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Neoliberalism, Law, and Strikes : Law as an Instrument of Repression at the University of Puerto Rico, 2010 2011
Jos M. Atiles-Osoria Latin American Perspectives published online 12 June 2013 DOI: 10.1177/0094582X13492123

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Neoliberalism, Law, and Strikes Law as an Instrument of Repression at the University of Puerto Rico, 20102011
by Jos M. Atiles-Osoria

The exercise of power in the student strikes at the University of Puerto Rico in 2010 2011 was determined in part by Puerto Ricos colonial condition, and at the same time the strikes influenced the ideological construction of the countrys colonial conflict. The law was used by both sides as a strategy for advancing their interests. At the same time, the criminalization and state terrorism employed in response to the strikes were the same strategies traditionally used against Puerto Rican independence movements, and the university administration and the government developed new ways of thwarting political demonstrations. The colonial conflicts and the student strikes fed each other and created a new pattern of political discussion and action. El ejercicio del poder en las huelgas de estudiantes en la Universidad de Puerto Rico durante 2010 -2011 se determin en parte a raz de la condicin colonial de Puerto Rico, a la vez que las huelgas mismas influenciaron la construccin ideolgica del conflicto colonial del pas. El derecho fue utilizado por el gobierno de Puerto Rico, por la administracin universitaria y por los estudiantes como una estrategia para favorecer sus intereses. Al mismo tiempo, contra las huelgas fueron empleadas las mismas estrategias de criminalizacin y terrorismo de estado tradicionalmente utilizadas contra los movimientos independentistas. No obstante, la administracin universitaria y el gobierno desarrollaron nuevas estrategias para frustrar las manifestaciones polticas. De esta forma, el conflicto colonial y las huelgas se influenciaron mutuamente y crearon un nuevo patrn de discusin y accin polticas. Keywords: Neoliberal legal discourses, Criminalization, Colonialism, New social movements

The exercise of power in the student strikes of 20102011 at the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) was determined in part by Puerto Ricos colonial condition, and at the same time the strikes influenced the ideological construction and interpretation of Puerto Ricos colonial conflict. In this paper I shall examine the strategies employed by the two sides in the student strikes and in the Puerto Rican colonial conflict. I intend to show that, although the strikes were a product of the economic crisis and the neoliberal austerity measures and budget cuts imposed by the Puerto Rican government, they cannot be understood
Jos M. Atiles-Osoria is a Ph.D. candidate in the sociology of law and political philosophy at the Center for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra, Portugal, and the University of the Basque Country, Spain. He thanks Laura Nader and David Whyte for their help and their comments on an early version of this article.
LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue XXX, Vol. XX No. X, Month XXXX xx-xx DOI: 10.1177/0094582X13492123 2013 Latin American Perspectives

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without analyzing the countrys colonial condition and its sociopolitical, legal, and economic implications. An analysis of the role of law in the strikes reveals the transposition of the legal and repressive practices used in colonial conflicts to the social crisis. The law was used both as a strategy of coercion and as a strategy of resistance, and this made it a space of encounter1 in the colonial conflict and the strikes. BACKGROUND Any analysis of Puerto Rican political conflicts must start by recognizing three facts: (1) Puerto Rico has been under colonial rule for almost 520 years, the past 114 years under the United States; (2) the Puerto Rican people have experienced a high degree of polarization and politicization because of this colonial condition;2 and (3) the UPR is not exempt from the countrys colonial and social conflicts. This last point becomes clear through a review of the rich history of student activism that the university has experienced in its 108 years of existence. U.S. colonial rule has been based on law and violence. Law has traditionally been effective in legitimizing the colonial condition and its violence (AtilesOsoria, 2012a). Rivera Ramos (2001) has argued that the expansionist project of the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the construction of its national state were followed by legitimization through law, the creation of alternative identities, and the institution of the rule of law in colonized areas. Since its invasion in 1898, Puerto Rico has been subjected to various laws under the state of exception (Atiles-Osoria, 2012a): the Foraker Act of 1900, establishing a U.S.-appointed civilian government; the Jones Act of 1917, imposing second-class U.S. citizenship; and Act 600 of 1950, establishing a nonsovereign government. These laws imposed new areas of recognition and responsibilities, although this did not mean either important changes in its colonial status or the extension to Puerto Ricans of all U.S. constitutional rights. The state of exception was based on the outcome of one of the Insular Cases,3 which concluded that Puerto Rico belonged to the United States but was not part of it (Venator, 2006). It allowed the implementation of various political, legal, and coercive measures against actors who opposed the colonial system that created a space of indistinctness between legal and illegal. Members of independence movements have been jailed (Paralitici, 2004), persecuted, and even killed by security agencies of the United States, the colonized government of Puerto Rico, and Puerto Rican right-wing and Cuban-exile groups (AtilesOsoria, 2012b; Paralitici, 2011).4 These processes of persecution, repression, and imprisonment amounted to the criminalization5 of the Puerto Rican independence movement. However, the independence movements and those opposed to U.S. colonialism have used Puerto Rican colonized law, the U.S. legal system, and international law to legitimize their struggles and demand recognition of their human, political, and civil rights (Atiles-Osoria, 2012a). This use of hegemonic law in counterhegemonic ways can be understood as the implementation of the law from an emancipatory perspective (see Santos, 2009) and has served as a strategy

