesattempted to create a “Latino Market” with the purpose of enjoying the benefitsof broader markets (economics of scale).

While on somelevels there are significant points of convergence the reality is that stillsignificant social, cultural differences exist, and these persist acrossgenerations. Ruben Rumbaut, Cuban sociologist at UC Irvine coined the term “segmentedassimilation” where he showed that there is not one road to cultural and socialintegration but that the path has a number of different tracks. While I nolonger use the term assimilation because of its linear connotation it isimportant to note that depending on the characteristics of the localpopulation, members of a minority Latino sub group at times adjust to U.S.society on the basis of the majority Latino group in its region. CentralAmericans in Houston “assimilate” and mimic Mexican cultural traits just likethey also do in South Florida where they mimic Cubans as studies have revealed.In Long Beach California, Cambodian youth who grew up in majority Mexicanbarrios also incorporated some cultural traits from their Mexican counterparts.In New York, the New York Times had an article a few years back of a Peruviangirl singing “Preciosa” with as much patriotism as a Boricua. However, thesecommunities still remained distinct.

But this recentpiece in Huffington Post is the classic example of sloppy, inaccurate andharmful fluff that passes for political analysis. Fortunately, writers like LuisVarela demystify and challenge the narrative created by this piece but Iwill add a bit more comment to the counter narrative. Unfortunately, during the 2008 elections anumber of writers became instant experts on Latino politics which made them asthe saying goes, “one-eyed men/women in the country of the blind are king.” Despite the fact that Latino political scientists haveproduced a respectable amount of empirically verified analysis on Latinopolitics it has only been recently that these experts are getting on the front stageof Latino political analysis. One greatjournalist who is always on the mark in her analyses is Pilar Marrero from LaOpinion, another great analyst is Angelo Falcon from the Latino Institute forPublic Policy. But unfortunately, theydid not write this recent piece in the Post.

The writer GretchenSierra-Zorita, makes some accurate points about the inability of Republicans toattract the Latino vote, and their need to have an economic agenda that wouldbe more palatable to Latinos. However, given the disproportionate power of theextreme right Tea Partiers (recently making their Speaker Boehner look weak andindecisive in the recent budget fiasco) it is even ludicrous to consider anychange in their worldview. Socially, Republicans are isolated from Latinos,most do not have Latinos in their primary group relationships so they aretotally immersed in the popular culture prejudices that hark back to what iscalled by historian Gilbert Gonzalez, the ‘Mexican Problem” ideology. Thisanti-Mexican (and by extension anti-Latino as most who have lived in the U.S.can attest to) is deep and pervasive.

On her comments onPuerto Rican Governor Fortuño’s bid as VP under a winning Republican candidate(which is the hidden agenda), that is another siren song that does not deserve seriousconsideration. In fact, given the anti-Republican sentiment that Republicanxenophobia has elicited from a broad spectrum of the Latino community, especiallyamong the youth, Gov. Fortuño would be the wrong pick for three basic reasons:First, while ethnicity is not the primary factor when people vote it is stillimportant if the “Latino” candidate is from another Latino ethnic sub group.Mexicans would not feel much attachment to an outsider, especially an outsiderwho is alien to the Mexican American community and who is not in touch with theexperiences of Latinos in the mainland. Secondly,Gov. Fortuño’s economic agenda is right there with the Tea Party so hispackaging as a “Latino” would not hide the reality of his anti Latino economic policies.Thirdly, opposing candidates from the Democrat Party, would have a batteringram to demolish his standing in the community, all they would need reveal thefissures is point out the civil and human rights violations, identified by the recentDepartment of Justice’s scathing indictment of the Puerto Rican policedepartment. This 143 page document has particularly disturbing informationabout the racist treatment of people of Dominican descent in Puerto Rico. Allcarried out under the authority of Governor Luis Fortuño, as the report states inthe use of excessive force, seizures, intimidation, etc.

Finally, thePuerto Rican population of Florida is still an unknown, a third is young (25years and 44 years, Duany and Matos-Rodriguez) highly educated, more likely toidentify as white than any Puerto Rican community in the United States. However,there is another segment that came from New York so this is one community whichstill is in a fluid state so it remains how it will go in the 2012 elections. Therecession has hit the housing sector hard with many foreclosures so this is acommunity that like the broader community needs more state intervention thanthe neo liberals are willing to provide. But as Luis Varela correctly states,given the tens of thousands economic exiles that have left Puerto Rico and nowlive in central and South Florida, give me a break, most of them know why theyhad to leave: Fortuño’s policies. Any GOP candidate that would be foolish tochoose him would be assuring the loss, not only of the Puerto Rican vote but alsoof the broader Latino support.

As to “Disneyricans”!Please!

"Tejiendo Los Fragmentos Dispersos de la Historia de Puerto Rico" Reseña Ayala-Bernabe

2011-12-28T10:09:00.000-08:00

ATejiendo Los FragmentosDispersos de la Historia de Puerto Rico@

Victor M. Rodríguez Domínguez

(Departamento de Estudios Chicanos y Latinos,California State University, Long Beach, victor.rodriguez@csulb.edu)

Cesar Ayala and Rafael Bernabe. 2007. Puerto Rico in the American century: A History Since 1898.Chapel Hill:University of North Carolina Press.

Todas las nueva generacionesintentan definirse en relación a las generaciones anteriores, en ocasiones, elproceso incluye rechazar o re-escribir las memorias heredadas y compartidas. Enel mundo académico puertorriqueño las nuevas generaciones de intelectualestambién re-interpretan el legado histórico y los marcos de referencia que ledieron sentido a las generaciones que le precedieron. Muy a menudo, en nuestra necesidad dedistanciarnos de las metodologías, interpretaciones y marcos teóricos, a vecesdesechamos, no tan solo la paja pero también el grano. Lamentablemente, paraafirmar nuestra perspectiva de que aramos en terreno virgen, perdemos de vistaque lo que construimos está imbuido de sabiduría heredada.

Afortunadamente, en losmomentos mas necesarios, se nos asoman en el horizonte obras que nos recuerdanque no todo lo novedoso es nuevo y que las experiencias, interpretaciones quele dieron sentido a generaciones pasadas eran ventanas a verdades que en sumomento contribuyeron a una mejor comprensión de los procesos sociales. Luego de más de una década de pesimismo y deuna febril estampida donde todas las vacas sagradas de nuestra cultura, historiay política han sido desmenuzadas y atacadas, es refrescante contemplar unejemplo de trabajo intelectual edificante que re-evalúa el pasado y el presentesin necesidad de botar fuera de borda los legados teóricos e interpretativosque dieron base a una mejor comprensión de lo que es Puerto Rico hoy día.

Cesar Ayala y Rafael Bernabé,en su enciclopédico trabajo nos demuestran la receta que permite aquilatar lasinterpretaciones históricas, los análisis culturales y políticos del pasado sinperder de vista como se construye la zapata de un nuevo proyecto histórico paranuestra patria. En 342 abultadas páginas nos ofrecen la más amplia y abarcadorareevaluación de las más importantes tendencias en el análisis cultural,histórico, político y económico puertorriqueño desde el 1898. En cierta medida,Ayala y Bernabé han logrado lo imposible, como conectar las variadas hebras deltapiz de la formación social puertorriqueña y a la vez proveernos un marco dereferencia teórico que le da sentido a las partes. Si la tendencia en losúltimos años entre los intelectuales puertorriqueños ha sido la visiónfragmentada, pesimista e iconoclasta de nuestro acontecer histórico, culturaleconómico y político, Ayala y Bernabé nos proveen un atisbo a otro modo deimaginarnos.

Ambos investigadores en ciertamedida representan una parte importante de la realidad de la experienciapuertorriqueña hoy día. Ayala, catedrático asociado en sociología en laUniversidad de California en los Ángeles, Bernabé, catedrático y director delCentro de Estudios Hispánico Federico De Onís de la Universidad de Puerto Rico,recinto de Río Piedras. Y aunque podemos detectar en ocasiones los capítulosdonde uno u otro tuvieron una mayor participación en su redacción, realmentelogran una totalidad que representa un conjunto muy bien balanceado.

El libro, está dividido enquince capítulos, que nos describen desde el trasfondo histórico, económico,cultural y político de la invasión norteamericana hasta los debatescontemporáneos desde las perspectivas marxistas, neo-marxistas, nacionalistas,neo-nacionalistas y las que han producido los modos de interpretación y visiónde mundo llamados post-modernismo y estudios post-coloniales. Los autores hanescogido cuidadosamente las figuras, obras y perspectivas puertorriqueñas másimportantes en los últimos 109 años bajo el imperio norteamericano. También hanlogrado entretejer, en momentos estratégicos, la experiencia y las visiones demundo que se conformaron en la diáspora puertorriqueña en los Estados Unidos.Un trabajo tan extenso como este no puede recibir la justipreciación que semerece, es por eso que resaltaré aquellos aspectos que más me llamaron laatención.

Lo realmente novedoso, pero noiconoclasta, que caracteriza este libro es como nos provee una perspectiva queconecta la vida cotidiana con los cambios sistémicos del capitalismo. De formacuidadosa los autores no caen en un determinismo económico sino que proveen unespacio para el desfase o ruptura que se da entre la cultura y los cambios económicos.Nos proveen una taxonomía de periodos históricos que revela aspectos nuevos denuestra vida social, cultural, económica y política desde las calles de SanJuan hasta los barrios boricuas en los Estados Unidos. En un lenguaje claro, noobtuso, como muchos textos post-modernistas, los autores nos proveen unanálisis e interpretación que aún el mismo Jacques Derrida pensaría es unarespuesta ponderada a su reciente libro el AEspectro de Marx.@ En este libro Derrida invocael espíritu radical de Marx en un momento en que el capitalismo salvaje sevanagloria de sus éxitos. Por otro lado los post-modernistas puertorriqueñosparecen haberse convertido en el coro Griego que le acompaña al capitalismotriunfante afirmando que ya no hay ideologías solo el capitalismo perpetuo.

La justa apreciación del roldel imperialismo en Puerto Rico no los lleva a una visión monolítica del mismo.Tampoco, los lleva a la perspectiva del Aimperialismo bobo@ que comparten de formavariada y contradictoria los seguidores de Luis Muñoz Marín e irónicamentealgunos escritores desde la perspectiva post-modernista. No todo lo que estámal en la formación social y la experiencia puertorriqueña es producto delcolonialismo. Pero ignorar el rol del capitalismo en su etapa mas depredadoraes ignorar la forma como el contexto tiende a proveer y/o limitar lasalternativas a la que han tenido y tienen acceso los puertorriqueños en su vidapolítica, cultural, económica y social. Recientemente la intelectual filipina Delia D. Aguilar en unaconferencia reciente de estudios étnicos en los Estados Unidos, apuntaba laforma irreflexiva en que los intelectuales post-modernistas aclamaron el librode Michael Hardt y Antonio Negri, AImperio@ que le sirve de contrapeso alesfuerzo que realizan Ayala y Bernabé. Estos últimos entrelazan de formacuidadosa el análisis económico y los otros análisis de las otras esferas de lavida humana sin que ninguna esfera pierda su autonomía y dinamismo. Pero evitancaer en el error garrafal en que cayeron Hardt y Negri cuando concluyeron queel imperialismo ha sido substituido por un imperio descentralizado,fragmentado, donde la nación/estado ha desaparecido como categoría de análisis.Esta hipótesis fue totalmente devastada por lo eventos del 11 de septiembre, lapresidencia imperial y la guerra en Irak. Hardt y Negri además se burlan, delnacionalismo y los movimientos de liberación nacional como retrógrados, y venel mundo como uno donde las clases proletarias se han convertido en multitudes(o en masa a lo Ortega y Gasset o Areguerete@ a lo Muñoz). Los post-modernistas parecen haber caído enla alegórica caverna de Platón y se encuentran cegados por las imágenesfantasmagóricas perdiendo de vista los procesos reales que se desarrollan en elmundo.

La recuperación de lascontribuciones de escritores y analistas que por las nuevas modas habían caídoen el olvido y el desuso (con la honrosa excepción de algunos intelectualespuertorriqueños) es otra contribución que nos hace este libro. Las figuras deRosendo Matienzo Cintrón, Nemesio Canales y Luis Lloren Torres son recuperadasy puestas de nuevo en el tablado del análisis cultural, político e históricopuertorriqueño. Y realizando este necesario proceso de desempolvar estasfiguras históricas nos ofrecen una visión más certera mas profunda de lasdivisiones que existían al interior de la elite puertorriqueña. En cierta medida, incorporan, conectan estasperspectivas, con la re-evaluada historia de los de abajo en una interpretaciónhistorica que incluye la complejidad estructural de la sociedad puertorriqueñaen lo que ellos llaman el ASiglo Americano.@

Nuestro perpetuo debate sobrela identidad puertorriqueña, recibe un muy bien balanceado tratamiento queincluye voces a las que usualmente no hemos oído recientemente en estecontexto. Particularmente resaltan los escritores a Rubén del Rosario y NilitaVientós de Gastón, personas cuyo análisis cultural nos impresiona por sucapacidad de proveer una visión maleable y porosa de la identidadpuertorriqueña, a la vez de servir de fundamento para lo que los autores llamanuna perspectiva critica, no nacionalista del colonialismo norteamericano.

Otros debates históricos, porejemplo el carácter de las partidas sediciosas a principio del siglo veinte,también reciben una merecida atención de Ayala y Bernabé. En momentos enque nos sentimos intrigados por lasvariadas interpretaciones de la forma en que los puertorriqueños acogieron alinvasor, los autores nos proveen un análisis balanceado de las fuentes queconocemos sobre este fenómeno que se aleja de los análisis nacionalistas oneo-nacionalistas sobre el carácter de estos focos de insurrección.

Pero en algunos casos elanálisis adolece de una más profunda interpretación de hechos y figurashistóricas. Por ejemplo, al analizar la anomalía que representa que una republica democráticagobierne sobre una posesión colonial estos concluyen, luego de listar una seriede intervenciones imperialistas norteamericanas en el Caribe que AComo se puede ver de estalista, el imperialismo de los Estados Unidos, a diferencia de sus predecesoresEuropeos, no comenzó con intenciones de construir un imperio colonial formal.@ (P. 30) En cierta medida, yaunque mencionan que Puerto Rico es una anomalía dejan al lector con la impresiónde que los Estados Unidos andaba a ciegas y al tropezar se vio enredado en lamadeja imperial. El cuidado con el queElihu Root estudió los volúmenes de estudios conducidos por los antropólogos ypolíticos Británicos en el proceso de construir una administración colonialindica que las elites norteamericanas no tropezaron sino que sabían muy bien loque hacían. Elihu Root, como Trías Monge y otros revelan, fue quienfundamentalmente orientó la construcción de la administración colonial enPuerto Rico, sabía muy bien que los Estados Unidos no era la democracia quesustentaba los principios democráticos contenidos en la Ordenanza del Noroestede 1787. Esta ordenanza establecía que todos los territorios adquiridos por losEstados Unidos serían colocados en un proceso hacia su eventual admisión comoestados. Root escogió el modelo Británico, implícitamente reconociendo que losEstados Unidos entraba a una nueva etapa imperial, el edificio que el construyoen las Filipinas y Puerto Rico meramente lo formalizó y lo concretizo. Comovemos en el trabajo de Cabranes y Jorge Duany en cierta medida los EstadosUnidos había puesto una verja alrededor de las áreas donde los ciudadanostendrían una ciudadanía de primera clase. Así, los Estados Unidos seaprestaban, en caso de que conquistaran otros territorios, a no tener queadmitirlos en su unión. Es por esto que el sociólogo William Gram. Sumner deYale escribió el clásico articulo titulado ALa conquista de los EstadosUnidos por España.@ Obviamente, el carácter racializadode los Estados Unidos no le permitía a los Estados Unidos incorporar a unanación como Puerto Rico (o las Filipinas) con una cultura y población que losEstados Unidos no podían Adigerir.@ Los debates en el congresosobre la disposición de las Aposesiones@ claramente indican que losimperialistas tenían aspiraciones territoriales, pero también encontraronoposición de los que veían como una contradicción el que una nación democráticaposeyera colonias.

Sin embargo este trabajo,complejo y amplio ha logrado en gran medida escribir una historia de PuertoRico donde las dialécticas de raza, clase, género en su contexto político yeconómico de forma no se desdibujan sinó que revelan la complejidad de nuestrahistoria. Ayala y Bernabé integran los trabajos que sociólogos e historiadoreshan hecho sobre la feminización de la mano de obra puertorriqueña, sobre eldesarrollo de las relaciones capitalistas de producción bajo la hegemoníaimperial norteamericana. Retan mitos que hemos cargado por muchos años que hanrepresentado al imperio norteamericano como un ente topoderoso. Nos recuerdan,por ejemplo, que aun cuando los inversionistas norteamericanos controlaron unaparte substancial de la industria azucarera, puertorriqueños y extranjerosresidentes en Puerto Rico aún controlaban la mayor parte de la producciónazucarera. También nos recuerdan y evidencian Ayala y Bernabé que el patrón deconcentración de la tierra en pocas manos es una herencia del sistema colonialespañol, no un producto del imperialismo norteamericano.

Unos aspectos estimulantes delanálisis de la historia económica que nos ofrece este trabajo es larecuperación de ciertos aspectos positivos del análisis económico marxista. Hasido un lugar común en muchos análisis históricos y económicos contemporáneosel rechazar el análisis marxista in toto. El producto de este análisistotalizador resulta en un proceso en el cual al querer cortar la maleza tambiénse descartan las plantas productivas. El concepto leninista de la faseimperialista como una fase cualitativamente diferente del capitalismo serecupera en algunos de sus aspectos.

Otro de los aspectos mejorlogrados por Ayala y Bernabé es la evaluación e interpretación de las basesideológicas del Aposibilismo@ de Luis Muñoz Marín. Los autoresnos proveen una explicación razonable del abandono de la independencia porparte de Muñoz Marín que problematiza la idea de que este traicionó el ideal.La realidad es que ya temprano en los años cuarenta Muñoz Marín había dejado decreer en la independencia como un proyecto posible. Contrario a Don PedroAlbizu Campos, Muñoz Marín no entendió que los Estados Unidos eran una naciónque no respondían a actitudes serviles de sus sujetos. Igual que losestadistas, los autonomistas asumieron una posición de servilismo frente alimperio que meramente re-afirmaba el paternalismo de los norteamericanos. Estaidea del Aimperialismo bobo@ que permea el pensamientomuñocista se ve claramente en la forma en que este presentaba un discurso en elcongreso y luego otro tipo de discurso en la isla. Esta falta de comprensión dela naturaleza del imperio norteamericano ha contribuido a perpetuar lasituación colonial de Puerto Rico.

También la figura de Don PedroAlbizu Campos recibe un análisis que rechaza los aspectos más negativos de loslibros de Luis Angel Ferrao y Gordon K. Lewis, donde ambos le aducen simpatíascon el fascismo. Se presentan documentosprimarios donde Albizu Campos rechaza el fascismo y el régimen nazi. Ayala y Bernabé contraponen la forma en queMuñoz Marín y Albizu Campos construyen al sujeto puertorriqueño. Para MuñozMarín, el Boricua es un ser trágico al cual hay que ayudar de formapaternalista, para Albizu Campos el puertorriqueño es un ser que quiere sersujeto de su historia. Pero tampoco este análisis deja de presentar losaspectos conservadores de su ideología. El Albizu Campos que emerge de estelibro es un ser real, ni estigmatizado ni convertido en una deidad.

Pero uno de los aspectos mejorlogrados por este trabajo es su certera crítica de la corriente post-modernistapuertorriqueña. Resaltaré dos críticas realizadas por Ayala y Bernabé y lascompararé al análisis que hizo la intelectual filipina Delia D. Aguilar deotras fuentes similares. Arturo Torrecilla y Carlos Gil, uno de los fundadoresde Postdata, escriben en sus textos que los sujetos de lamodernidad (proletarios) sustituyeronviejos mitos por nuevos mitos. El mito nacionalista fue substituido por el mitomarxista de la heroica clase trabajadora. La nueva visión de mundo Apost@ encuentra a un nuevo chivoexpiatorio para explicar las derrotas sufridas por algunos movimientos socialesen Puerto Rico. La huelga de los telefónicos se perdió por culpa de laizquierda, según los editores de Bordes, otro proyecto post-modernista.Para Juan Duchesne Winter la lucha de Vieques fue redundante, ya que la marinase fué en el periodo establecido por la orden ejecutiva de Clinton. DúchenseWinter reduce la lucha de los Viequenses a un espectáculo utilizado por lospopulares para aunar los sentimientos nacionalistas en su proyecto electoral.Este distorsionado análisis de la realidad puertorriqueña es producto de unavisión fragmentada de los procesos sociales. No conectar las dinámicaseconómicas y geopolíticas del imperio norteamericano con el acontecer social enPuerto Rico transforma el imperialismo en un Aimperialismo bobo.@ Si un presidente firmó unaorden ejecutiva entonces, )como pueden los boricuasasegurarse de que la palabra no se convierta en letra muerta? Este análisis ignoralos que ocurría tras bastidores en los círculos de poder norteamericanos paraimpedir el cierre de las bases navales en Puerto Rico. Los Estados Unidos hanfirmado mas de 300 tratados con las naciones indígenas de Estados Unidos, yfirmaron el Tratado de Guadalupe-Hidalgo en 1848 con México y han violado todosy cada uno de estos tratados. Lo que Duchesne Winter y los otrospost-modernistas proponían como estrategia era abstenerse de participar endichos procesos de apoyo.

