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Abstract
In this article, I examine key symbols and strategies mobilized by students during the first system-wide strike in the University of Puerto Rico's history. I argue that these acts of creative cultural production not only supported the growth of participatory politics within the mobilization but that they also were tools for enacting public pedagogy. In particular, I examine the spatial dimensions of these practices, showing how strikers disrupted the normative boundaries between protest space/public space, and actor/spectator by engaging police officers in innovative ways. I suggest that by performing this spatial reconfiguration, pedagogues were implicated in the process of transformation as much as their targeted learners/spectators. In the conclusion, I reflect on the ethical implications of public pedagogy, arguing that artistic expressions facilitate a flexible and dynamic mode for becoming otherwise in ways that cannot be anticipated.
Notes
1. Despite the fact that the medical sciences campus only held a 24-hour stoppage, they often participated in actions organized by the neighboring Río Piedras campus and openly expressed support for the strike.
2. The strike resulted from three major concerns: cuts in the operating budget of the University authorized by Law 7, feared privatization of the institution and a Board of Trustees’ policy, Certification 98 which eliminated double eligibility for tuition waivers and financial aid. These concerns reflected a more longstanding concern about the rising cost of study that was center stage in the 2005 strike la huelga del CUCA (the committee against the tuition hike).
3. A long occupation of a major highway would be disruptive anywhere, but in Puerto Rico, an island with a notoriously severe traffic problem due in major part to rapid development of the island in a fifty-year period, it was even more of a threat to the functioning of daily life.
4. This is despite its original designation as a school that would promote English language and train technicians to work on the sugar plantations when it was founded shortly after the U.S. military invasion of the island and the passage of the Foraker Act, which established a civilian government in the island.
5. Although a close analysis of how this fragmentation was produced is beyond the scope of this paper, it relates to the political designation of the island as a “free associated state,” which operates in practice in ways much more aligned to the island's original status of unincorporated territory. More than fifty years since its founding and after three plebiscites held to decide its fate, the most powerful parties are those that support continued integration into the US. The opposition is extremely weak and appears to be plagued by old school languages and tactics that emphasize short-term coalitions but lack lasting forms for creating a viable alternative.
6. The few times students did abandon the campus, they faced extremely violent repression by the state, making the proposition of leaving campus regularly more fraught. The practical issue of who would protect the campus from police and infiltrates further complicated matters. In the strike against the fiscal stabilization fee that followed this one, efforts were made to make these connections, but many thought that the opportunity had already been missed.
7. To read the letter in its entirety, see http://occupyca.wordpress.com/2010/04/23/more-upr-campuses-strike/
8. Whereas political publics refer to macro-level configurations like the nation-state, popular publics refer to the distribution of everyday texts, and concrete publics refers to spatially grounded spaces of experimentation where actors build an alternative community together (Savage, 2014, p. 81–88).
9. I am focusing on interventions that commented on the police presence since students’ efforts to make them part of the struggle is one concrete way to demonstrate their intention to shift boundaries between public and protest space. I am fully cognizant of the fact that this was a representational strategy that in no way should suggest that students’ felt a false sense of collectivism with police officers. However, students’ manner of engaging with the police was significant especially when compared to their representations of the administration of the UPR system, who were consistently ridiculed in performances and online forums. One popular form of student critiques of administrators was to produce culture jammer-esque movie posters based on the conflict, such as: “How to Lose the University in Ten Days,” or “How the Grinch stole the UPR.”
10. The concert's name is a reference to a popular protest song written by Violetta Parra, a Chilean multi-genre artist who was known for her love and respect for peasants as well as workers. She became a major figure in Latin American song writing and was one of the key founders of the folk inspired, socially political music genre known as la nueva canción (the new song). The title of the concert was not only homage to prior student movements, but also signaled a shared love for “the people.” Estimates of the number of attendees in popular presses ranged between 6,000-8,000 and suggested that a broad range of constituents identified with the students’ claims.
11. Tumba coco, or coconut knocker, is a colloquial name for a large speaker system, usually outfitted to a van or truck. The sound is so loud it could knock down coconuts from the tree. It also has the added implication of being against the statehood party, which has adopted the palm tree as one of its key symbols.
12. Of course, it bears mentioning that it wasn't until the second strike, which ran from December 2010 to February 2011, that the trope of the dying university became more than a trope. Approximately 10,000 students were forced to drop out after the implementation of the $800 quota, and officers occupied the campus after the second stoppage was lifted on December 9, 2010, making it nearly impossible to engage in creative forms of protest.
13. The photo montage is not paginated. The image I describe is in the section titled October 1981, seventeen pages in.
14. To access the photo, go to http://www.primerahora.com/noticias/gobierno-politica/nota/huelgaenlauprdia22minutoaminutoygririveraanunciacierrehastael31dejulio-387498/
15. The title of this poem is borrowed from a line in Amiri Baraka's work Black Music published by Akashic Books in 1959. It appears on p.181 as part of a description of the present moment. “Contemporary means that; with the feeling that animates our time”.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Melissa Rosario
Melissa Rosario is a postdoctoral fellow in Anthropology and Latin American Studies at Bowdoin College. She is interested in embodied knowledge, public space and the micropolitics of resistance.
