San Juan, Puerto Rico – On May 1, police in Puerto Rico responded to tens of thousands of people marching against austerity with serious repression including tear gas, pepper spray and arrests.

The Puerto Rican Teachers Federation (FMPR) along with the Broad Front in Defence of Public Education (FADEP) called a strike on May 1 in opposition to the government’s plan to close hundreds of schools and privatize public education. Many other workers and other social movements such as Jornada Se Acabaron las Promesas, a movement that formed in 2016 to resist the colonial ‘Promesa Act’, also mobilized to the Milla de Oro in San Juan to oppose the harsh austerity measures that the Wall Street-imposed Fiscal Control Board is trying to implement.

FMPR President Mercedes Martinez posted on Facebook about what happened: “Yesterday more than 60,000 people went to the Milla de Oro to protest against the austerity measures of the Control Board and Ricardo Roselló. Eight marches from different starting points. Workers, fathers, mothers, environmentalists, students, feminists, public health workers, religious people, retired workers, all with one voice demanding that they don't abide by the fiscal plans that drive us into misery.”

Video footage has gone viral on social media showing the police launching tear gas and pepper spray at the May 1 protesters. Around 20 protesters were also arrested. Video has also emerged of large numbers of police entering neighborhoods after the protest to track down people who were at the protest and taking them from their homes forcefully to arrest them.

After the repression on May 1, another march was called for the evening of May 2 to demand that the people arrested on May 1 be freed, as well as continuing to protest the Promesa Act, the Fiscal Control Board, school closings and privatization of public education, the robbing of pensions, and more. As of May 2 in the evening, five of the people who were arrested on May 1 were reportedly still in jail.

Noelanie Fuentes, a leader of the Puerto Rican Teachers Federation in Rio Grande, was an eyewitness to the tear gassing and repression on May 1 in San Juan. She said, “Yesterday I didn’t simply see young people, adults, kids or elders in a protest where they covered up our constitutional right to participate in one. Yesterday I also saw the face of the solidarity, hope, life and energy necessary to begin to stop the oppression, corruption and intimidation carried out by the supposed leaders of our country. I saw enough bravery to fight against the colonial system we live in and make our rights matter as a people. In that crowd which was trapped, there was no fear – there was courage, rage and indignation. Enough to not leave and to be there for hours fighting to accomplish what we had set out to do. Wake up boricuas, they’ve given us the signal, wake up from this dream, it’s time to struggle. We’re already awake and there’s enough of us to struggle, resist and win!”

#SanJuanPuertoRico #SanJuan #PuertoRico #May1 #Strikes #FederaciónDeMaestrosDePuertoRico #PuertoRicanTeachersFederation #JornadaSeAcabaronLasPromesas

San Juan, Puerto Rico – On April 27, police pepper sprayed teachers in a protest led by the Puerto Rican Teachers Federation (FMPR) outside the Department of Education. The teachers were protesting the government’s plan to close hundreds of public schools as part of a massive ‘education reform’ plan to privatize public education.

FMPR President Mercedes Martinez said, “It was abusive, an unnecessary abuse of power against unarmed teachers that were peacefully protesting against the government’s outrages,” and that “they used pepper spray disproportionately, they sprayed pepper spray like it was a joke, it was a shame what happened today.”

The Puerto Rican Teachers Federation, along with the Broad Front in Defense of Public Education (FADEP) is not letting the police attack stop their organizing to defend public education. They announced that there will not be classes in Puerto Rico’s schools on May 1, International Workers Day, because teachers are going on strike. Teachers and school communities across Puerto Rico will converge in San Juan to march from the Department of Education to the ‘Milla de Oro’.

In a statement, the FADEP said, “May 1 is a day in which teachers, mothers, fathers, students and diverse sectors of civil society will unite in one voice to demand that they stop the closing and privatization of schools,” “On May 1 we’ll have an overwhelming expression to stop school closings and to demand that Education Secretary Julia Keleher resign and we can get back on the path of a true transformation of the education system.”

