Resumen de Days of reckoning for the University of Puerto Rico: the struggle to maintain the Cultural Autonomy of a Caribbean public university

Alicia Pousada

• Pousada’s commentary points to how Cultural Autonomy is being threatened by efforts to privatize education and run public schools as though they were businesses. She uses the case of Puerto Rico and describes the battle to retain a viable public university system within the larger struggle to maintain a uniquely Puerto Rican culture under the aegis of the United States within the ambiguous status of Commonwealth or Estado Libre Asociado ʻFree Associated Stateʼ. Pousada points to the anachronistic and colonized nature of a “free associated state” and, contrary to Fishman, argues that the Puerto Rican case is in no way a model for Cultural Autonomy.