Oscar López Rivera

Oscar López Rivera is a Puerto Rican Nationalist who was convicted and sentenced to 70 years in prison for seditious conspiracy, use of force to commit robbery, interstate transportation of firearms and ammunition to aid in the commission of a felony, and interstate transportation of stolen vehicles.^[1][2] He was among the 16 Puerto Rican nationalists offered conditional clemency by U.S. President Bill Clinton in 1999, but he rejected the offer. His sister, Zenaida López, said he refused the offer because on parole, he would be in "prison outside prison."^[2][3] Congressman Pedro Pierluisi, has stated that "the primary reason that López Rivera did not accept the clemency offer extended to him in 1999 was because it had not also been extended to fellow independence prisoner Carlos Alberto Torres (who was subsequently released from prison in July 2010)."^[4]

The president's offer was strongly opposed by Republicans and law enforcement agencies.^[5] President Clinton defended his clemency decision stating that López Rivera was never convicted of crimes that resulted in deaths or injuries.^[6] López Rivera was never accused of any act of violence.^[7][8]

López Rivera is said to be "among the longest held political prisoners in the history of Puerto Rico and in the world."^[9] He has been jailed for 32 years, 8 months, and 14 days.^[10]

On 29 May 2013, on the 32nd anniversary of his continuous incarceration, high-ranking politicians, former prison personnel, singers, actors, Major League baseball players, and hundreds of other volunteers participated in mock-up prison cells events throughout Puerto Rico "crying out" for the release of López Rivera from the American prison system.^[11]

Early years and personal life

Oscar López Rivera was born in San Sebastián, Puerto Rico, on 6 January 1943. His family moved to the U.S. when he was nine years old. At the age of 14, he moved to Chicago to live with a sister. At age 18 he was drafted into the army and served in Vietnam and awarded the Bronze Star. When he returned to Illinois from the war in 1967, he found that drugs, unemployment, housing, health care and education in the Puerto Rican community had reached dire levels and set to work in community organizations to improve the quality of life for his people.^[12]

He was a well-respected community activist and an independence leader for many years prior to his arrest.^[13] Oscar worked in the creation of both the Puerto Rican High School and the Puerto Rican Cultural Center. He was also involved in the struggle for bilingual education in public schools and to force universities to actively recruit Latino students, staff, and faculty. He worked on ending discrimination in public utilities like Illinois Bell, People's Gas, and Commonwealth Edison.^[12]

Oscar was one of the founders of the Rafael Cancel Miranda High School, now known as the Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School and the Juan Antonio Corretjer Puerto Rican Cultural Center. He was a community organizer for the Northwest Community Organization (NCO), ASSPA, ASPIRA and the 1st Congregational Church of Chicago. He helped to found FREE, a half-way house for convicted drug addicts, and ALAS, an educational program for Latino prisoners at Stateville Prison in Illinois.^[14]

Seditious conspiracy

The U.S. Government describes López Rivera as one of the leaders of the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (FALN), a Puerto Rican Nationalist group linked to more than 100 bombings and five deaths in the 1970s. López Rivera will neither confirm nor deny his affiliation with the FALN and disowns any personal involvement in the bombing deaths.^[15]

A warrrant for the arrest of Oscar Lopez was first issued in 1977 for the possession and storage of explosives. That same year, both Carlos Alberto Torres and Lopez were indicted in Chicago for the receiving of 200 sticks of dynamite from Colorado and concealing them at their Chicago apartment. In 1980, Ida Rodriguez, the wife of Lopez, Torres, and nine others were arrested in Evanston, Illinois, while preparing to rob an armored truck. Raids a few days later of a house in Milwaukee, rented by Lopez and his wife, and of an apartment in Jersey City, N.J., rented by Torres, found bomb-making materials. Lopez was apprehended, initially for a minor traffic violation, in Chicago in 1981. Alfredo Mendez, one of the FALN members arrested, began co-operating with the government, and testified that Lopez taught him how to make a bomb using dynamite, convert a battery and a wrist watch into timed bombing-detonation devices and how to make gun silencers.^[16]

At his trial 1980-81, López and the other Chicago-based FALN comrades were not tied to specific bombings. Instead, he was convicted of seditious conspiracy ("attempt to overthrow the government of the United States in Puerto Rico by force"), armed robbery, and lesser offenses.^[17] Declaring his status as a prisoner of war, he refused to participate in the proceedings.^[15]

While none of the bombings of which they were convicted resulted in deaths or injuries,^[18] the authorities have never been able to convict anyone for the Fraunces Tavern bombing in 1975^{[citation needed]}; the FALN did take responsibility for that bombing.^{[citation needed]}

López Rivera was given a 70-year federal sentence for seditious conspiracy and other charges.^[19] Among the other convicted Puerto Rican nationalists there were sentences of as long as 90 years in Federal prisons for offenses including sedition, possession of unregistered firearms, interstate transportation of a stolen vehicle, interference with interstate commerce by violence and interstate transportation of firearms with intent to commit a crime.^[18] None of those granted clemency were convicted in any of the actual bombings. Rather, they had been convicted on a variety of charges ranging from bomb making and conspiracy to armed robbery and firearms violations.^[20] They were all convicted for sedition, the act of attempting to overthrow the Government of the United States in Puerto Rico by force.^[19][21]

While López Rivera does not deny of confirm his affiliation with the FALN, and disowns any personal involvement in the bombing deaths, the FALN was involved in more than 100 bombings in New York, Chicago and other cities. The 1975 bombing at Fraunces Tavern in Manhattan killed four people: Harold H. Sherburne, age 66; Frank Connor, age 33; James Gezork, age 32; and Alejandro Berger, age 28. Joseph F. Connor, the son of one of the dead at Fraunces Tavern, has played an instrumental role in blocking the release of a man he considers in part responsible for his father's death, and who has never expressed contrition for those actions.^[22]

Human rights violations

There were reports of human rights violations against the FALN prisoners.^[12][23] The prisoners were placed in prisons far from their families, some were sexually assaulted by prison personnel, some were denied adequate medical attention, and others were kept in isolated underground prison cells for no reason. Amnesty International and the House of Representatives' Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Administration of Justice both criticized the conditions. The conditions were found to be in violation of the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners.^[12] A federal judge also addressed his concerns in the case of Baraldine vs. Meese.

