Vol. 81/No. 24 June 19, 2017
Puerto Rican independence fighter welcomed in Calif.
López was released May 17 after nearly 36 years in U.S. prisons, framed up on charges of “seditious conspiracy” and accused of being a leader of the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN). Because the government had no evidence that López carried out violent acts, it centered its case on a member of the group who turned informer. He testified against López in exchange for getting out of prison.
When he was 14, López moved to Chicago from Puerto Rico. Drafted into the U.S. Army and sent to fight in Vietnam in 1966, López became active in struggles against police brutality, job discrimination and against U.S. colonial rule in Puerto Rico upon his return to Chicago. He was arrested in 1981.
For nearly five years López was joined in prison in Indiana by Fernando González, one of the Cuban Five — Cuban revolutionaries jailed for more than a decade for activities in the U.S. in defense of their revolution. The growing international movement that won freedom for the Five helped build support for López’s fight.
López’s dignity in the face of his jailers’ failed attempts to break him — including more than 12 years in solitary confinement — and growing support in Puerto Rico and worldwide won his release.
At a reception before the meeting, López pointed to the conditions imposed by the President Barack Obama-appointed Fiscal Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico, which has dictatorial power over the U.S. colony’s government budget and finances. The board highlights Puerto Rico’s colonial status, he said.
“I am certain that most Puerto Ricans are not satisfied with the Fiscal Control Board,” he said in an interview earlier that day with radio station KPFA, referring to cascading layoffs of government workers, slashing of pensions and cutting the University of Puerto Rico budget. “There’s one common denominator that we can use” to unite all Puerto Ricans “and that is the decolonization of Puerto Rico.”
Many said the Puerto Rican “political prisoners would never be free,” his brother José López told the crowd at the meeting, “But Oscar López is free tonight.”
“I spent quite a few years behind bars. I know how dehumanizing prison can be,” Oscar López said. “I know how painful it is for the families.”
Leonard Peltier, in prison since 1976, Mumia Abu-Jamal, in prison since 1981, and Herman Bell, a former Black Panther in prison since 1973 serving a life sentence on frame-up charges of killing two New York cops in l971, were among the prisoners who sent greetings to the meeting.
“I am happy you made it out. All too often most of us seldom do, or we die soon after we get out due to poor health, or when spending endless decades inside,” Bell wrote. “We look to the future with unshakable resolve to achieve our goals.”
At all the meetings since his release, López tells people to fight for freedom of these remaining political prisoners.
A statement from Fernando González, president of the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples, was distributed. “Oscar, an upright man and revolutionary, was tortured and repressed,” González wrote, but “never stopped loving his island, his people and his flag.”
In an interview with Cuba solidarity activist Alicia Jrapko before the event, López said he is “really looking forward” to visiting Cuba in November. “Cuba has always given us their solidarity,” he said, “Not just toward me, but their solidarity for the independence of our beloved homeland.”
Organized by the National Boricua Human Rights Network, the National Lawyers Guild and local Puerto Rican activists, the meeting was endorsed by the International Committee for Peace, Justice and Dignity; the Socialist Workers Party; the National Network on Cuba; and others.
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Join fight for independence, workers power in Puerto Rico
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