University of Puerto Rico Student Strike Victory Unleashes Brutal Civil Rights Backlash

By Maritza Stanchich, Ph.D.  Orginally published at The Huffington Post

As so many Americans gear up for Fourth of July fireworks this weekend, the U.S. Territory of Puerto Rico roils from a brutal civil rights showdown unleashed by a far-right wing government, now seemingly hell bent on destroying the recent unprecedented victory of a two-month long student strike against privatization of higher education at the University of Puerto Rico. 

The broader implications are crucial on numerous fronts, including the struggle to maintain broad access to public higher education and efforts to rein in runaway neoliberal policies that have wreaked havoc on the global economy, resulting in draconian austerity measures worldwide. For the violence and repression seen in Greece and at the G20 in Toronto appears to now be visiting this Caribbean island nation of about four million U.S. citizens, the homeland of more than an additional four million Puerto Ricans in the United States, the second largest U.S. Latino group. 

While the economic crisis in Puerto Rico--the worst since the 1940s, if not the 1930s-has been deepening for years, and the current right wing government has aggressively implemented a hard-line, unpopular neoliberal agenda since its broad electoral victory last November, it appears as if the recent UPR student strike victory has touched off a firestorm, with a police attack on peaceful demonstrators at Puerto Rico's Capitol building on Wednesday injuring dozens, some seriously. 

The UPR strike concluded June 21 after a tense, two-month shut down of 10 campuses in a system serving nearly 65,000 students at the end of the academic year, with an accord that by all accounts was an unprecedented strike victory, in historic, hemispheric terms. A widely-supported student movement remarkable for its coalition building across traditionally distinct and even contentious social and political sectors coalesced against threatened erosion of broad public access to the widely-regarded state university, as well as its increasing privatization. 

With tensions high after police and riot squads had attacked and injured students, their parents and journalists on at least three occasions, an agreement finally reached through judicial mediation met with the students' basic demands, reinstating cancelled tuition waivers, temporarily forestalling a tuition hike or imposition of student fees, and protecting strike leaders from summary suspension reprisals. The accord, signed by a majority of the Board of Trustees, though those refusing included the university and board presidents, was hailed as an achievement in civil conflict resolution, especially in light of the history of previous UPR strikes that had ended in deadly violent repressions. 

Immediately after however, the Puerto Rico state legislature, dominated by the extreme right of the local Pro-Statehood party, rapidly expanded the university Board of Trustees, with the governor approving four new appointees, and a new but divided board quickly imposed a $800 student fee starting in January, and made it permanent, reminiscent of the imposition of fees at University of California by then Gov. Ronald Reagan. The legislature also quickly dismantled a long-standing UPR tradition of student assemblies, replacing them with private electronic computer voting devoid of open debate. Other cuts were also implemented affecting professors and adjunct instructors, who now make up about 40 percent of the UPR faculty, following trends in the United States, where 60 percent of all professors occupy such increasingly precarious positions. 

In a far worse economic straits than the states of California or Michigan, Puerto Rico is confronting its worst fiscal crisis in decades, and UPR the biggest fiscal crisis of its 100-year existence. As throughout much of the world facing related circumstances, virulent and organized opposition to drastic cuts principally directed at the working and deteriorating middle classes has mushroomed, especially since the current global crisis, in Alan Greenspan's own befuddled words, was caused by greed-induced corruption among the highest echelons of the world economy. 

While the neoliberal agenda of Puerto Rico's current political leaders look back to the very doctrines now being challenged in the United States and throughout Latin America, the UPR student movement embodies the vanguard of the contemporary 21st Century, as reflected by their symbols and tactics, including the democratizing internet, egalitarian rainbow flags, sustainable organic farming, an effervescence of alternative arts, and new coalition building among center, right and left, in tandem with occupation practices inspired by international student movements as far as California, Spain, France and Greece. 

Though a shocking collective trauma, the violent crackdown at the Capitol Wednesday was not entirely surprising given the current administration's assault on all fronts since coming into power, targeting progressive, cultural and social welfare institutions and agencies with crippling budget cuts, attempting to dissolve Puerto Rico's bar association, lifting environmental protections to whole swaths of protected lands, and passing a now notorious law, called Ley 7, that not only dismisses 20,000 public employees, but declares null and void all public sector union contracts for three years, with the only recourse to challenging the law being to petition the local Supreme Court, now stacked with new appointments in the administration's favor. The governor has also activated the National Guard, amidst criticism from groups such the Puerto Rico chapters of the ACLU and Amnesty International. 

Common in Puerto Rico, however, though unusual at most U.S. state universities, is the way political parties assume control of UPR leadership by appointing a new president, also recently achieved. This is in part because the UPR is widely regarded as national patrimony, and is one of the few places left in the country where dissent may be cultivated. 

As opposition to these policies expands, as seen in a massive national strike in October which drew a quarter of a million workers into the streets, so has the government's seeming intolerance to any opposition, as Gov. Luis Fortuño, Senate President Thomas Rivera Schatz and UPR president José Ramón de la Torre commonly resort to Cold War era red-baiting with media campaigns labeling protestors as Socialists, Communists, and professional rabble rousers out to destabilize the country. The clamp down has so far gone as far as banning journalists from Senate chambers for four days last week during the country's budget sessions, prompting media organizations to petition in court to regain access. 

"I don't think there is any doubt that the intention of this government is to set back civil rights," said Judith Berkan, a long-time civil rights attorney and a law professor at University of Puerto Rico and InterAmerican University in San Juan, adding that the administration has enacted a staggering number of measures to neutralize and debilitate all those perceived as a threat to a local oligarchy acting in concert with U.S. interests. 

Attempts were made to reach Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi, Puerto Rico's non-voting representative in the U.S. Congress, and UPR President José Ramón de la Torre for comment, but they were not available at press time. 

The irony that the Pro-U.S. Statehood party of Gov. Fortuño is now curtailing the most basic press and civil liberties is not lost on UPR student strike leaders who witnessed and were injured at Wednesday's melee, including those who belong to the pro-Statehood party themselves, and voted for the sitting governor. 

"It pains me as a statehooder that this government has not learned the lessons of U.S. civil rights struggles of decades ago," said Aníbal Núñez, a student at the UPR law school and a member of the student negotiating committee. 

Núñez acknowledged the participation of students affiliated with Socialist groups among strike leaders and the student negotiating committee, and said they overcame their differences via universal concerns for education as a social necessity, as they gained each others' respect while coalition building together, adding that if he could not overcome ideological differences enough to collaborate, he would still believe in their right to pluralistically exist. 