#SanJuanPuertoRico #SanJuan #PuertoRico #strike #Strikes #TeachersUnions #FederaciónDeMaestrosDePuertoRico

San Juan, Puerto Rico – In an escalation in their fight to stop the government from closing or privatizing public schools in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, the Puerto Rican Teachers Federation occupied Education Secretary Julia Keleher’s office Nov. 7 in an act of civil disobedience. 21 teachers were arrested standing up in defense of public education in Puerto Rico.

All 21 teachers were released late the night of Nov. 7. In a press conference the morning of Nov. 8, the Puerto Rican Teachers Federation called on school communities to intensify the struggle to demand that their schools be reopened. The majority of public schools still have not been reopened a month and a half after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico Sept. 20. Secretary Keleher has said they plan to close and consolidate schools after the hurricane.

The Teachers Federation called on teachers, families and students to join them in a national protest on Nov. 9 at 1 p.m. in front of the Education Department. They are calling for all public schools to be reopened and for an end to the agenda of privatization. Mercedes Martínez, president of the Puerto Rican Teachers Federation, said, “Secretary Keleher should know that if she continues her plans to close our kids’ schools, our communities will continue to build resistance. She must reopen all schools!”

The Teachers Federation has been warning that the government is opportunistically taking advantage of the chaos after Hurricane Maria to close hundreds of public schools. The government has tried to close and privatize public schools for a decade but has been thwarted by teachers, students and communities organizing to defend their schools and public education. They warn that the government is trying to copy what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, when 7000 teachers were fired and all public schools were converted to charter schools overnight. The Teachers Federation is working to prevent that ‘disaster capitalism’ from dismantling public education in Puerto Rico.

#SanJuanPuertoRico #SanJuan #PuertoRico #HurricaneMaria #FederaciónDeMaestrosDePuertoRico

In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria’s devastation in Puerto Rico, the Puerto Rican Teachers Federation (FMPR, for their initials in Spanish) has been warning for weeks that Department of Education Secretary Julia Keleher was going to use the crisis as an opportunity to try to close hundreds of Puerto Rico’s public schools. This is something that those in power have wanted to do for a long time but haven’t been able to due to resistance from teachers and communities defending their schools.

The FMPR has raised the example of what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, when pro-corporate interests succeeded in destroying the public education system in the city in one fell swoop – all 7000 teachers were fired and overnight nearly the entire public school system was converted into charter schools. As FMPR president Mercedes Martinez said in an Oct. 29 press conference, “There [in New Orleans] the government privatized schools, fired teachers and closed schools. Here, they’re also trying to provoke thousands of Puerto Rican students to leave the island with their families.”

In Puerto Rico, public schools began to reopen the week of Oct. 23, a month after the hurricane. But the reopenings have been done in a chaotic and inconsistent way. A relatively small number of schools were opened last week, and many schools that have electricity and water and have been cleaned were not included in the list of schools to be opened. This lent credence to the view that there was actually a plan to keep many schools closed forever.

In an Oct. 30 interview with El Nuevo Dia, Education Secretary Keleher confirmed that getting rid of teachers and closing schools is indeed her plan: “Consolidating schools makes sense. They can go out and protest in the streets, but that doesn’t change the fact that we can’t go back to life being the same as it was before the hurricane.” In the same interview, Secretary Keleher also said that they would need to reduce the number of teachers.

Over the past week protests have started to break out in front of dozens of schools around Puerto Rico demanding that schools be reopened. These protests are multiplying. The FMPR has called a mass protest for Nov. 9 at 11 a.m. in front of the San Juan Convention Center, where post-hurricane governmental operations are headquartered, to demand the reopening of all public schools and oppose the policies of Education Secretary Keleher.

