100,000 march in Puerto Rico

National work stoppage protests mass layoffs

By Berta Joubert-Ceci

The masses in Puerto Rico sent a strong message to the pro-statehood administration of Gov. Luis Fortuño and his capitalist allies when more than 100,000 people came out on Oct. 15 in San Juan and Hato Rey to protest the current government’s neoliberal policies, including more than 20,000 layoffs in the public sector.

Despite a heavy police presence, National Guard assistance and the police chief’s threat of invoking the Patriot Act against the protesters, the people converged from several points in the city on Plaza Las Américas shopping mall, which had closed out of fear of the demonstration. The police chief is also an FBI agent.

Banner carried by Puerto Rican youth in Oct. 15 protest reads ‘No to the privatization of the minds of the future.’ Photos: Indymediapr.org

During the march, a sizable youth contingent blocked access to the heavily trafficked intersection of Las Américas and Roosevelt avenues for five whole hours.

Organizers characterized El Paro Nacional—the national work stoppage—as a complete success. The closing of the largest mall in the area and the virtual paralysis of the financial center of the nation—a mile-long section of Ponce de León Avenue known as the Milla de Oro [the Golden Mile], which is home to the main banks and mortgages firms—symbolized the Paro’s message: Shut down the creators of the economic crisis. One of the Paro’s slogans was “Que la crisis la paguen los ricos,” which in English means “Let the rich pay for the crisis.”

An Oct. 15 Univisión article reads, “According to economists, the national stoppage caused economic losses upwards of $30 million.”

Background of the Paro

The world economic crisis hit Puerto Rico severely. The announced layoffs are one more blow to the already untenable conditions of the majority of Puerto Ricans, who already suffer from 16-percent official unemployment. The new sales tax, along with higher costs for essential basic services like water, electricity, telephone, health and transportation, plus increased property taxes, have been a heavy burden that they can no longer endure.

The government has issued two laws that protect capital at the expense of the livelihood of millions of Puerto Ricans. Law No. 7, known as the “Special Law Declaring a State of Fiscal Emergency and Establishing an Integral Plan to Save Puerto Rico’s Credit,” was passed last March. This law promoted the layoffs and the Paro’s number one priority was to get it repealed. Law No. 29 is the “Law of Public-Private Alliances (the LAPP),” which seeks to privatize everything that was not privatized by the previous Pedro Roselló pro-statehood administration of the late 1990s.

Interview with National Paro leader Pedraza

Luis Pedraza Leduc, leader of the Program of Solidarity of the militant union UTIER, PROSOL-UTIER (the union of workers in the electricity and hydropower industry) and a spokesperson of the Labor Coordinating Committee (CS) and the Broad Front of Solidarity and Struggle (FAdSyL), one of the two general organizations behind the Paro, spoke with Workers World.

WW:How did the Paro develop?

LPL:It was an attempt to put pressure on the government on Oct. 15, precipitated by the layoffs of 20,000 workers on Sept. 25. The response from some labor sectors was to turn the activity that was planned for that day against a convention of investors at the Convention Center into a national work stoppage. This initiative started to take form and got the support of all the labor and social sectors of Puerto Rico.

One of the main achievements was that the convention got postponed because of the Paro. This was going to be a meeting of 250 investors from around the world representing different companies. As a result of the LAPP, the government had hired a consultant company based in London to promote Puerto Rico as a destiny for investors to accelerate privatization.

WW: Who initiated the Paro?

LPL:In Puerto Rico we have two groups that have been dealing with the labor and political issues around these neoliberal policies. One is the FAdSyL and the CS and the other is the Coalition All Puerto Rico with Puerto Rico (TPRcPR) with three labor sectors that are grouped under the Labor Coalition [This labor group is different from the CS—BJC]. Both groups agreed to have an action on the fifteenth. The FAdSyL/CS decided to have the event in front of Plaza Las Américas with the objective of closing it down after marching from the Milla de Oro as a symbol of the finance sector and main promoter of consumerism in Puerto Rico. When we found out that the convention had been postponed, then we all agreed to end at the Plaza.

The Coalition TPRcPR was born from an activity on June 5 protesting Law No. 7 and the LAPP. There was a march and a Peoples Assembly where a manifesto was approved, including points for struggle like the repeal of laws 7 and 29, defense of the environment and other important issues. The Labor Coalition is composed of the unions under the AFL-CIO, Change to Win and the CPT, the Puerto Rican Workers Central.

The FAdSyL started on Jan. 12, with the CS and UTIER—in total we are 18 unions. That day we made a call for the formation of a broad front with a permanent character. We are trying to overcome the experience in Puerto Rico where we unite around an issue and afterwards, goals achieved or not, we disband. We are now trying to establish a consistent, permanent work effort since we recognize that this is a long struggle. We are emphasizing the creation of Regional Councils. These councils are formed by unions, churches and other social groups and work cooperatively. There are a dozen councils so far around the island.

WW:What is the next step?

LPL: We are proposing a general strike. To challenge the state’s public and economic policies a people’s general strike is necessary and unavoidable as a way to confront the government. We are not going from protest to protest and lobbying to repeal a law that they already passed. They have stated that they will not back down because this is a project that was initiated in 1988 in Puerto Rico as a proposal of the main private groups and the Chamber of Commerce, to privatize all public works and reduce the government to a minimum, using the private sector and the municipalities and the deregulation of the market.

Since 1988 the government has pushed these points, now at an accelerated rate, and there is no room for dialogue. Therefore we have to recognize the need of organizing the people through assemblies, by sectors, forming regional councils to promote this assembly. And that the people start approving a conscious push for the development of a general strike in Puerto Rico. This would imply not an act for a particular day but a process of struggle that will effectively confront policies of this government against the people.

The government has already announced the elimination of 40 of the 134 government agencies between now and December. So we say that more layoffs are in the making, even though they say the layoffs will not happen. But it is inevitable: There will be more layoffs.

WW: At what level is the masses’ political consciousness?

LPL: This economic crisis directly affects the peoples’ wallets and we must take advantage of this moment, recognizing the opportunity that we have to help create consciousness. That the problem is not only the wallet, but that those running the system plan to discard the welfare state, to discard the system offering government services. They assert that people are not necessary, that what is important is the accumulation of wealth and that the Keynesian formula that required people to have incomes in order for the economy to move is not what is being proposed.

How do we explain that? How do we create a model of popular education that would help people understand and go from the defense of jobs and the stopping of layoffs to the awareness that we need a different economic system, that we need to rescue the demand for social justice and recognize that the present system will not give us that. I think that this point is the greatest contribution that we must offer during this struggle so that the level of struggle and of political consciousness goes to a new level. Fortuño is not the problem. The system he represents is the real problem.

WW:How can we help from the U.S.?

LPL: By internationalizing the struggle. Let people know about it, create unity, since the unity of workers of the different sectors is important. That way we can create a unitary process. I think that would be the most important thing since there are different places and experiences and we can help each other and learn from each other’s experiences.

---