Weekly News Update on the Americas

Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the
Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It is published by
the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York, P.O. Box 20587, Tompkins
Square Station, New York, NY 10009, weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com.

*5. Puerto Rico: Teachers, Media Condemn Police Actions

Student strikers at the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) continued using mass civil disobedience
the week of Jan. 24 to push their demand that the university drop an $800 tuition surcharge the
administration is imposing this year [see Update #1064]. Some 200 protesters occupied parts of
the Río Piedras campus in San Juan at various times on Jan. 25, with a total of 32 arrests. "We’re
going to emphasize civil disobedience as a strategy to bring the message that there are students
ready to commit themselves totally because they believe there are alternatives to the fee,” said
Xiomara Caro, a spokesperson for the Student Representative Committee (CRE). (El Nuevo Día
(Guaynabo) 1/25/11)

On Jan. 27 the strikers took their protest to the Capitol building in San Juan, where they
demonstrated in support of a measure that Rep. Luis Vega Ramos of the centrist Popular
Democratic Party (PPD) had introduced in the House of Representatives to allocate to the UPR
what he said was a $50 million surplus in the government’s Fiscal Stabilization Fund. Students
blocked avenues around the Capitol, and about 30 were arrested, including Xiomara Caro. Vega
Ramos’ legislative measure--which would make the tuition surcharge unnecessary--was defeated
by representatives from Gov. Luis Fortuño’s conservative New Progressive Party (PNP), which
holds a majority in the House. (END 1/27/11)

Meanwhile, police tactics during the protests have become a separate issue. Reporters and
photographers have been complaining ever since the civil disobedience actions began on Jan. 19
that police agents were keeping them from covering the arrests. On Jan. 21 Puerto Rican
Journalists Association (ASPPRO) president Rafael Lenín López and Puerto Rican
Photojournalists Association president Luis Rolón issued a statement saying the police seemed to
be “trying to prevent the people from seeing how they are arresting civil disobedients.” They
charged that agents kicked cameras and wouldn’t allow members of the press to enter the Río
Piedras campus. “The police cannot determine how the press should cover the news,” the
statement said.

On Jan. 26 the Latin American Federation of Journalists (FELAP) issued its own statement on
the actions of the Puerto Rican police, expressing solidarity with ASPPRO and condemning the
arrest on Jan. 25 of Ricardo Olivera Lora Ricardo, the director of Radio Huelga, the UPR
strikers’ radio station. (Puerto Rico Daily Sun 1/21/11; New California Media (NCM) 1/25/11
via Vos el Soberano (Honduras); FRELAP statement 1/26/11, posted on ASPPRO website; Adital
(Brazil) 1/28/11)

At a Jan. 29 press conference María Gisela Rosado, director of the Puerto Rican Association of
University Professors (APPU), said “acts of torture” during the arrests “have been obvious in the
visuals shown on television, on internet networks, in the written press.” She said police agents
were “following the governor’s directives” as they “apply pressure points, block the detainees’
breathing and the flow of blood to their heads…touch women’s bodies and pursue university
students with tear gas and pepper spray.” (Primera Hora (Guaynabo) 1/29/11) Police colonel
Leovigildo Vázquez, who heads the operations, has told reporters that the agents are acting
“professionally,” since they’ve been trained in using “pressure points to weaken the body”
though “pain.” (Adital 1/26/11 from NCM)