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SPECTACLE, PERFORMANCE, THEATRE: THE 2010 STUDENT STRIKE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PUERTO RICO

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2011

Lowell Fiet
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Extract

Rather than negotiate first with protesting and then striking students, the administration of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) shut down its flagship Río Piedras Campus from 21 April to 6 July 2010. Regular academic activity on the campus came to a standstill, and as a consequence the semester programmed to end in mid-May could not be finished until mid-August. Yet in those seventy-plus days of closure (cierre) a poignantly expressive culture of resistance took shape out of the continuous tension among the striking students who occupied the campus, the remote administration that refused to respond to their issues, the heavily armed state police officers who were stationed just outside the campus's gates, and the crowds of professors, nonteaching personnel, parents, and student supporters who gathered daily to urge the administration to open a dialogue with the students. Along with independent radio broadcasts, the skillful use of cyberspace, celebrity concerts, and other strategies to capture public and media attention, the protest movement also fostered the spectacle of mass rallies and marches that featured acts of performance and theatre. If the university's theatres were dark, the streets that surround the campus became the stages for seminude, placard-carrying bodies moving serpentine through crowds; stilt-walking masked portrayals of local politicians and university administrators; large, painted-cardboard dragons and wolf heads to stare down police officers; a twenty-foot-tall puppet whose shirt front read “the university is not for sale” (“La UPR no se vende”); processions of black coffins accompanied by black-clad lloronas (mourners); and red-nosed, broom-carrying clowns decked out in tactical police gear to parade comically in front of the heavily armed and real tactical forces.

Type
What Are You Witnessing?
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , May 2011 , pp. 139 - 152
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 2011

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References

Endnotes

1. The history of student strikes at the University of Puerto Rico does not need to be retold here. However, the violence of anti-ROTC and Vietnam War protests in the 1970s and an extended strike that protested an unprecedented increase in tuition in 1981 had fatal consequences for both students and police. For that reason, from the late 1980s until December 2010, a nonconfrontation agreement governed the relations among the university, protesters, and the state police. The agreement guaranteed that only unarmed campus police would patrol and maintain order on the campus itself. The state police were allowed to control the perimeter but would not enter the campus or intervene in university affairs. That agreement no longer applies.

2. The 15 October 2009 general strike is exceptionally well documented on YouTube. For a good example, see “Paro 15 de octubre 2009, 11:00 a.m.,” <www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ470ryeIrQ&feature=related> (accessed 2 November 2010). Political tension remains a feature of everyday life in Puerto Rico. The principal issue is “status”: should the island become a new state of the United States, continue being a questionably autonomous U.S. commonwealth, or seek its independence? Hostility between the conservative statehood-supporting Partido Nuevo Progresista (PNP; New Progressive Party) and the more moderate, status quo, “free associated state” or commonwealth-supporting Partido Popular Democrático (PPD; Popular Democratic Party) dominates the electoral scene. Although the independence movement is a minority and is fragmented among various established and new parties, it remains strong in labor unions, in community and social organizations, and in all cultural fields, including higher education. The Partido Independentista de Puerto Rico (PIP; Puerto Rican Independence Party) once led the movement, but support for the PIP has fallen off, and it was out-polled by the new Puertorriqueños para Puerto Rico (PPP; Puerto Ricans for Puerto Rico) in the 2008 elections. Although it does not put forth candidates for local elections, the Movimiento Independentista Nacional Hostosiano (MINH; the Hostosian [for nineeteenth-century independence advocate Eugenio María de Hostos] National Independence Movement) is another large group of independence supporters.

3. The board also includes one student and two faculty members who are not appointed; they are elected by their peers. When the board was expanded from twelve to sixteen members in June 2010, the number of student and faculty members did not increase.

4. The principal UPR administrators involved are Ygri Rivera, president of the governing board; José Ramón de la Torre, president and a retired professor of Hispanic studies; and Ana R. Guadalupe, at the time interim chancellor of the Río Piedras Campus (who has since been appointed as chancellor). Government actors include Governor Luis Fortuño; Secretary of Government Marcos Rodrígüez Ema, who advises the governing board; and Puerto Rican Senate President Thomas Rivera Schatz.

5. Except for the second-largest campus in Mayagüez, which also has graduate programs and offers specializations in engineering and technology, the smaller regional campuses frequently remain more passive and distanced from issues of students rights, budget cuts, political intervention in educational policy, and so on. The 2010 student strike was an exception, and only the medical-school campus did not officially join the movement. Thus it became very clear in the minds of the majority of UPR students, faculty, and nonteaching employees, as well as large sectors of the general public that represented a broad political spectrum, that budget cuts only masked a larger ideological agenda on the part of university administrators, members of the university board, and the ultraconservative statehood government to alter radically the social and cultural role traditionally played by the more liberal university as a public institution.

6. For examples on YouTube that graphically document these incidents, see “Abuso Policiaco en la huelga UPR 05-14-10,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UMqiVkOou8&feature=related (14 May 2010); “Motín en el Hotel Sheraton,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXPSedts9oc&feature=fvw (21 May 2010); “Golpean a estudiante,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=URqSkN4x1TE&feature=related (25 May 2010); and “Capitolio-Estudiantes UPR vs Fuerza de Choque-30 junio 2010,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7O0vOr679o&feature=related (30 June 2010) (all accessed 5 November 2010).

7. For extensive video documentation of the student strike, search within YouTube on “UPR Huelga Estudiantil” (the specific references that follow serve only as examples). See “18 de mayo UPR,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSrfY_zocrQ (accessed 10 November 2010), for a parade of painted bodies and a variety of other student and community performance techniques and expressions during the 18 May 2010 general strike.

8. Among the many YouTube videos that feature the Clown Police (all accessed 10 November 2010), see “Payasos Policias @ Huelga UPR, Rio Piedras,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zb8PRlwmZ4 (16 May 2010); “Los payasos de la Policía 1 (Huelga UPR),” www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qcp6l7DBFNU (19 May 2010); and “La Marcha de los Payasos.wmv,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPlxJy65DFo (14 May 2010), which also includes the large Papel Machete puppet.

9. Papel Machete appears in full form at the beginning of “Marcha por la Educación Pública, Huelga UPR.mov,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTAZCgtqk0Y (8 May 2010) (accessed 13 November 2010), which records a large number of student acts and comparsas during the 7 May 2010 March in Support of Public Education from the UPR–Río Piedras Campus to the offices of the central administration in the UPR Botanical Garden.

10. See “UPR-Huelga 2010-03.AVI,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSDfv4LhNas (20 May 2010) (accessed 13 November 2010), which captures the hormigas and the human-sized masked puppets of Los jóvenes del '98.

11. Also see “Huelga Indefinida UPR 18/mayo/2010,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD_e2S271sM; “Huelga Indefinida UPR 18/mayo/2010 parte 2,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UYb0uZ1Mts&NR=1; “Huelga Indefinida UPR 18/mayo/2010 parte 3,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONb-28ddzqM&feature=related; “Huelga Indefinida UPR 18/mayo/2010 parte 4,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhyKBgFua2g&feature=related; and “Huelga Indefinida UPR 18/mayo/2010 parte 5,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_TSCtpzCbU&feature=related (all accessed 13 November 2010). (The sixth video in this series contains fewer images.)

12. See “Policia arresta padre que llevaba comida a hijo en porton UPR-RP.MPG,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNSek6Tof4E&feature=related (14 May 2010); and “Testimonio del hijo de Luis Torres, el padre que fue golpeado por la policía.m4v,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0bkXWC6Y3g&feature=related (14 May 2010) (both accessed 11 January 2011).