Aguilar, en sus ensayo sobrela necesidad de recuperar el análisis clasista en los estudios étnicos revelacomo en los análisis post-modernistas de la conquista de las Filipinas setermina en la absurda conclusión que los Filipinos son cómplices con loscolonizadores y estigmatizan a los nacionalistas como Anacionalistas-coloniales.@ Con una series de frasesinter-conexas desaparece la líneadivisoria entre colonizador y colonizado. Todos somos opresores. De la misma forma Ramón Grosfoguel y JuanDuchesne Winter parecen sugerir que elimperialismo se confronta con una estrategia de Aseducción.A Botar por la borda la economía política delimperialismo los lleva a reducir los movimientos mundiales anti-imperialistas aestrategias donde se intenta extraer concesiones de un Aimperialismo bobo.@ Como describe Aguilar en sutexto sobre las Filipinas, cuando los post-modernistas descartan mirar losprocesos macros (políticos, económicos etc.) con los micros (cotidianidad,normas) terminan en un retorno a la alegóricacaverna de Platón. Kristin Hoganson es llevada por su análisis post-moderno aargumentar que la conquista de las Filipinas se dio porque los Estados Unidosquería recobrar su masculinidad perdida. Los blancos de clase media se habíanfeminizado por las comodidades de la vida moderna por lo que se hacia necesariollevarlos a las maniguas filipinas para Are-masculinizarlos.@

Finalmente, Ayala y Bernabésugieren una revisión a la estrategia de los Aestadistas radicales@ y en particular a lapropuesta de Grosfoguel de una lucha concertada con los movimientos socialesnorteamericanos para defender los derechos democráticos de los boricuas encamino a la estadidad. Los autores deesta historia mantienen un tono derespeto intelectual a las ideas que critican en su texto. Incluyendo cuando dicen que hay aspectosadmirables en la propuesta de Grosfoguel de Aresistir la privatizaciónneoliberal y los cortes en las transferencias federales . . . Cualquierdescolonización de Puerto Rico debe demandar una Aindemnización histórica@ de los Estados Unidos parareconstruir la economía de Puerto Rico . . . A y donde sugiere alianzas conlos movimientos sociales en los Estados Unidos. Lamentablemente no hay aspectosadmirables en esta propuesta, excepto que es una posición más progresista que laque han asumido otros post-modernistas, como Dúchense Winter que inicialmenteterminaron apoyando la invasión de Afganistán. Por lo menos se reconoce parcialmente el contexto de la economíapolítica del imperio. Pero la realidades que lo único novedoso de la propuesta de los Aradicales estadistas@ es que hablan de luchar enconcierto con los movimientos sociales en los Estados Unidos para lograr laestadidad. Los independentistas puertorriqueños, con sus altas y sus bajassiempre han tratado (a veces con menos ganas o posibilidades que en otrasocasiones) de concertar sus luchas, no solo con los movimientos sociales en elimperio, pero también a través del mundo. Aquí no hay nada nuevo.

Lamentablemente, la realidades que el aspecto racializado de la formación social norteamericana afecta aúna los grupos progresistas norteamericanos. El daltonismo racial que afecta lasociedad norteamericana también afecta la óptica de los movimientos socialesestadounidenses. La creciente conciencia sobre el carácter imperial de losEstados Unidos no incluye una creciente conciencia sobre el caso colonial dePuerto Rico. Puerto Rico es aun invisible (por razones muy complejas) para losliberales y la izquierda norteamericana. El creciente movimientoanti-inmigrante enfrenta una creciente xenofobia y racismo representado en lasnumerosas leyes locales que estigmatizan a los inmigrantes. También, elracismo, representado por el reciente caso de los seis jóvenes negroscriminalizados en Jena, Louisiana indica que la clase dominante esta entrandoen una etapa de movilización. La reciente decisión de la corte suprema el 28 dejunio del 2007, que debilito la decisión anti-segregación de Brown v. Brown de1954 augura un nuevo periodo de lucha. Pero concertar alianzas con los movimientossociales que están emergiendo para pedir la estadidad seriacontradictorio. Los profesores Ayala yBernabé nos demuestran que a veces el camino hacia el futuro implica recordardonde estuvimos. Este trabajo será un clásico en la historiográfica puertorriqueña.Esperamos que su edición en español (UPR) salga pronto.

Policy Brief on Racialization of Latino and Asian Students

2011-12-03T10:41:00.001-08:00

National Education Association Issue Policy Brief Racialization

Colleagues Dr. Jose F. Moreno, Dr. John N. Tsuchida and myself produced this policy brief in 2009 for the NEA. We also produced a training module and a power point presentation. My McNair mentee, Ms. Rosario Torres is currently utilizing this framework to look at racialization of Latinos in K-12 in California.

Las Carpetas Documentary on the files created by the surveillance of Puerto Rican pro independence activists. Previewed in Festival de Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano in Cuba.

2011-11-05T08:49:00.000-07:00

Racialization of Hispanic and Asian Students in the Educational System

2011-08-01T09:41:00.000-07:00

(Only text is included charts and graphics are not, if interested in this article as a PDF file contact me at rodrigvm@cox.net or you can download from here: http://www.divshare.com/download/15429021-fe8)

Racialization of Hispanic and Asian Students in the Educational System: Training Administrators, Teachers and Parents for Policy Changes

by

Victor M. Rodriguez Domínguez, John N. Tsuchida and Jose F. Moreno
California State University, Long Beach

(Policy Brief Written for the NEA, 2009)

INTRODUCTION

Racialization is the social and historical process of assigning individuals and groups a racial identity and social status (Rodriguez, 2007). The creation of a racial identity and social status includes a series of political processes which construct racial meanings, shape the identities of individuals and groups, and place them into positions of dominance or the dominated. The processes of racialization are always legitimized through ideologies and operate in the various institutional systems/arrangements that are the foundation of our society. In the economic arena, such systems/arrangements lead to stark differences in income on the basis of race, and cause lopsided incarceration rates of people of color in the criminal justice system. A strategic pillar of our society, the educational system has as one of its major latent functions, the perpetuation of a system based on inequality. The educational system historically has been part of our nation-building processes and functioned as the place where our national ideologies are inculcated and disseminated.

Our national ideology and identity are rooted in notions about racial differences, and about inferiority and superiority. We learn which cultural patterns and norms define who we are, and dictate how we understand the world and how we relate with one another. These lessons are taught in explicit and implicit ways; we learn them through narratives and practices perpetuated in the educational institutions where we teach and learn. The way we fund public education and the glaring inequities that exist between and within school districts convey a powerful message to students who are attending well financed and inadequately funded schools about their status in society. The distortions, absences and inadequate coverage of the history and culture of Hispanics, African Americans and Asian Americans in the educational offerings constitute a hidden curriculum that teaches students whose history and contributions are really important in defining who we are as a nation.

Classroom dynamics and pedagogical practices tend to reinforce wittingly or unwittingly racial ideologies by clearly evidencing the concrete reality of a racial hierarchy in the classroom. The way students of color are disciplined, often with racially diverse consequences, tends to legitimate culturally racialized notions of how violent or unruly some racial groups are in contrast with the majority group. Furthermore, the ways parents, teachers and administrators interact with each other indicate to children which individuals and groups are dominant and powerful in society. The absence of diverse teachers and administrators portends a vision of our present and future racially stratified society where students of color do not seem to fare well. The role of education in the racialization process has deep roots in our history and requires meaningful changes in institutional policy and culture.

GENEALOGY OF THE RACIALIZING FUNCTION OF EDUCATION
European immigrants who came to the shores of what today is the United States encountered the indigenous people and developed notions of difference that created hierarchical frameworks of racial and cultural inferiority and superiority. These ideas would further develop and dictate how decisions would be made as to who were worthy of inclusion in civil society and who were not. Education was an important tool that delineated the boundaries for Euro-Americans and people of color, as well as for citizens and non-citizens. Indigenous people were initially excluded from education and society, and it was not until 1924, when the Snyder Act (43 Statutes-at-Large 253, ante, 420) was enacted to grant them citizenship in the United States. Enslaved Africans were also excluded from education and citizenship; they were prohibited from becoming U.S. citizens until the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1868.

Although American-born Asians automatically became U.S. citizens under the Fourteenth Amendment, Asian immigrants had long been denied the right of naturalization until the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 (66 Statutes-at-Large 163) made all foreign-born Asians eligible for naturalization after meeting residency requirements. However, the U.S. Congress had previously accorded the privileges of naturalization to the Chinese in 1943 (Chinese Exclusion Repeal Act of 1943, 57 Statutes-at-Large 600), and to the Filipinos and Asian Indians in 1946 (Luce-Celler Act of 1946, 60 Statutes-at-Large 416), due to their countries’ military alliance with the United States during World War II. The denial of naturalization rights to alien Chinese and Japanese for 61 years and 30 years, respectively, coupled with their physical differences and the media misrepresentations of Asian Americans as a whole, was no doubt responsible for many White Americans mistaking or misidentifying U.S.-born Asian Americans as foreign-born.

A White waitress in a Rochester, Minnesota, restaurant automatically presumed a Sansei (a third-generation Japanese American) customer to be foreign-born and commended him on his “good English.” This customer was a lawyer born and raised in that state and educated at the University of Minnesota Law School, and naturally spoke impeccable English. An immigration inspector at the U.S.-Canadian border harassed another Minnesota lawyer of Japanese ancestry who was returning from his short trip to Toronto in the mid-1980s, and almost denied him reentry into the United States, because he did not have his passport. This lawyer only had his driver’s license from Minnesota, which then was a perfectly acceptable official document for U.S. citizens making brief trips to Canada and returning to the United States. This Sansei lawyer was unable to reenter his own country until the immigration officer received a faxed copy of his passport. Even former three-term U.S. Senator Spark Matsunaga was not immune from such occasional annoyances. At a State Department reception in 1981 in honor of Japanese diplomats, then Secretary of State Alexander Haig “welcomed” Senator Matsunaga to the United States and asked him: “How are you enjoying your stay in our country?” The Senator from Hawaii deliberately replied in pigeon English: “Secretary Haig, I happened to be one of the Senators who confirmed your appointment as Secretary of State.” One can easily imagine Secretary Haig’s embarrassment. The late Representative Robert Matsui, a 13-term Member of Congress from California, once stated that although every guard on Capitol Hill knew who he was, once he was outside the Congressional buildings, most people simply assumed him to be a Japanese national and treated him as such. Racialization of Asian Americans as foreign-born is a continuous problem which could occasionally cause them various degrees of annoyance and inconvenience in schools, employment, government offices, and commercial public places.

Hispanics, particularly people of Mexican descent, experienced a different relationship with the United States. After the Mexican American War of 1846-48, close to 100,000 Mexicans became U.S. citizens as a result of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which also ceded more than 500,000 square miles of Mexican national territory to the United States. While education, when available, was not denied to the new citizens of Mexican descent, increasingly a system that segregated Mexican students from their white counterparts became the educational norm. In Orange County, California, for example, some small school districts segregated Mexican American students from white public schools through the late 1940s, allegedly by reason of their limited English proficiency. Led by Gonzalo Mendez, a group of Mexican parents filed in 1945 a class action in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, against the Westminster, Garden Grove and El Modeno School Districts, and the Santa Ana city schools, because their children were required to attend segregated schools allegedly on account of their limited English proficiency. The court held in 1946 that such segregation was prohibited by California’s Constitution and Education Code (Mendez et al. v. Westminster School District of Orange County et al., 64 F. Supp. 544 [1946]). When the school districts appealed, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court decision, holding that “respondents have violated the federal law as provided in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution by depriving them of liberty and property without due process of law and by denying to them the equal protection of the laws (Westminster School District of Orange County et al. v. Mendez et al., 161 F.2nd 774 [1947]).” Severn years prior to the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the Mendez case invalidated all school segregation throughout the Ninth Circuit Court States of Alaska, Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington, as well as the Territory of Hawaii.

Asian students were also segregated from public schools for a long time, beginning in 1860 when California excluded Asians, Blacks and American Indians from public schools (Ancheta, 1998; Chen, 1982). Although Mendez had direct impact on the outcome of Brown, Chinese Americans in Mississippi had challenged, albeit unsuccessfully, the unconstitutionality of the “separate but equal” doctrine two decades earlier. Article 8, §207 of the Mississippi Constitution of 1890 provided: “Separate schools shall be maintained for children of the white and colored races.” Legally classified as “colored,” Chinese immigrants’ U.S.-born children were barred from attending Mississippi’s public schools.
Gong Lum was a prosperous Chinese grocer in Rosedale, Mississippi. When his nine-year-old daughter Martha was not allowed to attend a public elementary school in the Rosedale Consolidated High School District 1924, Lum filed a petition in the State Circuit Court of Mississippi for the First Judicial District of Bolivar County, seeking a writ of mandamus to force the school district to admit his daughter (Loewen, 1971). Although the trial court issued a writ of mandamus, ordering the school to admit Martha (Rice v. Gong Lum, 139 Miss.760, 104 So. 105), the Supreme Court of Mississippi overturned the lower court’s decision, holding that Article 8, §207 of the state Constitution required Martha to attend a school for colored races (Rice v. Gong Lum, 139 Miss.760 [1925], 104 So. 105). Undaunted by the Mississippi Supreme Court decision, Lum appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which addressed the issue of whether Mississippi accorded Martha the equal protection of the laws by giving her the opportunity to attend a segregated school. In affirming the Mississippi Supreme Court’s decision, the U.S. Supreme Court relied on Plessy v. Ferguson (163 U.S. 537 [1896]) which established the doctrine of “separate but equal,” and Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education (175 U.S. 528 [1899]) which held that “the education of the people in schools maintained by state taxation is a matter belonging to the respective states” (Lum v. Rice, 275 U.S. 78 [1927]). After losing the legal challenge, the Lum family relocated to Elaine, Arkansas, to enable their daughters to attend a White public school. Some Chinese families with school-age children moved to Memphis, and others bid farewell to the South once and for all. Lum v. Rice shows that Chinese Americans, though an extremely small ethnic group in the United States before World War II, also struggled courageously to abolish school segregation in the pre-Brown era. The Lum case was a precursor to Lau v. Nichols (414 U.S. 563 [1974]), a U.S. Supreme Court decision leading to the creation of bilingual education across the country.

While the manifest function of the educational system is providing the knowledge and skills necessary for the full participation of citizens in a democratic society, more often than not, education became an instrument that created a social hierarchy between inferior and superior citizens within a racially stratified society. Public schools in the nineteenth century became institutional arrangements that would perpetuate the dominance of Anglo-Saxon protestant culture and world views (Spring, 2006). Native Americans were sent to boarding schools where they were forced to assimilate (Spring, 2006). Chinese in California, particularly in San Francisco, were legally required to attend Oriental Schools until the Mendez case ended de jure school segregation across the Western States. African Americans, particularly in the wake of Plessey v. Ferguson of 1896, were relegated to segregated and inferior schools throughout the nation. Hispanics, especially Mexicans, began to be subjected to “Americanization” programs and attendance at “Mexican Schools” which developed as Mexican immigration began to rise in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century (Gonzalez, 1990). These Americanization programs were not designed to create upwardly mobile citizens but were molding, through vocational and civic instruction, a docile and domesticated labor force. These educational efforts were legitimated by the “Mexican problem ideology” which assumed that Mexicans were clannish, inassimilable, passive, fatalistic and violent and therefore unable to be equal to Whites (Gonzalez, 1990). The latent outcome of all of these educational efforts with students of color resulted in the internalization of a sense of inferiority and a racial identity that precluded them from full participation as citizens of this nation. Unfortunately, while much progress was achieved during the Civil Rights Movement, the role and latent function of the educational system has not been fundamentally transformed.

THE PERSISTENCE OF RACIALIZING IDEOLOGIES
Race continues to be the core organizing principle in U.S. society; this is most evident in the educational system. During the Civil Rights Movement, the struggles of African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans and Asian Americans gained the moral high ground and led to a national consensus regarding the need for educational reform. In the post-Civil Rights Movement period, the legal, political and pedagogical discourse around race has shifted dramatically. This new element that is shaping how we address legal, political and pedagogical issues around race is called by some scholars the “color-blind ideology” (Bonilla-Silva, 2003).

This “color-blind” ideology is the outcome of major societal changes that took place since the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education held school segregation unconstitutional and abolished the doctrine of “separate but equal.” This historic decision, coupled with the political and grassroots struggles of communities of color to enhance access to democratic rights, provided a platform for a series of laws enacted by Congress which provided a formal framework for the implementation of liberal ideals about racial justice. However, the de-mobilization of the Civil Rights Movement, the major social and economic changes that transformed the nature of our economic system, and the demographic changes in the racial and ethnic composition of the nation, have created the illusion that we have now become an inclusive society. The election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States and his inclusion in his cabinet of three Asian Americans (Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, and Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke), two Hispanics (Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis and Secretary of the Interior Kenneth Salazar), and an African American (Attorney General Erick Holder) may have added further credence to the popular belief that American society has become more democratic and inclusive.

It is within this context that this ideology has taken the principles of liberal thinking (work ethic, meritocracy, equal opportunity and individualism, etc.) and turned them into lenses to understand, naturalize or dismiss the persistent inequities that pervade our educational system. Today, those groups in positions of social, cultural and political dominance in our society fail to see race as a factor in the inequities that plague the nation’s educational system. The discourse of racial justice is considered an anachronism given the legal and discursive efforts during the last decades to address racial inequality (Steinberg, 1995). Therefore, elements of traditional liberalism are used today to discount race from being a factor in the inequities and have guided educational policies that fail to address the persistence of racial inequity. Instead, racial inequality is seen as the outcome of individual or group deficiencies that can be remedied if individuals and groups adopt the dominant culture.

This perspective is rooted in the “culture of poverty” theories that became dominant in the 1980s, and still persist today in many liberal attempts to address economic and racial inequalities. This new form of discourse encompasses a recurrent framework that blames the victim and leaves policies, organizational patterns and structures, economic conditions, and residential patterns excluded from any rigorous, critical examination. This framework is still the dominant perspective being used to understand the challenges of educational achievement and poverty among Hispanics, Asian Americans, and other children of color. In some educational systems around the nation, frameworks for understanding poverty, like the popular Ruby Payne model, are woven together with efforts to address the gap in educational achievement of students of color (Payne, 2001). These “new” perspectives, like those of the past, tend to make it difficult for us to accurately diagnose the root causes of the educational achievement gap, thereby further contributing to the perpetuation of the problem (Gorski, 2005, 2007, 2008). This is particularly troublesome given the large numbers of students of color who attend schools with a higher percentage of students from low socio-economic backgrounds.

One of the most damaging effects of these ideologies and their pedagogical practices is that like all ideologies, they become powerful instruments that make the process of racialization invisible to policy makers and practitioners (Gorski, 2007). Its dominance in contemporary educational systems requires sustained efforts to educate and organize faculty, administrators and parents in order to challenge its hegemony (Schoefield, 2001). This effort is even more urgent today as we face the most dramatic demographic change this nation has ever experienced in its history since the beginning of European immigration. This is the time for education to be about truth and not about the building of myths.

CHANGING DEMOGRAPHICS OF YOUNG PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES
Challenging the role of racialization processes in the educational system becomes more urgent as the nation transitions to the most dramatic changes in the racial make-up of its population in the 21st century. Within the next three decades, the nation will become, for the first time since the establishment of the republic, a country where half of its residents will trace their ancestries not to Europe, but to Africa, Asia, Latin America and to its indigenous populations.

Figure 1 Table 6: Percent of the Projected Population by Race and Hispanic Origin for the U.S. Population Division, U.S. Census Bureau, 2008

As Figure 1 indicates, by 2040, close to half of all Americans will not be of Anglo-Saxon descent. While we do not have any historical experience from which to draw on to fully interpret what this will mean, it is clear that given the salience of race and racialization in the nation’s public school systems, there is an urgent need to implement policies to reduce their negative consequences. If these consequences impacted the educational aspirations of numerically small populations decades ago, this time around they will determine the possibilities of further social and economic development for the entire nation. The United States cannot afford to exclude more than half of its population from the educational development that is necessary in a competitive and globalized economy and society.

The dramatic transformation in the racial make-up of the nation will be much more pronounced in the population under the age of 18. By the year 2030, racial and ethnic minorities will make up more than half of the U.S. population under 18. This is a trend that is also beginning to take place in public school systems throughout the nation. In Figure 2 and Figure 3, the dramatic transformation of the racial make-up in K-12 from 1972 through 2006 illustrates and portends the dramatic changes that the nation’s public schools will face in the next few decades.

