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

The Puerto Rican Teachers Federation and allied teachers’ organizations in the Broad Front in Defense of Public Education (FADEP) have called a national teachers’ strike in Puerto Rico for March 19. The strike is in response to the Puerto Rican House of Representatives passing an education reform bill this week that would introduce charter schools and private school vouchers and that would close hundreds of public schools. The government is trying to opportunistically push through this sweeping attack while Puerto Rico is still recovering from the destruction of Hurricane Maria.

At the same time as this push for privatization of public education, Puerto Rico's governor also announced his plan to privatize Puerto Rico's electrical system. Such privatization efforts are at the behest of U.S. corporations and the colonial Fiscal Control Board, which is demanding deep cuts and privatization of public services in Puerto Rico to collect on Puerto Rico's unjust and unpayable debt at the expense of the needs of the people of Puerto Rico.

To become a law, the education reform bill would still need to be considered by Puerto Rico’s senate and signed by Puerto Rico’s governor. To try to stop that from happening, teachers throughout Puerto Rico will strike on Monday, shutting down public schools and converging in San Juan to march on the capitol in repudiation of the proposal that’s currently in front of the senate.

#SanJuanPuertoRico #SanJuan #PuertoRico #Strikes #TeachersUnions #PuertoRicanTeachersFederation

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

Mercedes Martinez was interviewed on Oct. 22 in San Juan, just over a month after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico. Martinez is president of the Puerto Rican Teachers Federation (FMPR). The FMPR is a leading force in the struggle to defend public education and workers’ rights in Puerto Rico against attacks and attempted privatization. In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, they initiated volunteer work brigades to address people's immediate dire needs, while also speaking out and mobilizing against the government's developing plan to use the hurricane as a pretext to close and privatize schools, like what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, when public schools were replaced by charter schools. Interview and translation to English by Brad Sigal. Fight Back: We're here in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Let's start with who you are and what is the Puerto Rican Teachers Federation? Mercedes Martínez: I'm Mercedes Martínez Padilla, president of the Puerto Rican Teachers Federation. The Federation is a union of Puerto Rican teachers, education workers, social workers, advisors, librarians. Educators who struggle to defend public and liberatory education in our country, in defense of the rights of Puerto Rican teachers above all, and for accessible and quality public education for our students.

Fight Back!: What's the situation with public education and with teachers in Puerto Rico? Martínez: Public education in our country, like in all capitalist countries, has been under attack for many years. In the past four years, both of the major governing parties, the Popular Democratic Party and the New Progressive Party, have tried to close more than 320 public schools. They've created a situation with 35 or more students per classroom. They've been eliminating and repealing rights that the working class had won.

In the face of this general globalized attack on public education, the Federation has been struggling against the rolling back of rights that workers have won, defending the education of our kids. In this struggle we have succeeded in saving more than 300 schools that were threatened with being closed. In 2008 we had a strike and we succeed in stopping their goal of creating charter schools in Puerto Rico.

There is still not a single privatized school in Puerto Rico, mainly because of the militant struggle of Puerto Rican teachers. It was the Federation that led the 2008 strike that succeeded in winning an agreement with the government that stipulated that no public school would be privatized in our country. We still have a lot to do, and in that sense, we're working, organizing communities to do what is needed to defend public education in our country.

Fight Back!: What's changed since Hurricane Maria? What's the situation a month after the hurricane for the majority, the workers? Martínez: The crisis has intensified. This country was already in a crisis before the hurricane. The bad distribution of wealth and the class difference between the wealthy class and the working class and the poor was enormous, is enormous. Obviously now that has intensified. Poor people have no access to drinkable water, no electricity or access to electricity. They don't have money to buy generators to have electricity. They don't have gas stoves so they're mainly eating canned goods. Roads are impassable, the routes to get to some homes is incredibly difficult. There are flooded homes. There are still many people missing that we don't know where they are even today, and the government hasn't given that the attention it needs. Because of all this, the crisis for the working class and poor people in our country has intensified a lot. Obviously with the hurricane the crisis of the capitalist model is showing in all its splendor, and all the Puerto Ricans here on the island are suffering it and living through it.

Fight Back!: What is the Federation doing after the hurricane? Can you tell us about the brigades you've organized? Martínez: Yes. The Teachers Federation has organized work brigades. There’s an effort to establish access to public roads in our communities. We're installing roofs on the houses of compañeros who have lost their roofs. We're cutting trees [that block roads], collecting debris. We're bringing canned food and hot food out to communities. We're bringing gallons of water. We have different kinds of brigades. Brigades to make an impact to help clear roads, clean homes, deal with serious damage. We're doing brigades where volunteers bring food to people who have nothing to eat. We're bringing medications. We're coordinating with nurses in the U.S. who are coming to evaluate Puerto Rican people who don't have access to health care in these times. We're giving monetary donations to teachers, students and affected communities. So many people from the diaspora have reached out that I can't name them all because I'll surely leave someone out, but we're thankful to everyone that has helped, including with our GoFundMe. With this money we can go out and have an impact in communities.

Fight Back!: What can workers, unions and progressive people in the U.S. and other countries do to support you in your struggle? Martínez: First, join in the call for a moratorium on the public debt they want to collect on. There's an illegitimate debt that we don't recognize of more than $72 billion dollars. A moratorium on the debt, that this debt not be paid.

That the Jones Act be completely repealed so that aid is allowed to arrive from people from other countries that want to show solidarity with our country. Aid from the Cuban people, the Venezuelan people, hasn't been able to arrive in our country because of the Jones Act which prohibits this much-needed humanitarian aid in solitary with our country from arriving. There needs to be an international outcry. The elimination of the debt, the repealing of the Jones Act.

Money can be sent in solidarity to our GoFundMe account. Talk to your friends.

Write to your president, your senators, your representatives in the U.S. so they hear the most important demands: that the debt be cancelled and the Jones Act be eliminated. These are two very important demands so that the aid that needs to get to our country arrives, and so that the working class and the people don't pay for the crisis. As the slogan says, “the people before the debt”. And help for the people, those who are really in need, and who are the ones raising up this country day by day with their labor and their sweat.

Fight Back!: What would you say in response to the words and actions of President Trump and the U.S. government regarding Hurricane Maria? Martínez: President Trump is a very cynical person, a person that doesn't have any sensitivity. Puerto Ricans are lifting ourselves up day after day. We're helping each other with solidarity. Trump says that Puerto Ricans want everything done for them. That’s disrespectful to the Puerto Rican people and it’s not new. For more than 100 years as a colony our people have risen up day after day to move our country forward. Our fellow Puerto Ricans show solidarity by sharing food if needed to feed their neighbors. Our compatriots get up every day to clear roads with machete in hand without waiting for anyone to arrive. Help from the government hasn't arrived, the supposed help from the federal government. So Puerto Ricans aren't waiting for anything.

#SanJuanPuertoRico #SanJuan #PuertoRico #TeachersUnions #PuertoRicanTeachersFederation #MercedesMartinez

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