On En Caliente with Carmen Jovet, broadcast on NotiUno 630 in Puerto Rico, host Carmen Jovet and her guests, lawyer Ana Irma Rivera Lacén and analyst Francisco González Magaz, demanded the political will to restore a public-school subject that teaches students to resolve conflicts without violence. The discussion followed last week’s killings in Ponce of former activist Félix Plaud de Chaudens and lawyer Luis Quiñones González, and the suicide of bondsman William Rivera.
"I am guilty of not having managed to establish resolving conflicts without violence as a subject," Jovet said.
"I am guilty of not having managed to establish resolving conflicts without violence as a subject," Jovet said. Rivera Lacén agreed Puerto Rico is experiencing a culture of normalized violence and blamed a lack of will rather than a lack of studies on the topic: "I don’t see the will to push it forward." The panelists insisted the matter should not become partisan; González Magaz called it "a public policy issue, a country issue," a stance Rivera Lacén backed.
The panel recalled that in the late 1950s and early 1960s, under then Education Secretary Ángel Quintero Alfaro, public schools offered graded courses such as civics and Community Problems, considered as important as English, Spanish and math. The panel also warned that school bullying remains a reality and that many violent children replicate mistreatment suffered at home.