Figure 2 Percentage of racial/ethnic minorities enrolled in public schools from kindergarten to high school, 1972-2006. (Planty et al, 2008)

Figure 3 Percentage of racial/ethnic minorities enrolled in public schools from kindergarten to high school, 1972-2006. (Planty et al, 2008)

A significant proportion of the rise of students of color is due to the dramatic rise in the Hispanic student population in the public school system. While representing only 6 per cent of all students in the system in 1972, Hispanics accounted for 20 per cent by 2006 (Planty, et al., 2008 10). This growth occurred in all regions of the United States, although the rate of increase varied by state and region. In the West, for example, students of color comprised 55 per cent of public school students, whereas Whites represented 45 per cent (Planty, et al., 2008 10). Recently (2009), the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute of California released an analysis of national data on school enrollment by race and ethnicity. According to the report, in nine of the nation’s largest cities a majority or a nearly half of students enrolled in first grade are Hispanic.

Policy and practice changes in the educational system will be impacting a large segment of the public school student population, which nationally will be composed of predominantly racial and ethnic minority students. If policies are not developed to address the challenges that racialization poses to students of color, the nation’s ability to enhance educational and economic opportunities for all Americans might be imperiled. Racialization, as studies suggest, is an important barrier in the academic achievement of students of color. This is particularly troublesome in the experience of Asian and Hispanic children.

RACIAL INEQUALITIES IN THE PUBLIC EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM
Significant social, economic and achievement gaps exist between Whites and the various racial and ethnic minorities who are rapidly becoming the majority of the student enrollment in our public educational system. In economic terms, in 2005-06, larger percentages of Hispanic, African Americans and Native American/Alaskan Native students attended schools that were considered “high-poverty.” These are schools where 75 per cent of the students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch (Planty, et al., 2008 ix). This is much higher than the percentage for White and Asian American students. With $64,200, Asian Americans collectively had the highest median household income in 2006 of all ethnic groups in the United States, compared to $50,700 for White households. However, the poverty rate for Asian Americans was 10.3 per cent, whereas the corresponding rate was 8.2 percent for non-Hispanic Whites (U.S. Census Bureau News, 2007). Many students from Asian American families in poverty attended school in high-poverty, high-crime areas.

In terms of the funding of education, federal and state funding has increased while local sources (such as property taxes) have decreased. The percentage of total revenues from local sources decreased from 47 per cent to 44 per cent. In some areas which have greater concentrations of Hispanics, this decrease is more pronounced than in other regions. Although the property taxes earmarked for school districts decreased in the West, they increased in all other regions (Planty, et al., 2008 166). These structural inequalities, coupled with institutionalized racialization practices within schools, lead to a significant achievement gap for students of color.

Hispanics demonstrate some of the lowest educational outcomes, whereas Asians/Pacific Islanders exhibit more positive indicators. In 2006, 49 percent of Asian Americans 25 years and older had bachelor’s degrees, compared to 27 per cent for all Americans in the same age bracket. However, the degree of educational attainment differed widely among Asian ethnic groups. For example, 69 per cent of Asian Indians had college degrees, as opposed to 26 percent of Vietnamese Americans (UCLA: 2008 Statistical Portrait of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Other Pacific Islanders). Although Cambodians, Laotians and Hmong are educationally more disadvantaged as newer refugee/immigrant groups, the lack of current disaggregated data makes it difficult to accurately evaluate the status of their educational attainment.

Figure 3 KewalRamani et al, 2007, p. 122

The proportion of adults (25 years and older) who have achieved a high school education has increased from 1990 to 2005, but intra-racial and ethnic differences are stark. While Hispanics have increased their high school completion rate during this period from 51 per cent to 58 per cent, unlike Blacks they have not narrowed their achievement gap with Whites (KewalRamani et al., 2007). In 2005, the gap between Hispanics and Whites was 32 percentage points, compared to 31 percentage points in 1990 (KewalRamani et al., 2007). According to the same study, as of 2005, only 11 per cent of young Hispanics (25 to 29 years of age) had completed a four-year college education, compared with close to 28 percent of all young adults in the United States who had bachelor’s degrees.

The racial and ethnic differences in the dropout rate among the 16- to 24-year-old cohort continue to be a serious problem in the educational system. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey of 2005, 7.2 per cent of Whites were high school dropouts, in comparison to the corresponding figures of 22.8 per cent for Hispanics, 11.6 per cent for African Americans, and 3.5 per cent for Asians.

Figure 4 Percentage of 16-24 year-olds who were high school dropouts by nativity and ethnicity ACS, 2005

When Hispanic statistics are disaggregated, they point to significant differences among Hispanic sub-groups, and between the native-born and foreign-born groups. Mexican American youth had a 25.5 per cent dropout rate, while 16.9 percent of Puerto Ricans and 32.6 percent of Central American youth were dropouts. These differences are even starker when nativity is factored in. For example, only 13.8 per cent of native-born Mexican American youth were dropouts, whereas the corresponding figure for foreign-born Mexicans was 41.9 per cent. Puerto Rican data is not disaggregated by nativity since migrants from Puerto Rico are not technically “foreign-born.”

In addition to the challenge that dropping out has for various youth groups of color, the context of their communities presents an additional difficulty that at times leads to the stigmatization of students of color. Such a problem is particularly evident in the challenge and safety issues that gangs and gang violence present for students of color. This is another dimension of the experience of students of color that is also shaped by their race and ethnic background. The National Crime Victimization Survey of 2005 indicated that among youth between the ages of 12 and 18 years, 38.4 per cent of Hispanics, 36.6 per cent of African Americans, and 16.6 of Whites reported that gangs were present at school during the previous six months. The percentages vary significantly depending on the neighborhood context with inner city students of color experiencing rates more than 40 per cent (National Crime Victimization Survey, 2005). With respect to realistic fear for their safety, furthermore, 10 per cent of Hispanic students and 9 per cent of African American can students reported in 2005 that they were afraid of being physically harmed at school, in comparison with only 4 per cent of White students (Indicators of School Crime and Safety, 2007).

THE CONTINUING CHALLENGE OF SEGREGATION
Students of color face another challenge that is still pervasive in the nation’s schools. The persistence of segregation is a gnawing problem that erodes the possibilities for qualitative change in the educational system. Hispanic and African American students are more likely to attend segregated schools. These schools tend to have fewer resources, less funding, and higher rates of teacher turnover. In the 2005-06 academic year, while 23 per cent of all schools in the nation had 75 per cent or more students of color, 56 per cent of Hispanics and 50 per cent of African Americans attended such “segregated” schools (Planty, et al., 2008 50). While the rate of segregation is lower for Asian/Pacific Islander students than for Blacks or Hispanics, it is still higher than for Whites. Hispanics, according to the work of Gary Orfield (2004), are the most segregated group in the educational system.

In June 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 et al. (Nos. 05-908 and 05-915) severely set back the progress made by Brown v. Board of Education. In that case, the Seattle School District and the Jefferson County District, Kentucky developed student assignment plans based on “white or non-white” and “black or other,” respectively, to maintain racial balance among their schools. The parents of students in these districts filed suits, on the grounds that it was a violation of the equal protection clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to assign students solely on the basis of their race. In ruling in favor of the parents, the Supreme Court distinguished these reassignment cases from Grutter v. Bollinger (539 U.S. 306 [2003]). The Court concluded that in Grutter, the University of Michigan Law School’s “narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body” is constitutional “in the context of higher education,” but that the school districts’ student assignment plans based on “a binary conception of race” are designed only to achieve “racial balance, an objective this Court has repeatedly condemned as illegitimate (Community Schools v. Seattle School District [Nos. 05-908 and 05-915]).” In the wake of the Supreme Court’s regressive decision, the process of de facto school segregation will continue unchecked and unrectified for many years to come.

LACK OF DIVERSITY AMONG FACULTY
For example, Hispanics and Asians/Pacific Islanders share the challenge of being in school systems which lack teachers of color or staff. A little more than 44 per cent of the nation’s schools do not have teachers of color or staff (Irvine, 2003). Close to 83 per cent of all teachers in K-12 are White, only 7.9 per cent are African American, and 6.2 per cent are Hispanic (Snyder, 2008 22). Even though Asian American students account for 4.3 per cent of K-12 students, Asian American teachers represent only 1.8 per cent of the faculty (Klein, 2007 507). The lack of teachers who are culturally competent has serious consequences on the educational experiences of students. It impacts their achievement and cognitive development. Furthermore, the lack of cultural competence and awareness of the role of schools in the racialization process leads to problems in the development of the students’ self-concept and attitudes. The absence or scarcity of same-race teachers not only impedes the diversification of faculty, but also deprives ethnic minority students of various school enhancement benefits, and above all, role models to emulate (Klein, 2007).

Many teachers have been trained to uncritically accept color-blind pedagogies and practices, and have unknowingly given validity and meaning to the racialization processes that devalue the culture, perspectives, values and world views, which students from different cultures bring to the classroom. Instead of utilizing these as resources for the enrichment and the broadening of perspectives, many teachers ignore them, thereby sending a subtle but powerful message that the cultures and experiences of students of color are not worthy. It is not a coincidence that these students become silenced or that they begin to cope by internalizing oppositional identities which tend to reproduce inequality and limit the achievement of some groups of students of color (Tatum, 1997; Valenzuela, 1999). Moreover, the lack of cultural competence discourages parents from actively participating as advocates and supporters of their children’s education.

Hispanics and Asians/Pacific Islanders have the highest percentage of students who speak other languages than English at home. Approximately 2.5 million people five years and older regularly speak Chinese at home; Chinese is the second most widely spoken non-English language in the United States. Furthermore, each of the other three Asian languages―Tagalog, Vietnamese, and Korean―is spoken at home by over one million people (UCLA: 2008 Statistical Portrait of Asian Americans). The lack of translators or bilingual teachers and staff dissuades parents from participating in teacher/parent conferences, PTA’s, and school board meetings. In the end, parents are blamed for the inadequacy of school systems in providing the resources needed to incorporate the diversity of students and parents in our educational midst.

LOCAL LEVEL
What is often most difficult to process in a color-blind ideological paradigm is the development of data, specifically, quantitative data that may suggest the outcomes of a racialized schooling environment. Indeed, as school districts and state systems increasingly develop a rhetoric of concern and focus for the “achievement gap” and racial disparities in outcomes, they often confound the gap as a product of language barriers, poverty, negative neighborhood influences, and poor parenting skills or absentee parents. Educators, along with policymakers and the general public, tend to take a view that schools’ low achievement levels are concentrated in geographic locations that are poverty-stricken or economically marginalized and thus attribute the “achievement gap” as a function of class. What happens however when we analyze data and achievement patterns within a school site? How might we explain racial/ethnic disparities within a school? Typically data is produced that displays racial/ethnic outcomes on one chart and then data is displayed on academic outcomes for students who are socio-economically disadvantaged on another chart, and still further we then display a chart for outcomes for English Language Learners. In other words, we compartmentalize “deficits.” In order to understand how racialization may be playing out in schools, one must analyze data across these dimensions as a means of best framing and thus exploring the embedded nature of a racialized school environment.

For example, Figure 5 below displays data from a large urban district in California on the percentage of students who graduate having completed a college-prep curriculum known as the A-G Requirements in California. These courses are required by the University of California and California State University for admissions eligibility. By displaying data by race/ethnicity AND socioeconomic background (we use the measure of free/reduced lunch program as districts do not collect data on family income), we can see that there are disparate outcomes by race/ethnicity AND class. While we can see disparities across racial/ethnic groups and across “class” categories, it is striking to note that a smaller proportion of African American and Hispanic students who are NOT on free/reduced lunch complete the college-prep sequence than all other students including White and Asian American students. Such district-wide disparities are often explained as a function of housing segregation patterns, which then concentrate low-income and minority families in underresourced neighborhood schools.

Figure 5
*Note: Economic background based on Participation in Federal Free/Reduced Lunch Program. Low income = Yes; Non-Low Income = No

The realities of the negative impacts of housing segregation (themselves a function of racialized housing covenants) are most certainly at play in these district-wide data. However, when we examine College-Prep outcomes within a school site the same pattern holds true. Figure 6 displays similar disparities across race/ethnicity and economic background. While this school is a highly racially/ethnically diverse school, with no single group exceeding 30% of the student body, these data certainly suggest that there are processes that intersect race/ethnicity and class which result in disparate outcomes for Hispanic students. Indeed, while 34% of Non-Low Income Hispanic students complete the College-Prep sequence, over 44%, 37% and 50% of White, Asian American and Filipino students who are Low-Income complete the College-Prep sequence.

Figure 6. California High School A-G College Prep Completers by Race/Ethnicity and *Economic Background

*Note: Economic background based on Participation in Federal Free/Reduced Lunch Program. Low income = Yes; Non-Low Income = No

While limited in what can be concluded from this data, there is a developing body of research which suggests that school sites that may appear “desegregated” in their student body make-up, the curriculum and types of courses within the school are highly segregated by race/ethnicity as well as income. While we have known for decades about the curricular tracking that has occurred in schools, disparities that cut across race/ethnicity and economic background are little understood. So, how might we explain a finding that non-low income Latino students are faring worse than low income White and Asian American students?

Analyzing Mathematics data from the National Assessment of Education Progress, the Nation’s Report Card under President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law, Lubienski (2003) found that “differences in [instructional] practice are related to students’ race as well as their SES, with high-SES black students likely to encounter many of the practices that low-SES students generally encounter. This provides evidence that, almost 50 years after Brown v Board of Education, schools continue to employ unequal educational practices with students on the basis of race, in addition to SES.” (pg. 28) In her analysis, Lubienski found that teachers tended to utilize more rudimentary and basic skills teaching practices with Black students regardless of SES, while there was less use of such methods and for shorter periods of time for White students. In short, a racialized practice wherein expectations, however benevolent, were shaped by the ascription of Black students as a group needing more basic emphases by their teachers, led to lower achievement levels for Black students across SES.

Conversely, the opposite may hold true for Asian American students vis-à-vis classroom practices. Asian Americans are often perceived as the “model minority,” a mythology which pervades educator beliefs about this ethnic group. Consequently, educators may tend to racialize Asian Americans as inherently intelligent and/or culturally superior academically and thus needing greater academically challenging work, thereby further raising teacher expectations. Greater teacher expectations, fed by the racialization of Asian Americans as more studious and committed to their schooling, may then lead to greater academic outcomes and placement in college prep course sequences. While the data for this type of analysis is quite limited, analysis of California High School Exit passage rates shows a similar pattern of Non-Low income Latino students (and Black students) passing at a lower rate than low-income Asian American and White students across major urban districts in California. Additionally, scholars have noted similar disparities across race/ethnicity and SES in SAT and other standardized test scores.
The lesson from these descriptive data at a local level is that the framework of racialization can help educators frame their analytic questions in such a way as to not be dismissive of racialized processes. Rather such analyses can move them away from a “color-blind” ideological premise that a Ruby Payne framework or liberal ideologies might otherwise lead them towards. Therefore, utilizing disaggregated local-level achievement data by race/ethnicity and economic background and then intersecting these data points can lead to powerful findings about the extent to which racialization may be playing out within a district and school sites. These data may also suggest that racialization works in the interest of some students while simultaneously working against others. With racialization permeating our public education, we need to explore ways in which a framework of racialization can help us understand disparities in outcomes, challenges and successes within our school systems.

FOCUSED AREAS OF CONCERN
There are a number of areas where research indicates that racialization has negative consequences in the public school system. We will examine each one briefly and suggest some policies to address some aspects of these challenges in order to begin a process of change to improve the quality of education for all students.

Classroom Pedagogy and Management
Schofield’s (2001) classic study indicates that a color-blind perspective and practice leads to an atmosphere where racist stereotypes are not challenged and thus become embedded in the world views of many students. Moreover, a color-blind ideology and practice impacts how educational systems deal with the disciplining of children. Amanda Lewis’ work, Race in the Schoolyard: Negotiating the Color-Line in Classrooms and Communities (2003), clearly illustrates how the school can contribute to the creation of criminalized stereotypes which lead to the more severe disciplining and suspension of members of some racial groups than others. Sagar and Schofield (1980) also illustrate in an exercise how the same behavior is evaluated and racialized in different ways, depending on the race of the actor. Such disparate and arbitrary evaluation has been highlighted as a major factor in the significant difference in the discipline rates of Hispanics and African American children as compared to White children. It is not surprising that the incarceration rate of Hispanic youth, particularly males, is rapidly increasing in the nation.

The pervasiveness of color-blind ideology in the classroom perpetuates and reproduces the racialized narratives all children have learned through the process of racialization. According to Bonilla-Silva (2003), there are four basic frames that illustrate the role of this ideology.
• Frame 1: Minimization of the existence of racial disparity (normalizing differences)
In the classroom, this is manifested by the lack of knowledge, beyond a mythologized version of U.S. history, of how the system of race was created. In the curriculum, a series of myths are taught in social science and history that obscure rather than reveal the complex origin of the social construction of race in the United States. This leads to a world view that normalizes racial inequality and ascribes poverty, lack of educational achievement, exclusively to individual faults and weaknesses (Lewis, 2003 24). Also, there is a reluctance to engage in the classroom in the understanding and discussion of issues of difference and racial disparities.
• Frame 2: Blaming the pathology of non-White cultures (modern version of culture of poverty theory) for inequality
One of the main justifications for the assimilation model in our educational system is the assumption that the cultures of communities of color are an obstacle and a cause of the social, economic and educational disparities that impact these communities. Native Americans were sent to boarding schools, away from their parents in order to assimilate them into the dominant culture. A similar process took place in the Southwest with Mexican children who in many instances were placed in segregated schools and were provided vocational instruction. Similar efforts were also applied in Puerto Rico with the imposition of English as the language of instruction, the hiring of U.S. English-speaking teachers, and the use of textbooks which distorted the history, culture and memory of Puerto Rican children.
• Frame 3: Racial phenomenon is “natural” (people of color like to self-segregate; therefore segregation occurs.
Another way the classroom can serve as an affirmation of a color-blind ideology is to make no efforts to train teachers about the underlying reasons for social, psychological, and developmental processes that lead students, especially adolescents, to “self-segregate.” The work of Tatum (1997) has illustrated how these processes are not “natural” but part of socio-psychological processes of development in a racialized society. Also, something not clearly understood is how “oppositional” cultures are created by youth as a way of coping with their racialized experiences (Lopez and Stanton, 2001; Suarez-Orozco, 2000). Unfortunately, these oppositional cultures are assumed to be “natural,” but in reality they are means of resisting a racialized environment in ways that are unfortunately self-destructive. Peer groups tend to reinforce this oppositional culture when they stigmatize their fellow students of color who try to excel in school by labeling them as “acting White.”
• Frame 4: Upholding abstractly the ideals of equality and meritocracy without grounding them. Absolutist view that when a group is dominant or privileged it always “deserved” it.
This frame tends to assume that all children are on a level playing field and that society offers equal opportunity to all; therefore, failure and lack of success is not due to context, structures or policies but to the inability of children of color and their families to concretely live out the core values of the dominant culture. Again, the lack of historical context and knowledge, and the lack of culturally competent teachers that could help process racializing events in the classroom cause children of color to internalize inferiority and White children to internalize superiority. These scripts then become self-fulfilling prophecies of success and failure for many children (Loewen, 1995; Lopez and Stanton, 2001).

CONCLUSIONS
The challenges that students of color face are not insurmountable. Research has shown that given appropriate policies and pedagogies, significant changes can be implemented that will improve the quality of education. Social psychology research in higher education is increasingly providing evidence that all students can benefit from a pedagogy that integrates diversity into the curriculum (Antonio, 2001; Hurtado, et al., 1999; Milem, 2000).

In the meantime, our educational system is no longer considered one of the best in the world and we are losing our ability to compete academically at the international level. In the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), fourth graders’ reading literacy was assessed and compared with 45 educational jurisdictions across the world. Students in ten jurisdictions scored higher than U.S. students. Nations like Russia, Sweden and Italy received significantly higher reading literacy scores. Within the U.S., White fourth graders scored higher than Hispanics, African Americans and American Indians/Alaskan Natives in reading literacy (Planty, et al., 2008 28). In terms of science literacy, the 2006 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA 2006) found that the United States’ average score was below 30 countries from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). One of the areas of weakness among U.S. students was in their ability to explain phenomena scientifically and to use scientific evidence (Planty, et al., 2008 29). Among the nations that scored higher than the U.S. were Canada, Japan, Australia, Ireland, Netherlands, and Korea.

The issue of how racialization stigmatizes Asian and Hispanic cultures is also relevant to the challenges that students of color face in the public educational system. "Maintenance of the culture of origin acts as a powerful buffer in mediating the entry of the child into mainstream culture, communities that keep children close provide them with a protective frame of reference (Suarez-Orozco, 2001).” According to Brookings Institution demographer William Frey, "The future of our education system depends on how we can advance Hispanics through the ranks," which is also is true for Asian Americans and other students of color (Quaid, 2009).