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for denouncing the violence employed by both the U.S. colonial state and the Puerto Rican colonized government. The emancipatory conception of the law is evident in the discourse of these movements when they speak of their right to fight for the self-determination of the people in UN resolutions such as 1514 (XV) (Atiles-Osoria, 2012a). It is in this sense that the law and legal discourse are a space of encounter in the colonial conflict. We see these political uses of the law and legal discourse in the student strikes of 20102011. Both the university administration and the students used the law as a strategy for advancing their interests. At the same time, the strategies of criminalization and state terrorism employed in response to the strikes were the ones traditionally used against independence movements, and the university administration and the government even created new ways of thwarting political demonstrations. The colonial conflicts and the student strikes fed each other and created a new pattern of political discussion and action. In the course of its 108-year history, the UPR has faced approximately 10 large-scale strikes and hundreds of protests, among them the strikes and demonstrations of the 1930s and 1940s (Navarro, 2000; Rodrguez, 1996) and 1948 (Reynolds, 1989), the Vietnam Warera demonstrations (Paralitici, 1998), the strikes of 19681974 (Surillo and Merced, 2006), those of 1971 and 1972 (Rodrguez Graciani, 1972), and those of the late 1970s and early 1980s (Nieves Falcn, 1982; Pico, Pabn, and Roberto, 1982). These events must be understood as the product of the power relations between the colonial regime and a society in constant struggle for recognition of its right to self-determination and the eradication of economic, social, racial, and gender inequalities. At the same time, the neoliberal crises in Europe and North America have affected Puerto Rico in a powerful way. Since mid-2000 Puerto Rico has been facing serious budget deficits, and these, together with a high level of government corruption and the lack of sovereignty that makes diversification of trade and foreign relations almost impossible, have worsened the situation, solidifying the idea of neoliberalism as the only solution. The neoliberal strategies adopted in response to the crisis include austerity measures, budget cuts, massive layoffs of public employees, and the imposition of economic discourses on colonial politics. With the ascent to power in 2008 of the administration of the Partido Nuevo Progresista (New Progressive PartyPNP) led by Governor Luis Fortuo Burset, neoliberal practices became dominant. It was assumed that to maintain a good credit rating the state and society had to move to the rhythm of transnational investment and credit-rating agencies such as Moodys and Standard & Poors. The resulting economic and social crisis led to the declaration of a state of fiscal emergency and the dismissal of some 30,000 public employees (Brusi, 2011). The state of fiscal emergency was based on executive orders 2009-001 and 2009-004 and the passage of Act 7 on March 9, 2009.6 This law revealed the colonized governments inability to manage sociopolitical problems through the democratic practices it claimed to uphold and the governments commitment to the same undemocratic style of governance implemented by the Bush administration, which used the state of exception and legal decrees to manage U.S. political life (Agamben, 2005). This approach resulted in the War on

