A lifelong combatant for Puerto Rico's independence, Cancel Miranda spent 25 years in jail for participating in an armed attack, along with three fellow independentistas, on the U.S. Congress in 1954. A fifth nationalist prisoner, Oscar Collazo, had been imprisoned for a 1950 attack on President Harry Truman's house. Cancel Miranda had previously been jailed as a youth for refusing to be drafted into the U.S. army for the Korean War.

Cancel Miranda, 65, lives in Puerto Rico and spoke here as part a U.S. campus tour. He devoted his talk to explaining the necessity of independence for Puerto Rico and the continuing struggle to seek freedom for 15 political militants behind bars in U.S. prisons.

The five nationalist freedom fighters were released from incarceration after an international defense campaign, based in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Puerto Rican community. Although they refused to seek parole or clemency from the U.S. government, President James Carter felt compelled in 1979 to grant them a pardon in exchange for the release of several U.S. mercenaries held in Cuba for spying. The freed nationalists were greeted as heroes by 5,000 supporters at the San Juan airport.

Cancel Miranda devoted nearly half an hour to a spirited defense of the Cuban revolution during animated exchanges with the audience, often punctuated by applause.

"As long as Cuba fights," he said, "all of America has an example, has hope, has dignity. If Cuba is crushed, everybody in the world will suffer."

A regular visitor to the island, Cancel Miranda saluted Cuba's continued defiance of the dictates of Washington. "I was in Cuba right after the pirate planes [piloted by Brothers to the Rescue] dropped leaflets on Havana," he said. "The Cubans warned the United States this must stop. Who knows what's in those planes. Bacteria? Chemicals? All this has happened before. What is `airspace to the United States? What happens if a foreign airplane flies over Washington without permission?

"I was sorry to hear that two planes were shot down over Cuba in February," Cancel Miranda said slowly. "I wish it had been 10. Now they know not to do this." Most of the crowd erupted in applause.

"Cuba has the only free air in the Americas. Who owns the airspace of Mexico? Who owns the airspace of my country, a U.S. colony?" the nationalist leader asked. "Cuba lifts us all."

"What does the U.S. government fear? There is no Soviet Union, no Eastern bloc. Why does it fear this little country, Cuba? Because Cuba does not bow to them, it does not take orders. It fears Cuba for the same reason it fears anyone who thinks, anyone who uses this," Cancel Miranda said, pointing to his head.

A Puerto Rican student asked the speaker to respond to charges that Cuban president Fidel Castro is a dictator.

"No, no, no, it is not Fidel they are worried about," Cancel Miranda said. "It is not `Fidel the dictator.' It is the fact that there are 11 million Fidels in Cuba, 11 million Cubans who will not leave, who defend the revolution. Cuba is the dignity of Latin America. It is the dignity of every person in this room."  
 
 
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