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

• Development of longitudinal data systems wherein student achievement can be more closely analyzed across multiple demographic dimensions (e.g., race/ethnicity, economic background, gender, English Learner etc.).
• Explicit State and Board policies that seek to infuse on-going cultural competency training and development for teaching and administrative leadership staff.
• Greater attention to the preparation of teachers in Teacher Education Programs including the provision of culturally competent training, curricular and pedagogical development, and tracking of credentialed teachers to examine promising practices in Teacher Education.
• Explicit curricular policies that support multicultural and multiethnic materials and frameworks.
• Explicit hiring policies and practices designed to provide a diverse teaching and administrative leadership staff.
• Professional development for teachers and administrative leadership staff to enable them to use data to examine disparities in outcomes and to engage in conversations about race and schooling outcomes.

REFERENCES

Angelo Ancheta. Race, Rights, and the Asian American Experience. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1998.

A. L. Antonio (2001). Diversity and the Influence of Friendship Groups in College. The
Review of Higher Education, 25(1), 63B89.

Bureau of Justice Statistics. 2005. National Crime Victimization Survey. U.S. Department of Justice.

Heidi L. Barajas and Amy Ronnkvist. (2007). Racialized Space: Framing Hispanic and Latina Experience in Public Schools. Teachers College Record, vol. 9, n. 6: 1517-1538.

_______. "Race and Public Schools: School Organizations as Racialized White Space" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Hilton San Francisco & Renaissance Parc 55 Hotel, San Francisco, CA,, Aug 14, 2004 Online <.PDF>. 2008 08 22 http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p109081_index.html

Mario Barrera. Are Hispanics a Racialized Minority? Sociological Perspectives
Summer 2008, Vol. 51, No. 2, Pages 305B324.

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. Racism Without Racists: Color Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2003.

Jack Chen. The Chinese of America: From the Beginning to the Present. San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1982.

Nicholas De Genova, Ana Y. Ramos Zayas. Hispanic Rehearsals: Racialization and the Politics of Citizenship between Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in Chicago. Journal of Latin American Anthropology 2003, Vol. 8, No. 2: pp. 18 57.

Louise Derman-Sparks, & A.B.C. Task Force Anti-Bias Curriculum: Tools for Empowering Young Children. Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children, 1989.

Joe R. Feagin. The Agony of Education: Black Students at White Colleges and Universities. New York: Routledge, 1996.

James Glaser. "White Attitudes Toward Race Neutral and Race Conscious Policies" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia Marriott Hotel, Philadelphia, PA, Aug 27, 2003 Online <.PDF>. 2008 08 23
http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p62238_index.html

Isar P. Godreau et al. "The Lessons of Slavery: Discourses of Slavery, Mestizaje, and Blanqueamiento in an Elementary School in Puerto Rico" in American Ethnologist, Vol. 35, No. 1, pp. 115-135, 2008.

Gilbert Gonzalez. Chicano Education in the Era of Segregation. Philadelphia: The Balch Institute Press.

Paul C. Gorski. Good Intentions Are Not Enough: A Decolonizing Intercultural Education. In online Educational Change, 2008. http://www.edchange.org/publications/intercultural-education.pdf

_______. "The Question of Class." Teaching Tolerance. No. 31, Spring 2007.

_______. "Savage Unrealities: Uncovering Classism in Ruby Payne's Framework.' In online Educational Change, 2005. http://www.edchange.org/publications/Savage_Unrealities.pdf

S. Hurtado, Milem, J., Clayton-Pederson, A., & Allen, W. (1999). Enacting diverse
learning environments: Improving the climate for racial/ethnic diversity in higher education.
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Jacqueline Jordan Irvine. Educating Teachers for Diversity: Seeing With a Cultural Eye. New York: Teachers College Press, 2003.

Angelina KewalRamani et al. Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Minorities. National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, Washington, D.C., (September 2007).

Susan S. Klein. Handbook for Achieving Gender Equity through Education. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007.

Amanda Lewis. Race in the Schoolyard: Negotiating the Color-Line in Classrooms and Communities. Rutgers University Press, 2003.

James W. Lowen. The Mississippi Chinese: Between Black and White. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971.

_______. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. New York: Touchstone, 1995.

David Lopez and Ricardo D. Stanton Salazar. "Mexican Americans: A Second Generation at Risk" in Ruben G. Rumbaut and Alejandro Portes. Ethnicities: Children of Immigrants in America. University of California Press, 2001.

J. F. Milem, & Hakuta, K. (2000). The benefits of racial and ethnic diversity in higher
education. In D. J. Wilds (Ed.), Minorities in higher education 1999B2000 (pp.
39B67). Washington, DC: American Council on Education.

H.A. Sagar and J.W. Schofield. "Racial and Behavioral Cues in Black and White Children's Perceptions of Ambiguously Aggressive Acts in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39 (4) pp. 590-598.

Suhanthie Motha. Racializing ESOL Teacher Identities in U.S. K 12 Public Schools. TESOL Quarterly: A Journal for Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages and of Standard English as a Second Dialect, v40 n3 p495 518 Sep 2006.

Gary Orfield, D. Losen, J. Wald, & C. Swanson, (2004). Losing Our Future: How Minority
Youth are Being Left Behind by the Graduation Rate Crisis, Cambridge, MA: The Civil Rights
Project at Harvard University. Contributors: Advocates for Children of New York, The Civil
Society Institute.

Veronica Pacini Ketchabaw, Jan White, Ana Elisa Armstrong de Almeida Racialization in early childhood: a critical analysis of discourses in policies International Journal of Educational Policy, Research and Practice, Annual, 2006.

Ruby K. Payne. A Framework for Understanding Poverty. Highlands, TX: Aha Process Inc., 2001.

M. Planty, et al. The Condition of Education 2008. Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, 2008.

Alvin Powell. “Suarez-Orozco Focus on the Youngest Immigrants” Harvard Gazette. February 24, 2000. http://www.researchmatters.harvard.edu/story.php?article_id=124.

Libby Quaid. “Hispanic enrollment rising in US schools, colleges” in International Herald Tribune, March 5, 2009. http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2009/03/05/america/NA-US-Schools-Changing-Demographics.php.

Ana Y. Ramos Zayas. Racializing the "invisible" race: Hispanic constructions of "White culture" and Whiteness in Chicago. Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development. December, 2001.

Victor M. Rodriguez. "The Racialization of Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans and Asians, 1890s-1930s" in John N. Tsuchida, Juan M. Benítez and Dean S. Toji, (Eds.). Education, Youth, Leadership, Labor: Asian Pacific American and Hispanic Perspectives. Long Beach, CA: Center for Asian Pacific American Studies, California State University, Long Beach, 2007.

_______. "¡Si Se Puede! The Mobilization of Naturalized Latinas/os in Santa Ana, CA: 1990-2003" in Victor M. Rodriguez Hispanic Politics in the United States: Race, Ethnicity, Class and Gender in the Mexican American and Puerto Rican Experience. Dubuque, IA: Kendall-Hunt, 2005, pp. 99-169.

Robert Rosenthal. Pygmalion in the classroom: teacher expectation and pupil's intellectual development. Carmarthen: Crown House, 2003.

Ruben G. Rumbaut. "The Crucible Within: Ethnic Identity, Self-Esteem, and Segmented Assimilation Among Children of Immigrants" in The Second Generation. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1996.

_______. "Assimilation and Its Discontents: Between Rhetoric and Reality," in The International Migration Review, Vol. 31, Issue 4 (Winter 1997) pp. 923-960.

J. W. Schofield. "The Color-Blind Perspective in School: Causes and Consequences" in J.A. Banks and C.A.M. Banks, (Eds.). Multicultural Education: Issues and Perspectives. New York: John Wiley, 2001, pp. 247-265.

T. D. Snyder, Dillow, S.A., and Hoffman, C.M. (2008). Digest of Education Statistics 2007 (NCES 2008-022). National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC.

Joel Spring. Deculturization and the Struggle for Equality: A Brief History of the Education of Dominated Cultures in the United States. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006.

Stephen Steinberg. Turning Back: The Retreat from Racial Justice in American Thought and Policy. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995

C. Suarez-Orozco and M. Suarez-Orozco. Transformations: Immigration, Family Life, and Achievement Motivation among Hispanic Adolescents. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995.

Marcelo M. Suarez-Orozco and Mariela M. Paez. Hispanics: Remaking America. University of California Press, 2002.

Beverly Daniel Tatum. 1997. "Why Are All the Black Kids Seating Together in the Cafeteria?": And Other Conversations About Race. New York: Basic Books.
Edward E. Telles and Vilma Ortiz. Generations of Exclusion: Mexican Americans, Assimilation and Race. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2008.

Edward E. Telles and Vilma Ortiz. Generations of Exclusion: Mexican Americans, Assimilation and Race. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2008.

UCLA 2008 Statistical Portrait of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Other Pacific Islanders.

U.S. Census Bureau News, August 28, 2007.

U.S. Department of Commerce, Census Bureau, American Community Survey, 2005.

U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Statistics. Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2007.

U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2006 (NCES 2007-003), table 8.1, data from U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, School Crime Supplement (SCS) to the National Crime Victimization Survey, 2005.

A. Valenzuela. Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring.
New York: State University of New York Press, 1999.

Links to National Educational Association Resources (training module and powerpoint presentation)

National Education Association Resources on Racialization

.

Social Protest and the Future of Higher Education in Puerto Rico

2011-07-20T07:55:00.000-07:00

http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/academe/2011/JA/feat/rodr.htm

Social Protest and the Future of Higher Education in Puerto Rico

ACADEME: Magazine of the American Association of University Professors (2011 Issues July-August 2011)

Hidden from the eyes of the world, the most intense struggle for democracy and public education since the 1960s is now under way in Puerto Rico. The outcome is uncertain.

By Victor M. Rodríguez

In 2010, in thirty states across the nation, students and faculty members protested for access to public education and against tuition and fee hikes. A common theme of the protests was the fear that rising tuition would effectively privatize public higher education, making it inaccessible to a broad segment of the nation’s youth. These protests were followed by massive demonstrations in early 2011 over the efforts of states like Wisconsin and Ohio—under the guise of cutting deficits—to limit the ability of labor unions to engage in collective bargaining.

Puerto Rico was not immune to these deficit-cutting policies; what was unique and terrifying was the government’s violent repression of faculty, staff, and student protests.

In April 2010, after gathering by the thousands in a massive assembly, students voted to strike to repudiate an $800 tuition increase, which amounted to a 50 percent hike. They occupied the largest campus of the University of Puerto Rico system, in Rio Piedras, for two months. At various points during this period, all but one of the system’s eleven campuses were closed. These protests won island-wide support from labor unions as well as religious, professional, and community organizations. This initial stage of the protests also led to an agreement with the UPR administration that included a postponement of the tuition increase. However, late in 2010, the UPR administration again decided to impose the $800 tuition fee increase, so the protests continued into 2011.

After a year of instability, the social conflict at the University of Puerto Rico is polarizing the island to such an extent that this US possession, which used to be heralded as a “showcase of democracy” during the Cold War ideological struggles, is now sliding into systematic 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, 2011, riot police violently intervened in Rio Piedras because students were painting murals protesting the fee increase and the police presence on campus. The students were creating the murals in an area of campus where they are routinely allowed to do that. Not this time. Twenty-eight students were arrested, many were hurt, and chaos ensued when police used pepper gas and batons to arrest students and bystanders. The police violence was of such a magnitude that the faculty organization, the Puerto Rican Association of Professors, and the Brotherhood of Nonfaculty Employees called for a twenty-four-hour strike, which was later extended to seventy-two hours.

The university was closed. The president of the system, José Ramón de la Torre, after writing a letter requesting the removal of the police from the campus, announced that he was resigning. Nonetheless, the hostility to dissent did not end. Unlike in the protests over the curtailment of collective bargaining rights in Madison, the specialized units of the Puerto Rican police did not join the protesters; instead, they used excessive force against them. The prevailing attitude of government officials is best illustrated by a comment made by Marcos Rodríguez Emma, Governor Luis Fortuño’s chief of staff: “Sincerely, I would kick them [the students] out of the university and would fire the professors who allow themselves to be used.”

Social Movement or Permanent Crisis?

With the exception of the 2009 and 2010 student protests at University of California campuses in Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Santa Cruz and the recent protests by students and faculty members of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, most in today’s academic community have not organized into a broad social movement to challenge the ideology underlying the restructuring of how public higher education is financed. Puerto Rico may be a significant exception. In some sense, as political scientist Laurel Weldon argues in her recent book When Protest Makes Policy, the social movement for public education in Puerto Rico has provided a voice for a segment of society that felt powerless while the government dismantled public higher education and created the basis for a seemingly permanent crisis.

Since its founding in 1903, the University of Puerto Rico has had to face the political intervention of the state. The university was organized during the period just after the US military government of Puerto Rico ended. The chancellor was provided with broad powers, and higher education became part of the “Americanization” process that was used with other racial minorities in the United States. The university was modeled on the system created for the education of African Americans and Native Americans during a period when social Darwinism permeated American culture and some political and educational leaders took a paternalistic view of the “natives” of newly acquired territories.

Unfortunately, this colonial legacy is still woven into the institutional norms and practices of the university. In fact, it was the government’s extensive intervention into university affairs—almost every chancellor was under the direct control of the governor—that led the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools to refuse to accredit the university in 1937 (accreditation was granted in 1946). The university’s colonial origin, its centralized administration, and the intrusion of partisan politics are the sources of most of the social conflicts that have pervaded the history of the institution. In 1942 and 1948, faculty, staff, and students protested political encroachment, leading to two major strikes that closed down the university. Throughout the 1960s and 1980s, university life was again punctuated by protests, calls for educational reform, and debates about whether fiscal autonomy might ensure the academic community a central role in governance.

While strikes and protests have been relatively common throughout the history of the university, three factors have converged today that together could either crush the hope for progressive educational reform or create the momentum for real reform in the not-too-distant future: first, the worst recession the island has experienced since the 1930s, one that began two years before the downturn on the mainland; second, the political intervention in university affairs by Puerto Rico’s Fortuño administration; and third, the use of force against protesters.

The protest movement’s efforts to link with other sectors of Puerto Rican society—especially environmental, community, and labor groups—and the resignation of the university leadership have elicited such deep-seated fear that the island’s government is using unconstitutional surveillance tactics. On December 19, 2010, the island’s superintendent of police, former FBI agent José Figueroa Sancha, admitted that police used video surveillance during the university protests. Later, in March 2011, the police approved a protocol for the videotaping of protests, despite a 1990s ruling of the Puerto Rico Supreme Court banning the use of unrestricted surveillance against political dissidents.

The University and the Governing Part y

When this article went to press, Miguel Muñoz, former chancellor of the engineering campus in the western city of Mayagüez, was the interim president of the UPR system. While a process exists to name a permanent replacement, the faculty senates of four campuses in the university system have refused to participate in the search. The other four created search committees, yet two of them chose “none of the above”; only one, the Bayamon branch, has supported the interim president. In fact, even the engineering school in Mayagüez, where the interim president served as chancellor, did not participate in the search process.

Decades of politically partisan intervention in university affairs have fostered mistrust among faculty, staff, and students. Puerto Rico’s legislature expanded the number of trustees who govern the system so that lawmakers could name people loyal to the governing party. As a result of an electoral landslide in 2008, the legislature is now under the full control of the New Progressive Party (PNP), which is led by Governor Fortuño. (The system of government on the island does not allow for recalls, as in some states.)

The PNP, which is neither progressive nor new, has supported statehood for Puerto Rico since the party’s creation in 1968. It has used its almost unrestricted power to increase the number of judges on the island’s supreme court to solidify its control of the judiciary. The police force under José Figueroa Sancha, an appointee of Governor Fortuño, has been militarized, and a number of new units have been created, including the Unit for Tactical Operations and the Special Arrests Unit. Sancha also has increased the deployment of SWAT units with automatic weapons, and Tasers, pepper spray, rubber bullets, and shields have been used to quell student protests.

The US Department of Justice, in response to a December 20, 2010, request by the American Civil Liberties Union, is investigating the police of Puerto Rico. In January 2011, two high-ranking members of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division visited the island to investigate. The local civil liberties union and other organizations from Puerto Rico’s civil society expect that some form of consent decree will be implemented this year to curb the widespread violations of human and civil rights. The crisis led US Representative Luis Gutiérrez, a Democrat from Illinois who is of Puerto Rican descent, to denounce the violations in a session of Congress.

The protests quieted in spring 2011, however, after an incident in which Ana Guadalupe, chancellor of the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras, was attacked with water bottles and pushed by students. While she was unhurt, the incident divided supporters of the strike. Most of the student protests now are held through conferences, meetings with community leaders, and strategy sessions. The police remain on campus, but the local media have limited their coverage of student organizing. And even during the most active period of the protests, in spring 2010, coverage by media from the mainland was scant. The principal non–Puerto Rican outlets to report on the crisis were Al Jazeera and Tele Sur (of Venezuela). In order to break the silence, students in Puerto Rico, like their Egyptian counterparts, created media outlets of their own to tell the world what was happening in this US territory. The website Estudiantes de la UPR Informan (UPR Students Inform) and the radio station Radio Huelga (Radio Strike), managed and controlled by students, cover the events and promote dialogue about the issues.

Public Education and Economic Crisis

Hidden from the eyes of the world, and especially from the US public, the most intense struggle for democracy and public education since the 1960s is now under way on this island with 3.7 million inhabitants. “The epicenter of the struggle for the public university in Latin America is Puerto Rico,” said José Carlos Luque Brazán, a professor and researcher of political science and urban planning at the Autonomous University in Mexico City.

The academic community on the Rio Piedras campus has led the island-wide movement. Rio Piedras, which has twenty thousand students and one thousand faculty members, is a selective research-intensive university and the most prestigious institution of higher education in the Caribbean. Because of its selectivity, Rio Piedras also has the most creative and most persistent defenders of educational reform and of the expansion of public education.

Unfortunately, ideology is guiding the government’s response to the educational and social crisis at the university. Since his landslide election in 2008, Fortuño has implemented a series of neoliberal measures that have polarized the island’s population and increased economic inequality. Fortuño is the first Puerto Rican governor to be an avowed member of the national Republican Party, despite the fact that the GOP as such does not participate in Puerto Rican elections. Breaking his electoral promises, he has fired seventeen thousand public workers and reduced investments in social services and education. Puerto Rico, moreover, has one of the lowest labor participation rates in the world, a rate that has declined dramatically in recent years. In July 1999, 47.8 percent of working-age adults were in the labor force; by December 2010, the figure had dropped to 41.1 percent. In contrast, the labor participation rate on the US mainland in January 2011 was 64.2 percent.

In the meantime, efforts to privatize segments of public services—including education—are being made through what the government calls “public-private partnerships.” These are ways of providing the private sector with public assets without the risks involved in the private market. One proposed partnership (which faces strong citizen opposition) would involve building a gas pipeline through some of the most environmentally fragile areas of the island, close to population centers.

The privatization of higher education is another strategy to achieve the same objective. Since 1997, government funding for the University of Puerto Rico has been cut by $336 million. The 50 percent tuition hike was justified by the system’s budget deficit. This increase will mean that nearly ten thousand students will not be able to attend the university system as a whole. Further reductions in federal Pell Grants, which seem likely, will price more poor and middle-class students out of a college education.

Meanwhile, from 2001–02 to 2006–07, enrollment in private universities increased in Puerto Rico by 34 percent while enrollment in the public system declined by 10.7 percent. The quality of education in private colleges and universities is much lower than that in the UPR system. According to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System of the US Department of Education, six-year graduation rates in 2007–08 for private colleges and universities ranged between 18.15 and 45.3 percent. In comparison, graduation rates for the eleven campuses in the public system range between 36.4 and 61 percent.

If the government’s policy of cutting financial support for public education continues, a still more economically stratified system of education will develop. Since private universities are less selective, economically disadvantaged students are more likely to attend private universities than public ones. The burden of educating the island’s youth will continue to be shifted to private universities, which rely more on federal Pell Grants. By expanding the role of private universities, neoliberals are thus increasing the burden for US taxpayers.

Governor Fortuño’s poll numbers are very low, yet he is steadfast in supporting the repressive measures used against the university community. One reason behind his obstinacy may be that he is being courted by the national Republican Party as a way of attracting the Latino vote. Fortuño recently traveled to California to attend events sponsored by the Koch Brothers and the Heritage Foundation. At such venues, he asserts that he has established law and order in Puerto Rico. Most recently, on February 11, he spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference’s 2011 meeting in Washington, DC, where he touted his policies. Toeing the Tea Party line, he spoke about reducing government, improving bond ratings, and reducing the government’s structural deficit. (While it is true that Puerto Rico has a structural deficit of $3 billion, a tax cut for multinational corporations effected ten years ago cut the same amount, $3 billion, in general funds revenue from the island’s coffers.)

Sadly, although Puerto Rico’s bond ratings have increased somewhat (they are still considered risky), the island’s social fabric is collapsing. Dora Nevares, a UPR criminologist, had predicted in the 1990s that the strong-arm tactics of Pedro Roselló, the previous PNP governor, would lead to increased violence on the island. Then, Rosselló sent the National Guard and the police to raid public housing projects. The raids targeted the youth and stigmatized the poor as violent. Most of the one thousand murders committed last year on the island (which has a higher murder rate than any other state or territory) are committed by youths against other youths engaged in the drug trade. In the meantime, the population of the island, for the first time in modern history, has decreased. From 2000 to 2009, more than four hundred thousand Puerto Ricans migrated to the mainland. This is the highest number of emigrants since the great migration that followed World War II.

