On November 8 and 9, our team participated in Escuelita de la Deuda (Debt School) in Puerto Rico, convened by the Comisión Ciudadana para la Auditoría Integral del Crédito Público. The gathering strengthened a growing alliance between Puerto Rican movements and international human rights advocates working to confront debt injustice and austerity, and to advance alternatives grounded in dignity, democracy, and accountability.
Escuelita de la Deuda is a series of political education workshops for community, environmental, feminist, and social leadership that is already confronting Puerto Rico’s ongoing fiscal and debt crisis. Rooted in popular education and lived experience, the Escuelita creates space to collectively examine how debt and fiscal policy shape everyday life, restrict democratic decision making, and undermine economic and social rights, while also building shared strategies for resistance and transformation.
Across the two days, CESR contributed to sessions examining the human cost of debt and austerity, challenging dominant approaches to fiscal policy that treat budgets and debt as abstract or apolitical. Drawing on human rights standards and tools such as the OPERA Framework and Decoding Injustice, we supported participants in analyzing how budget decisions, debt servicing, and opacity translate into concrete harms for communities in Puerto Rico, and in identifying entry points for accountability and change.
A central focus of the Escuelita was narrative power. Our team engaged with participants on how dominant economic narratives normalize austerity, creditor first policies, and the erosion of public services, and how movements can reclaim the story by naming harm, centering lived experience, and advancing rights-based narratives that resonate beyond expert and policy spaces.
The sessions also situated Puerto Rico’s debt crisis within broader global patterns of creditor power and fiscal control. We contributed to discussions on the role of cross border alliances in exposing structural injustices, challenging global financial rules, and strengthening collective demands for debt justice. CESR’s participation was supported by María Emilia Mamberti, Research and Policy Lead, Mahinour El Badrawi, Global Partnerships Lead, and Auska Ovando, Communications Manager.