The notion that accessible, quality higher education contributes to economic recovery runs counter to the widening U.S. trend of students graduating with crippling debt, as public education has for years now faced diminishing state support. A common argument used by the administration during the UPR strike was its affordable tuition, at less than $2,000 per year for undergraduates before the recently imposed fees. But while tuition is cheaper than probably any other state university in the United States, average income in Puerto Rico is also far lower than any other U.S. state, with about 48 percent of the population living in poverty as defined by U.S. federal standards, and the cost of living in San Juan at least, far higher than at oft compared institutions in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, or Oxford, Mississippi. This tradition of maintaining broad public access to a quality state institution of higher learning is a hard earned point of pride at UPR, compared to institutions that have recently reneged their public mission with sudden and steep fee/tuition increases, such as at University of California, where students also opposed, occupied and met with police repression, but could not stave off a 32% fee hike imposed in November. 

As UPR administrators continue to grapple with what was a nearly $200 million budget shortfall for next year going into the strike, in search of additional or alternative money saving and raising sources, an emboldened student movement will also regroup and weigh all its options. Future conflicts may be averted by altering the very style of governance at UPR, a top-down and paternalistic holdover from the past, as this could go a long way toward making students, as well as professors and staff who also have large stakes at play, part of a give-and-take process. 

For come what may in the global fiscal crisis in the coming decade, these students are the future of new Americas of increasingly porous borders and dramatic, rapid demographic, political, cultural, informational and economic shifts, as the old order, the vestiges of the Cold War in Puerto Rico and in South Florida for example, fade into the proverbial sunset. 

"We may not hold the power but we have the will power," stated law student Núñez, "and given the choice, I prefer the latter." 

UPR administrators and Statehood party leaders would do well to recognize and reach out to the productive potential of this new power, shift gears and learn to act on the principles they purportedly hold dear.

*Photo Credit: Primera Hora / Archivo / Andre Kang

Of "Puercos" and the Punitive Turn: Facebook Threats and the UPR Student Strikes

A friend of mine from college getting her graduate degree at UPR alerted me to this story last week (Thanks Ria!).  Members of the police department have gotten into quite of bit of hot water since screen grabs of their facebook pages and status updates have started to surface in the media.  The officers have been boasting about beating students or complaining about the lack of opportunities to brutalize students.  

Some examples:

Alexander Luina: "Por fin puedo dar un macanazo en esta bendita huelga, despues de 12 dias."  ("Finally, after 12 days I can use my baton in this damn strike.")

William Concepcion: "Por fin di un macanazo Hoy, Pueneta q se ponga bruto pa vaciarle este rifle." (I finally clubbed somebody today, I hope things get crazy so I can empty out my rifle.")

And there are more screen grabs like this of cops expressing their intentions to do physical damage.   The cops are crying foul play.  Jaime Cruz Colon, the officer above who said that the police were going to beat up the students who didn't want to learn to make way for those who did, for instance is claiming that he is a victim of hackers.  Given that the police department's second in command, Col. José A. Rosa Carrasquillo can be seen in the picture below kicking a student while he is on the ground and restrained, I think it is fair to say that the kind aggression verbal and physical being displayed toward the students permeates the chain of command at many levels, and it is doubtful that hackers would have to invent something like this.  

The violent repression of students and workers struggles under the Fortuno administration illustrates what many theorists have argued about the neoliberal period -- the fiscal disciplining of the market necessitates the physical disciplining of the populations who are directly affected by economic and political restructuring.  They are two sides of the same coin.  In this case, the police are not trying to protect private property or quell crime, they are trying to facilitate the changes called for by public law 7.  

The students are fighting for more than just fee waivers, they are fighting for a new way of doing things.  They are protesting the punitive turn and the neoliberal policies that it is meant to protect.  They are fighting against the criminalization and punishment of the poor and working classes, and fighting against the use of youth as a scapegoat for societal ills.  They are calling not only for the transformation of the University, but also the radical reconfiguration of Puerto Rican society itself. 

Rima Brusi: "Our Best Investment"

Originally published in the Puerto Rico Daily Sun, May 21, 2010

In his budget address a few weeks ago, Gov. Fortuño referred to public, affordable higher education as a “privilege” that Puerto Rico provides to its students at no small cost to its citizens. To reinforce the message, he compared University of Puerto Rico tuition prices to the much higher ones of other, private, higher education institutions in the island, and of colleges and universities in the United States.

In an “us vs. them” move seemingly designed to conceptually place responsible tax payers against protesting students, he stated that “tuition paid by students, when they do pay, is but a 3 percent of the university’s budget … the rest is paid by us taxpayers. Which is why our people, just and noble, yes, but also democratic and respectful of law and order, get upset when they see what we have all seen in the university these past two days.” As the strike grew bigger and more complicated, involving all of the 11 campuses, a number of public and private citizens have echoed the governor’s general message, portraying the students as selfish, privileged, disorderly, and “ideologically” driven. As I write this column, the president of the UPR’s Board of Regents is stating, on the radio, that the striking students are “breaking down the institution.”

At the heart of this image is the idea that the university is too inexpensive for the individual students and too expensive for the state, thus rendering student complaints about the elimination of tuition waivers, and their insistence that tuition rates stay low, as shallow. I propose we examine this notion. Is the university really “too cheap?” Is it a “cost” to the state? “Cheap” and “expensive” are relative terms, and they arise from comparing the costs of the UPR with other institutions. However, is the comparison with private institutions in the island, and with public and private universities in the U.S., an appropriate comparison?

Private institutions in the island have helped the country meet an increasing demand for higher education degrees, but in terms of efficiency and value, economic studies have shown that the UPR, with double the graduation rate, and producing 95 percent of the island’s research output, represents the best return on investment for public funds.

Universities across the U.S., a country traditionally known for its excellence in higher education, are experiencing problems that the states are concerned with. Two related ones are access issues faced by minorities and low-income students and the production of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, or STEM, degrees. Access problems are in great part due precisely to increasing tuition costs in four-year colleges and universities. STEM degrees hover around 20 percent of U.S. degrees, at a time when the country desperately needs to increase the domestic STEM workforce. Mainland universities have an average of only 14 percent of their student body qualifying for need-based Pell Grants. A number of efforts in the U.S., including the intensive use of federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds, are directed at increasing the number of underrepresented students and of STEM degrees.

In contrast, at the UPR, 40 percent of the degrees are STEM, and two-thirds of its student body qualifies for need-based aid. The UPR produces 16 percent of the Hispanic STEM workforce in the U.S. Historically, the people of Puerto Rico have viewed their public university not as a cost or as a burden but as an investment — the kind of investment most needed in times of economic crisis.
The governor is fond of the “family” metaphor. He often compares Puerto Rico and its current fiscal crisis with a family that needs to make hard choices to face periods of economic crisis, and wonders out loud about why the UPR cannot seem to be able to “tighten its belt” like so many families have done around the island. But even within the metaphor, choosing to take resources away from the public university in times of fiscal crisis would be akin to taking away children’s educational opportunities. Few families would agree with this choice.