The University of Puerto Rico was placed on probation last year by the Middle States Association. Two of the main reasons cited were poor governance and poor financial management. The academic senate of the Rio Piedras campus submitted an addendum to the university report to Middle States that included an account of police brutality on that campus. When Chancellor Guadalupe refused to include the addendum in the report, the faculty sent it separately.

The students and their allies continue organizing and entering into dialogue with broader sectors of Puerto Rico’s civil society. While the US mainstream press may not cover these events, in some important sectors a sense is emerging that the government needs to reconsider its repressive actions. The only local English-language daily paper, the moderately conservative Daily Sun, editorialized on February 10, 2011, that “the indiscriminate aggression of police riot squads against students, who are exercising their constitutional rights in public areas without interfering with any academic or administrative activity, is a gross violation of their rights and an act comparable only to the acts of the dictatorships we all denounce and reject….We do not want this new order, neither for our university, the Capitol, La Fortaleza or our neighborhoods. We reject it with all our might; exercising our freedom of speech, or freedom of association, is not a crime.”

Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, wrote something appropriate to this Puerto Rican moment. He described the fear of institutions that create thoughtful citizens capable of critical thinking: “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.”

Víctor M. Rodríguez is professor of Chicano and Latino studies at California State University, Long Beach. He is the author of Latino Politics in the United States. His e-mail address is vrodrig5@csulb.edu.

Growth of Minority Population in Florida

2011-07-11T13:50:00.000-07:00

IFRAMES not supported

California Ethnic Minority Growth, 2010 Census

2011-07-11T13:48:00.000-07:00

IFRAMES not supported

The Dismantling of Public Education in California

2011-07-08T10:11:00.000-07:00

The Dismantling of Public Education in California

Victor M. Rodriguez Dominguez

Recently in Texas, the Texas Public Policy foundation, a conservative think tank, proposed a business model for reshaping the University of Texas, Austin. A response by the College of Liberal Arts Dean’s Executive team characterized the proposal as a “business-style, market-driven approach under which colleges and universities would treat students as customers, de-emphasize research that isn’t immediately lucrative, and evaluate individual faculty by the tuition revenue they generate. Advocates of these proposals see them as a necessary response to the rising cost of higher education, a cure for a system they suggest is inefficient and inaccessible.”

The model, which purports to improve “efficiency” is part of the national efforts of conservative organizations and individuals to infuse “market forces” inside higher education as a response to the “budget crisis” many states are facing. This model also is presented as an effort that will save money for the starving state governments while maintaining educational excellence.

This model, which is not new or novel, is based on the ideas of Frederick Taylor at the beginning of the 20th century. His model of “scientific management” was also predicated on the idea that efficiency would increase productivity. While it was being introduced in the industrial system this model was also influential as the system of higher education in the nation was being created. “Taylorism” promoted reducing tasks to its most minute components which made the labor process faster as workers specialized in smaller movements. It also introduced ways of measuring productivity that tended to reduce the wages paid to workers if certain production standards where not reached. It also transferred the control of the labor process to management taking away the autonomy that was enjoyed by the craftsmen. Workers became cogs in the industrial wheel.

There are a number of serious pedagogical issues that this model when applied to higher education will not address. First, the creativity and innovation which are part of academia are based on the relative autonomy that faculty enjoys. Not all research has to produce economic profit but research will enrich our knowledge and understanding.

Secondly, in states like New Mexico, Texas and California the challenges of a diverse student population are not even considered by proponents of this model. In these three states, according to the 2010 census, the majority of the K-12 enrollment is made up of students of Latino descent. The educational system created at the end of the 19th century while it has experienced important changes still has some of the basic features of the early system of schooling. It still has not incorporated the curriculum and pedagogy necessary to address a very different population than the one it was created to serve in the 1900s. In many ways, the educational system is focused more on “Americanizing” students than on educating students. In many ways the education of students is sacrificed so that students will assimilate quickly even at the expense of their knowledge of science, math etc. New research on learning shows that new knowledge is easier to be learned if connected with the knowledge that students bring to the classroom. For example, in terms of language acquisition, “intercomprehension” research shows that the best way of acquiring a language is by building on the language a student already knows. This was a major contribution of Paulo Freire, the founder of Liberation Pedagogy who created a curriculum to teach peasants how to read in Northeast Brazil. His concept of “contextualized education” built on the idea that the culture of people can be used as a foundation for new knowledge.

Fallacy of the Budget Crisis

Also, the business model is defended as a way of solving the “budget crisis” that states like California are facing. Unfortunately, the reality is that, at least in California there is no budget crisis, what exists is a revenue shortage created by policies implemented by the state government. According to the California Budget Project (2009) "Corporate income taxes have declined over time as a share of General Fund revenues and as a share of corporate profits. If corporations had
paid the same share of their profits in corporate taxes in 2006 as they did in 1981, corporate tax collections would have been $8.4 billion higher."

A more recent report by the CBP (April 2011), reported that because of corporate tax breaks and tax loopholes, personal income tax receipts have increased their share of General Fund revenues from 35.4 per cent in 1980-81 to 51.5 per cent in 2010-11. The burden of supporting government services, including education has been placed on individual tax payers. In addition, more corporate tax breaks approved in the September 2008 and February 2009 budget agreements will reduce by $2 billion a year the revenue from corporations in California. Another source of revenue that has declined are the high income earners ($200,000 a year) who paid no taxes. This high income “no tax” since 1997 has increased in California, from 579 to 2,431 individuals tax returns.

In terms of the financing of education the impact of proposition 13 is that contrary to most states, most of the financing of K-12 education is not local but by the state and federal funds. We are also reducing our financial investment in higher education, according to Mortenson (2009) in a study prepared for the California Faculty Association:

“In 1980 California appropriated $12.86 from state tax funds for the operations of higher education for every $1000 of state personal income. This ranked California’s investment effort 11th among the states. By FY2008 this had dropped $7.71 per $1000 of state personal income, a decline of 40.0%. California ranked 21st among the states by 2008.”

This decline in California’s investment in education is also reflected on our bottom standing with respect to most variables related to quality education: we are 44 in terms of spending per pupil, we are 46 with respect to education spending as a percentage of personal income, we are 50 in terms of students per teacher and 49 in terms of students per guidance counselor (CBP, 2010).

We also have one of the lowest college attendance rates in the nation, 55.8 per cent, states like Tennessee, Missouri, North Carolina have much higher rates despite having less wealthier populations (PPIC, 2009). At a time when it is projected that by 2025:

"California will have one million fewer college graduates than it needs in 2025-only 35 percent of working-age adults will have a college degree in an economy that would otherwise require 41 percent of workers to have a college degree." (Johnson and Sangupta, PPIC, 2009)

Most of the students who will not be able to have access to a quality education in California are Latinos. Given the achievement gap that exists between whites, Latinos and African Americans, many of these students will face challenges to succeed in college. The reasons are not entirely the fault of the individuals but of a system that is broken. “In California, 12% of math teachers, 18% of physical science teachers and 11% of life science teachers are considered out-of-field teachers” (California Report Card, 2010). The schools were African Americans and Latino are most likely to attend are segregated, under funded and the ones which have high rates of students per teacher, per guidance advisor etc. It is no wonder that the recent National Assessment of Educational Progress report found that while in 2009, Latino and white students have increased their reading and math scores from previous years, the achievement gap remains the same. These are the reasons for the alarming fact that 50 per cent of Latinos do not graduate from high school (Gandara, 2009). Latinos have not had significant progress in college attainment in 30 years.

Patricia Gandara, education professor at UCLA and part of the Civil Rights Project, says that this is a crisis derived from failed social policies. While the popular media blames immigrants, the reality is that, as many empirical studies have demonstrated, immigrants tend to do better than native-born. Middle class immigrant students educated elsewhere do better than native born Latinos. Some studies argue that in fact Latino children, the more they spend in the educational system the more passive and less optimistic they become (Quiroz, 1997). Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, from the Harvard Immigration Project argues that his longitudinal data shows that assimilation has not been a positive process for Latinos.

Poverty and lack of resources, as Mortenson argues will provide additional challenges to California:

"On the demographic side the share of California's K-12 students approved for subsidized school lunches has increased from 35.2% in 1989 to 51.5% by 2007, and this share will increase much further and probably rapidly and indefinitely in future years. These students will have zero resources to pay for higher education when they reach college age. But they also represent a growing share of California's future workforce that must be higher educated for the most valuable work to be done in the Human Capital Economy." (Mortenson, CFA, 2009)

Given that 51% of K-12 are Latinos, the declining investment on education in California will have a disparate effect on Latinos. But in the end it will affect the progress of California in the next few decades when a significant proportion of the baby boomers will be retiring. Since programs like Social Security are supported by taxes paid by working people, is California and other states do not invest in the education of youth, the labor force will be made up of workers who will be less educated and who will pay less into the coffers of the system. In the end, today’s voters will pay the consequences in the future.

Excellent Summary of Social Movement for Public Education Against Neo-Liberalism

2011-06-28T09:13:00.001-07:00

The Truth About the US Economy---Robert Reich former secretary of labor explains in less than 2.minutes 15 seconds

2011-06-20T12:32:00.000-07:00

Is the USA Post-Racial? Towards an explanation of the Obama 'Miracle' (June 20, 2009)

2011-06-18T09:06:00.000-07:00

Boricua Sociologist analysis of President Obama's role as an African American leader of a white supremacist empire.

Here you can find a link to my article on the racialization of Chicanos and Boricuas

2011-05-09T09:49:00.000-07:00

http://redalyc.uaemex.mx/pdf/377/37717104.pdf

The Racialization of Mexican Americans and Puerto Rico, 1890s-1930s

Journal CENTRO of the Puerto Rican Studies Center, Spring 2005 Vol XXII, No. 1

Reflexiones sobre manifiesto de Felipe Luciano

2011-04-16T11:36:00.000-07:00

Hace un par de días leí las reflexiones de Felipe Luciano. Como Boricua nacido en Puerto Rico, casado con una Boricua criada en el Sur del Bronx, comparto las inquietudes y algunos de los señalamientos del paisano. Y noten que digo paisano, porque a pesar de los esfuerzos de la torre de marfil de “throw de baby with the bathwater” al criticar el nacionalismo, estigmatizarlo, demonizarlo, es ese nacionalismo el que moviliza a cientos de miles de Boricuas a organizarse en sus comunidades, desde Chicago, California, Nueva York y Orlando. Es ese sentido de pertenencia e identidad parejero “Yo soy Boricua pa’ que tu lo sepas” que le sirve de escudo contra el racismo y la supremacía blanca en los Estados Unidos.

Lo que sucede es que muchos en la torre de marfil se desligaron de las luchas comunales y de forma abstracta, con fachada anti-empiricista, crearon un muñeco de paja al que intentaron destruir como los niños rompen una piñata. La piñata, para que los niños le puedan dar tiene que estar atada a algo que le de acceso a los trancazos de los niños. Eso fue exactamente lo que hicieron muchos intelectuales (en la diáspora y en la isla) inspirado por teorías mal digeridas de teóricos franceses y norteamericanos. Hoy día vemos algunos de los resultados en la implosión de la lucha universitaria en Puerto Rico donde algunos de los mismos teóricos clavaron las ultimas cuñas (y ya sabemos que no hay peor cuña que la del mismo palo) en el ataúd de la lucha universitaria.

Pero hay otros responsables, en la isla, la negación del rol del racismo en la vida social puertorriqueña por algunos sectores ha contribuido a convertir la idea de la nación dividida en la nación fragmentada. La nación dividida era un concepto geográfico, la nación fragmentada es una descripción de un proceso de escisión donde se están creando dos realidades sociales distintas y posiblemente opuestas. Como se identifican los Boricuas racialmente en el censo nos prevé cambios fundamentales en las dos alas de la nación puertorriqueña. En el censo del 2010, es cierto que se disminuyo el por ciento de los que se identifican como blancos y aumento el por ciento de los que se identifican como negros. Por otro lado, lo contrario ocurre en los Estados Unidos en las comunidades Boricuas. Y aunque no han divulgado aun las estadísticas por estado, las del 2000 ya señalan la dirección de este proceso. En Florida, el 67.1 por ciento de los Boricuas se identifican como blancos, en California el 45.1 por ciento y en Nueva York el 44.8 por ciento. La nueva inmigración Boricua a los Estados Unidos trae consigo la negación de nuestra herencia cultural Africana y al igual que en México, la negación de los negro. Siempre ha habido multidimensionalidad en lo que significa ser Boricua, no hay que re-descubrir el mediterraneo. La nación puertorriqueña se va fragmentado con sectores que van en sentido contrario hacia . . .?

Africa in Latin America: PBS Dominican Republic and Haiti

2011-04-14T10:39:00.000-07:00

Watch the full episode. See more Black in Latin America.

NEA Resources on Racialization

2011-04-06T09:08:00.000-07:00

. In 2009, John Tsuchida, Moreno and I finished a policy brief for the NEA, they finally have released it on the internet. There is a training module, instructor sheet, NEA policy brief and a power point presentation, I am sure you will find it interesting. Fair use and acknowledgement of sources is required.

http://www.keysonline.org/about/resources/resources-on.html

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

2011-04-02T08:41:00.000-07:00

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

By Victor M. Rodriguez

Victor M. Rodriguez is Professor and former Chair of the Department of Chicano and Latino Studies at California State University of Long Beach. He is an alumnus of the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras. Among his publications is Latino Politics: Race, Ethnicity, Class and Gender in Mexican American and Puerto Rican Experience (Kendall-Hunt, 2005) and Victor M. Rodriguez Dominguez, John T Tsuchida and Jose F. Moreno. 2009 “Racialization of Latino and Asian Students in the Educational System: Training Administrator, Teachers and Parents for Policy Changes” Policy Paper for the National Education Association. His e-mail address is: vodrig5@csulb.edu. His blog: http://ethnosboriquen.blogspot.com/

"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

Introduction

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 call “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 Vietnam War). 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 not a 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” are attempted in 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, just like the recent book When Protest Makes Policy (Weldon, 2011) 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.

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 (Navarro Rivera, 2010). 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’s 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 (2011) 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. 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 the 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 has exacerbated the tension. But even during the most active period of the protests in spring 2010 when students occupied 10 of the eleven universities, the media coverage of this social movement by U.S. mainstream media 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 who 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 (2003) 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 (Dietz, 2003). One of the interesting data provided by economist Francisco Catalá (2010) is that profits to foreign companies in Puerto Rico raised from 7.4 of gross national income in 1970 to 56.5 per cent in 2009. 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.

References

Catalá, Francisco. “Anosognosia en la colonia.” Conference on April 27, 2010.

Dietz, James L. 2003. Puerto Rico: Negotiating Development and Change. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.

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.

Navarro Rivera, Pablo. 2010. “Democratización y autonomía en la Universidad de Puerto Rico: Mito y realidad.” Manuscript.

Weldon, S. Laurel. 2011. When Protest Makes Policy: How Social Movements Represent Disadvantaged Groups. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press

Smokes and Mirrors: Gov. Luis Fortuño Lying to Conservatives

2011-03-27T11:35:00.000-07:00

Smokes and Mirrors: The Lies and Distortions of Puerto Rico’s Governor Luis Fortuño

“Credibility alone must determine whether propaganda output should be true or false”
------------Joseph Goebbels

In this interview with the host of Reason, a right wing conservative organization, Gov. Fortuño gave a rosy perspective of his efforts to bring fiscal stability to Puerto Rico’s finances. He failed to mention the employee protests, the turmoil at the University of Puerto Rico and the cuts in public financing of public higher education. He fulfilled Goebbels principle of seeming credible in telling his lies, but the people of Puerto Rico know better.

• Cut spending in last two years.
Only cut 42% of what he originally had promised, majority came from employees that were fired ($697.9 million) See New Center Analysis at http://grupocne.org/cneblog/?p=645

• Gave money back to the people. Cut taxes
Increased some taxes, multinational companies, 4% and increased its revenues by $1 billion or 85% of its original objective. New Center says they did better increasing revenue than in cutting expenses, a totally different effort than the one he told the host of Reason.

• Bond ratings are up (still lowest in the U.S. and considered risky
http://nprchamber.wordpress.com/2011/01/19/puerto-rico-offers-bonds-at-higher-rate-of-return-than-us-but-are-they-too-risky/

• 44% of revenue, I am picky but it was actually 42% according to Standard and Poor

• 17 per cent unemployment, 14 per cent now.
It’s actually 15.7 per cent according to the Planning Board Economic Indicators January 2011.

• Windows to encourage workers into early retirement
Which places the retirement system in even more danger than it is, since there is an actuarial deficit which will bring the system into a crisis as early as 2016, no longer than 2019. The money paid out to early retirees and the smaller income into the system received from employees and the government will increase the gap between what needs to be paid and the reserves. Francisco Catala has a great article on this in Republica May 3, 2010.

• First time in 20 years taxes were cut

Gov. Fortuño is referring to cuts made under the administration of Gov. Hernandez Colon. This financial mistake created an economic crisis that led his administration to sell the Long Distance Phone company, then a publicly owned firm. Then Gov. Pedro Rossello, facing a fiscal crisis sold the extremely profitable Puerto Rico Phone Company which cut a source of revenue for the Puerto Rican government. In 1975 James Tobin, winner of the Nobel in economics suggested Puerto Rico should reform its tax structure and increase taxes, too many exemptions for corporations and later in 2006, Brookings study included a tax expert who suggested the same problem with Puerto Rico’s tax structure.

• While it is true that the structural deficit was reduced from $3, 306 billions to $2,143 billions on the other hand, this was done using non recurrent funds (ARRA Obama’s one time financial aid of $6,800, of which $3,300 was used to provide subsidies to tax payers and $3,500 for unemployment insurance. According to the analysis of the report the government gave to the bond agencies, examined by CNE they already have spent 63% of the ARRA funds. COFINA issues $9,200 billions in bonds (more debt) 2009-10 to pay some operational costs, pay debts, Stabilization Fund, Local Stimulus Fund, $1 billion is still unspent. The public debt of Puerto Rico has increased from $52, 947 billion in 2008 to $63,366 billions in February 2011. An increase of $10,419 billions more or 19 per cent increase!!!!

What will happen when these funds are used? Things will be worse than they were since the labor force is smaller, fewer people will be paying taxes (including the more than 17,000 that were let go (voluntarily or not). There are 28,000 fewer people employed in construction, 17,000 in retail commercial establishments, and 27,000 less in manufacturing. No wonder people are leaving, while Nero is playing his fiddle the island is sinking!

• New Party for Progress?

Gov. Fortuño is so ashamed of his party name (New Progressive Party) that he changed it to the New Party for Progress. The word progressive is anathema in tea party circles so he avoided being associated with it. Did he ask for permission to the party executive committee?

Smokes and mirrors, that is what this is all about . . .

Reflexiones sobre la economia de Puerto Rico

2011-03-27T09:42:00.000-07:00

Hay dos enlaces, en el primero pueden bajar cuatro MP3 con la excelente conferencia del economista puertorriqueño Dr. Francisco Catala. Un intelectual renacentista (si, aun es posible) que tiene la capacidad de explicar asuntos complejos en for acesible para todos. Desmitifica las mentiras de los neo liberales a la vez que ofrece esperanza en el futuro del pais. Otro Puerto Rico es posible.

"anosognosia" es la enfermedad de no conocer el mal que se padece . . .

En el segundo enlace un excelente articulo del economista Dr. Sergio Marxuach del centro para la nueva economia.

Francisco Catalá: La anosognosia en la colonia

http://www.independencia.net/noticias3/jrb_fCatala_anosognosia_colonia29abr10.html

Los economistas y la universidad

http://grupocne.org/cneblog/?p=651

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011 at 6:36 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Recientemente se han hecho públicas varias propuestas para cambiar el método de financiamiento de la Universidad de Puerto Rico y la manera en que se distribuyen esos fondos entre el sector privado y el sector público, así como entre las diversas áreas del conocimiento. En mi opinión, esas recomendaciones se basan en una aplicación simplista y superficial del análisis económico. Aprovecho esta oportunidad para presentar respetuosamente lo que entiendo son los limites de ese análisis en el contexto universitario.

De entrada hay que cuestionar si es adecuado utilizar la metodología del análisis económico, que valora la educación solo en términos de sus consecuencias, como un medio para lograr otros fines (crecimiento económico, más empleos, mayores ingresos), en vez de considerarla un bien de valor independiente. Esta diferencia puede parecer algo esotérica pero es de una importancia fundamental. La perspectiva filosófica que se escoja va a determinar si el acceso a la educación universitaria se va a decidir usando un estricto análisis de costo/beneficio, o si la educación se va a considerar un bien público, como la seguridad pública, esencial para el bienestar general.