The union has responded strongly because they predicted just such ‘disaster capitalism’ maneuvers to try to ram through sweeping changes that couldn’t be implemented in normal times. FMPR President Mercedes Martinez said on Oct. 29, “Secretary Keleher has taken advantage of the fact that the country is in chaos and the teachers and school communities are still struggling to meet their basic necessities in order to ram through their plans against public schools. They think that people won’t be able to organize to respond to this new attack.”

While powerful forces want to take advantage of a national crisis to advance an agenda of austerity and reduction of public services like education, in Puerto Rico that agenda is already meeting strong resistance from teachers, parents and communities, and that resistance is sure to continue.

#PuertoRico #TeachersUnions #FederaciónDeMaestrosDePuertoRico #PuertoRicanTeachersFederation #JuliaKeleher

Eulalia “Laly” Centeno was interviewed Oct. 23 at the Puerto Rican Teachers Federation office in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Centeno is a teacher at the Salvador Brau Elementary School in Cayey and active with the Puerto Rican Teachers Federation. She talks about the danger of the government using the crisis of Hurricane Maria to impose massive school closings and privatize public education in Puerto Rico – as they’ve tried to do for years but have not been able to because of resistance from teachers and the community. She warns that the government is using the model that was used in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, when public schools were closed en masse and changed to privatized charter schools. Interview and translation into English by Brad Sigal. Fight Back!: Can you tell us who you are and what’s happening with your school? Eulalia Centeno: I’m Eulalia Centeno Ramos, better known as Laly Centeno. I’m a teacher and affiliated with the Puerto Rican Teachers Federation (FMPR). I’m an elementary school teacher at the school called Salvador Brau, which is a K-6 school. In this difficult moment that the country is living through, the school where I work is in the best possible condition because it has electricity, it has water, and it’s clean because the teachers and workers of the school did all the cleaning. We got everything ready. We organized the program to welcome back students and start the academic process. All areas are ready to start classes.

But then the Education Secretary announced that in this school, this town, this region, classes won’t start until the Commission of Engineers from the U.S. comes and certifies it. They are saying that for now the students aren’t allowed to be in the school. But the workers, all the workers are in the school! I can’t understand that.

What makes us think that the government has a plan with the intention to get more money out of FEMA and is projecting to close schools and eventually merge them is that this already was the plan that the Fiscal Control Board had. Now Hurricane Maria has just opened the doors for them to come in and undo everything and play with the emotional state and conditions of our children, our parents, our staff, so that they can impose school closings and eliminate teachers from the system. With our children living in the subhuman conditions in which we’re living in terms of health and security they even said we couldn’t use the school kitchens in our schools in the center of the island to provide food for the people.

Because of all this, it’s clear they want to do long-term school closings so they’re being very selective about which schools to reopen first because this would be a new class cycle. They’re being very selective and that way they can close schools and provide ‘alternatives’ to the children of our country.

Fight Back!: And these school closings are part of a privatization agenda, like what happened after Hurricane Katrina? Centeno: Yes, they want to go through a process of privatization. Yes. Because what happened with Katrina, they have established in writing that they are using the Katrina model here in Puerto Rico. Already, right now, they are offering the public school up to the association of private schools to use the buildings of the public schools. They are ready to give them over to them so they can use them. But they are not opening the schools up to the people in the same way.

The most lamentable part of all this is that the [other] union that is supposed to represent teachers, the Association of Teachers, is being complicit in this process of school closings, of privatization of the schools in the country. It’s in writing and the governor and education secretary have said that the model they’re using is the Katrina model from New Orleans and we know this is what happened there. So we in the Puerto Rican Teachers Federation are alerting the country, we’re alerting parents, we’re alerting the community that we can not allow this.

What they are doing is not helping the country, it’s for the benefit of a few rich people using the needs of the people to do it.