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Terror, the deterioration of civil and political liberties, an increase in social inequality, the privatization of public services, the enrichment of economic elites, and the deepening of the global neoliberal crisis. It is in this context that the students resorted to social mobilization, seeking new ways of resistance and a new social paradigm through the exercise of radical democracy. THE STRIKES: MOBILIZATION AND RADICAL DEMOCRACY The student strikes at the UPR in 20102011 can be divided into two periods: AprilJuly 2010, when 10 of the 11 campuses of the UPR system participated, and December 2010April 2011, when strikes took place mainly on the systems largest campus in Ro Piedras. Even when there was no strike, students held almost daily events and activities on most campuses (Brusi, 2011). The main reason for the strike of the first period was the governments introduction of austerity measures and budget cuts at the university. This policy represented the transfer of sacrifice to the UPR in the interest of the elites. Under the UPR Board of Trustees Certification 98 (2009-2010) of February 20, 2010,7 the following austerity measures were imposed: the elimination of tuition waivers for student athletes, an increase in the requirements for obtaining grants for tuition fees for good students, the elimination of programs and undergraduate courses that were not profitable in economic terms, an increase in the number of students per class, cuts in professors salaries and a moratorium on the creation of new positions, and the imposition of a fiscal stabilization fee of US$800 a year. All these measures were justified in terms of the state of fiscal emergency. Exacerbating the situation was a reduction in the amount of funds the UPR received from the Puerto Rican governments general budget. By law,8 the UPR had been receiving 9.60 percent of the islands general budget, but because of the state of fiscal emergency the proportion was reduced to about 7 percent (Brusi, 2011). The withdrawal of a substantial part of the universitys extraordinary income made the picture even bleaker, helping to generate a shortfall of some US$300 million (Brusi, 2011). The strike of the second period began in protest of the fiscal stabilization fee (Brusi, 2011), which had been postponed to the JanuaryMay 2011 semester as a result of the agreement between the university administration and the students that ended the 2010 strike.9 The administration had committed itself to looking for other possible solutions to the budget deficit, but instead it not only imposed the fee but also reneged on almost all of the rest of the agreement by summarily suspending the students who had participated in the strike, eliminating courses, establishing a moratorium on many undergraduate degrees, and instituting other neoliberal structural adjustments (Brusi, 2011). The situation took a turn for the worse when the university administration and the government adopted positions that destroyed the basis for dialogue and negotiation. Among them were unwillingness to establish dialogue and the making of decisions without consulting the academic community, the summary suspension of striking students, lawsuits against students, the imposition of a moratorium on mass events on campus, the hiring of private security guards who served as provocateurs, and allowing the police to enter the

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campus (Atiles-Osoria and Whyte, 2011). The implementation of these measures result in the second strike. The university crisis was created by the university administration and the colonized government. It can also be viewed, however, as an attempt to turn the UPR into a pseudo-private institution operating under the logic of neoliberalism, in which the state is perceived as not being responsible for the institutions operational costs. The UPR was an 11-campus public university serving approximately 60,000 students with a large faculty and staffin other words, a very large bureaucratic institution with a large budget that was to some extent the locus of dissent on the island. Neoliberal administrators were interested in minimizing the cost of university operations and eliminating the opportunity for dissent. The students adopted innovative strategies to tackle the authoritarian practices embedded in the structures of colonial-neoliberal domination. Broadly speaking, they followed the model of deliberative and radical democracy (Mouffe, 2005) in their models of organization, action, and communication. Their organizational model was radical democracy. 10 Its structure was derived from the students daily life. It was made up of committees representing the various faculties on each campus and special committees representing women and the lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender community. These committees replaced the action committees of the early days of the strike. Delegates to a national committee and subsequently to a national negotiating committee were chosen from the various campus committees. The delegates positions were not permanent, which meant that everyone participated in all tasks. Extensive and intensive discussions and the rotation of responsibilities made the experience richer and at the same time made it more difficult for the university administration to identify leaders, to the point that members of the administration and Puerto Rican government agents often commented that the students had no leaders.11 The student assembly became a forum for debate, promoting mass participation, and can be considered a radicalization of existing democratic practice. On many occasions the striking students remained assembled for a long time (sometimes more than 12 hours) discussing the progress (or lack of it) of the negotiations. The Student General Council was seen as an instrument of the administration and the ruling parties, and therefore the students created their own system of representation that stood up for their interests. Women, who had traditionally been marginalized or had not actively participated in these struggles, were strongly represented in leadership positions. During the second strike, the organizational model just described seems to have deepened. The organization of this strike represented a new paradigm for the organization of student struggles and a challenge to the new regime being imposed on them. The students radical democracy was met by the administration and the government with state terrorism and the criminalization of political practices. The striking students articulated the old strategies for struggle developed through the long history of UPR student activism with new strategies that had different effects. Among the inherited elements was the idea of the student strike itself, with its blocking of gates, picket lines, and demonstrations, but this element had been transformed by the time of the second strike. The

