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People march along Las Americas Highway as they hold Puerto Rican flags to demand the expulsion of power company Luma amid a continued lack of electricity across the island, in San Juan, Puerto Rico on October 15, 2021. Photo: Ricardo ARDUENGO/AFP via Getty Images.
Puerto Rican citizens demand the cancellation of the contract with the capitalist Canadian company LUMA Energy.
The Police of the State of Puerto Rico, a dependent territory of the United States, dispersed Thursday night a demonstration of dozens of Puerto Ricans in Old San Juan, who were staging a protest against LUMA Energy due to the constant power outages.
This is the most recent episode of the protests that have been shaking the Caribbean island for days, although it is the first one that culminated with a confrontation between demonstrators and police, and one person arrested.
🚨 Puerto Ricans are again on the streets of Old San Juan, in front of the Governor's Mansion, protesting against the incompetence and corruption of the private electric utility @lumaenergypr, a U.S. and Canadian company, that hasn't been able to improve the electric grid of PR. pic.twitter.com/pDq7piViUS
— Boricuas Unidos en la Diáspora (@BUDPR) August 26, 2022
The Teachers Federation also joined Thursday night’s protest, as did the president of the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP), Juan Dalmau.
The demonstrations followed calls made last Monday by a group of legislators from the House of Representatives and social organizations to mobilize as a way to put pressure on the pro-U.S. Governor Pedro Pierluisi to cancel the contract granted to LUMA Energy.
LUMA Energy is the consortium that since last year is in charge of the transmission and distribution of electricity in Puerto Rico, one of the results of the privatization of the network on the island controlled by the United States.
The population’s complaints are due to a spate of blackouts and other service interruptions over the past two weeks, which left hundreds of thousands of people, businesses and even hospitals without electricity.