The Constitution of Puerto Rico (section 5, art.2) provides for a free public education system, covering first-grade through 12th grade. This was in 1952, when a high school diploma brought a certain amount of prestige and a number of job opportunities. It could easily be argued that what a high school diploma meant in the ’50s, the college degree means today.

Affordable, public higher education cannot be seen as a cost or expense, but as value. It is one of those things where Puerto Rico consistently “lo hace mejor,” or “does it better.” It is one of the best investments we have made as a collectivity, as a society. Let us protect it.
____
The author is an associate professor at the University of Puerto Rico’s Mayagüez campus. She regularly blogs in www.parpadeando.net.

Lowell Fiet: “When State Governments Go Bad”

Governments go bad in different but interestingly similar ways. In Arizona, racist anti-immigrant legislation has been signed into law, and police and citizen vigilantes join in the unwarranted persecution of legal and illegal Latino residents. In the US territorial Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, an equally “tea-party” --evangelical statehood advocates in this case-- Republican Governor and Legislature, albeit “Latino,” have turned on State employees, firing between 20 and 25 thousand in the past year, and now proceed to disarticulate and privatize the Island’s most prestigious, functional, and liberal public institution, the 11-campus, 60 thousand-student-strong public university system.

In Arizona, the “brown rats” (a reference intercepted online in an exchange between full and part-time Arizona residents) are illegal Mexican and Central American immigrants but also Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican, and other legal Latino residents. In Puerto Rico, the “revoltosos” (disruptive rats to the current University administration and State government) are liberal, independence and/or social democratic-leaning students, professors, non-teaching university employees, and the growing number of non-statehood and (increasingly) statehood parents, general citizens, unions, and political organizations that support them.

Perhaps the comparison seems far-fetched, yet the issues involved are not just racism, on the one hand, and the right to and funding of education, on the other hand. In both Arizona and Puerto Rico, one whose current government is openly anti-Latino and the other a government obsessed with muzzling and suppressing all opposition to become the first Spanish-speaking US state, elected and appointed officials willfully bend the law (and abuse protected democratic rights) to their ideological wills, regardless of the consequences, and if existing laws do not serve their purposes, new ones are passed that do. It is the point where white supremacy and the class supremacy of a ruling elite meet eye-to-eye and heart-to-heart.   

A national uproar follows the new law in Arizona that permits ethnic profiling in search and detainment procedures and, by extension, proposes the elimination of courses in bilingual education and ethnic and multicultural studies from public school curricula. In contrast, Puerto Rico remains a well-kept political secret for most US citizens. Political news, except for hurricanes or other phenomena that affect the tourist industry, usually receives attention only in the fringe media. On this island of nearly 4 million inhabitants, where the majority lives below the US poverty level (the per capita income is less than half that of Mississippi, the poorest US state) and the government annually receives hundreds of millions of federal dollars to administer food stamp, social services, and, particularly, educational programs, politicians get away with just about anything without raising the eyebrows of oversight committees or gaining the kind of attention now being devoted to Arizona. From the North looking South, it is easy to forget that all Puerto Ricans are US citizens and are supposed to enjoy the same constitutional protections as all other citizens.

In early 2009, the newly elected statehood Governor Luis Fortuño declared a financial crisis, and the Legislature, controlled by his party, passed the controversial Law 7, an emergency bill that suspends existing public employee and union agreements and contracts, permits the radical revision of institutional budgets and funding formulas and the firing of personnel, levies new taxes, and penalizes resistance to its provisions. For that reason, last year over 20 thousand untenured and tenured public employees could be summarily dismissed. In the face of the crisis, the members of the Puerto Rican Senate and House of Representatives have annual salaries and excessive expense accounts that surpass those of the great majority of their homologues in the 50 US states.

As an autonomous educational institution, Law 7 should not apply to the University of Puerto Rico. The University of Puerto Rico, with its main campus in Río Piedras (San Juan), has been a beacon of intellectual and scientific endeavor for decades. This  Casa de Estudios  has been home to the exiled Spanish Nobel Laureate Juan Ramón Jiménez, the gateway to recognition in the US for countless Latin American artists and intellectuals, and the training ground for generations of writers, doctors, teachers, scientists, artists, lawyers, social workers, urban planners, accountants, journalists, and communications, media, computer, and business specialists, etc. --the entire professional infrastructure of Puerto Rican society. It is the one remaining public institution of national and world prestige and, although tarnished by decades of Government interference, is the only unbroken sector of an otherwise dysfunctional bureaucracy mired in party politics and financial corruption.

However, a campaign has been mounted to severely undercut its services and programs. The 2010-2011 budget will be reduced by 100 million dollars. 23 million will be sliced from the flagship campus in Río Piedras. The Governor mandates the composition of the University’s Governing Board ( Junta de Síndicos ), which recently installed a new President in a process directly influenced by the Governor’s staff. Unfortunately, the academic senates of the UPR campuses acquiesced to the politics-as-usual appointment. Then, behind closed doors and without consultation with academic and administrative deans and faculty representatives, the Governing Board began to dictate the terms of the new budget measures through their mouthpiece, José Ramón de la Torre, the new UPR president.

The UPR faculty knew something of what to expect: no academic promotions (with accompanying salary-level changes) were awarded and no cost of living increases were assigned in 2009-2010 (that will no doubt continue in the near future); no sabbatical leaves, heavier teaching loads, less or no funding for travel and research, no new faculty hiring, reduced technical and clerical staff, with no possibility for hiring new non-teaching personnel, no improvement of physical facilities, and cutbacks on academic services, etc. will probably prevail as well. Whether or not non-tenured and tenured faculty will lose their positions in 2010-2011 because of budget cuts is still unknown.

But the new and immediate restrictions were directed at the student body -- a reduction in tuition waivers for academic, artistic, or sports excellence; no Pell grants for those who do receive tuition waivers; a severely limited summer school offering and, in general, reduced course offerings in the future; the continued privatization of campus services; the rumor of the sale of regional campuses to a local mass-education community college chain; and of course, no student input in these decisions and no transparency in terms of how and by whom the decisions are being made. In fact, measures such as the elimination of tuition waivers, which the UPR administration insists upon with the bellicosity of a playground bully, would result in only miniscule savings. The greater issue is the patriarchal structure of authority: the Governor, the UPR’s Board and President, and the Interim Chancellor of the Río Piedras Campus are not to be questioned. Good children obey; bad children who do not are severely punished.

The student protests, teach-ins, and requests for dialogue in early April went unanswered. A large general assembly elected a negotiating committee and voted in favor of a two-day class/work stoppage, during which they would occupy the Río Piedras Campus. That stoppage, it was decided, would become an indefinite strike only if the UPR administration refused to begin a serious dialogue with the negotiating committee over student issues. On the morning of April 21 st , the first day, the administration gave its “full-metal-jacket” response: an estimated 250 state police officers, including helmeted and armored tactical operation forces (shock troops) at all campus gates, virtually guaranteeing a full-scale student strike. The situation has only worsened in the past three and a half weeks. The administration has made, at best, only half-hearted attempts to meet with the negotiating committee and broke off dialogue in the one meeting in which some progress seemed to be made. The students held another general assembly --this time off campus to permit full and free participation-- on May 13 th  in the large San Juan Convention Center. Now an overwhelming majority --greater than the initial assembly-- voted to continue the strike.

