Participatory Action Research in�Puerto Rico:�Creative Resistance in the Face of �Disaster Colonialism

Dr. Isar Godreau

(University of Puerto Rico at Cayey)

Genesaret Flores Roque and Adriana Rodriguez-Vazquez (undergraduates)

Dr. Julio Cammarota and Dr. Regina Deil-Amen (University of Arizona)

Dr. Gina Perez (Oberlin College)

����Between Resistance and Resilence: The University of Puerto Rico in the Face of Disaster Capitalism�

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Isar P. Godreau1 and Rima Brusi2

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Photo by Amanda Godreau

1. Institute of Interdisciplinary Research, University of Puerto Rico at Cayey

2. Northern Arizona University

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University of Puerto Rico at Cayey

1 of 8 undergraduate campuses

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2, 550 students

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75% Pell Grant recipients

Units of the University of Puerto Rico System

La Junta

Financial Oversight and Management Board

7 unelected members appointed by US Congress

PRIVATIZATION OF ELECTRIC POWER COMPANY LUMA ENERGY: 15 YR. Multi-Million Contract

“CAYEY IS

UAGM

TERRITORY”

Ana G. Méndez University

• … [I]n my class, the other day, we were discussing the difference between resilience and resistance. That little word that they continue selling us as if it was the most beautiful thing in the world. Be resilient, be resilient, ! Lets’ go ! Resilience ¡. Resilience means enduring and surviving. And there are situations in life when we have to endure and survive, but you know what? We are here today because these youth… got tired of being resilient. We are tired of holding on. We are tired of being silent and we are here to tell those who are in there (pointing to the Capitol) that we are going to resist with rebellious dignity ...
• [T]oday we want to tell those legislators that they should know that what we have here is a people ready to put up a fight; that here is a student body ready to put up a fight and a UPR that is not going to give up. That here is a working sector that is not going to give up. And that we are going to continue on the street because resiliency is over. Because these are times of resistance.

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Universidad de Puerto Rico en Cayey: Informe de Presupuesto Año Fiscal 2022

PROYECTS ON HOLD OR DISCONTINUED

CERTIFICATIONS ON HOLD

Áreas de Investigación:

• Salud
• Medioambiente
• Educación
• Inequidad e Identidad

Misión : Generar investigaciones de enfoque regional, interdisciplinario y aplicado relevantes para el país y -sobre todo- para la región de servicio de la UPR en Cayey, apoyando la gestión investigativa de docentes y estudiantes en la UPR-Cayey.

Institute of Interdisciplinary Research at UPR – Cayey 2000 – Present

2000 – Present

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From Undergraduate Research to Graduation: Measuring the Robustness of the Pathway at a HIS

J. Caraballo Cueto, I. Godreau and R. Tremblay Submitted to Journal of Hispanic Higher Education (October 2021)

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Students in Waiting Lists: #86 (2016-17) #85 (2015-16) #105 (2014-15)

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INTD 4116

Gracias

isar.godreau@upr.edu

Review of Antonia Pantoja Research Mentoring Program

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• Research program for undergraduates supported by the Instituto de Investigaciones Intedisciplinarias, UPR Cayey
• Puerto Rican scholars from the diaspora would conduct research in PR
• UPR, Cayey requires students to have research experience for graduation
• Instituto de Investigaciones Intedisciplinarias has excellent track record for preparing undergraduates for graduate school.

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Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR)�What is it??

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• Self Reflexive – Students’ research own experiences with Hurricane Maria.
• Researcher/Researched – Researcher and Researched are one in the same.
• Applied Knowledge – Cultivation of funds of knowledge for social justice
• Creative Resistance – Students’ use creative expression to resist domination

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Our Process: June 2019

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Teaching college-level research methods

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Utilizing YPAR

• Centering the Puerto Rican students and addressing root causes

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• Presentation of “cultural artifacts” to represent resiliency
• Planters; poems; journals; paintings; photographs; social media memes; videos; handmade jewelry, etc…

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More cultural artifacts

More cultural artifacts

Our Process (continued):

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Utilizing YPAR

• Practicing fieldwork and allowing for feminist data collection processes and field notes
• Borrowing from Indigenous methods
• Examples include…
• Observation poems
• Sharing circles

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Feminist Ethnographic Practice

“Indeed, feminist researchers have a long history of challenging inequalities—both in their application of research methods, and through their research objectives. A principal priority in feminist ethnographic work, since its inception, is to honor what is important to the people you are working with. This is true both in terms of topic, as well as how they participate in your work” (Dana-Ain Davis and Christa Craven 2016, 78)

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Ethnographer of home (Lloréns, 2021)

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Home work/tarea (Villarreal, 2022)

Using ART and CREATIVITY to examine resilience led to the generation of expressions of resistance

From “Puerto Rico se levanta”�to�“Puerto Rico se vende” �to�“el corazon” de Puerto Rico���

From the rallying cry ”Puerto Rico rises” in the immediate aftermath, anticipating that efforts to rebuild would prove Puerto Ricans to be resilient, strong and tough, and able to rise above adversity…

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To feelings of hopelessness and impotence about the government neglect and lack of adequate response…

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To a renewed hope for collective resistance and grass-roots self-sufficiency.

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“The crisis wasn’t the hurricane itself, but the aftermath,” the struggle to come to terms with having to “live the same day over an over again” for months upon months that stretched into years, with no apparent systematic help from their government and no end in sight.

IMPOTENCE

FEAR

FRUSTRATION

TORN APART

NEGLECT

SHAMEFUL

DEHUMANIZING

DEPRIORITIZED

ABANDONED

DISPOSABLE

ENDURE

Casa Pueblo

revelation, shift in mindset, turning point

Casa Pueblo

revelation, shift in mindset, turning point

With our visit we learned

A little more of Puerto Rico.

A place that encourages us

To fight for our island.

Con nuestra visita aprendimos

Un poco más de Puerto Rico.

Un lugar que nos anima

A luchar por nuestra isla.

Transformed engagement with resilience into engagement with the idea of resistance after their exposure to Casa Pueblo��- a community-based organization in Adjuntas devoted to a self-sufficient and self-sustaining existence ��- Astounded, students went from a mindset about survival and resilience in the face of this natural catastrophe, toward a more critical realization about the ongoing catastrophe engendered by Puerto Rico’s colonized economy and government. ��- Decades earlier, this community had developed an infrastructure to consistently serve their own needs, and even more so when faced with the devastation of Hurricane Maria.

HOPE

UNITY

COLLECTIVE

JOINING HANDS

PRIDE

STRUGGLE

RESISTANCE

LOVE

TRANSFORMATION

CREATE

FIGHTING

WORKING TOGETHER

KNOWLEDGE

OBSERVATION POEM AS “DECIMA”��Invoking a Puerto Rican�lyrical tradition�(Yareliz)

DECIMA

De Puerto Rico el corazon

En casa pueblo y Adjuntas

Combaten con manos juntas

Ruinas y demolicion

Con cultura y educacion

Gracias a un noble ingeniero

Derrotan el agujero 

Cultivaron la esperanza 

Con musica y con danzas 

Cuidan la tierra que quiero

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Of Puerto Rico the heart

At Casa Pueblo and Adjuntas

They fight with folded hands

Ruins and demolition

With culture and education

Thanks to a noble engineer

They defeat the hole

They cultivated hope

With music and dance

They take care of the land I love

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DECIMA

Autogestion comunitaria 

Desde ninos hasta adultos 

Destruyen a los incultos

Aunque al principio fue solitaria

Sin ayuda monetaria 

De un gobierno embustero

Con un mensaje sincero

Café, libros y artesanos

Todo hecho con sus manos

Cuidan la tierra que quiero

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Community self-management

From children to adults

They destroy the uneducated

Although at first it was lonely

Without monetary aid

From a cheating government

With a sincere message

Coffee, books and artisans

All done with your hands

They take care of the land I love

Four group projects were developed of students’ original research on their own experiences and those of fellow community members contending with Hurricane María and its aftermath.

YPAR process as a culturally-sustaining approach and a “high impact practice.”

• Students…
• Began by centering themselves
• Learned research design, how to observe, take ethnographic field notes, and conduct interviews in family and community context.
• Generated theoretical ideas (personal and sociocultural resilience and resistance) and integrated findings with policy and practical actions/interventions, including activism.
• Engagement in learning was intellectual, emotional, and embodied
• Findings embedded in collective values and ‘local’ knowledge production

Undergraduates from UPR, Cayey share their YPAR process…

Genesaret

Adriana

Video Presentation

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Genesaret Flores Roque

Video Presentation

Genesaret Flores Roque

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Art Presentation

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Adriana M. Rodriguez

Audience Activity

Define some specific cultural artifact that, for you, represents your own experiences of resilience in your college-going pathway, a natural disaster, and/or your pandemic survival. Situate your cultural artifact within the wider socio-political, socio-economic, sociocultural, raced, classed, gendered etc. contexts of oppression.

OR

Engage in creative resistance -- generate your own observation poem or artwork about transformative action in the face of these contexts.

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What creative production might you encourage among your student researchers?

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REFERENCES

• Brusi, Rima (2021) The University of Puerto Rico is not for sale ! in The Nation.com October 26, 2021
• Brusi, Rima and Isar Godreau (2021) Public Higher Education in Puerto Rico: Disaster, Austerity and Resistance in AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom vol. 12 : 1-19
• Bonilla, Y. (2020). The coloniality of disaster: Race, empire, and the temporal logics of emergency in Puerto Rico, USA. Political geography, 78, 102181.
• Bonilla, Y., & LeBrón, M. (Eds.). (2019). Aftershocks of disaster: Puerto Rico before and after the storm. Haymarket Books.
• Godreau, Isar, R. Brusi, B.Rivera (2019) Once Recintos: Viables?, No, Necesarios? Sí en 80grados.net
• Brusi and Godreau (2019) Dismantling public education in PR in “Aftershocks of Disaster”, Y.Bonilla and M.Lebrón, eds.
• Irizarry, Jason G., Rosalie Rolón-Dow and Isar P. Godreau (2019) Después del Huracán: Using a Diaspora Framework to Contextualize and Problematize Educational Responses Post-María in CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies Vol. 30 No. 3 Fall 2018.
• Brusi, Bonilla and Godreau (2018) When disaster capitalism comes for the UPR in The Nation.com
• Brusi (2011) The University of Puerto Rico: A Testing Ground for the Neoliberal State in NACLA

THANKS TO…

• Dr. María del Mar Rosa
• Staff at the Instituto de Investigaciones Interdisciplinarias, UPR- Cayey
• Students of the Student Movement at UPR

Thank YOU��Questions & Comments???