En Puerto Rico decidimos hace mucho tiempo que la educación universitaria, y todos los campos del saber que la componen, tienen un valor inherente e independiente de su “utilidad” social. ¿Qué empresario, o burócrata gubernamental, sea o no economista, está capacitado para determinar que es mas “útil” enseñar biología que estudiar el ensayo sobre la libertad de John Stuart Mill o la teoría de la justicia de John Rawls? Solamente el filisteo más obtuso se atrevería a asignarle un precio a la habilidad para pensar críticamente.

Segundo, los economistas usualmente parten de la premisa que los bienes y servicios se producen en un estado de competencia perfecta. Ese estado se caracteriza por la presencia de una cantidad ilimitada de compradores y vendedores; la ausencia de costos para entrar y salir del mercado; cero costos de transacción; la disponibilidad de información perfecta para todos los participantes en el mercado; y la producción de bienes y servicios homogéneos.

La educación universitaria es uno de esos servicios que claramente no se provee en un mercado de competencia perfecta. La cantidad de compradores y vendedores es limitada; los costos para entrar y salir del mercado, así como los costos de transacción, son altos; los servicios que se proveen no son homogéneos, (¿como se compara el “valor” de un crédito de literatura con un crédito de ingeniería?); y la asimetría de información entre los proveedores y los consumidores es abismal. ¿Es razonable asumir que un muchacho de 17 o 18 años va a analizar críticamente las virtudes y defectos de distintos programas educativos a nivel universitario?

Todo lo anterior nos lleva a concluir que la propuesta para eliminar el financiamiento por formula de la Universidad y sustituirlo por un programa de vales, aunque suene bien en teoría, simplemente no va funcionar. Los programas de educación universitaria no son bienes homogéneos como las bicicletas o los televisores. De hecho la consecuencia mas probable de implantar un programa de vales puede ser lo que los economistas llaman el “race to the bottom”; una competencia para ver quien ofrece mas diplomas y mas títulos académicos con el menor esfuerzo y trabajo posible por parte de los estudiantes.

Tercero, los servicios educativos padecen de lo que los economistas llaman el “mal de Baumol”, nombrado en honor del economista que lo descubrió, William Baumol. La tesis de Baumol es que aumentar la productividad en el sector de servicios personales, como la educación, es imposible o altamente indeseable.

En la categoría de “imposible” piense en el tiempo y la cantidad de músicos que se necesitaban para tocar un cuarteto para cuerdas de Mozart en 1790 en comparación con el 2011 o cuanto tiempo le tomaba a un profesor enseñar la filosofía política de Locke, Hobbes, o Rousseau hace 200 años en comparación con lo que le tarda hoy. En ambos casos no ha aumentado la productividad pero los salarios reales de los músicos y los profesores de filosofía si han aumentado.

En la categoría de “indeseable” piense en la educación de niños de primer grado. En teoría es posible duplicar la productividad de los maestros duplicando el número de alumnos que atienden, digamos de 25 a 50 estudiantes por salón de clase. Muchas personas, sin embargo, no considerarían esto como una mejoría en la productividad de los maestros, sino como un grave deterioro en la calidad de la enseñaza.

Por tanto, si estamos hablando de una actividad, como la educación, donde no hay mucho espacio para lograr aumentos genuinos en la productividad, y si asumimos que el nivel general de salarios reales aumenta constantemente, entonces el costo de proveer esos servicios, en relación a otros bienes y servicios, va aumentar significativamente a través del tiempo.

La implicación del análisis de Baumol es que la demanda por estos servicios personales relativamente costosos se va a reducir en relación a la demanda por otros bienes y servicios. La oferta también se reducirá, ya que el aumento en los costos de proveer estos servicios no guarda relación con la productividad de los proveedores, a menos que el estado intervenga. En términos sencillos, el estado siempre tendrá que intervenir en el área de la educación, a todos sus niveles, si se desea mantener una oferta socialmente adecuada de servicios educativos.

Si lo anterior es correcto, entonces el pueblo de Puerto Rico tiene que decidir si considera la Universidad pública un gasto o una inversión. Si la Universidad se considera un mero gasto, igual al gasto en contratos de relaciones públicas para anunciar los “logros” del gobierno, entonces, en tiempos de crisis fiscal, se podrían justificar recortes masivos al presupuesto de la misma.

Por otro lado, si la Universidad se considera una inversión, ya sea porque tiene un valor intrínsico o porque produce un rendimiento económico a largo plazo, entonces, aun en tiempos de crisis fiscal, resulta imperativo identificar los fondos necesarios para mantenerla en operación, ya sea recortando otros gastos o aumentando los impuestos. Estamos conscientes que esto requiere que las personas en posiciones de liderato en el gobierno tomen decisiones difíciles, pero para eso es que están ahí.

En suma, no existen soluciones mágicas, basadas en la aplicación arbitraria de los principios del fundamentalismo económico neoclásico, para resolver los problemas financieros de la Universidad. Me sospecho, sin embargo, que el verdadero objetivo de los que quieren recortar el tamaño y el alcance de la Universidad no es ahorrar dinero, sino diluir el impacto de la misma en la sociedad puertorriqueña. Lo hacen, en palabras de Mario Vargas Llosa, porque “saben el riesgo que corren dejando que la imaginación discurra por los libros, lo sediciosas que se vuelven las ficciones cuando el lector coteja la libertad que las hace posibles y que en ellas se ejerce, con el miedo y el oscurantismo que lo acechan en el mundo real.” Lo hacen, porque saben que la Universidad nos hace más inconformes, inquietos, e insumisos ante un retrógrado proyecto antiliberal.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Sergio M. Marxuach es director de política pública del Centro para la Nueva Economía

Anti-Racist Multicultural Diversity_UND_February 25, 2011

2011-03-21T14:14:00.000-07:00

https://conted.breeze.und.nodak.edu/p56197744/

Reaccion a un articulo insultante y colonialista de el Dr. Patrick Andre Mather

2011-03-14T17:58:00.000-07:00

Al final el enlace a dicho articulo . . . .

Este artículo de Patrick Andre Mather en Diálogo es un ejemplo de como la falta de un esquema conceptual informado por lo que los científicos sociales Boricuas y otros han escrito sobre estos temas causan una distorsión e incomprensión de las causas, de la genealogía de las normas culturales que conforman, inclusive, las formas de inter actuar y comunicarse en nuestro país. Este análisis, ausente de un trasfondo historico, confunde las causas y al igual que el cientifico social William Ryan nos advertia hace decadas, la víctima termina siendo la causante de la patología.

Primero, es una critica solapada a la política de la no confrontacion que desde la década de los ochenta ha evitado graves incidentes similares a los que aquejaron al recinto en la década de los años setenta. Ademas, no se percato el analista que lo medular de la politica es que giraba la balanza del poder hacia la el estudiantado limitando el poder omnimodo de la administracion de la UPR. Era una medida que ampliaba el ejercicio democratico.

Segundo, este articulo es un recalentamiento de lo que ha escrito el colega en otras partes (e.g. Revue Signes, Discours et Sociétés) sobre la formas culturales plebeya y subalterna que gobiernan las interacciones y conversaciones diarias en Puerto Rico. Entre los problemas de este análisis es que ignora toda una literatura antropológica y sociológica que se ha escrito al respecto (es como sí re-descubriera el caño por tercera vez), que puede surgir del problema de la compartamentalizacion de las disciplinas pero también de la falta de conocimiento sobre la literatura escrita en español sobre estos temas. Por otro lado, ignora toda una tendencia en la ultimas décadas de la antropología crítica que reflexiona sobre como los grupos dominantes distorsionan a través de sus “etnografías” las culturas de los subalternos. Philippe Bourgeois en su libro “In Search of respect” advirtio sobre el peligro de racializar a grupos dominados aun cuando las intenciones fueran buenas. Esta critica fue precedida por el fenecido antropólogo radica Marvin Harris que utilizó los conceptos de “emics” y “etics” para diferencial el conocimiento que viene “de afuera” y el que viene “desde dentro” de la cultura. La etnografia, utilizada por la antropologia y la sociologia, fue complice de la construccion de sistemas coloniales que perpetuan la opresion, No es una coincidencia que los norteamericanos utilizaron el conocimiento acumulado por la antropologia Britanica para construir los sistema scoloniales implementados en las Filipinas y Puerto Rico.

Tercero, la parejería, el ser presenta’o, el chiquiteo, el ay bendito, la exagerada expresión de hospitalidad que exhibimos los Boricuas hacia los grupos dominantes son parte de la internalización del colonialismo (que muy bien describió Fannon) primero por los Españoles y ahora por los EUA. Es una pena que el colega se entrelace con la vision colonizada de Morris pues al hacerlo se convierte en complice. Si utilizara otra optica hubiera podido entender que la razon porque a muchos no les “caen bien” los socialistas peludos, es porque son presenta’os, parejeros y no “saben su sitio,” en lo que a mi respecta, es por eso que me caen requete bien. Son los “yes sir” lo que tienen enterrado al país en una fosa sin fondo.

Ay bendito, y al fin y al cabo, ¿quien utiliza el gentilicio “oriental” en la epoca post-Edward Said?

http://www.dialogodigital.com/index.php/Politica-de-no-confrontacion-metafora-de-la-sociedad-puertorriquena.html

Resident Commissioner of PR in Congress Stutters and Lies

2011-03-14T17:46:00.000-07:00

Shameful display of ignorance by our political leaders . . .read comments next post.

2011-03-02T09:02:00.000-08:00

Reflections: March 2 1917: U.S. Citizenship Imposed on Puerto Rican

2011-03-02T08:56:00.000-08:00

“Those who forget their history, are condemned to repeat it” Harvard Philosopher, George Santayana (Spain)

March 2, 1917 U.S. imposed U.S. citizenship on Puerto Ricans

A shameful display of ignorance by Puerto Rico's leadership in the Puerto Rican legislature. Asked by Nuevo Dia reporter “What does the U.S. citizenship means to you?” Most rambled and ended making some inane comments, some could not remember which Law made Puerto Rico citizens of the U.S. and some did not even remember the date when that took place. Of those who remembered that it was the Jones Act (Jones-Shafroth), most could not recall who Jones was (Chairman of the Insular Affairs Committee). Colonialism like racism can't only survive with historically knowledgeable people. I am sure no one is taught that on April 15, 1914, a memorial was passed by the only elected legislative body in PR ( (including words expressed earlier by Luis Muñoz Rivera), The House of Delegates, and introduced in the Congressional Record that same year and signed by the speaker Jose de Diego saying: "opposition to being declared, in defiance of our express wish or without our express consent, citizens of any country other than our beloved soil." “We are citizens of Puerto Rico and as such entitled to the protection of the United States...” (Jose A Cabranes, Citizenship and the American Empire, 1979, p. 77) Jose Alberto Cabranes is the first Puerto Rican named as a federal judge, he serves in U.S. Court of Appeals Second Circuit.

When the act was enacted, Puerto Ricans had no choice, if they did not accept U.S. citizenship they would become foreigners in their own land without being able to participate in the political life of their country. Amilcar Cabral, anti colonial African freedom fighter understood well what the role of cultural and historical amnesia and how empires use it to maintain and perpetuate their control. Just like Franz Fannon said, “...the most powerful weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”

"History teaches us that certain circumstances make it very easy for foreign people to impose their dominion. But history also teaches us that no matter what the material aspects of that domination, it can only be preserved by a permanent and organized control of the dominated people's cultural life; otherwise it cannot be definitively implanted without killing a significant part of the population.“

(Amilcar Cabral, 1970)
-----Founder of the liberation organization (PAIGC) in Guinea and Cabo Verde, Africa. Portugal was the colonizing country.

Repost: Eduardo Galeano escribe una carta a los estudiantes en huelga

2011-02-21T14:18:00.001-08:00

Eduardo Galeano escribe una carta a los estudiantes en huelga.

Eduardo Galeano

Carta

Mis queridos hermanos puertorriqueños:

Los pueblos que no escuchan los reclamos de sus estudiantes corren el peligro de quedarse sin futuro. La ciudadanía estudiantil es la que custodia el fuego sagrado de la esperanza de los pueblos, y la guardan con su arrojo, con su temeridad, con su inviolable capacidad de soñar. Hay que escuchar a los estudiantes, aguzar el oído, mirarlos a los ojos y leer lo que nos dicen con sus actos, pero sobre todo con el deseo encendido de su mirada. Cuando el resto claudica y se recoge en la madriguera cómoda de la conveniencia, los estudiantes se alzan. Cuando el resto piensa hoy no, mañana quizás, los estudiantes dicen: ahora. Cuando el resto se acostumbra a lo que hay, los estudiantes nos muestran el sendero luminoso del porvenir.

En momentos como éste, cuando esta Latinoamérica nuestra sufre, con el resto del mundo, las consecuencias nefastas del desplome de la avaricia del capitalismo salvaje, hoy más que nunca, no nos podemos dar el lujo de darle la espalda a nuestros estudiantes. Hay una comunidad internacional que observa con interés el desarrollo de este movimiento. Esperamos, de las autoridades universitarias y gubernamentales, el mayor respeto. Desistan del uso de la fuerza. Siéntense a negociar con ellos en paz, de igual a igual. Escúchenlos. Sean generosos. No están dentro del recinto, atrincherados en el campus, por puro capricho. Están allí porque ellos son el corazón, la llama viva de la universidad.

Estudiantes, profesores debaten estrategias sobre la huelga

2011-02-18T08:31:00.001-08:00

Cong. Gutierrez Speaks Out on Civil Rights Violations in Puerto Rico

2011-02-16T13:22:00.001-08:00

Huge demonstration "I love the UPR" Supporting Student Strike

2011-02-13T08:58:00.000-08:00

2011-02-12T11:59:00.000-08:00

Expanding Democracy and Public Education in Puerto Rico

Victor M. Rodriguez*

"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. **

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. In and 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. Puerto Rico last years had 1,000 murders, already in January 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, 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.

*Professor and former Chair of the Department of Chicano and Latino Studies at California State University of Long Beach. Alumni of the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras.

Blog and Video link: http://ethnosboriquen.blogspot.com/

**”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

Rio Squad Repressing University of Puerto Rico Students

2011-02-12T08:11:00.000-08:00

Lascivious Assaults By PR Police Against Women Student Protesters

2011-01-31T16:22:00.001-08:00

This is one of a number of lascivious acts committed by Puerto Rican police officers during the protests of University of Puerto Rico students.

The Hiring of Robert Warshaw: Damage Control?

2011-01-31T13:53:00.000-08:00

Government Prepares for Possible Federal Intervention: Hires Expert for Damage Control

The secretive hiring of Robert Warshaw by the government of Puerto Rico may indicate an effort to mitigate the political damage a possible intervention of the U.S. Department of Justice may have on the colonial goverment of Puerto Rico as a result of the complaints filed by the Puerto Rico chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Mr. Warshaw, a former Associate Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, who also serves as an auditor for the United States Department of Justice where he reviews whether organizations like police departments are in compliance with procedural revisions directed or overseen by a Federal court. In cases where complaints of violation of civil rights have resulted in a Negotiated Settlement Agreement (NSA) like a consent decree, Warshaw has served as a monitor for to oversee if there is compliance with the court order. Presently, he serves as head of the Independent Monitoring Team which is overseeing the city of Oakland, California’s NSA. This 5-year-old NSA is the outcome of a series of police abuse in what is called the Riders’ Scandal. The incident involved police officers committing false arrests at the same time a similar scandal occurred in the Ramparts Division of the Los Angeles Police Department. It appears thta Mr. Warshaw strict interpretation of the NSA may lead the Oakland Police Department into receivership for its failure to restrain its police in the use of force.

He also served in the same capacity with another NSA process with the City of Detroit. In this consent decree the Detroit Police Department was expected to develop a use of force policy and an elimination of the use of the choke hold and similar carotid holds unless deadly force is authorized. Given the use of this very dangerous police tactic in the arrests of peacefully protesting students, this might be one of the areas which might be at the center of a Department of Justice intervention. It will be interesting to see what will the reaction of the courts be with respect with recent the sexual assaults that have been committed by some police officers against women protesters. The Bar Association Women's Commission has demanded that police officers be investigated for lascivious attacks. The You Tube portrayal of a young woman being inapropriately touched by a police office has received wide attention.

In recent years, for example, the New Jersey State police had to sign a consent decree because of instances of sexual assault by its officers including the rape of a college student by police officers.

In a consent decree, the accused party does not need to admit wrong doing but it commits to reforms that will address the violations of citizens rights. This is a way of avoiding a lawsuit which could bring heavy financial costs to the organization. Warshaw, because of his expertise can tell the Puerto Rican Police Department what measure it should take to avoid a lawsuit. It is possible that if the complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Justice proceeds, the Government of Puerto Rico would have an ally helping them engage in damage control and the political fallout from a department of justice intervention.

Recently, the Superintendent of the Puerto Rican police ordered the police not to use the choke hold. Interestingly, this deadly force tactic has been the center of many interventions by the Department of Justice in cities across the United States.

In the meantime, Gov. Fortuño denies there are any potential investigacion in progress of the goverment of Puerto Rico.

(from various sources, Oakland Informant, Primera Hora and the internet 1/31/2011)

Governor of Puerto Rico Luis Fortuno Faces Protesters While in Spain

2011-01-22T08:10:00.000-08:00

Police Brutality Against Civil Disobedients University of Puerto Rico

2011-01-19T16:34:00.000-08:00

Comparing Countries with US States

2011-01-19T07:51:00.000-08:00

Rompiendo mitos sobre la violencia en los movimientos sociales

2011-01-13T13:03:00.000-08:00

Un ciudadano ex alumno que apoya la huelga escribió esto en Estudiantes de la UPR informan.

1. Luis G. Santiago Buitrago La gente que se manifestaba pacificamente con Gandhi por la descolonización de la India, y con Martin Luther King en su lucha por los derechos de los afroamericanos en EEUU, se arriesgaban no solo al arresto, sino a la misma muerte. Sin embargo, nunca usaron capuchas. Irónicamente, las capuchas a quienes nos recuerdan es a los linchadores racistas del Ku Klux Klan. Creo que ya sobran argumentos: no mas encapuchados mi gente. El que tema ser arrestado, que se quede afuera y apoye de otra forma.

Los comentarios del compatriota han sido repetidos ad nauseum por muchos que comentan los sucesos en mi alma mater la Universidad de Puerto Rico.

El sistema de educación es uno de los pilares más importantes en la perpetuación del estatus quo. La educación logra internalizar ideologías individualistas que fragmentan la visión de mundo de los estudiantes. Ademas, la estructura jerárquica y opresora del sistema de educación (a pesar de los espacios liberadores que existen) premia aquellas formas de pensar y comportarse que domestican al estudiante para convertirlo en un trabajador dócil e obediente. La visión de mundo fragmentada convierte el mundo social en algo inexpugnable, ininteligible lo que conduce a imaginar explicaciones mistificadoras sobre los procesos sociales. Esto combinado con la pasividad internalizada y a no recibir la capacidad teórica de entender como ocurren los cambios sociales llevan a muchos a sentirse sin poder, enajenados.

Una de las formas en que esta ideología es reforzada es a través, por ejemplo, de enseñar una historia donde son los grandes lideres los que crean los cambios. El rol de las masas es escondido y distorsionado. El rol de la violencia, por ejemplo, es siempre presentado por la historia tradicional como legitima solo cuando es ejercida por el estado. Por otro lado se crea un mito a sobre procesos sociales importantes que conducen a creer que estos son ordenados, racionales y lineales. Un ejemplo concreto es la lucha de los derechos civiles en los EUA. Básicamente la narrativa dominante es que Martín Lutero King, prácticamente solo y a través de la resistencia pacifica logró los cambios monumentales que se dieron en los Estados Unidos y que desmantelaron de forma importante el sistema de segregación de jure. Esta narrativa convierte a Rosa Park en una anciana que cansada decide sentarse en la sección de los blancos en una guagua Montgomery, Alabama y al ser arrestada comienza mágicamente el movimiento de los derechos civiles. Rosa Park era una organizadora, miembro del NAACP, recibió entrenamiento como organizadora en el Highlander Center, uno de los centros de entrenamiento de la izquierda norteamericana más progresista.

La narrativa elimina a las Panteras Negras (Poder negro, nacionalistas, acción directa, lucha armada), a US (poder negro, acción directa, lucha armada), a los Diáconos de la Justicia en Louisiana (auto defensa armada), al Ejercito Guerrillero Negro (lucha armada), etc. Ademas, en el periodo de 1967-1969 mas de 100 ciudades en los EUA explotaron en protestas violentas por la opresión racial, el asesinato de Martín Lutero King, brutalidad policiaca. En Detroit, la guardia nacional uso tanque y bazookas cuando atacó los barrios afroamericanos. Ademas, desde finales de la segunda guerra mundial, veteranos afroamericanos ejecutaron acciones armadas en defensa de sus comunidades. Y esta recuperación de la historia no incluye los numerosos casos de violencia del estado y de organizaciones supremacistas blancas. Toda esta historia es borrada de la narrativa distorsionada que pasa como historia en los sistemas educativos de los Estados Unidos y de Puerto Rico.