The following morning the Interim Chancellor, Ana R. Guadalupe gave the directive that no one and nothing would enter the Río Piedras Campus, and the state police beat and arrested a father who tried to deliver food and water to his son. During the rest of the day tension and flurries of violence continued as parents, professors, local artists, and supporters arrived with food and water and defied the police and the chancellor’s directive. Again, the administration responded, this time by officially closing the campus, first for a maximum period of thirty days, but then for a definite period until the July 31st.

The administration has done virtually everything in its power to provoke the students camped inside the UPR Campus to become the “revoltosos” they have tried to characterize them as being. Yet, with the exception of one incident of self-protection with mustard or pepper spray on the first day (April 21), the striking students have committed no incidents of violence, no trashing of facilities, no vandalism. They separate their garbage for recycling and pass it out of the campus where municipal garbage trucks pass to pick it up. They read --in an early act of solidarity, professors handed copies of their own books and those of others to them through the campus fences--, play soccer, listen to music, and have established their own radio station, websites, and blogs that originate from the campus. They paint posters, create and stage plays and acts of performance, and although they sleep in tents, they have all found ways of slipping out and back on the campus virtually unnoticed by campus and state police.

The UPR faculty is united for the first time in years in its support of the student demand for dialogue. The professors’ association (APPU) is particularly active, but non-affiliates also participate freely. Scheduled academic symposia and conferences have also taken place without incident off campus. Students and faculty from the regional campuses of the UPR support the strike. Although late arrivals on the scene, five academic deans from the Río Piedras Campus recently wrote a letter urging a negotiated settlement that includes all sectors of the university community and not just the unilateral decisions of the Interim Chancellor, the President, and the Governing Board. Popular support continues to grow. As well as artists, intellectuals, and opposition politicians, island labor unions are supporting the students by staging a general strike --the second in less than 8 months-- on May 18 th . Is there an end in sight? The main Río Piedras Campus of the University of Puerto Rico remains officially closed until July 31 st , yet it is active, creative, dynamic, and productive because it is occupied by the best representatives of Puerto Rico’s democratic future, a future the current government in its fanatical authoritarianism wants to negate and silence.

Students ( revoltosos ) in Puerto Rico and legal and illegal Latinos (“brown rats”) in Arizona: both groups represent the future and the promise of a better, more democratic and egalitarian society, not only in their respective states but in all of North America and the Caribbean. Obviously, those who oppose them with such obsessive rigidity and prejudice hold the power and the wealth and are willing to use violence in their attempt to block that future.


 *Lowell Fiet has been a Professor at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus, since 1978 and currently directs the Interdisciplinary Studies Program of the College of Humanities. He was the Director of the English Department on three different occasions, founded the academic journal  Sargasso , co-authored the PhD Program in Caribbean Literature and Linguistics, headed the Rockefeller Foundation-funded Caribbean 2000 Project (1994-99), and has directed National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminars and institutes at UPR-Río Piedras. He is also a leading critic of Puerto Rican theater and performance and has been the critic for the weekly newspaper  Claridad  for the past 18 years.

Message from the Puerto Rican Studies Association about Student Strike at UPR

Como agrupación de profesores, investigadores, activistas y estudiantes comprometidos con las causas progresistas y con el más amplio acceso a las oportuniadades educativas, la Puerto Rican Studies Association apoya a los estudiantes de la Universidad de Puerto Rico en su lucha por hacer de la educación un derecho para tod@s. Al igual que en tantas ocasiones en décadas pasadas, el estudiantado de la UPR se moviliza a favor de las causas sociales y democráticas, en este caso el esfuerzo por contrarrestar el alto costo de la vida. La educación para todos es la base de un mundo donde la igualdad social pueda ser posible. Nuestro respeto a los estudiantes que luchan por el derecho de todos y no por los privilegios de algunos.

As a group of professors, researchers, activists and students committed to progressive causes and wider access to educational opportunities, the Puerto Rican Studies Association supports students at the University of Puerto Rico in their struggle to make education a right for everyone. As has often occurred in past decades, students of the UPR have mobilized for social and democratic causes, in this case the effort to offset the high cost of living. Education for all is the foundation of a world where social equality can be possible. We respect the students in their fight for the right of all and not just the privileges of a few.

Gladys M. Jiménez Muñoz, Presidenta


Roberto Márquez, Vice-Presidente


Puerto Rican Studies Association

El Velorio Redux

Bet you didn't know Puerto Rico is at the cutting edge when it comes to wakes.  The funeral home is apparently under investigation now because embalmed bodies are supposed to be shown in caskets because they emit dangerous gasses.  Either way, I think this is a super interesting practice and says a lot about masculinity and the precarious nature of life for many young men in Puerto Rico. 

Francisco Oller would approve. 

Calle 13 Supports The Student Stikers at UPR

In these videos Calle 13 (and a number of prominent Puerto Rican and Latin American artists through video message) support the struggles of of Puerto Rican students fighting against the privatization of the University of  Puerto Rico and state divestment from education.  This video was super powerful for me and really impressive.

Many scholars of neoliberalism are pointing to the ways in which Latin America is at the vanguard of anti-neoliberal struggles.  This video reminds us that Puerto Rico IS also part of Latin America and is also at the forefront of crucial struggles for social justice.

Education is a right and the students at the University of Puerto Ricans are reminding the world of that.

Que Vivan Los Estudiantes!!!

Massive Student Mobilization at University of Puerto Rico

By Guest Blogger Claudia Sofia Garriga Lopez

Last Monday, April 19th,  the students at the University of Puerto Rico declared a strike. By Wednesday hundreds of students occupied the university and closed down all five entrances to the university. They are resisting the 100 million dollar budget cuts, the tuition hikes, and the privatization of the school, that has been put forward by the administration for next semester. These cuts are taking place in a university that is already marked by long lines in administrative buildings and students waiting for years to take classes that are required for graduation because they are often full to capacity. It means a freeze on all promotions, and new hires, as well as a salary reductions for faculty and staff. The tuition will increase but the quality of the services available will be seriously reduced.

Since the occupation, which has been called ocup(arte) the students have participated in street theater, as well as mass bench painting campaigns, puppet making workshops, poetry and music gatherings both inside and outside the university. The riot police has been stationed outside the university, but the students have remained non-violent. They have been assaulted mainly with pepper spray and tear gas, there have been several wounded but a surprisingly small amount of arrests. This is definitely a proud moment in student history for the University of Puerto Rico. The students inside the university have had so much support by their fellow students and other community members that they have had more than enough food, and have subsequently donated to food pantries. Classes have been canceled for the rest of the semester and the strike is indefinite. I will keep you posted as events continue to develop.

