chicagotribune.com
Puerto Rican community seeks prisoner's release

By Margaret Ramirez
Tribune reporter

7:25 PM CDT, May 29, 2011
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With prayer, song and calls for freedom, dozens of Puerto Rican community members and human rights activists gathered today to mark the 30th year in prison for Puerto Rican nationalist Oscar Lopez Rivera and called for his release.

Lopez Rivera, now 68, is a gray-haired vestige of a long-gone era in America, when a group known as the F.A.L.N. (Spanish for the Armed Forces of National Liberation) fought for Puerto Rico's independence from the U.S.

More than a dozen FALN members were convicted and imprisoned in the 1980s on various charges including seditious conspiracy and armed robbery. In 1999, President Bill Clinton granted clemency to nearly all the prisoners and released them.

Lopez Rivera, who is serving a 70-year sentence in a federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., is now the last remaining Puerto Rican prisoner.

In recent months, the National Boricua Human Rights Network and other activists have launched a national campaign to urge President Barack Obama to commute his sentence. In addition to a prayer vigil and rally in Chicago, events were also held in New York, Los Angeles, Cleveland, Philadelphia and Puerto Rico.

At the Sunday prayer service held at Lincoln United Methodist Church in Chicago, the prisoner's sister, Zenaida Lopez, said her brother has done his time and should be allowed to come home.

In addition to his sister, Lopez Rivera has a daughter, Clarissa, who lives in Puerto Rico and a granddaughter, Karina, who is a student at the University of Chicago.

“There's one thing that's forgotten in this struggle -- and it's that Oscar is human,” Zenaida Lopez said. “He's a brother. He's a father. He's a grandfather. He's a son. He's loved deeply by his family.

”We have to struggle to see that he is released, so that he becomes part of the family once again. It is our dream. It is our hope. It is something that we talk about every single day.

Also at the prayer service, two activists, Michael Reyes and Matt McCanna arrived after completing a 10-day, 200-mile walk from the federal prison in Indiana to Chicago.

The FALN was involved in a series of bombings in New York and Chicago, including the 1975 bombing of the Fraunces Tavern in Manhattan that killed four and injured more than 60 others.

Lopez was not convicted for a role in the Tavern incident.

In the Puerto Rican community, Lopez Rivera, a Vietnam War veteran and community organizer, is widely regarded as hero. But, others view him as an unrepentant terrorist.

Those opponents said his release would send the wrong message about terrorism.

In February, the U.S. Parole Commission denied Lopez Rivera parole and released a statement that said: “We have to look at whether release would depreciate the seriousness of the offenses or promote disrespect for the law, whether release would jeopardize public safety and the specific characteristics of the offender.”

Even so, his attorney Jan Susler, remains hopeful of his release. She noted that three previous U.S. presidents have commuted sentences of Puerto Rican prisoners including presidents Harry Truman, Jimmy Carter and Clinton.

marramirez@tribune.com
 

Carlos Alberto talks about Oscar López Rivera
By Cándida Cotto
Published: Tuesday May 24, 2011
http://www.claridadpuertorico.com/content.html?news=22D0072C9F3A36D03E2390719D2DC805
 
On Monday, May 9, 2011, the United States Parole Commission denied parole to Puerto Rican political prisoner Oscar López Rivera, who on May 29 will mark 30 years of a cruel imprisonment.
 
Already here in the Homeland, ex political prisoner Carlos Alberto Torres is about to complete a year since his release from prison. Comrades from the same struggle, both from Chicago, the experience of their years in prison and facing the procedure before the Parole Commission, make Carlos Alberto and Oscar López Rivera two sides of the same coin.
 
Claridad talked with Carlos Alberto about his reaction to López Rivera’s procedure before the Parole Commission.
 
Imprisonment
How do you face prison? is the question posed to Carlos Alberto in view of the fact that Oscar López is still in prison after 30 years. In a low, serene tone, he described for us: “When you’re in prison, you’re alone. Although there are compañeros, you are alone because the government made sure, with the exception of the women, that all of us were going to be in different prisons. They didn’t want us together, in part because their strategy was ‘we’re going to see how we can break this individual, change his opinions, or extinguish his fervor.’ They put you in a kind of isolation, not only separation throughout the United States, but that isolation ... you feel it when you arrive at a place, ‘wow,’ what am I doing in Alabama? Or what am I doing in California? At the end of the day, you’re alone, you’re surrounded by other people, but they’re not your compañeros, they’re not your family, they’re people you don’t know, maybe people you are suspicious of. You make friends, and even though there is support, a lot of affection, it’s always with certain caution ... separation.”
 