Las luchas sociales son siempre caóticas, complejas y tienen sus altas y bajas. Los métodos, no siempre son homogéneos porque las situaciones concretas son siempre diversas. No hay que romantizar la violencia, pero tampoco hay que esconder que a veces, los procesos sociales y la lucha por la justicia, tienen aspectos desagradables y dolorosos. Por eso cuando las cosas se complican, perdemos la esperanza. Con eso es que precisamente cuentan las clases dominantes.

Puerto Rican Scholars in the US Request Attorney General Intervention UPR Conflict

2010-12-17T12:42:00.000-08:00

December 16, 2010

Honorable Eric H. Holder, Jr.
Attorney General of the United States
The United States Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001

Dear Mr. Holder:
As Puerto Rican scholars teaching in the United States we have decided to write to you in order to express our deep concern with regard to recent developments at the University of Puerto Rico (UPR). For the past months, the University has experienced a continuing conflict that began last semester with a call for a strike by the students in response to an increase in academic tuition and related to fears about the future of public higher education on the island. Unfortunately, university administrators, professors, and students have not been able to negotiate a satisfactory agreement. The whole process has recently culminated in the intervention of Governor Luis Fortuño and the deployment of a massive police presence on the main university campus at Río Piedras and on other campuses in the system, including a private security contractor and fully armed SWAT units.
On December 13, Chancellor Ana R. Guadalupe banned all meetings, festivals, manifestations, and all other so-called large activities on the Río Piedras campus for a period of thirty days. In our view, this represents a clear breach of fundamental constitutional rights. The justifications given by the Chancellor are that this measure is required in order to keep the campus open and to return it to normal operations. Furthermore, professors and workers are being asked (under the threat of punishment) to continue working despite the intense volatility caused by the police presence on campus.
We remain very concerned that such use of force may in fact increase the potential for violence and continued tension, especially if the guarantees of freedom of speech, association, and assembly have been revoked. Both the United States Constitution and the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico guarantee these rights. Moreover, this week the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico (which, without the opportunity for serious public debate, was recently restructured by the government of Luis Fortuño in order to ensure a clear majority of judges in his favor) declared, in a disturbing resolution, that strikes will be prohibited at all UPR campuses effective immediately.
We the undersigned write to you as scholars and citizens because of the potentially lethal conditions that we have described and that prevail at the UPR. That is why we urge you to intervene in order to:
1. Guarantee the constitutional rights of freedom of speech, association, and assembly as stipulated by both constitutions and to see that the conflict is conducted under the strictest observation of human and civil rights for all parties involved.
2. Procure the immediate withdrawal of all state and city police, private contractors, and other non-UPR security personnel from the University of Puerto Rico system currently under occupation.
3. Call all parties to meet and have a truly productive dialogue.
Respectfully yours,
[Institutional affiliations for identification purposes only. Please respond to primary contacts.]
1) Agnes Lugo-Ortiz, The University of Chicago [Primary contact]
Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
Chicago, IL 60637
lugortiz@uchicago.edu
2) Ivette N. Hernández-Torres, University of California, Irvine [Primary contact]
ivetteh@uci.edu
3) Luis F. Avilés, University of California, Irvine [Primary contact]
laviles9631@sbcglobal.net
4) Aldo Lauria-Santiago, Rutgers University [Primary contact]
alauria@rci.rutgers.edu
5) Arcadio Díaz-Quiñones
Emory L. Ford Professor, Emeritus, Princeton University
adiaz@princeton.edu
6) Aníbal González-Pérez, Yale University
anibal.gonzalez@yale.edu
7) Luis Figueroa-Martínez, Trinity College
Treasurer, Puerto Rican Studies Association (PRSA)
Luis.Figueroa@trincoll.edu
8) Roberto Alejandro, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
ralejand@polsci.umass.edu
9) Harry Vélez-Quiñones, University of Puget Sound
velez@pugetsound.edu
10) Ismael García-Colón, College of Staten Island, CUNY
Ismael.Garcia@csi.cuny.edu
11) Áurea María Sotomayor-Miletti, University of Pittsburgh
aureamariastmr@yahoo.com
12) Antonio Lauria-Perricelli, New York University
al71@nyu.edu
13) Wanda Rivera Rivera, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Wanda.Rivera-Rivera@umb.edu
14) José Quiroga, Emory University
jquirog@emory.edu
15) Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
lawrlafo@yahoo.co.uk
16) Daniel Torres, Ohio University
torres@ohio.edu
17) Pablo Delano, Trinity College
Pablo.Delano@trincoll.edu
18) Denise Galarza Sepúlveda, Lafayette College
galarzad@lafayette.edu
19) Richard Rosa, Duke University
rr49@duke.edu
20) Eleuterio Santiago-Díaz, University of New Mexico
esantia@unm.edu
21) Ilia Rodríguez, University of New Mexico
ilia@unm.edu
22) Ramón H. Rivera-Servera, Northwestern University
r-rivera-servera@northwestern.edu
23) Gladys M. Jiménez-Muñoz, Binghamton University-SUNY
gjimenez@binghamton.edu
24) Luz-María Umpierre
Poet, Scholar, Human Rights Advocate
LUmpierre@aol.com
25) Sheila Candelario, Fairfield University
candelariosheila@hotmail.com
26) Edna Acosta-Belén, University at Albany, SUNY
eab@albany.edu
27) Efraín Barradas, University of Florida at Gainsville
barradas@LATAM.UFL.EDU
28) Kelvin Santiago-Valles, Binghamton University-SUNY
stgokel@binghamton.edu
29) Víctor Figueroa, Wayne State University
an7664@wayne.edu
30) Juan Duchesne Winter, University of Pittsburgh
juanduchesne@yahoo.com
31) Pablo A. Llerandi-Román, Grand Valley State University
llerandp@gvsu.edu
32) Irmary Reyes-Santos, University of Oregon
irmary@uoregon.edu
33) Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé, Fordham University
cruzmalave@fordham.edu
34) Ileana M. Rodríguez-Silva, University of Washington
imrodrig@uw.edu
35) César A. Salgado, University of Texas, Austin
cslgd@mail.utexas.edu
36) Jossianna Arroyo, University of Texas, Austin
jarroyo@mail.utexas.edu
37) Francisco A. Scarano, University of Wisconsin, Madison
fscarano@wisc.edu
38) Jaime Rodríguez Matos, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
jaimerod@umich.edu
39) Cecilia Enjuto Rangel, University of Oregon
enjuto@uoregon.edu
40) Elpidio Laguna-Díaz, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
elplag@optonline.net
41) Lena Burgos-Lafuente, SUNY, Stony Brook
lenabu@nyu.edu
42) Ramón Grosfoguel, University of California, Berkeley
grosfogu@berkeley.edu
43) José Francisco Buscaglia Salgado, SUNY, Buffalo
Director of Program in Caribbean Studies
jfb2@buffalo.edu
44) Francisco Cabanillas, Bowling Green State University
fcabani@bgsu.edu
45) Lisa Sánchez González, University of Connecticut
lisa.m.sanchez@uconn.edu
46) María M. Carrión, Emory University
mcarrio@emory.edu
47) Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
Director Institute for Research on Women
yolandatrabajo@optonline.net
48) Agustín Lao-Montes, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
oxunelegua@yahoo.com
49) Jason Cortés, Rutgers University-Newark
jasoncor@andromeda.rutgers.edu
50) Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Rutgers University
President, Caribbean Philosophical Association
nmtorres7@gmail.com
51) Daín Borges, The University of Chicago
dborges@uchicago.edu
52) Edna Rodríguez-Mangual, Hamilton College
emrodrig@hamilton.edu
53) Ricardo Pérez Figueroa, Eastern Connecticut State University
PerezR@easternct.edu
54) Licia Fiol-Matta, Lehman College, CUNY
lfiolmatta@earthlink.net
55) Frances R. Aparicio, University of Illinois at Chicago
franapar@uic.edu
56) Luis E. Zayas, Arizona State University
lezayas@asu.edu
57) Hortensia R. Morell, Temple University
hmorell@temple.edu
58) Milagros Denis-Rosario, Hunter College
mdenis@hunter.cuny.edu
59) Víctor Rodríguez, California State University, Long Beach
vrodrig5@csulb.edu
60) Madeline Troche-Rodríguez, City Colleges of Chicago
mtroche05@yahoo.com
61) Carmen R. Lugo-Lugo, Washington State University
clugo@wsu.edu
62) Jorge Luis Castillo, University of California, Santa Barbara
castillo@spanport.ucsb.edu
63) Rosa Elena Carrasquillo, College of the Holy Cross
rcarrasq@holycross.edu
64) Juan Carlos Rodríguez, The Georgia Institute of Technology
juan.rodriguez@modlangs.gatech.edu
65) Susana Peña, Bowling Green State University
susanap@bgsu.edu
66) José R. Cartagena-Calderón, Pomona College
Jose.Cartagena@pomona.edu
67) Amílcar Challu, Bowling Green State University
achallu@bgsu.edu
68) Carlos J. Alonso, Columbia University
calonso@columbia.edu
69) Carmen A. Rolón, Providence College
CROLON@providence.edu
70) Amy Robinson, Bowling Green State University
arobins@bgsu.edu
71) Consuelo Arias, Nassau Community College
ecarias@att.net

Puerto Rican Scholars in Canada Who Also Subscribe to this Letter

72) Rubén A. Gaztambide-Fernández, University of Toronto
rgaztambide@oise.utoronto.ca
73) Néstor E. Rodríguez, University of Toronto
nestor.rodriguez@utoronto.ca
74) Gustavo J. Bobonis, University of Toronto
gustavo.bobonis@utoronto.ca

cc: Thomas E. Pérez, Assistant Attorney General, United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division
Luis Gutiérrez, Congressman, Illinois 4th District
Nydia Velázquez, Congresswoman, New York 12th District
José Serrano, Congressman, New York 16th District
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
Luis Fortuño, Governor of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico
Pedro Pierluisi, Puerto Rico’s Resident Commissioner in Washington
José Ramón de la Torre, President of the University of Puerto Rico
Ygrí Rivera de Martínez, President of the Board of Trustees (Junta de Síndicos), University of Puerto Rico
Ana R. Guadalupe, Chancellor of the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus

Cuba and South Africa: Cuito Cuanavale

2010-06-19T08:07:00.000-07:00

Cuito Cuanavale (thanks to an article in Granma by Oscar Gomez Serra)

VMR 6/17/2010

During a trip to Cuba in 2004, I engaged in conversation with a Cuban (Dionisio?) who worked as an engineer in the mining sector. He had been a combatant in the Cuban expeditionary forces in Angola 1987-88. While I followed the news about the role of Cuba in Africa, to hear from a witness-participant the stories he shared were moving. Not all stories of heroism but given the Cuban humor stories about actions that were not heroic but sometimes funny and sad. Now, as I watch the World Cup, Gomez Serra’s article reminds us that there would be no cup if the Cubans had not supported African anti colonial struggle. In Cuito Cuanavale, Angola, after the South African army came to the aid of the CIA supported UNITA, the Cubans came to the aid of the Angolan forces against the South Africans. They defeated the South African forces and in many ways undermined the Apartheid regime. An African and Diaspora Army defeated the powerful army of Apartheid. Cubans shed their blood together for Angola asking nothing in return except solidarity.

The African leader of Guinea-Bissau Amílcar Cabral: The Cuban combatants are willing to sacrifice their lives for the liberation of our countries, in exchange, the only thing that they will take with them are the bodies of their fallen comrades who fell fighting for liberty.”'

There might not be a Cuban team playing, but the stadiums are full with the spirits of the fallen combatants . . .

Restoring Political Economy to "Post-Modern" Discourse

2010-06-18T08:47:00.000-07:00

Comparto esta intervención por Delia Aguilar porque articula una crítica de algunas perspectivas postmodernas que desconectan el análisis de lo "cotidiano" de los marcos amplios que le dan sentido a la misma. El concepto de las "multitudes" frente a las masas conscientes me recuerda la descripción de Luis Muñoz de Puerto Rico, no como una nación, sino como un "reguerete" de personas. Este "reguerete" derrotó a la función opresiva del Servicio Selectivo en Puerto Rico (colapsando el SMO en la isla) en los 60s, derrotó a la armada naval norteamericana en Vieques y fue capaz de mantener la cultura que los Boricuas creamos a traves de la resistencia a la asimilacion. Los estudiantes en la Universidad de Puerto Rico incorporaron la diversidad y ampliaron la democracia en sus procesos, pero también fueron capaces de aglutinar, debido a su identidad como Boricuas, a todo un pais que los apoyo. Los estudiantes tenían una visión para construir su Universidad Nacional Pública. Las referencias a "La UPR es un pais", la música que cantaron, los poemas que leyeron, fueron afirmando su identidad nacional. Hablaron sobre una Universidad que no era EN Puerto Rico pero de una Universidad DE Puerto Rico. También entendieron bien los marcos amplios para entender como las políticas neoliberales crearon el contexto para el ataque a la Universidad. Los estudiantes fueron colocados por los ataques del estado en una clases social, contra la clase dominante en Puerto Rico, que es una posición de clase. La clase trabajadora no ha podido extraer estas concesiones por el bajo grado de organización (gracias a la función y leyes del Gobierno federal y colonial), el papel de las uniones internacionales y el poder del Estado (creacion de la fuerza de choque y otras unidades militarizadas) y el creciente papel de las autoridades federales como el FBI en la isla. Durante la protestas cantaban “Preciosa” con las referencias al “tirano” (no al destino). Esta mañana, DJ Fabio uno de los locutores de Radio Huelga en Rio Piedras dice adiós a su audiencia (va a Barcelona) con una canción de Roy Brown, un poema de Juan Antonio Corretjer sobre ser Boricua hasta en la luna. Esta generación no se desconecta el pasado, sólo está construyendo un futuro.
=============

I am sharing this speech by Delia Aguilar because it articulates a critique of some post-modern work which disconnects the analysis of the "cotidiano" from the frameworks that give sense to it. The "multitudes" versus conscious masses reminds me of Luis Muñoz's description of Puerto Rico, not as a nation but as a "reguerete" of people. This “reguerete” defeated the Selective Service in Puerto Rico, defeated the U.S. Navy in Vieques, and was able to maintain the culture it fashioned in struggle. The students at the university of Puerto Rico incorporated the diversity and expanded democracy, but also were able to coalesce because of their identity as Boricuas, as students who had a vision to construct their public national university. The references to “Puerto Rico es un pais,” the music they sang, the poems they read, were affirming their national identity. They talked about not a University IN Puerto Rico but of a university OF Puerto Rico. They also spoke about the larger frames of neo-liberal policies that created the context for the attack on the university. The students were clearly socially positioned against the ruling class in Puerto Rico, that is a class position. The only reason why the working class has been unable to extract these concessions is because of the low degree of organization (thanks to the role of the federal and colonial government), the role of international unions, and the power of the state (creation decades ago of riot squad, and other militarized units)and increasing role of federal authorities like the FBI in the island. DJ Fabio on Radio Huelga says good bye to its audience (going to Barcelona) with a song by Roy Brown, a poem of Juan Antonio Corretjer. This generation is not disconnected from the past, it is just building a future. 6/18/2010

“But one wonders how much more talk of bordercrossers negotiating multiple, fluctuating, heterogenous identities navigating an interstitial third space a person can stomach amidst realities that speak an altogether different story.”

1. Class Considerations in a Globalized Economic Order
by Delia D. Aguilar

The following is the text of Delia D. Aguilar's keynote address at the 22-23 March 2007 Pacific Northwest Regional Conference of the National Association for Chicana/o Studies, University of Washington: "Class Dismissed? Reintegrating Critical Studies of Class into Chicana and Chicano Studies." -- Ed.

I cannot begin to tell you how delighted I am at the opportunity to address this conference. When I first received Professor Devon Pena's kind invitation, I immediately thought that he had mistaken me for a Chicana, and felt compelled to clarify my identity as a Filipina. When he explained that he was aware of my national origin, I was moved by this gesture of solidarity. And when I read the conference call for papers, I simply had to answer in the affirmative. I have not seen such an explicit call to break away from the linguistic turn and to openly exhort a reinstatement of class in order to adequately address the subaltern condition.

Over the past several years I have been alternately dismayed and vexed by the persistence in the academy of a perspective that makes radical and progressive claims, yet fails to confront the geopolitics of neoliberalism that is clearly responsible for the ever deepening poverty of nearly half of the world's population. Intellectuals within and outside the academy, including the major mainstream media, hailed the publication in the year 2000 of Empire by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. The book deserves mention because it is quintessentially postmodern, a prime example of what this gathering seeks to pull back from. It argues that imperialism has been replaced by a decentered Empire where power is now diffused, the nation/state has virtually disappeared (it mocks all kinds of nationalism and depicts national liberation movements of the 60s as retrograde), and in which an amorphous category called "multitude" has displaced the Fordist working class. Surely the events that transpired not too long after its printing -- the horror of 9/11 and the subsequent invasion of Iraq by the world's sole superpower, the United States, by no means a defunct nation/state -- refuted its chief premise and highlighted its bankruptcy more than any critical review the book may have received.

Yet publication after publication that scholars produce replicate, if in less ambitious ways, the basic postmodern elements of this highly acclaimed book. To be sure, thinkers like Alex Callinicos, David Harvey, Teresa Ebert, Terry Eagleton, Ellen Meiksins Wood, and Peter MacLaren, among others, have for well over a decade now intervened and countered some of postmodern/postcolonial theories' more pernicious tendencies, but for the most part these remain entrenched in academic thinking. What results is often a jarring disconnect between real lives and the postmodern narratives that purport to shed light on these. I was just hearing over the radio, for example, about the undisguised militarization of the US/Mexico border, the building of a 700-mile wall, the heightened criminalization of immigrants and the attribution of leprosy to so-called illegal Mexicans. All this is in anticipation of the immigration bill to be taken up shortly by the Senate. One expects such a response from confused, frightened, and hateful nativists, particularly after the awe-inspiring massive demonstrations of Latinos, Asians, and other ethnic groups a year ago, the largest in US history. But one wonders how much more talk of bordercrossers negotiating multiple, fluctuating, heterogenous identities navigating an interstitial third space a person can stomach amidst realities that speak an altogether different story.

To repeat, I am deeply honored to be part of a group that has taken the lead in the urgent project of recuperating a class analysis. I initially thought that, given the shared histories of conquest and the immigrant experience of Mexicans and Filipinos, I would elaborate on their similarities and differences. The following readily came to mind: 300 years of outright colonization by Spain; the United States' "manifest destiny," first applied to the annexation of Mexican territory in 1848 to justify and insure Anglo-Saxon supremacy and extended to the conquest of the Philippines 50 years later, along with the conquest of Puerto Rico and Cuba; notions of benevolent assimilation and "the white man's burden"; the derogation of both groups as children who required uplifting and civilizing; and their inferiorization as workers and peasants under the prevailing U.S. capitalist mode of production. In the first half of the twentieth century, Mexican immigrant workers and Filipino "nationals" found themselves together in the agribusiness farms of the West Coast and began to forge solidarity as workers exploited by capital. Here class emerged as primary, ethnic identity, secondary. This was clearly the case in the formation of the United Farm Workers led by Cesar Chavez in support of the grape strike of 1965 which was initiated by Filipino farm workers in Delano. Subsequent decades witnessed intensifying US domination of Mexico and the Philippines by way of the IMF/WB, wrecking both countries' economies with the debt burden, causing great poverty, and forcing growing numbers to leave in search of employment. The responses of both governments have been remarkably similar, from the creation of special programs for returning migrants (Paisano for Mexico and Balikbayan for the Philippines, the better to extract remittances), to hailing them as "national heroes," to granting of dual citizenship. In effect, US imperialism has made of both countries nations of migrants.

On the one hand it is difficult to imagine anything more ironic than the disparagement and dismissal of class considerations -- that is, of labor/capital relations, and here I include women's assigned duty of social reproduction -- in light of such realities and at the very moment in history when all the nations of the planet have been drawn together into one global capitalist order. On the other, if one assumes a materialist view on the rise and popularity of specific conceptual frameworks and the ruling classes they serve, this intellectual stance should come as no big surprise.

To prepare for this conference I gave myself a crash course in Chicana Studies, an undertaking that I found illuminating in a variety of ways. Above all else, however, I discovered to my chagrin (but admittedly, also relief, probably a perverse reaction on my part) that the reigning approaches in Philippine Studies are the exact same ones deployed in Chicana Studies. In the course of my exploration I came upon one work that I am sure you are all familiar with, but which for me was new and rather eye-opening. As I read chapter after chapter of A Century of Chicano History by Gilbert Gonzalez and Raul Fernandez, I could have sworn they were writing about Filipino scholarship! What the book revealed to me is the existence of an academic template, circulating across various disciplines, where only the particulars need filling in. All I had to do was substitute the Philippines for Mexico. This discovery made me realize the extent to which a type of formulaic thinking has established residence in the academic mind, a condition that in my opinion actually functions to hamper social change. I made a decision at that moment to shift gears and direct my talk to a discussion of Philippine writings, hoping that it would have some relevance for Chicana Studies.

