Cubans March in Solidarity with Puerto Ricans

Cubans joined the multitudes around the world who on Friday came out to show their support
with students from the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) on World Solidarity with the UPR Day
to urge for the reestablishment of a non-confrontational policy within the university. The day also
recalls the tragic attack against the UPR campus that occurred 40 years ago on March 11, 1971,
culminating in the deaths of three people, including a student

By: Juan Morales Agüero y Yailé Balloqui Bonzón

Email: digital@juventudrebelde.cu

2011-03-12 | 15:10:36 EST

Cubans March in Solidarity with Puerto Ricans

Calixto N. Llanes

Cubans joined the multitudes around the world who on Friday came out to show their support
with students from the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) on World Solidarity with the UPR Day
to urge for the reestablishment of a non-confrontational policy within the university. The day also
recalls the tragic attack against the UPR campus that occurred 40 years ago on March 11, 1971,
culminating in the deaths of three people, including a student.

The demonstration was held in Havana’s Central Park presided over by Cuban Parliament
President Ricardo Alarcón with the participation of student and youth organizations, and students
from Puerto Rico and around the world studying in Cuba.

In their statement announcing the day of solidarity, Puerto Rican organizations recalled the
ominous day:
“March 11, 1971 was one of the bloodiest single days in the history of the University of Puerto
Rico . The main campus at Río Piedras was occupied by the Puerto Rico Police, unleashing
violent confrontations that ended the lives of two police officers, including the then chief of the
notorious Tactical Operations Unit, and one student.

“Barely one year before, on March 4, 1970, during a student demonstration, student Antonia
Martínez Lagares was shot dead by police. These tragedies influenced a series of decisions that
helped reduce the intensity of on-campus conflicts during the following decades, including the
removal of the United States ' Army Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC), and an
institutional commitment to resolving conflicts without police intervention.”

Forty-years later, the statement reads, the students have embarked on a new struggle that has also
been met with violence:

The UPR community, led by the students, still struggles for a democratic and accessible
institution, against the abusive and exclusionary policies of the latest colonial
government. Among these, aside from its clear intention to privatize higher education as
much as it can, said government has laid off more than 25,000 public employees, and
intends to build a gas-duct across the island that will displace entire communities and
impact areas of high ecological and archeological value.

In this context, the Río Piedras Campus once again lived several months of police
occupation, with the open support of the government and university administrators, in
reaction to the strike democratically declared by the Río Piedras General Student
Assembly, rejecting an unjust and arbitrary $800 hike in the cost of studying. The eyes of
the world watched as Puerto Rico Police officers tortured peaceful civil disobedients
with impunity, sexually accosted and attacked women students, discriminatorily harassed
student leaders, and savagely beat people, even under custody, all before the television
cameras.

During the solidarity demonstration held on Friday in Havana, Cuban Parliament President
Ricardo Alarcon spoke about the fascist attack against university demonstrators in Puerto Rico
who were fighting for peace and a better world, protesting against the draft that forced young
Puerto Ricans to participate in the unjust war carried out by the United States against the people
of Vietnam.

Speaking about the current strike by UPR students to demand quality public education, Alarcon
said that their struggle is for freedom, culture and education, “We Cubans must do all we can to
increase international solidarity with Puerto Rico and their youth.”

In the Eastern Cuban city of Las Tunas, hundreds of university students also marched in
solidarity with their UPR colleagues and to commemorate the March 13, 1957 attack on the
Presidential Palace by a handful of courageous Cuban students lead by José Antonio Echeverría.

On March 13, 1957, as part of the struggle to overthrow Batista’s dictatorship, a group of young
people led by the Cuban Federation of University Students (FEU) President Jose Antonio
Echeverria attacked the Presidential Palace to execute Batista and stormed the Radio Reloj radio
station to call on the people to rebel. In this action, Echevarria died in combat along with several
other revolutionaries.

“The walk to freedom taken up by Jose Antonio and his colleagues was later followed by Fidel
Castro and his comrades, culminating in the instauration in Cuba of the most just, humane and
popular government that this continent has ever seen,” said Arley Silva Velázquez, Las Tunas
provincial president of the FEU.

Similar marches were held across the island in solidarity with the young Puerto Ricans whose
message ends stating: “We are united by the firm conviction that the demands of the UPR
community are just. The strike is still in effect, and the struggle (its current phase) will continue
until the $800 hike is eliminated. In the longer term, we support a real democratization of the
decision-making process in the UPR, so that it is the community that determines the best way to
handle the institution's financial and administrative problems.”