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second strike supplemented these traditional features with cyberactivism and activities that went beyond the immediate university area. Because the university administration had removed the gates, allowed the police to enter the campus,12 and imposed a moratorium on mass demonstrations,13 the strike had to be conducted outside the gates, with protests and pickets in malls or shopping centers and around the symbols of executive, legislative, and judiciary power as well as at the U.S. federal court in San Juan. Thus, what began as a simple act of resistance acquired other political and symbolic dimensions because of the intensity of the repression and physical violence exercised by the police. Civil disobedience outside the university included visits to the offices of members of the UPRs board of trustees, sit-ins at the Capitol and on the streets leading to the university, protests at events in which members of the university administration or the government were participating, and concerts and other artistic activities on the Ro Piedras campus and around it (Franco, 2011a). As the repression and state terrorism increased, the students received more support and solidarity from both national and international sectors (Brusi, 2011). Events were held around the world in support of the striking students and against police brutality and the imposition of a state of fiscal emergency.14 Finally, this strike saw the development of legal strategies that had rarely been used by the students in previous strikes. From their beginnings, the strikes ushered a new era of political struggle in terms of communication strategies. Nina (2010) has called them digital strikes because of their use of information technology, including the creation of online radio stations such as RadioHuelga15 on the Ro Piedras campus and ResistenciaColegial16 on the Mayagez campus, the use of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter to spread important information, the creation of blogs such as Desdeadentro,17 Huelga dos punto cero (Strike 2.0),18 and Luchas RUM,19 and the posting of messages on YouTube. All these strategies indicated the students intention to democratize information and gain access to places that were inaccessible through the mainstream media. The use of information technology has characterized many of the social mobilizations since 2010 in various parts of world. Some examples of the use of this new pattern are the Occupy movement, the Indignados of Spain, and the Arab Spring. The use of this technology and social networking points to a transformation of the perception of the time-space-place of collective action. Mobilizations are going beyond physical presence to cyberactivism. THE RESPONSE: LAW, CRIMINALIZATION, AND VIOLATION OF RIGHTS In response to the strikes, the university administration and the government adopted the strategies of criminalization and state terrorism that had traditionally been employed in the context of colonial conflict. These strategieslegal action, physical/symbolic violence, and propaganda and misinformation have changed very little over time. The legal actions taken in response to the strikes included recourse to the courts, the use of normative schemes such as the University Rule and the UPR

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General Students Rule, and denial of rights that results in the constitution of criminal subjects. This latter practice is common in areas of high sociopolitical conflict (Scraton, 2007), especially in colonial conflicts such as that in Puerto Rico. A review of some of the strategic actions of the UPR administration and the government reveals how they justified the use of physical/symbolic violence20 against the striking students. The university administration was much concerned with singling out leaders on whom they could impose a criminal identity. For example, it developed a media campaign arguing that the students were members of a tiny minority driven by selfish, ideological motives, socialists, lefties, anarcolocos (crazy anarchists), and even terrorists (Brusi, 2011: 8). The use of terms such as crazy people, minority, and terrorists was characteristic of the strategies employed by the U.S. and Puerto Rican governments against the Puerto Rican independence movements during their long history of persecution and repression (Nieves Falcn, 2009; Paralitici, 2011). Once a criminalized collective subject had been created, the administration and the government instituted measures to repress it. Among these measures were legal charges filed against students whom the security agencies had identified as leaders, a petition to the court that the strikes be declared illegal (which was in fact granted by the Puerto Rican Supreme Court),21 new laws prohibiting protests and strikes in educational and health institutions22 and the wearing of masks during demonstrations,23 and the use of certain criminal laws (e.g., against obstructing traffic) to bring the accused students to trial. One of the most interesting of these legal strategies was the prohibition of strikes and protests on campus. The Supreme Court ruled in University of Puerto Rico vs. Laborde et al. (CT-2010-008) on December 13, 2010, that students had no right to strike. The main argument for this was the contractual nature of students relationship with the institution. The court claimed that the students had purchased a service contract, which made them consumers of education and therefore not entitled to strike as workers were. At the same time, the ruling established that the university administration could determine where and when demonstrations could be held and whether certain activities could take place on campus. The argument for this was that the UPR was a semipublic institution and therefore had the power to determine the extent of the right of free speech (Atiles-Osoria and Whyte, 2011). This opinion enabled the administration to establish a moratorium on mass demonstrations at the university. At the same time, it diminished the rights achieved by civil society, independence movements, and unions in the course of Puerto Ricos colonial history (CAPR, 2010). Hundreds of students were prosecuted for participating in demonstrations at the UPR (ACLU, 2011). In general, the court of first instance found no case against the accused students because the evidence was weak or because it was easily verified that the cases had been fabricated by the security agencies. Meanwhile, however, the police began implementing a strategy of isolation; students were detained for 2448 hours without receiving medical care, legal assistance, or access to their relatives (Atiles-Osoria and Whyte, 2011). They were not provided food and were kept in very cold or very hot cells (ACLU, 2011). In addition, womens groups complained about sexual abuse by police officers (Franco, 2011b).