A new book on the US conquest of the Philippines at the turn of the twentieth century demonstrates these very trends -- in this example, a revision of history that effectively obscures capital's expansionary imperatives, its search for new markets and raw materials. Titled The Blood of Government, Paul Kramer puts race at the heart of his argument: he maintains that prior accounts demonstrate the ways in which race serves empire, whereas he wants to make the case that it is race itself that constitutes empire. It is not an exaggeration to state that this book is cultural reductionist without apology, which is not to say that it is without virtue. The research the author undertakes is extensive, as is his documentation of the racialization of Filipinos; their characterization as childlike, savage, indolent, and superstitious is, without a doubt, common knowledge for Chicanos and other subordinated groups. But alas, he then proceeds to describe Filipinos as colonizers themselves! He labels them "nationalist colonialists" who would "demonstrate their capacity for independence precisely through their ability to conquer, rule, and uplift the savages [Muslims, animists, and non-Christian Filipinos] in their midst" (p.32). Ultimately the relationship between conqueror and colonized is conveniently wished away with the following statement: "The symmetry between imperial indigenism and nationalist colonialism suggests the ways in which the new racial formation was the product of intense contestation and dialogue, a joint American-Filipino venture situated inside a broader, evolving colonial project" (p.435). Imagine that. "Symmetry," "intense contestation and dialogue," "joint venture" -- do not these suggest a relationship of equality, fraternity, even?

Another historian writing of that same period, Kristin Hoganson, in Fighting for American Manhood, asserts the notion that it was fear of male degeneracy that impelled US conquest and colonization of the island nation. She concedes, as she would have to, that economic factors can be seen to "partially account" for what she calls "later decisions to fight Filipino nationalists for the control of the islands," owing to their proximity to the China market. But she insists that the more compelling, though not readily discernible motive, was to build and sustain the masculine character of white, middle- and upper-class men who had been softened by the comforts provided by wealth and civilization. She cites several reasons for why combat formed the crucible for maleness. The first was that the "splendid little war" in the Philippines would serve to revive memories of military heroism in the Civil War, perceived as having fostered manliness in youthful soldiers. It would, like the British experience in India, allow manhood to evolve as the chief outcome of learning how to properly rule one's inferiors. Lastly, conquest of the Philippines would be a remedy for the effeminacy ostensibly spawned by soft living.

What I find interesting in these two historical revisions is the way in which political economy, the class character of empire, is summarily dismissed in favor of unabashedly culturalist explanations. And why at this historical conjuncture? For answers it might be useful to turn to a brief sketch of the Philippine situation.

Fifty years of colonial rule and continuing economic control by the United States of the Philippines have imbricated every facet of life and all the institutions in the country -- the media, courts, schools, civic society and, according to Filipino nationalist economist Alejandro Lichauco, even the churches. Various agreements were entered into at the time of the granting of independence in 1946, and new ones proposed and acceded to by every succeeding administration, to insure that this would remain the case. This concession to imperialism has resulted in a lopsided, maldeveloped, principally agrarian economy, one that produces goods for export and is unable to supply its own people's basic needs. On the cultural level it has created an enduring colonial mindset held more firmly captive in this globalized era by a conglomerate-controlled consciousness industry.

While Subic and Clark, the two largest US bases, were shut down in 1991 due to nationalist protest, a Visiting Forces Agreement was signed in its place that gave the US 22 entry points, "lily-pad"-style, throughout the country. Currently US Special Forces scour the South, ostensibly to hunt down the Muslim Abbu Sayyaf bandit group of under two hundred, but whom activists believe to be providing aid to the Philippine Army in wiping out dissenters. In 2005 a Filipina was gang-raped by four US servicemen; one of the soldiers was found guilty in a trial last December, only to be whisked away from a local prison by the US Embassy in the middle of the night. Recently the UN Alston Report confirmed human rights violations of "significant" proportions, consisting of 839 extrajudicial killings of suspected protesters, among them grassroots organizers, religious, journalists, and students. Reports of these killings continue practically on a daily basis. Despite this finding, an anti-terrorism bill, the Human Security Act of 2007, has just been signed by Arroyo, following the moves of her master in the White House. This bill would allow repression that could easily outrank that of the martial law years.

Continued indebtedness to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and faithful compliance with Structural Adjustment Programs have forced presidents after the dictator Marcos, who launched the practice, to resort to sending masses of unemployed abroad to ease tensions at home. With the country in a chronic state of crisis, the deployment of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) is the largest dollar earner ($12 billion in 2006) and has become a permanent fixture in the socioeconomic landscape. It is estimated that up to 12% of the population of 88 million is overseas, 75% of whom are women mostly destined for domestic and nanny work. President Arroyo has recommended skill-training to transform and package them into even more marketable "supermaids." Three thousand Filipinos -- economists predict this figure could go up to 5,000 -- leave their homes daily for 180 different countries; an average of 3 workers come back in coffins every day. A new development is the re-training of doctors in a special two-year nursing program; in 2006, 6,000 doctors underwent such training, up from 2,000 of the previous year. The Philippines sends more nurses to the US than any other country. Meanwhile, health care services are in a state of decay.

And how have scholars responded to this situation? For an answer, let me turn to a study of Filipino American migration titled Home Bound by Yen Li Espiritu. I chose this because unlike most students of immigration writing today who routinely preface their studies with an obligatory disavowal of class (here they mean poverty) or what they commonly refer to as "the economy," Espiritu recognizes the importance of sociopolitical economic context. She announces at the outset that she will be "attentive to the larger political, economic, and cultural context of migration and to the human agency and subjectivity of the migrants . . . " and that it is ". . . the intersection of macro and micro forces that shapes . . . migration -- and eventual settlement -- of Filipino women and men. . ." (p.24). Throughout the book she uses a vocabulary that suggests a cognizance of what she calls "the big picture": colonialism, imperialism, capital investment, economic and military assistance, pervasive Americanization, etc. to which she repeatedly returns.

Elsewhere Espiritu refers to the "dialectic" relationship between the macro and the micro (p12). Yet simultaneous with the assertion of the link between neoliberal policies and individual decision-making is its rejection, as witness this statement: "Although Filipino migration needs to be situated within the larger history of US (neo)colonialism and capital investment in Asia, these structural forces do not shape actual patterns of migration" (p.24). Why bother to mention US neocolonialism at all then? Further on, the same contradiction appears -- and the book is replete with similar contradictory statements, enough to make the reader dizzy -- when she explains that because Filipinos she has interviewed migrated only after family and social networks were already set up, "the macrostructural context, while important, does not determine or shape specific migration responses" (p.44). She illustrates this by reproducing the narratives of four Filipinos, each one of whom departs the country for different reasons. A. B. Santos ran away to Manila because his grandfather wanted him to enter the seminary; while in Manila, he met some townmates who were bound for the United States, so he joined them. Maria Rafael, who had previous experience in the US as an exchange high-school student, didn't care to return, but her husband was petitioned by his brother. Cecilia Bonus, a nurse, had made plans to return to the Philippines, but a car accident in which she was involved led to a meeting with a man who became her husband; they now reside in San Diego.
All this is to delineate and underscore the intricacies, nuances, and complexities of people's decisions to migrate that are then unhinged from the metanarrative of neocolonialism. All four are migrants by accident; none of the reasons they give has to do with class considerations -- by this she means poverty or the desire for better employment opportunity -- which seems to be what the author is looking for. It appears, then, that either Espiritu fails to understand what neocolonialism means, or she has deliberately limited "contextualization" to an immediate cause-effect relationship -- a rather simplistic view, I'm afraid, that beats the presumed simplemindedness and "determinism" of Marxism to which postmodernism is a response. Still, this is a predilection that Gonzalez and Fernandez know all too well. For them what has occurred in this instance is the detachment of migratory practice from its original cause. Once migration flows begin and migration networks have been established, migrants are seen as self-propelled and self-governing. It is now their "subjectivities" that warrant examination, no longer US immigration policies designed in collaboration with local elites. The latter have been erased from the picture. (History has been erased)

This fragmentation of thinking is also evident when Espiritu proposes the concept of "differential inclusion" to describe the status of Filipino Americans; that is, to show that they are not totally excluded, but rather marginalized, by mainstream Anglo society. She proceeds: ". . . Filipino American lives have been shaped not only by the historical racialization of Filipinos in the United States but also by the status of the Philippines in the global economy" (p.48). Here the "but also" suggests a somewhat tangential relationship between the situation of Filipino Americans and the subjugated nature of their home country that, one notes, is curiously sidestepped in this statement's neutral phrasing. In contrast, let me return to Gonzalez and Fernandez who object to any such tangentiality. Instead, they vigorously insist that the only way to view Chicanas as a national minority is to acknowledge their centrality to the US colonial empire. Put another way, US socioeconomic cultural machinery could not operate as it does without the labor exploitation of national minority groups and its attendant gender and racial oppression. Moreover, for them Mexican migration, like that of Filipinos, is primarily a labor migration which can be comprehended only when situated squarely in the context of US hegemonic control of Mexico, a view that Espiritu, as we have seen, appears to subscribe to, but barely.

As a result, Espiritu's rendering of migration ends up with all the pitfalls that Gonzalez and Fernandez describe in their book. Without a firm grasp of the totality of capitalist globalization and the ways in which it encroaches into every nook and cranny of human existence -- for this, one needs to have an understanding of the social relations of production -- studies of migration end up, according to Gonzalez and Fernandez, as studies of migrants themselves (p.115). Given this, the choice presented is to project them as either victims or actors, which the two consider to be a fallacious dilemma. To quote Gonzalez and Fernandez, on the ubiquity of "agency": "Rational choices made by migrants to acquire commodities, or to reestablish community, cultural lifestyle and family ties, motivate migrations. International economic relations are relegated to the margins, and . . . economic domination . . . is ignored while the 'independent' decision making of the migrants is centered" (p. 46).
As we have seen earlier, that is exactly what Espiritu does in disclaiming the power of structural forces. Countless examples of the exercise of "agency" -- always individual and mainly discursive -- abound in Espiritu's book. She details the ways in which individual migrants resist by showing "how the 'margins' imagine and construct the 'mainstream' in order to assert superiority over the latter" (p. 158). An example she gives is how Filipinos look down on the morality of white women (in actuality a residue of Spanish Catholicism's repressive sexuality), generally perceived as "loose," as a strategy of resistance. In doing so, according to her they are able to "mark and decenter whiteness and locate themselves above the dominant group, demonizing it in the process" (p.177). It is precisely this tendency that Gonzalez and Fernandez attempt to correct, with good humor, by turning the notion of "agency" on its head while appropriating a bit of postmodern jargon: "Focusing on issues of 'macro' subjectivities or the agency of empire, allows a vision of how the networks of US domination in Mexico are complemented by the direct intervention of state agencies in the US " (p.117).

No current study of migration is complete without its use of that most favored of postmodern devices, bordercrossing. To her credit, Espiritu rejects Appadurai's dismissal of nation/states and maintains that "local spaces, memories, practices" have "enduring importance" (p.12). But, following a well-worn path, she cannot resist depicting Filipino Americans as agile bordercrossers capable of discursively discrupting their subordinate status. To paraphrase Chicano scholar Marcial Gonzalez (questioning Gloria Anzaldua's "mental nepantilism," the foundation that lies at the base of "bordercrossing"), it is hard to imagine how the mere act of freely traversing conflicted discursive spaces can result in any real challenge to the existing order.
I should reiterate that I chose Yen Li Espiritu's work not because it is particularly defective, but rather because it is one of the few that actually attempt to account for the international political economy, to try to project North/South relations of power as the backdrop for immigrant experience. If it fails in this stated goal, it is not the limitations of the author but those of the intellectual framework whose very design, as I've tried to show, is to detach culture from political economy and to debunk class considerations.
In my immersion into Chicana Studies 101, I found enough of a historical materialist grounding to help elucidate the subaltern experience in US society. I might cite Nicholas de Genova's Working the Boundaries as a parallel study to Espiritu's. De Genova probes into the subjectivities of a sample of Mexican immigrants in Chicago, but he never abandons the metanarrative of neocolonialism underpinning Mexico-US relations.

It would not hurt to recall the following statement from Juan Gomez-Quinonez on the inseparability of class and culture written in 1977: "Culture is the context in which struggle takes place; however, conflict or resistance is primarily economic and political and constitutes class resistance." The hundreds of thousands who staged actions in over 200 cities and towns this time last year remind us as much.

Thank you for allowing me to take part in this important undertaking.
References

De Genova. Michael. 2005. Working the Boundaries: Race, Space, and "Illegality" in Mexican Chicago. Durham: Duke University Press.
Espiritu, Yen Li. 2003. Home Bound: Filipino American Lives Across Cultures, Communities, and Countries. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Gomez-Quinonez, Juan. 1977. On Culture. Los Angeles: UCLA Chicano Studies Center Publications, Popular Series No. 1.
Gonzalez, Gilbert G. & Raul A. Fernandez. 2003. A Century of Chicano History: Empire, Nations, and Migration. New York: Routledge.
Gonzalez, Marcial. 2004. "Postmodernism, Historical Materialism and Chicana/o Cultural Studies." Science and Society, vol. 68, no. 2, 161-186.
Hardt, Michael & Antonio Negri. 2000. Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Hoganson, Kristin. 1998. Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Kramer, Paul. 2006. The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, & the Philippines. Chapel Hill: University of Carolina Press.

Delia D. Aguilar has written extensively on feminism and nationalism, among them a book titled Toward a Nationalist Feminism published in the Philippines. She recently co-edited a collection of essays, Women and Globalization, with Anne Lacsamana. She was on the faculty of women's studies and ethnic studies at Washington State University and Bowling Green State University and now teaches at the University of Connecticut. URL: mrzine.monthlyreview.org/aguilar290507.html
MR

Massive Strike at the University of Puerto Rico: The Invisible and Recurring Social Struggles in The Oldest Colony in the World

2010-06-15T11:34:00.000-07:00

Massive Strike at the University of Puerto Rico: The Invisible and Recurring Social Struggles in The Oldest Colony in the World**

Students strike at the university of Puerto Rico and they reveal the fissures in the colonial economic system while connecting with student struggles of the past

Víctor M. Rodríguez Domínguez*

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)

(After more than fifty-six days, students at the University of Puerto Rico system reached an agreement with the Board of Trustees (6/15/2010) on all their demands. Their demands included elimination of a rise in tuition in the form of a $1,200 fee, the elimination of a policy that would limit the students’ ability to receive lower tuition on the basis of merit and economic aid, a commitment by the university not to privatize any campus, no summary sanctions for students and a fair process to address violations of the university policy. The board also agreed that no student would be sanctioned for participating in constitutionally protected activities like the strike, protests, pickets. While the Board agreed there would be no fee this next semester it agreed that if there is a fee increase in the Spring semester it would be no greater than the average increase in the Pell grant many students receive. However, although student leaders signed this agreement they also included language that said they did not agree with any fee increase. This ambiguity leaves a space open for student action next semester. Student assemblies will be celebrated in all the universities of the system to ratify the agreement in the next few days. During the summer 2010 the students ratified the agreement but as predicted, the administration, now with Chancellor Ana Guadalupe as the official chancellor of the UPR-Rio Piedras, a research institution with 18,000 students, has imposed a $800 fee for Spring 2011. Last October 19, students occupied a number of the colleges 10/25/2010) Another version was published in Dissident Voices, the radical newsletter at:

http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/06/puerto-rico-the-invisible-and-recurring-social-struggles-in-the-oldest-colony-in-the-world/

For more than fifty-seven 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 further 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 is that for the first time in U.S. history, lands that were conquered or annexed did not become a territory that would be incorporated 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, the “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. EEconomic policies of the military government, like the devaluation of the peso and the limiting of credit, led to the collapse of some agricultural sectors while 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 next decades saw the invasion of United States investors who bought out land to produce sugar which received protection under the new tariffs. These investors and some of the members of the national sugar elite were able to coalesce in a powerful economic class that in the following decades transformed Puerto Rico into a large sugar plantation.

Meanwhile, thousands of displaced peasants 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 is not a voting member of congress which has always had 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 in the late 1940s and later 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, many 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. A constitution was drafted, which included very progressive principles including a section 20 with many of the human rights established in the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 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. Despite the evident colonial character of the new political structure—congress forced Puerto Rico to eliminate section 20—the Popular Democratic Party leaders and the United States diplomats were also able to convince the United Nations that Puerto Rico had exercised self-determination.

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 partially 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 which began as a result of student struggles at the University of Cordoba, Argentina, 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 new 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 activists 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 student leadership the process ended in a short-term defeat of the movement. But as a response to the lessons of the 1981-82 period the university adopted a formal policy of “no confrontation” that has affirmed autonomy and freedom of expression as basic rights and which have helped the university avoid the extreme levels 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 protracted (57 days June 16), 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 specifically enshrined in the constitution is also considered a right and not a privilege by most Puerto Ricans. The state support and relatively low tuition attests 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 more than 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 (Cruz, 2008).

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 (Oficina de Planificación Académica, 2008). 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 ($3 billion, 30 per cent of the island’s budget) 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 since 1989 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. In the last 12 years the public debt has rise from $19.500 billion to $47,700 billion which creates a very high burden because of the cost of loans to finance this debt. Also, at a time when the island’s infrastructure is in need to a major investment. The social fabric of the island is also a disrepair, the murder rate is one of the highest in the world, domestic violence has increased 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. Yet, its economy is, relatively speaking, in worst shape than it was in the 1970s.

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. In his message to the nation April 26, in the midst of the student strike, Governor Fortuño called the students “privileged” because 81 per cent of the costs of the system of higher education are paid by the state. He failed to mention that the university, for every 100 jobs creates 57 jobs in the Puerto Rican economy, which means it has a positive economic impact higher than construction, agriculture and hotels. He also failed to mention that the University of Puerto Rico increased its external funds (grants and investigation) from $106 million to $187 million during the 2001-2008 period a 11 per cent 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. But also in part ot the collapse of the colonial model and its reliance on external investment and low taxes. In Puerto Rico the tax burden has fallen on idnividuals, with 60 per cent of the tax burder borne by individuals and only 40 per cent by corporations. This contrasts with nations like Singapur, who despite a dependence on external investment, have a tax system where corporations pay three times what they pay in Puerto Rico (PIP, 2005).

The students, who already had already 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, students during a symbolic graduation sand the national anthem, with the revolutionary lyrics of Puerto Rican poetess Lola Rodriguez de Tió. This strike showed that what seemed dead was just resting and dreaming that another nation was possible in a new day .

*Dr. Rodriguez is a professor in the Department of Chicano and Latino Studies at California State University, Long Beach. He received a bachelor in arts in history at the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras, and his master and doctorate in Comparative Culture (Sociology) was received at the University of California, Irvine. He is a national speaker and activist on Puerto Rican and Latino issues, was student and labor activist at the University of Puerto Rico, and as an anti racist trainer organizer has worked with social service agencies, police departments, universities and religious organizations across the United States. His research focus is race and Latino identity and its impact on political behavior and education. He is also an activist in the struggle for the independence of Puerto Rico. his most recent book on racialization is Latino Politics in the U.S.: Race, Ethnicity Class and Gender in the Mexican American and Puerto Rican Experience. Dubuque, IA: Kendall-Hunt Press, 2005 was the recipient of an honorable mention in the Gustavus Myer Center Outstanding Books Awards process in 2005.

**Oldest Colony refers to the title of a book by Jose Trias Monge "The Trials of the Oldest Colony in the World." Monge was one of the architects of the present colonial status of Puerto Rico called "Estado Libre Asociado."

References Cited

Jose L. Cruz Rivera. “Acarreo, Retencion y Graduacion” Taller de Gerencia Academica, RUM, 19 de mayo, 2008. Vice-Presidente Asociado de Asuntos Estudiantes, Universidad de Puerto Rico.

Gladys Escalona de Mota. “Política institucional de no confrontación del recinto de rio
Piedras de la Universidad de Puerto Rico” Circular Num. 42, Año 2004-2005 issued on February 9, 2010.

Juan Lara. “Is there life after ARRA? Is the life during?” Advantage Business Consulting. February 19, 2009.

Oficina de Estudiantes, Vicepresidencia de Asuntos Académicos. “Sobre el Presupuesto de la Universidad de Puerto Rico” Universidad de Puerto Rico 14 de abril de 2005.

Oficina de Planificacion Academica. “Perfil Institutional 2007-08" Universidad de Puerto Rico Recinto de Rio Piedras.

Puerto Rican Independence Party. “Propuesta para hacer justicia a los asalariados y a la clase media y para sacar a puerto rico de la crisis fiscal” Agosto 31, 2005.

“Sobre el presupuesto de la Universidad de Puerto Rico” Universidad Hoy

“Universidad de Puerto Rico Informe Anual, 2009-09" Universidad Hoy

“Universidad de Puerto Rico Cifras y Datos” Universidad de Puerto Rico.

Alejandro Torres Rivera. “Las propuestas del CAREF: antecedentes, desarrollos y retos” 2009.

Universidad de Puerto Rico. “Tabla comparativa de los ingresos base del presupuesto operacional - fondo general Años fiscales 1996-97 al 2009-2010" Universidad Hoy

U.S. Bureau of the Census. “Median Household Income for States: 2008 and 2009 American Community Survey” September, 2009.