For those of you who understand Spanish here is a link of the clown police squad performing outside the university in front of the closed gates. Towards the end of the video Lowell Fiet, Chair of the Interdisciplinary Department of UPR storms the clown police in a dragon mask followed by other dragons chanting "dragones unidos jamas seran vencidos." Its kind of an amazing video.

and here are some interviews with students occupying the university on Saturday

Cuarto Día Huelga UPR 2010 from Nuevo Jacho TV on Vimeo.

QUE VIVAN LOS ESTUDIANTES DE LA UPR!

*Photo Credit: Primera Hora/Andre Kang

con mi M-16

I've been really busy recently trying to keep up with all the news coming out of Puerto Rico about the recent activation of the National Guard to fight "crime" on the island.  Anyway, this song has been playing on a constant loop in my head as I ponder all ways in which the Puerto Rican National Guard is deployed as an answer to high levels of crime among the island's idled youth population.  Rather than real reform aimed at providing social and economic opportunities for Puerto Rico's youth sector, the commonwealth government tries to push kids into military service as a way to make money or stay out of jail.  Those "civilian soldiers" are then deployed on the streets of Puerto Rico's urban centers to intimidate and police their peers, or perhaps worse are deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan.

It's incredible to me the way that the National Guard is repeatedly offered as a solution to the problem of youth involvement within the informal economy and the crime associated with it.  The current administration is following in the failed footsteps of its predecessors by not addressing the lack of employment and educational opportunities for many Puerto Rican youths.  Instead, the Fortuño administration is trying to ram more neoliberal reforms down the throats of the people, only exacerbating the problem. 

This is of course not to say that the National Guard was deployed to only manage youth populations.  As union leaders have pointed out, the Governor signed the executive order to mobilize the National Guard, shortly after the unions announced their intention to strike (although they weren't activated until recently).  Clearly, the Guard is an attempt to manage these ruptures caused by Fortuño's neoliberal agenda, but nonetheless it is important to remain vigilant of the ways the National Guard is in this moment targeting youth, either on the streets or as a get out of jail free card.

"Ricardo Alegría tiene un bigote mágico que le otorga poderes sobrenaturales."

Arlene Davila recently shared this lovely tongue-in-cheek ode to Ricardo Alegría by Los Niños Estelares. " "Alegría Doctor Alegría" is the first video off of their album Námaste.  This video does an awesome job of showing the crucial role Alegría had in shaping ideas about Puerto Rican cultural patrimony, in addition to lampooning Alegría's  near mythic status.

Estás cabrón!

Gay Puerto Rican Teen's Body Found Brutalized in Hate Crime

The body of Jorge Steven López Mercado, age 19, was found decapitated, dismembered, and partially burned on Friday, November 13, 2009 in Cayey, Puerto Rico.  López, a resident of Caguas, was reportedly a well known member of Puerto Rico's gay community.

LGBT activists are calling for López's murder to be classified as a hate crime.  This would be the first crime of its kind to be designated as such, if authorities reclassify the case.  Pedro Julio Serrano, executive director of Puerto Rico Para Tod@s notes that although the Puerto Rican government added sexual orientation to its hate crimes laws in 2002, local authorities have not used it to prosecute those accused of anti-gay violence. The FBI has announced it will take jurisdiction over the case if local investigators conclude López’s killer or killers murdered him because of his sexual orientation

LGBT activists are also speaking out against homophobic remarks made by Investigator Angel Rodriguez’s that implied that López deserved what he got because of his “lifestyle.”  During a televised press conference Rodriguez said, “este tipo de personas, cuando se meten a esto y salen a la calle, saben que esto les puede pasar” [When these type of people get into this and go out into the streets like this, they know this can happen to them].  These comments sparked outrage and activist are calling for the Puerto Rico Police Department to take disciplinary action against Rodriguez.  Rodriguez has been removed from the case, but is yet to be sanctioned for his remarks.  A vigil will be held later this week for López, in addition to a protest calling for disciplinary action to be taken against Rodriguez.

López’s killer or killers remain at large.


For more info:

El Nuevo Dia: Exigen investigación de crímenes de odio

Primera Hora: Solicitan relevo de agente investigador en asesinato de joven homosexual en Cayey

Edge (Boston): Gay man’s gruesome murder sends shockwaves across Puerto Rico

Mayor of San Juan calls Residente Calle 13 a "Tecato"

The government is responding to Residente’s comments about the governor during the MTV Premios Latino by cracking down on his chances to address the public.  The Mayor of San Juan, Jorge Santini, recently canceled the Coors Light Circotic show that Calle 13 was supposed to appear at on October 31st at the Coliseo Roberto Clemente.  Santini said he was compelled to do this as  punishment for Residente's comments.  What did "Ley 7" affect free speech too?

In response to Residente’s insult Fortuno responded not by addressing the lay-offs and "Ley 7” but by speaking about how Residente, and musica urbana more generally, disrespect the women of Puerto Rico. Santini went so far as to call Residente a “tecato” [junkie].  In this way the conservative forces of Puerto Rico have attempted to use a discourse of concern for women and feminist agendas, in addition to attempts to marry musicia urbana to drugs and drug use, in order to avoid actually having to answer for the effects of neoliberalism on Puerto Ricans and the growing discontent among many sectors of the population.

Pathetic.

Calle 13 on the Oct. 15 General Strike in Puerto Rico

“América Latina no está completa sin Puerto Rico y Puerto Rico no es libre. Hoy 15 de octubre los puertorriqueños marcharon contra el desempleo, porque el gobernador de Puerto Rico los dejo sin trabajo y el gobernador de Puerto Rico es un hijo de la gran p…. Yo lo puedo decir porque sé y porque tengo influencia. Hoy los puertorriqueños estamos de pie”.

Now in English... "Latin American is not complete with out Puerto Rico and Puerto Rico isn't free. Today, October 15th, Puerto Ricans took to the streets to march against lay-offs because the Governor of Puerto Rico has left us without work, and the governor is a son of a bitch ...I can say this because I know, and I have influence. Today the Puerto Ricans take a stand.

Calle 13, who co-hosted the Premios MTV Latino last night, wore a shirt that read: “Viva Puerto Rico Libre” as he delivered his insult to Governor Luis Fortuño. Previously he had had on shirts that read: “Chávez nominado mejor artista pop” (seen above) and “Mercedes Sosa sonara x100pre”.

Source: Wikiton

CFP: PRSA 2010 "Cuerpos vigilados y castigados: Resistance and Empowerment in the Body Rican"

Juan Sánchez, RICAN/STRUCTIONS: A MULTI-LAYERED LEGACY

Cuerpos vigilados y castigados:

Resistance and Empowerment in the Body Rican

Puerto Rican Studies Association 9th Biennial Meeting
Call for Papers, Panels and Presentations Hartford, Connecticut October 21-23, 2010

Please join us at the Puerto Rican Studies Association Conference.