#SanJuanPuertoRico #SanJuan #PuertoRico #privatization #TeachersUnions #FederaciónDeMaestrosDePuertoRico #PuertoRicanTeachersFederation

This is an interview done on Oct. 22 with Noelanie Fuentes, vice president of the Rio Grande Local of the Puerto Rican Teachers Federation and a social studies teacher at Liberata Iraldo Middle School. Her school is one of many across Puerto Rico that is still being used as a shelter for people whose homes were destroyed in the hurricane. Here she discusses the work teachers have been doing to support families living in their school, and her perspective on reopening schools while many in Puerto Rico are still living in shelters, including shelters at schools, or have no electricity or water. Interview and translation from Spanish by Brad Sigal. Fight Back!: Let's start with who you are and what you do here.

Noelanie Fuentes: Good afternoon. My name is Noelani Fuentes Cardona. I’m a middle school social studies teacher. We’re here at the school where I’ve been working for three years, the Liberata Iraldo middle school. In the time since Hurricane Maria passed, the school is serving as a shelter for all the people that lost their homes in the town of Rio Grande. It’s the central shelter for the town of Rio Grande.

Fight Back!: So the people that are here have been living here since September?

Fuentes: Yes, since September, since a few days after Hurricane Maria passed. They’ve now been living here approximately a month in our classrooms that have been converted into their homes. And here we’re struggling day-by-day.

Fight Back!: So you’re saying that your classroom has a family living in it?

Fuentes: It has a large, extended family living in it. This week we were collecting donations for all the people sheltered here because they have needs, basic hygiene needs, needs for kids’ clothes and toys, so us teachers took on the task to support these families, support the community and other schools. We collected as many donations as we could in the week and brought them the donations. They won’t have all that we have but at least they’ll feel a little bit of stability in this space they have which is already quite difficult.

Fight Back!: And now the Department of Education is announcing that they’re going to reopen many schools. What’s going to happen at your school?

Fuentes: Well, that’s a big question that all teachers have, and that we have specifically at the Liberata Iraldo school. Because the Department of Education has put out some memos but none of them specify what’s going to happen with the schools that are serving as shelters. All the memos are very general, addressing the level of all the schools. But this is a school where approximately 120 people are living. It’s understood, or it has been said, that they’ll be relocated to a closed factory. A factory where as of now there are no dividers, it’s a space where everyone would be out in the open. They’re in the process of creating divided sections and separated bathrooms. How long will that take? It’s unknown. So due to that, as long as they haven’t finished preparing this factory to relocate the people who have taken refuge in the school, we are meeting here in the school lobby Monday through Friday from 8:00 to 12:00, waiting for direction from the education secretary.

Fight Back!: Anything else you’d like to add?

Fuentes: Yes. People have the need to return to normalcy or something approximating that. But you also have to think about these students, this generation, who are going through a process they’re not used to. They’ve never lived through this. To demand starting their classes, to demand that they comply with an extended schedule of 8:00 to 3:00, which the secretary of the Department of Education had to change at the last minute to 8:00 to 12:00, I understand that’s a lot.

As teachers we want to work and we want to attend to our students. But not in a situation where there’s no water in many communities, where there’s no electricity. Many people say, “why can’t you teach classes that way?” Well, sure, fantastic! You walk into a classroom with a 105-degree temperature with 30 students in a classroom. 30 students who very likely didn’t sleep well the night before because of the heat, who didn’t sleep well because of their parents’ worries, who didn’t sleep well because they didn’t eat well because if you go now to the supermarket the shelves are empty. You have to stand in line for everything, to withdraw money, to buy things. And these are worries that we as adults often can’t even handle.

Imagine children, imagine young people, many of whom are in a transition period which is much more difficult for them. I understand that things that are elective shouldn’t be imposed above emotional wellbeing. You have to work on it all, but it shouldn’t be a situation where to avoid not completing a fixed number of hours [as set by Department of Education policy for hours required in the classroom for a school year], they say we have to start classes right away. It needs to be done wisely and in a humanitarian way.

#RioGrandePuertoRico #RioGrande #PuertoRico #HurricaneMaria #FederaciónDeMaestrosDePuertoRico #PuertoRicanTeachersFederation