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At the same time, the active use of the courts was a strategy of the students as well. For example, they went to court to stop the expulsion of fellow students, to request the dismissal of criminal charges against them, to seek the removal of the police from the campus, and to demand that the courts rule on the legality of administrative decisions such as the declaration of an administrative recess on the Ro Piedras campus, as in Moreno Orama and Farinacci Fernos vs. De la Torre President of the UPR et al. (CT-2010-3). All this constituted a judicialization24 of the strike, although the students continued demonstrating political opposition. A number of actions outside the legal framework helped to prevent demonstrations and served as another way to criminalize social protest. Among these were declaring a moratorium on mass events on the Ro Piedras campus and identifying places where students could not demonstrate, hiring private security guards, and authorizing the police to record and photograph students during their demonstrations (Serrano, 2010). These actions lay in the very narrow space between legality and illegality. They violated the civil and political rights of the students in the interest of the Fortuo administrations neoliberal project. Of the many examples of symbolic violence in the strikes, perhaps the most significant was allowing the police to enter the campus. Other important ones were the hiring of private security guards, the infiltration of the student movement by police, visits to students by the FBI,25 and media campaigns to discredit the students. The presence of police on the campus has been described by Atiles-Osoria and Whyte (2011) as the militarization of the university. This symbolic violence created tension and fear among the universitys students and staff. The strikes were also marked by physical violence and serious violations of the students civil and human rights (Atiles-Osoria and Whyte, 2011). For example, on July 30, 2010, the police made a show of force against student demonstrations at the Capitol (ACLU, 2011), prohibiting access to the legislative sessions in which the antidemocratic laws mentioned above were to be approved (Brusi, 2011). Students who went to the Capitol to read a declaration against the neoliberal policies of the Fortuo administration were attacked by police using pepper spray and tear gas. A few hours later the police established a perimeter around the Capitol and began to evacuate the area where students and others who had joined the demonstration were standing. During this evacuation, protesters were beaten and dispersed with the aid of helicopters firing tear gas and pepper spray, and all the while snipers were visible on the roof of the Capitol (ACLU, 2011). After these events, the press broadcast a video of a police officer firing a weapon into the crowd (CAPR, 2010). Another example of state violence was the show of force conducted by the police in January and February 2011. During this period the police were on the Ro Piedras campus and massive demonstrations were banned. As a result, there were many instances in which the police used their repressive power against the students. On February 9, 2011, for example, a passive and entirely peaceful demonstration on the campus was met with an extreme physical and violent attack by members of the police (ACLU, 2011: 3). The symbolic power of this state terrorism was particularly strong because of the wide dissemination