For over three centuries, Puerto Ricans have been subject to—and involved in—various types and levels of surveillance and persecution, and have developed a variety of creative approaches to oppose, resist, engage or live with them. Going against the established juridical-political order; resisting socio-economic conditions; being poor and/or nonwhite; being positioned outside the law when trying individually or collectively to survive; not being an adult male, and/or not identifying as heterosexual; as victims of disease or as persons themselves seen as embodying disease (physiological, mental, or social); speaking the “wrong” language or speaking the “right” language the “wrong” way; having too many children or actively deciding when not to have a child; wanting to live in an unpolluted environment; playing and dancing to the “wrong” music; praying and speaking to the “wrong” God(s); being too loud or refusing to be a spectacle; being in the wrong place at the wrong time; or just simply being. Each of these, severally and
apart, have served as provocation, cause or justification for supervision, accusation, and penalty.

In 2010 our conference theme centers on these and other sites of discipline and punishment, as well as on strategies of coping, opposition and resistance. Carried out by foreigners and by our compatriots, by strangers and by our own kin, by others and by ourselves, these varied practices and instances of penalization have occurred both formally and informally, publicly and privately, overtly and covertly; with the use of force and/or by instilling efficient behavior and a lucrative obedience, episodically and in the historical long-term.

This year’s conference will also explore the ways in which Puerto Ricans have created and can continue to create critical, social, cultural, political and economic opportunities for civic action. Hartford offers us a privileged and critical space for reflection. Locale of the first Puerto Rican elected mayor of a capital city on the “mainland,” it is also home to the largest proportional population of Puerto Ricans residing in any city beyond the confines of the island of Puerto Rico itself. Following President Barack Obama’s historic nomination to the Supreme Court of the Hon. Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina and Puerto Rican to be so appointed, this year’s Conference's exploration of empowerment as a conduit for civic action seems particularly timely and assumes even greater salience. Not only the first Latina to be appointed to the Court, Judge Sotomayor is also the first Puerto Rican ever to serve in one of the highest public offices available within the governing structures of the United States. Aspiring to a critical reflection about disciplinary discourses of punishment and power affecting Puerto Ricans, this year’s conference aims also to engage those narratives and practices of empowerment which facilitate and enable progressive civic action.


PRSA Conference Themes
This year’s conference thus features two mutually constitutive themes, one with a focus on technologies of the self, one on practical approaches to social, political and economic empowerment. Efforts to study the intersections of power and the body have opened up new spaces for critical thinking and collective action. To critically explore their diverse forms and dimensions, we invite presenters to propose papers, panels, poster sessions, and by other creative means and fora, engaging with any of the following, merely suggestive rather than exhaustive, list of possible areas and topics:

1) Papers, panels, or presentations that focus on the roles of state technologies of power used to discipline the Puerto Rican subject, as well as on modalities of resistance to them. Proposals should include themes in the areas of law, justice, state repression and violence, and other institutional mechanisms of discipline and punishment, as well as proposals that explore critical modes of resistance. 2) Papers, panels, or presentations that are especially apt and relevant to this (New England) region, as one of the objectives of this conference is to create a critical space for the exchange of ideas, experiences and reflections on how to empower Puerto Ricans in local, state, national and international forums. 3) Papers, panels, or presentations that elucidate the ways in which Puerto Rican studies can inform broader debates across disciplines, thereby encouraging that interdisciplinarity which has traditionally been one of the hallmarks of the PRSA and its conferences.

We encourage submissions from the array of communities that together shape the Puerto Rican experience: university and college professors, independent scholars, community and labor organizers/activists, teachers and intellectual workers, artists, and graduate and undergraduate students.

Send two copies of your proposal form, abstract and membership fee by
February 10, 2010 to:
Secretariat, Puerto Rican Studies Association: 2009 Conference
c/o Latino Studies Program
Cornell University
434 Rockefeller Hall
Ithaca NY 14853

Please remember that only proposals from paid-up PRSA members will be accepted for inclusion in the 9th Conference. Membership dues must be received by the PRSA Secretariat by February 1, 2010. Membership dues information and a downloadable membership form are available at
http://www.puertorican-studies.org.

PRSA Pre-Conference Workshops
The PRSA Pre-Conference Workshops are designed to provide junior faculty and advance graduate students with a series of professional workshops which seek to assist in faculty development and career planning for scholars whose research and work projects focus on Puerto Rico, Puerto Ricans and their communities, and Puerto Rican Studies. These will include a workshop on tenure and promotion as well as a discussion of the history of PRSA and its contributions to intellectual life and collaborative community work. Pre-Conference Workshops will take place on Thursday, October 21, 2010. More details forthcoming.

The Sponsoring Institutions
The Puerto Rican Studies Association was founded to help promote scholarship in the field and offer a place for its scholars to come together. The Association meets every other year (in even-numbered years) in a different location. We maintain a list-serve for the dissemination of news of interest to the membership. For more information on the PRSA please visit our website at: http://www.puertorican-studies.org/. We encourage students, scholars, activists, and others with interests in the island and its people to join and actively participate in the PRSA.

The City of Hartford, a vibrant city with one of the largest proportional populations of Puerto Ricans in the United States, will assist in the hosting of the 2010 conference. Our 9th biennial conference represents the collaborative effort of members of the city’s local Puerto Rican and Latino communities as well as various academic programs and institutions affiliated with the University of Connecticut, Eastern Connecticut State University and Trinity College.

The Conference Sites
The PRSA Conference will take place in the Hartford Marriott Downtown in Hartford, Connecticut, which will also serve as the primary lodging site for conference attendees. The Hartford Marriott is located in downtown Hartford, within walking distance of many of the city’s amenities. The city of Hartford is itself conveniently located at the crossroads of New England. Only 30 minutes from Bradley International Airport, it is also within reasonable driving distance from New York City, NY, Boston, MA, and Providence, RI.

The Hartford Marriott was selected because it provided a consolidated space with access to meeting rooms as well as a central location within walking distance of restaurants and other downtown establishments. Conference rates will be available. Most of the conference events will take place in the available conference rooms in the hotel. For more information on the hotel, please visit their website at:
http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/bdldt-hartford-marriott-downtown/.
Additional information on hotel rates will be forthcoming and available at the PRSA
webpage.

For local information please contact, Charles R. Venator-Santiago, IPRLS & Department of Political Science, University of Connecticut, charles.venator@uconn.edu

For information on PRSA please contact:
• PRSA Secretariat, Marti Dense, Latinos Studies Program,
Cornell University, prsa@cornell.edu
• PRSA President, Gladys M. Jiménez-Muñoz, Department of Sociology,
Binghamton University-SUNY, gjimenez@binghamton.edu
• PRSA Program Committee Chair, Vilma Santiago- Irizarry,
Department of Anthropology, Cornell University, vs23@cornell.edu .

