Vol. 77/No. 39 November 4, 2013
“It passed unanimously,” Alejandro Molina, co-coordinator of the National Boricua Human Rights Network and a leader of the fight to free López, said by phone Oct. 14. The resolution was submitted by the Puerto Rico Federation of Labor and the Office and Professional Employees International Union.
In Puerto Rico even leaders of political parties opposed to independence for the U.S. colony have called for the release of the 70-year-old political prisoner. “And we now have six Nobel laureates from around the world backing this fight,” Molina said.
Who is Oscar López?
The son of a small farmer, López grew up in Puerto Rico. When he was 14 he moved with his family to Chicago. López was drafted into the U.S. army in June 1965 and sent to Vietnam as an infantryman from 1966 to ’67.The 1959 Cuban Revolution, the rise of the Black struggle in the U.S., and the movement against the war in Vietnam inspired working people in Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans in the U.S. to fight against national oppression and colonization.
Upon his return to Chicago from Vietnam, López joined struggles for bilingual education and against police brutality and began to support independence for Puerto Rico. He led protests against hiring discrimination at construction and utility sites.
López was a founding member in the early ’70s of the Committee to Free the Five Puerto Rican Nationalists, political prisoners in jail for decades: Lolita Lebrón, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Irving Flores, Andrés Figueroa Cordero and Oscar Collazo.
Under pressure from the international campaign and the resurgent independence struggle, President James Carter ordered the release of Figueroa Cordero in 1977 and Lebrón, Cancel Miranda, Flores and Collazo in 1979. The fight for their release was given impetus with the Vietnamese people’s 1975 victory over U.S. imperialism and the 1979 revolutions in Grenada, Nicaragua and Iran.
Grand jury fishing operations
In the mid-1970s, following the bombing of banks and businesses with investments in Puerto Rico that the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN) took credit for, the U.S. government stepped up its probes and harassment of Puerto Rican political activists. Grand jury fishing expeditions were convened in New York and Chicago in 1974 and 1976.In 1980, 10 people were arrested and accused of belonging to the FALN. López, accused of being a leader of the group, was arrested the next year. They were framed up and convicted on charges that included seditious conspiracy “to oppose by force the authority of the government of the United States” and to bring about the political independence of Puerto Rico by force and violence; possession of unregistered firearms, “interference with interstate commerce by threats or violence” and “interstate transportation of a stolen vehicle.” Demanding they be recognized as prisoners of war, they refused to participate in the court proceedings. In a series of trials they were given stiff sentences.
By charging conspiracy, the prosecution did not have to prove any violent acts took place. López was not accused of carrying out a single bombing or act of violence.
“The evidence will not reveal anything about the colonial case of Puerto Rico,” López told the court at the beginning of his trial. “We will not hear anything regarding militarism in my country or how my country was conquered by force.
“The evidence will not tell you anything regarding the racist organizations created by the FBI and the CIA who have killed labor leaders and independentistas,” he said, referring to murders by rightist paramilitary groups and the cops on the island in the 1970s.
López was convicted and sentenced to 55 years in prison. In February 1988 he was framed up on charges of conspiracy to escape and sentenced to an additional 15 years in jail.
“For 12 years,” his daughter Clarisa López told the Militant last year, “my father was kept in isolation. He was kept in his cell 23 hours a day.”
In his book Between Torture and Resistance, López describes the brutal and arbitrary conditions he has faced during much of his incarceration: handcuffed and shackled for every visit to the doctor; strip-searched when he left his cell; and at times woken up every hour for “night count.”
Since being transferred to Terre Haute Federal Corrections Institute in 2008 his conditions have improved. He is still required to report to prison guards every two hours, although according to Molina, he is usually allowed to sleep undisturbed through the night.
López would have been released from prison in 2009 if he had accepted a 1999 parole offer from President William Clinton to him and 13 other Puerto Rican political prisoners. But he refused because two prisoners, Carlos Alberto Torres and Haydée Beltrán, were not included. They have since been released.
In February 2011 the U.S. Parole Commission denied parole to López and ruled that he cannot reapply until 2023.
“Oscar López should not be in prison,” Cancel Miranda said in a phone interview Oct. 19. Those who have used violence to maintain Puerto Rico as a colony should be in prison, “not those who have fought for it to be liberated.”
Related articles:
Use Guerrero paintings to broaden support from Cuban 5
Who are the Cuban Five?
Pussy Riot political prisoner: ‘Treat us like human beings’
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