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of information about it. The use of information technology allowed hundreds of people around the world to witness the police violence. This led the American Civil Liberties Union to conduct a study of violence against students on strike (ACLU, 2011). The Fortuo administration made systematic use of violence as a mechanism for eliminating social protest and political dissent. Propaganda diffusion and the control of public opinion through the mass media was the third strategy employed by the administration and the government. The propaganda aimed at eliminating the student movement and its counter-definition of politics by constructing an image of the students as enemies of the state, spreading misinformation, and justifying the governments actions. To create an image of the students as enemies of the state, the administration and the government often argued that the protesters were a small group or a minority that did not have the support of other students (Brusi, 2011) and that they were operating in the interest of outsider groups. They suggested that the students were leftists who were not really interested in education but only in the payment they got for protesting. References were made to their style of dress, their sexuality, and their alleged drug addiction (Brusi, 2011). This helped to build a distorted image of a subject who was an enemy of society and of the good values the university was intended to transmit. This process of image construction mirrored the strategies employed against the Puerto Rican independence movement (Nieves Falcn, 2009). In addition, there were TV and radio commercials and newspaper advertisements broadcasting half-truths or misinformation about the strike, perhaps the best example of which had to do with the supposed effect of the strikes on accreditation by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.26 Finally, the media were used to offer a rationale for the use of violence. It was argued, for example, that the students began the skirmishes and the police were forced to respond and that if the students had not been stopped they would have gone on to engage in illegal activities. CONCLUSION: STUDENT STRIKES AND COLONIAL CONFLICT We have seen that the university administration used strategies within a legal and extralegal framework to deal with the conflict and that the students politicized the conflict not just by taking it to court but with strategies typical of radical democracy, cyberactivism, and the pursuit of solidarity in society and outside the country. All of these strategies were an attempt to make this situation understood in terms of a struggle for public education and against neoliberal colonial austerity measures and budget cuts. Considering the impact of these strikes on the colonial conflict and vice versa, I have argued that the colonial conflict provided many of the axiological categories and interpretations assumed by the different actors in the strikes. On one hand, the university administration and the government criminalized the students as they had previously done with the independence movements and actors who opposed the system of colonial power. They used categories such as rioters, rebels, communists, minority, terrorists, and criminals (Brusi, 2011). In addition to this discursive strategy, they employed state

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terrorism and the prosecution of students in court as they had against the independence movements (Paralitici, 2004) and invited the United States and its security agencies, such as the FBI, to take part in the response to the strikes. On the other hand, the students adopted some of the discursive strategies used in the colonial conflict, among them the idea of the strike itself, the discursive deployment of a protest that refers to the people and the less advantaged, the appeal to national solidarity and international recognition of their struggle, the effort to raise awareness of the university as part of a national project, and the recognition that the current crisis was due to Puerto Ricos colonial situation, the ineptness of the university administration, and the corruption of the countrys colonized governing elites. At the same time, many of the strategies used in the university strike affected the colonial conflict as well. The strikes created new areas of discussion and action. Both the government and the university administration created new legitimate forms of repression: the prohibition of social protest and strikes in educational and health institutions, the ruling that students had no right to strike (which opened the way for restricting the freedom of speech of other sectors), and the creation of files on the activities and the students participating in them.27 A final example is the legitimization of violence and state-sponsored terrorism on the assumption that the students represented a threat to the countrys security. All these elements would lead one to argue that alongside the development of the neoliberal colonial administration we are witnessing the rise of a new conception of social security that calls for the sacrifice of freedom, both individual and collective. This social security means the elimination of dissent through legal action and physical/symbolic violencein other words, the militarization of society. However, we are also witnessing the development of political strategies by students and a resurgence of struggle and resistance. In this context, radical democracy has appeared as a contingency strategy. The students meetings, long discussions, and attempts to establish equity represent a new political experience in Puerto Rico. Similarly, the use of cyberactivism points to new horizons of action for social movements, and the independence movements have learned from it. Finally, the law, as a political project of regulation, has served both as a legitimating strategy for state terrorism and as a strategy for resisting it. NOTES
1. According to Pratt (1992), a space of encounter is a sphere in which the exchange of perceptions and epistemologies and interaction between the colonizer and the colonized take place. 2. Puerto Ricos colonial subordination and conflict have involved various social sectors, among them the United States, the colonized state of Puerto Rico, sectors that advocate annexation to the United States, a sector that supports the status quo (the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico), the independence sectors, and the various sectors (environmental, gender, labor, student, religious, and so on) traditionally known as civil society. 3. As Rivera Ramos (2001: 7475) explains, the Insular Cases were a series of nine decisions rendered in 1901 concerning the status of territories acquired by the United States after the Spanish-American War, seven of them from Puerto Rico, one from Hawaii, and one from the Philippines. The case that established that Puerto Rico was territory belonging to the United States but not part of the United States was Downes v. Bidwell. 182 U.S. 244 (1901).