In 1988, he was convicted of conspiracy to escape and given an additional 15 years.^[24] After spending twelve years in maximum security prisons in Marion, Illinois and Florence, Colorado, under conditions described as oppressive,^[12] in 1998,^[25] he was transferred to the general prison population at the federal correctional facility in Terre Haute, Indiana, where he remains today. In 2006, the United Nations called for the release of the remaining Puerto Rican political prisoners in United States prisons.^[26]

Political prisoner

At the time of their arrest López Rivera and the others declared themselves to be combatants in an anti-colonial war against the United States to liberate Puerto Rico from U.S. domination and invoked prisoner of war status.^[27] They argued that the U.S. courts did not have jurisdiction to try them as criminals and petitioned for their cases to be handed over to an international court that would determine their status. The U.S. Government, however, did not recognize their request.^[12][28]

According to president Bill Clinton, the sentences received by López Rivera and the other Nationalists were judged to be "out of proportion to the nationalists' offenses."^[18] U.S. Government statistics showed their sentences were almost 20 times greater than sentences for similar offenses by the American population at large.^[12][29]

For many years, numerous national and international organizations criticized López Rivera' incarceration categorizing it as political imprisonment.^[30][31] On 7 June 2012, Puerto Rican activist Tito Kayak started a two-leg lone high seas voyage from Ciudad Bolivar, Venezuela, to San Juan, Puerto Rico, and then from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Washington, D.C., to protest the U.S. incarceration of Puerto Rican political prisoner López Rivera.^[32][33][34] López Rivera is said to be "among the longest held political prisoners in the history of Puerto Rico and in the world."^[9] He has been jailed for 32 years, 8 months, and 14 days.^[10]

Cases involving the release of other Puerto Rican Nationalist prisoners have been categorized as cases of political prisoners, with some^{[35][36][37][38]} being more vocal than others.^[39][40][41]

Supporters of López Rivera have accused the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons of isolating López Rivera on the basis of his political beliefs.^[42] For more than half of his 22 years in prison, López Rivera has been held in solitary confinement in maximum security prisons in the United States.^[15] López's release date is scheduled for June 26, 2023.^[43]

Recent events

López Rivera requested parole via his attorney but it was denied in February 2011.^[44]

In an "ingenious manifestation of solidarity" to demand the release of Lopez Rivera, "numerous volunteers" participated in a 24-hour demonstration where they remained confined to 6ft x 9ft mock-up prison cells intended to represent Lopez Rivera's current cell size in Terre Haute, Indiana. The demonstrations took place on 29 May 2013 at the central squares of Puerto Rico's four largest cities, San Juan, Ponce, Mayaguez, and Arecibo.^[45][46] Some of the volunteers included politicians, like María de Lourdes Santiago, a Puerto Rican senator,^[47] musicians, like Tito Auger,^[48] and actors, like Ángela Meyer.^[49]

Others entering the mock-up cells were pro-Statehood party Ponce mayor María Meléndez, writer Mayra Montero, San Juan pro-Commonwealth party mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, former Puerto Rico governor Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, and former Major Leagues baseball player Carlos Delgado.^[50]

On the same day, hundreds of activists, including pop star Ricky Martin, asked for his release from prison.^[51][52] The governor of Puerto Rico, Alejandro García Padilla, also joined the call for Lopez Rivera's release, communicating his request by letter to President Barack Obama.^[53] His release is also supported by Congressmen Luis Gutiérrez and José E. Serrano, as well as by Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez. In 2010, Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi also requested his release.^[54]

Honors

A festival on his honor was celebrated at Estadio Hiram Bithorn in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on February 21 through 24, 2013.^[55]

The 12 convicted prisoners

On August 11, 1999, President Bill Clinton extended an offer of clemency to 14 of the Puerto Rican political prisoners convicted on February 18, 1981. López Rivera refused the clemency offer.^[56] Twelve accepted the offers and were subsequently released.^[57] The twelve were:

• Edwin Cortes, sentenced to 35 years in prison.
• Elizam Escobar, sentenced to 60 years in prison.
• Ricardo Jimenez, sentenced to 90 years in prison.
• Adolfo Matos, sentenced to 70 years in prison.
• Dylcia Noemi Pagan, sentenced to 55 years in prison.
• Alicia Rodriguez, sentenced to 55 years in prison.
• Ida Luz Rodriguez, sentenced to 75 years in prison.
• Luis Rosa, sentenced to 75 years in prison.
• Carmen Valentin, sentenced to 90 years in prison.
• Alberto Rodriguez, sentenced to 35 years in prison.
• Alejandrina Torres, sentenced to 35 years in prison.
• Juan Enrique Segarra-Palmer, served an additional five years after clemency was granted and had his fine dropped. He was sentenced to 55 years in prison on October 4, 1985, and was released on January 25, 2004.^[58]

External links

• Book Review: Puerto Rican Independentista Oscar López Rivera’s 32 Years of Resistance to Torture. Written by Hans Bennett.
• Figuras públicas continúan encarcelándose por Oscar López Rivera. Contains the long, though partial, list of prominent figures who were "jailed" for López Rivera.

References

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