Puerto Rican Hipsterism pt. 3: Jowell's "Reggaeton Mullet"

Last week Solo Para Reggaeton blogged that "Jowell Invents Reggaeton Mullet." I was intrigued, and then once I saw the photo stoked! More Puerto Rican Hipsterism!


Talento de Victoria says:

Not much to say about this one, just check out that picture! Obviously it's pretty awesome. Reggaeton has a way of doing that to things that would otherwise suck. He looks like a Japanese international student or a Puerto Rican version of Kenny Powers. I like it.

I like it too. I liked it even more when I found out that Jowell donated his hair to make wigs for children who lost their hair when they underwent chemotherapy. Jowell talked about his new do' with Primera Hora, check it out:

Reggaeton Revolutionaries

Following up on the previous post, with a special tip of the fitted to Wayne Marshall...

Wayne left a comment on the previous post linking to another Reuters piece entitled "Cuba's Fidel Castro honored with a reggaeton song." Cubaton artist Baby Lores wrote a song about Castro after rumors circulated that the reggaetonero had defected during his last trip to Europe. In the video for the song, while taking "traitors" to task, he is seen getting a tattoo of "El Jefe" on his shoulder.

In the last post I mentioned that to me it seemed like a lot of the rhetoric about reggaeton's "neoliberal" properties had to do with how Cuban revolutionary authorities perceive reggaeton as a product produced by Puerto Rico's neocolonial relationship with the United States. Baby Lores makes that point extremely clear at one point towards the end of the song when he says (roughly translated) "Let me see how I explain, don't confuse Cuba with Puerto Rico, excuse me for saying it this way, but instead of two I prefer only one flag." I thought it was pretty interesting that Lores takes Puerto Ricans and Cuban exiles to task in nearly the same breath, for effectively being gusanos. I don't really know what to make of it yet, but there is something interesting happening here around ownership claims and authenticity -- distancing Puerto Rico (and simultaneously the U.S.) in order to make reggaeton acceptable for consumption within Cuba.

I'll leave you with a YouTube response by Frankoraz:

He says: "Sentí la necesidad de representar al pueblo cubano que vive dentro y fuera de la isla. Esta es la respuesta indignada al irracional tema de Baby Lores "Creo", dedicado a la Revolución Cubana." [I felt the need to represent Cubans who live in and outside of the island. This is an angry response to Baby Lores' irrational song "Creo"].

Neoliberalism and Reggaeton

Reuters recently published a pieced entitled "Reggaeton fever shakes up Cuba's culture" the article cites an now infamous (in reggaeton circles anyway) quote by Juventud Rebelde that calls reggaeton a "reflection of 'neoliberal thinking'."

I think the development and growth of reggaeton in Cuba has been fascinating (if you are interested check out Geoff Baker's work) and illuminates much about the ways in which different musical forms/genres circulate as cultural and ideological commodities.

The idea of reggaeton being a product of neoliberalism is intriguing. Clearly the flows of neoliberal capital and its circuits facilitated the spread of technologies and people that enabled the different permutations of reggaeton within the Caribbean, the Americas, and globally.

More than anything else, I wonder what seeing reggaeton as a neoliberal commidity says about how Cuban authorities think about the neocolonial relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico and the forces of diaspora (not only between Puerto Rico and the U.S., but broadly speaking) in forging reggaeton, essentially outside of the Cuban nation (and well any nation really). Reggaeton is largely positioned as outside of the Cuban nation, seen as an import from the yanquis via Puerto Rico, which is why Cuban Culture Minister Abel Prieto is quoted in the Reuters piece as saying that reggaeton needs to be "pushed away." Reggaeton is agringado, a corrupting influence on Cuba's revolutionary ideals.

While reggaeton is (often mis)understood as a Puerto Rican, or even an American phenomenon, the more authorities and cultural brokers attempt to place reggaeton within some kind of national frame the more obvious it becomes that reggaeton exist in between and outside of national boundaries.

Maybe that is what makes reggaeton so threatening, what incites all these national panics? Well, besides sex and race, but of course those things are tied up within the nation too...

Now I'm just ranting though....thoughts?

The Reggaetón Factor in the U.S. Elections

*Originially published at NACLA (North American Congress on Latin America)

Who would have thought when Daddy Yankee released "Gasolina" in 2004 that four short years later the song would become the butt of jokes about John McCain and offshore drilling? If there were still sectors of U.S. society that didn’t know about reggaetón, this year’s presidential race certainly changed that.

Daddy Yankee (Raymond Ayala) endorses McCain before a shrieking crowd of high school girls in Arizona.

Daddy Yankee caused a stir in August when he publicly endorsed Republican presidential candidate John McCain. The reggaetonero recently made headlines again when he agreed to help moderate a debate on October 9 among candidates for governor of Puerto Rico as part of the "Vota o Quédate Callao" (Vote or Shut Up) initiative to get young voters to the polls in November.

Not to be outdone, Barack Obama has also had a number of reggaetón artists come out in support of his campaign, most notably Julio Voltio and Don Omar who appeared in the video "Podemos con Obama," directed by Yerba Buena's Andres Levin. Calle 13 is even rocking the vote over at MTV. The duo can be seen in ads on MTV and MTV Tr3s urging young people to listen to their new album on the way to the polls.

Does this signal the emergence of a "reggaetón vote"? Pundits have wondered about the weight of the "hip-hop vote" in this year’s election, particularly regarding Barack Obama’s potential appeal to young African American and Latino/a voters. But in 2012 will political pundits be asking candidates what they’re doing to win the "reggaetón vote"?

Maybe. But much like the "hip-hop vote," the idea of a "reggaetón vote" is more complicated than it seems, and it defies simplistic categorization. Politicians’ use of reggaetón in speaking to the so-called "Latino Vote" revealed stark cleavages within the Latino/a community along lines of nationality, race, class, gender, legal status, and age. Indeed, the strategy backfired in many ways and exposed the messy complexities and divisions within the Latino/a community that often gets lumped together with monolithic labels like "Latino/a" and "Hispanic."

Although some analysts continue to question reggaetón’s political potential, this election season confirms the genre’s growing politicization. What that means, exactly, depends on who is doing the politicking.

Daddy Yankee, "El Cartel: The Big Boss," 2007, Interscope Records.

When McCain appeared with Daddy Yankee in an attempt to woo Latino/a voters, controversy erupted over whether Daddy Yankee—and by extension reggaetón—could or should represent the Latino/a community politically. In public responses to the endorsement some felt that reggaetón was something too Puerto Rican or too Caribbean to fully represent the entire Latino/a community.¹ Others felt that reggaetón was too "low-class," saying they did not want to be associated with references to drugs, violence, and aggressive sexuality.

