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Ante tales consignas que enarbolan los estudiantes, respaldados por otros
sectores sociales de la nación, la respuesta de la Junta de Síndicos y del
gobierno ha sido la represión policial, la suspensión de estudiantes, los
encarcelamientos, las provocaciones, el cierre de espacios públicos para la
libre expresión, y la criminalización de las protestas sociales.
After more than two months this year of heroic resistance and peaceful
protests on the part of the Puerto Rican university students, the situation
has become complex since their demands have not been listened to.
Neither arrests nor tortures nor abuses nor teargases have succeeded in
silencing the exemplary heroism of the Puerto Rican students, who demand a
center of higher studies that meets the needs of all social strata without
any discrimination or exclusion. The 800-dollar increase in the annual cost
of entering the sole state university in the country has produced such an
outburst of social protest that it reaches beyond the Island’s frontiers.
The new tuition fee imposed at the opening of this course, the highest in
the history of that educational institution, has been rejected by thousands
of youngsters and workers of the place, who recognize in the extreme measure
taken by the Rector the possibility of a privatizing maneuver on the part of
the University of Puerto Rico, as part of the merciless neo-liberal policy
implemented by the country’s governorship. Up to date, the enforcement of
this measure has forced nearly 10,000 young persons to give up their higher
studies, faced with the impossibility of paying such fee.
Today, March 11, 2011, when we celebrate the 40th anniversary of a painful
event in the history of the university in the country, police violence again
makes us recall the bloody events of those days and the memory of the
student victims, all of which should not occur again.
The OSPAAAL accompanies and supports the just claims of the Puerto Rican
university students on strike. It endorses their rejection to the “special
fee” as formula to face the fiscal disaster and administrative restructuring
of that center of higher studies at the expense of restraining the
possibilities of access to education of the poorest sectors. At the same
time, it denounces the maneuver of the authorities of the University of
Puerto Rico aimed at eliminating the program of Spanish Studies from the
curriculum, a measure that intends to attempt against the national identity
and culture of the Puerto Rican people and trample on a cardinal precept of
independence leader Pedro Albizu Campos, who with patriotic solidness
stated: