Arrests made during LUMA protest in Hato Rey

By John McPhaul

jpmchaul@gmail.com

After multiple warnings about violations of the law and calls on the protesters to clear Muñoz Marin Avenue, the police proceeded on Wednesday to forcibly remove them, arresting a handful of demonstrators.

The demonstrators, dressed in masks and hoods, ignored the warnings, blocked the street with tires on a stretch of the avenue in addition to the stretch they previously obstructed early in the morning.

The group, Jornada Se Acabaron las Promesas, closed a section of the avenue in front of the Seaboard building in Hato Rey, the location of the offices of the Financial Oversight and Management Board.

“We hold both the governor of Puerto Rico, the dictatorial Fiscal Control Board, the Energy Bureau and the government of the United States responsible for the energy crisis that the island is going through,” said Jocelyn Velázquez, spokeswoman for the group. “More than a year ago we warned that the LUMA contract would unleash a terrible social, human and economic crisis”

She said that the blackouts and the inability of LUMA have become routine.

“It is time for the U.S. government to take responsibility for the inability of this crisis and stop the privatization of the Electric Power Authority. The funds for the reconstruction of our electricity system cannot be conditioned to the whims of the Board and the U.S. government through its courts, Congress and institutions,” said Velázquez.