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4. Some examples of these right-wing organizations are Abdala, the University Pro-Statehood Association, the Coordinator of United Revolutionary Organizations, the Cuban National Liberation Front, the Friends of Democracy, the Cuban Revolutionary Junta, and Omega 7. 5. Following Scraton (2007), what I mean by criminalization is the political use of the criminal law to thwart and delegitimize social and political organizations. Some examples are the design of special laws, the use of courts to resolve situations of a political nature, the long-term imprisonment of political actors, and the outlawing of organizations through either positive law or legal argumentation (for example, the use of official state discourse to establish that a given organization is criminal, subversive, or terrorist). 6. http:/ /www.oslpr.org/download/es/2009/0007c1326.pdf (accessed June 25, 2012). 7. For the Spanish version see http:/ /www.certifica.upr.edu/PDF/CERTIFICACION/ 2009-2010/98%202009-2010.pdf (accessed July 9, 2012). 8. Law 2 of January 20, 1966, established the formula (see Ingresos provenientes frmula 9.60% y transfondo histrico, http:/ /www.senado.uprrp.edu/Informes/Ley-UPR.pdf [accessed July 9, 2012]). 9. After 69 days an agreement was reached through the mediation of the San Juan Superior Court judge Jos Negrn Frnandez. http:/ /www.scribd.com/fullscreen/33192711?access _key=key-361qnkmrxv22hv25q9f (accessed July 9, 2012). 10. Rivera Lugo (2010) points out that many of the students participating in the strike were not part of any leftist movement but received their training in the process of struggle. 11. The superintendent of police, Figueroa Sancha, said that the police attacks on the students were justified because the students had no leader with whom they could negotiate (Atiles-Osoria, 2010). 12. The admission of the police violated university policy. http:/ /senado.uprrp.edu/Comites/ PoliticaNoConfr/Pag-PolNoConfr.htm (accessed July 9, 2012). 13. This ban was imposed by Chancellor Ana Guadalupe on December 30, 2010, and at first was to last 30 days. Instead it was extended until the end of the second strike in April 2011 on the ground that the General Students Rule allowed the administration to prohibit any activity that affected the normal functioning of the university. The students mobilized against the ban in two ways: direct defiance through civil disobedience and two lawsuits, both of them ending in rulings in favor of the administration. http:/ /www.primerahora.com/tribunaldeapelacionesratificaprohibiciondemanifestacionesenrecintodeupr-462238.html (accessed July 9, 2012). 14. A Global Day of Solidarity on March 11, 2011 (the anniversary of the police killing of UPR students during another student strike in 1971) involved acts of solidarity in 16 cities around the world. http:/ /www.bandera.org/articulos/internacionales/16-ciudades-se-unen-al-d%C3%ADmundial-de-solidaridad-con-la-universidad-de-pue (accessed July 9, 2012) and http:/ /www. scribd.com/fullscreen/50494159?access_key=key-hne8aqvpbhhkg7v3ej7 (accessed July 9, 2012). 15. http:/ /radiohuelga.com/wordpress/. 16. http:/ /www.ustream.tv/channel/resistenciacolegial. 17. http:/ /rojogallito.blogspot.com/. 18. http:/ /blogs.uprm.edu/huelgadospuntocero/. 19. http:/ /luchasrum.wordpress.com/. 20. By symbolic violence I mean the imposition of cultural practices, languages, and citizenship to the detriment of the colonized country, the imposition of structural adjustments and budget cuts that result in the impoverishment of citizens, the deployment of police, the militarization of public space, and other tactics of intimidation and coercion. 21. CT-2010-008. http:/ /www.ramajudicial.pr/ts/2010/2010TSPR225.pdf (accessed July 9, 2012). 22. Law 3 of February 4, 2011. http:/ /www.oslpr.org/2009-2012/leyes/pdf/ley-3-04-Feb-2011. pdf (accessed July 9, 2012). 23. This prohibition was considered in the framing of Law 2631 of the Puerto Rican House of Representatives in 2010 (Rivera Vargas, 2010) and made part of the new penal code in 2012. 24. By judicialization I mean, following Santos (2009), the superimposition of legal discourses on political practices. 25. As happened with the student Vctor Balaguer in December 2010. http:/ /pr.indymedia. org/news/2010/12/46595.php (accessed July 9, 2012). 26. For examples of this argument and the counterarguments developed by the student movement see http:/ /rojogallito.blogspot.com/2011/01/en-record-publicidad-enganosa-de-la-upr. html (accessed July 9, 2012).

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27. This practice was in effect from 1930 until the late 1980s, when it was halted by a lawsuit. It has begun again with the creation of files with photos and videos of protesters in every single mobilization that occurs in Puerto Rico, with no clear rules governing it and no acknowledgment of its purpose (Serrano, 2010).

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