The support you receive from the outside is what makes the difference. “That strengthens you, but at the end of the day you have to know who you are, why you’re there, and you have to have a strong sense of yourself as a person who struggles, and not allow the conditions to separate you from that.
 
“With Oscar, I’m sure, knowing him, that he is a person of verticality, his character, his principles, he is one of the most generous people you will ever know in your life. He is that type of man who thinks of others, of the collective, before thinking of himself. He’s an individual we all admire as a natural leader, a real man. His conduct confirms it and affirms it every day. A man of struggle, a man of conscience, brilliant, of incredible intelligence.”
 
The last time Carlos Alberto saw Oscar was April 4, 1980, the day he was arrested with the group of then-members of the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN). Oscar was arrested the following year, on May 29, 1981, and has been in prison ever since. “When I knew him, I already had a mustache,” recalls the current resident of Camuy.
 
He knew Oscar at the beginning of the ‘70's, when he was at the University of Illinois. “He noticed me because I was a young kid. He went to speak to my parents about issues in the community. I was already interested, had a social conscience. I grew up thinking it was natural to integrate into community work. That’s the context in which I started to work with Oscar. His influence over me was total. I immediately recognized that he was a person of conviction, commitment, with energy. He reminded me and made me think a lot about my concept of don Pedro (Albizu Campos) who put the struggle and the people first. That’s exactly how Oscar was, putting the struggle and the people before his own comfort.”
 
Like a cruel game, the conditions imposed on the Puerto Rican political prisoners didn’t allow Carlos Alberto to stay in contact with his eleven compañeros freed in 1999, nor with Oscar during the five years they were on conditions. The compañeros, now free of all conditions, can communicate among themselves and with Oscar.
 
In light of your experience, did you ever doubt that Oscar López’ case would turn out the way it did?
 
“In Oscar’s case, we were all hopeful. I was really almost convinced because my experience in prison taught me that if it’s six in the morning and time for sunrise, that’s what will happen, but also when you’re in prison you always have to have reservations, because anything can happen.
 
As for his reasons to be cautiously optimistic, he commented that he was the only one who in 1999 wasn’t offered a sentence commutation; Oscar was offered release if he served 10 more years, which would have been in 2009. “We already know that he took a principled position, even though he told everyone else to accept. I figured out that the quarrel was with me. When I went for parole, they treated me like any other social prisoner. There was no extraordinary procedure. They conducted themselves ‘well.’ I expected something like that would happen with Oscar. I said, ‘well, obviously there isn’t such a strong resistance. The man will have served 30 years.’ Under the law, any person sentenced to more than 45 years, who has good conduct, who hasn’t been a risk to society, has the right to parole. That was the criteria they used with me, and it’s the law.”
 
He immediately questioned what it means to be, or to not be, a risk to society. “In my case, from what I know about how hearings go, I’d say with few exceptions they treated me like they treat everyone else, which is why I felt hopeful. Obviously I assumed that they would see that Oscar had served 30 years, there was no reason to treat Oscar differently. I was in prison for 30 years. I’ve talked with hundreds if not thousands of men who have been to parole hearings over the years. I had more or less an idea how they were. I’ve never heard of a case like Oscar’s, where they take you chain up. It was an Inquisition.”
 
From a political perspective, he pointed out that it wasn’t anticipated that the right wing in the United States would move in that way. He called attention to the fact that one of those who opposed the confirmation of the current U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, said during Oscar’s hearing that if they’d known that he – Torres – were going to the Parole Commission, they would have reacted in the same way.
 
“The Commission is an agency of the United States government. They aren’t sympathetic with us; they are sympathetic with the system. There was truly a lot of work done to demonstrate to the Parole Commission that there was support among the people, that there was support in the Puerto Rican community from different interest groups who supported Oscar’s release. At the moment of truth, they took sides. I think that the work that was done this time was remarkable. The difference was that now there was resistance from the right, and that agency is going to respond to the United States right before it will respond to the Puerto Rican community or to the Puerto Rican people in general,” he reflected.
 
Like what happens in hardball, this hasn’t ended, which is why Carlos Alberto insisted on how very important it is that Oscar continue receiving letters from friends, students, receiving calls, publications, postcards, information about the various activities. “That fills you up. You get your perspective back. If you were feeling a little depressed, in those moments you see Claridad, information about activities in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, about the Grito de Lares ... you say, ‘I’m ok; they’re working on it; we are struggling; they haven’t forgotten about me.’ That’s what we have to do, to let the government know that even though they made that decision, we’re going to keep struggling, we’re going to keep organizing, we’re going to keep inviting people who haven’t participated to participate, that we’re going to be with this compañero until he is release, period.”