The impact of Hurricane María on the political participation of Puerto Rican University students in UPR Cayey

Abstract

This research paper focuses on the political participation of students from the University of Puerto Rico in Cayey (UPR-Cayey) after Hurricane María. The culture, perspective, politics, and resistance of these students are researched in light of other sub-contexts, such as the protests pressuring the former governor of Puerto Rico Ricardo Rosselló to resign. The ages of the participants ranged from 19 to 23 years old; they were all students from UPR-Cayey, and they were interviewed. The researchers are also students from the UPR-Cayey. The perspective of this research project is an anthropological one and uses analytical coding tools with interviews followed up with field notes from the protests of July 2019. We found that most of the people interviewed for this research project were very interested in the government’s corruption and Puerto Rican resistance. Our investigation indirectly illustrates the aspects of our Puerto Rican culture that become salient during the protests.

Keywords:

• Resistance
• Puerto Rican university students
• Puerto Rico
• protests
• politics
• culture
• perspective
• political participation

Acknowledgement

I would like to acknowledge the assistance of Janely M. Rosa Vázquez, Yareliz Zayas Cruz & Julián A. López López in earlier drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 It is a common practice to refer to Puerto Rico as “the island” despite that fact that it is, in reality, an archipelago that includes the municipalities of Vieques and Culebra.

2 This is translated from Spanish to English. The word “picket” it steeming from the Spanish word “piquete”. This refers to a group of people that are protesting using a strike slogan.

3 Décima translates to tenth in English. The Royal Spanish Academy defines it as “Metrical combination of ten eight-syllable lines, of which, as a general rule, the first rhymes with the fourth and fifth; the second, with the third; the sixth, with the seventh and the last, and the eighth, with the ninth. It supports full stop or colon after the fourth line, and does not support them after the fifth.”

4 Bad Bunny, Residente and Ilé are famous Puerto Rican musicians.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Adriana M. Rodríguez Vázquez

Adriana M. Rodríguez Vázquez is an undergraduate psychology and sociology student at the University of Puerto Rico at Cayey. She has worked with Dr. Julio Cammarota in research about political participation of students of the University of Puerto Rico at Cayey within the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. And is working with Dra. Elisa Rodríguez in research about sexuality and love with people who have physical functional diversities. Adriana has presented her research before in the Symposium of Interdisciplinary Research in UPR-Cayey and in the 2021 ASHE conference. She will begin to work as a voluntary research student with Dr. Emily Saéz in the University of Puerto Rico at Río Piedras in May 2022. She currently is president of the Association of Psychology Students at UPR Cayey and is part of the board of directors of the Psychologists of Puerto Rico Association.