Others felt that as a U.S. citizen Daddy Yankee was not immediately affected by immigration policy and, therefore, had no right to endorse McCain because of his stance on immigration. Still others wondered why Daddy Yankee’s endorsement even garnered so much attention since as a Puerto Rican resident he is barred from even casting a ballot for president on Election Day.

Likewise, recent events in Puerto Rico have sparked further debate over reggaetón’s political potential. Many youths are resisting the cooptation of reggaetón by the political mainstream and using the music to channel concerns and challenge the status quo.

A group of young artists staged a protest outside of the Puerto Rican Convention Center against the gubernatorial debate being held inside on October 9. They organized not in protest to reggaetón’s cooptation or even Daddy Yankee—though they did burn his albums—but in protest to the hypocrisy expressed by Puerto Rico’s four major political parties.

Listen to Sietenueve's "Quédate Callao":

The protestors denounced how reggaetoneros, like Daddy Yankee, are being used in an effort to attract youth to a political system that systematically ignores their concerns. Sietenueve, a hip-hop artist based in the barrio of Villa Palmeras in Santurce, composed a biting critique of Daddy Yankee entitled "Quedate Callao" accusing him of greed and political ignorance. While Yankee implores youth to "Vote or Shut Up," Sietenueve's song title suggests his colleague do the latter. At the end of the song, he raps, "How can you endorse a guy that wants to bring us more war, more blood, more death. It's real sad. Brother, if you don't know your history, educate yourself. Or just shut up."

Although urban music such as hip hop and reggaetón is seen by many as little more than apolitical party music, artists like Sietenueve, other musicians, and their fans in Puerto Rico are increasingly using it as a platform for social justice and anti-establishment political engagement. This point is made poignantly visible with "Ninguno, el candidato de los hip-hoppers" (Nobody, the hip-hoppers candidate).

The "Ninguno pa’ Gobernador" (Nobody, for Governor) campaign is an intervention by political theater group Papel Machete. Much like the "None of the Above" vote that Puerto Ricans made famous during the 1998 plebiscite to determine Puerto Rico’s status, Ninguno’s supporters are urging voters to once again turn to "la quinta" (the fifth)—in protest to the four main parties—and write-in "Ninguno" on the November 4 gubernatorial ballot.

Sietenueve and other high-profile ningunistas joined the Friends of Ninguno Committee in the protest outside the convention center during the gubernatorial debate to highlight the lack of representation all four candidates offered voters.

As one protester told Primera Hora, "In our country, political parties work within an imposed limited structure, making electoral participation an act of selection between candidates, who, once elected, automatically become puppets of the rich."

While all the candidates claim that they know the struggles of the young, the working-class, and the marginalized of Puerto Rican society, their platforms are largely indistinguishable from the status quo and desires of elites. Protestors provocatively asked, "Which candidate for governor comes from the barrios? Which one of them works in the factories? Is there a true representative of the worker, the woman, or the poor?" The answer is of course Ninguno. As Ninguno himself states, "Todos prometen, Ninguno Cumple" (Everyone promises, Nobody delivers).

While U.S.-based Latino/a youth and Puerto Rican youth are using music as a vehicle for political expression and action, they are also actively resisting superficial attempts made by politicians to win their votes through token musical shout-outs, while casting them aside in terms of actual policy.

Indeed, Daddy Yankee’s endorsement of McCain as well as his participation in the gubernatorial debate caused outrage among many young people because it threatened to turn reggaetón into a hollow signifier, separating it from its radical and subversive potential.

This election season shows politicians will not win the reggaetón vote through cultural pandering. To win over this growing group they will actually have to address the issues affecting U.S.-based Latino/a and island-based Puerto Rican youth with concrete policies. Dancing perreo on stage for votes isn’t going to cut it—and, in fact, it never did.

Notes:
1. These "responses" are based on coverage of the endorsement by mainstream media such as Primera Hora, The Washington Post, Newsday, and New York Times, and their readers’ comments as well as Latino/a themed blogs and forums such as Latin Americanist and Vivir Latino.

Move Over Gwen Ifill: Daddy Yankee to Moderate Debate

Daddy Yankee agreed to help moderate a debate tonight (October 9) among candidates for governor of Puerto Rico. He will be joining television personality Yizette Cifredo and journalist David Rodríguez as a co-moderator. Daddy Yankee is there as part of the "Vota o Quedate Callao" initiative to get young voters to the polls on November 4th.

Although, El Cangri recently made a big splash in the mainland because of his endorsement of Republican presidential candidate John McCain, he says he is not partial to any of the candidates running for Governor of Puerto Rico. He told the newspaper Primera Hora, "I am going to be an instrument to deliver the people's questions."

The event is being sponsored by Univision, and has already garnered quite a bit of controversy. A group of young boricuas gathered outside of the Puerto Rican Convention Center , where the debate is being held, earlier today to burn Daddy Yankee albums. One of the youth, Jose Perez, said the artist is being used as "bait" in a system that otherwise neglects young people.

The discussion will be between Luis Fortuño, Edwin Irizarry, Rogelio Figueroa the current governor of Puerto Rico, Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, who will respond to various questions posed by young voters submitted through social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. For those of you on the isla you can catch the debate tonight on Univisión Puerto Rico.

What do you all think? Is this a smart political move or is that Daddy Yankee brand hair gel that El Cangri uses seeping into his brain?

[via/ Associated Press]
*tip of the fitted to Lossip

“Quedate Callao!”

Reggaetonero SieteNueve has released a tiraera pa Daddy Yankee due to his endorsement of John McCain. The song called "Quedate Callao" asks how much money Daddy Yankee got to sell his people out and lead them into war over "gasolina." The chorus say "Mejor quedate callao si vas a hablar por los otros" (roughly:"it's better that you stay quiet if you're going to speak for us").

The hook uses a line from a voting campaign that Daddy Yankee was part of in January 2008 called "Voto o Quedate Callao" which translates to vote or shut up, or vote or be quiet.

Raquel Rivera, has written about the campaign and what it says to try and get the youth vote, so I urge people to look at her take over at Reggaetonica.

I think that SieteNueve's track is great and points to alot of the political reasons why people are bugging outover Daddy Yankee's endorsement of McCain. What I think is interesting is the use of the slogan "Voto o Quedate Callao" that Daddy helped popularize now being used to silence his (non) vote. The whole voto or quedate callao campaign basically said if you're not going to vote, or in this case you can't vote because of neocolonial law, then you have no right to voice your opinion. I think it is interesting and telling that SieteNueve's video ends with him saying "I endorse Don Pedro Albizu Campos," alluding to the fact the Daddy Yankee has no business voting for Obama or McCain, because the issue is still Puerto Rican independence and neither candidate is going to provide that.

*tip of the fitted cap to Angry Brown Butch and Vivir Latino