Apparently, Luis Fortuño is taking credit for withdrawing police forces from the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras campus. However, people in the know explain that Governor Fortuño was summoned by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in Washington, DC, to respond to ongoing complaints, and was told under no uncertain terms to order the departure of the police squads. So far, only a couple of radio stations on the island have begun to report this item.

This week Democracy Now summarized: “Puerto Rico Governor Luis Fortuño has begun withdrawing the police occupation of the main University of Puerto Rico campus in San Juan after two months. SWAT teams and riot squads took over the campus in December following a massive student strike against fee hikes and privatization. Hundreds of students have been arrested, and some have reported being beaten, including sexually harassed and tortured, in the ensuing crackdown. An estimated crowd of more than 15,000 marched against the police occupation last Saturday.” They quoted Democratic Rep. Luis Gutiérrez of Illinois, who speaking on the House floor, condemned the crackdown on Puerto Rican students: “I want to talk to you today about a part of the world where the rights of citizens of all walks of life to protest and speak their minds is being denied, with clubs and pepper spray, a part of the world where a student strike led the university to ban student protests anywhere, anytime on campus, and where, when the students protested the crackdown on free speech, they were violently attacked by heavily armed riot police. What faraway land has seen student protests banned, union protesters beaten, and free speech advocates jailed? The United States of America’s colony of Puerto Rico.”

Meanwhile The New York Times focused on the resignation of the president of the university and the arrival and explanations of interim president Muñoz, quoting: “It is the same situation that many universities in the United States are facing,” said Miguel A. Muñoz, the interim president. “Our budget is about $1 billion, and we have been cut about $200 million. We need the $800 fee to cover the deficit, and our tuition is so low, $51 a credit, that it’s almost a gift.” However, journalist Tamar Lewin did stress that the new $800 fee increases students’ costs by more than 50 percent and that “Puerto Rico is poorer than the mainland United States, and two-thirds of the students have incomes low enough to qualify for Pell grants.”

Lewin quotes student leaders, who estimate that at least 5,000 of the university’s students were not able to pay the fee this semester and that now there are fewer than 54,000 students, compared with about 60,000 last semester, and student outrage at calling in riot police: “Calling in the police, for the first time in 30 years, was one of the most rash decisions they could have made,” said René Vargas, a law student who represents the student body on the university board of trustees. “The university’s intransigence and refusal to talk to students has worsened the whole situation. The students presented a 200-page document suggesting alternatives and ways to increase revenues, and the trustees have not even been willing to look at it.” Lewin points out that many people across the island have witnessed the violent confrontations between students and the police on television and YouTube videos.

She also points out the general malaise created by the university’s decision to put several academic programs, including Hispanic studies, “on pause” (meaning they are not accepting new undergraduates) and the political atmosphere that has played a large role in the university’s problems: “Puerto Rico has its first Republican governor in decades, Luis G. Fortuño, a pro-statehood conservative who has cut the number of public employees by about 17,000. Last weekend, while the protesters were marching in the streets, Mr. Fortuño was in Washington as a featured speaker at the Conservative Political Action conference” [and facing the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights].

[Many thanks to Patricia Célerier and Maritza Stanchich for bringing these items to our attention.]

For full reports, see http://www.democracynow.org/2011/2/17/headlines/police_withdrawn_from_puerto_rico_campus and http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/education/18puertorico.html?_r=2&pagewanted=al