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(I am going to have a fuller report on the Left Forum tomorrow but the author of this article spoke about this incident in a panel discussion on the Puerto Rican economic meltdown. Basically, assholes wearing masks broke windows at a bank and the bank used this incident to press charges against 42 groups on the frontlines of the resistance to austerity.)
The crowd gathered around the stage on Muñoz Rivera Avenue was unaware that just around the corner on Bolivar Street, masked rogue demonstrators were throwing stones at the main headquarters of Banco Popular, the island’s largest bank, shattering some of its largest windows. Police—including regular forces and the riot squad—reacted slowly, moving into the area and marching en masse toward the main stage down the block. They launched tear-gas canisters and pushed into the crowd as stage announcer Millie Gil, a local media personality, was desperately calling for calm. “Don’t be provoked.… We don’t want the headlines of tomorrow’s newspapers to say that we lost control of a peaceful demonstration!” she pleaded.
But the police, after a negotiated standoff, engaged in continual confrontations with protesters, pushing, striking, and gassing peaceful demonstrators and masked provocateurs alike. Images of vandals, tear gas, and students running under late-day thunderstorms dominated the evening news. It was a tailor-made media op for the rightist statehood party (PNP) government. Governor Ricardo Rosselló held a press conference denouncing the vandalism, but he recklessly lumped the vandals together with the marchers. His tone of moral opprobrium was underscored the next morning in another staged media tableau that showed him helping workers sweep up shattered glass in front of the Banco Popular tower.
The mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz, as well as Representative Manuel Natal Albelo, who was one of the first elected officials to champion the idea of an independent debt audit, quickly denounced the governor’s equation of peaceful protesters with vandals. The ACLU, led by William Ramírez, held a lengthy press conference in which Ramírez, who was still recovering from the effects of tear gas he was exposed to while acting as a negotiator and observer, displayed tear-gas canisters and even rubber bullets that had been used by the police. His statement directly contradicted one made earlier by police Superintendent Michelle Hernández, who denied their use. Ramírez also criticized violations of protocol (including no warnings, and plainclothes officers not wearing badges) and excessive use of force.
In addition, eyebrows were raised when a lawsuit was filed by Banco Popular on the afternoon of the protests and disturbances, naming 42 plaintiffs, including community organizations, labor unions, and “unknown demonstrators.” Ariadna Godreau-Aubert, a human-rights lawyer who is part of a Legal Action Committee that is trying to draw attention to SLAPP lawsuits, or frivolous suits brought to intimidate people who take part in demonstrations, found the suit to be highly irregular and part of a disturbing pattern.
full: https://www.thenation.com/article/puerto-ricos-political-economic-crisis-deepens/
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