Puerto Rican Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War Released:
¡Que Viva Puerto Rico Libre!

The latest issue of Turning the Tide: Journal of Anti-Racist Action, Research & Education, Vol. 12 #3, Fall 1999, features this front-page perspective from PART (People Against Racist Terror). If you'd like a free sample copy of the whole issue, send your street address to PART at PO Box 1055, Culver City CA 90232. Tel: 310-288-5003. E-mail: part2001@usa.net. On the web at people.we.mediaone.net/part2001

The forces of liberation and decolonization, and the campaign to free political prisoners and prisoners of war held by the U.S., have won a tremendous victory. Eleven Puerto Rican political prisoners and prisoners of war were released from U.S. prisons in September, under a conditional clemency by President Clinton. We must savor the victory, and also deepen our understanding of how it was won and how it can be built on.

Edwin Cortés, Elizam Escobar, Ricardo Jiménez, Adolfo Matos, Dylcia Pagán, Alberto Rodríguez, Alicia Rodríguez, Ida Luz Rodríguez, Luis Rosa, Alejandrina Torres, and Carmen Valentín, were justly welcomed as heroes and patriots by the Puerto Rican people. Each was greeted by family members and supporters as they emerged from prison gates for the first time in as much as 19 years. The campaign had united even Puerto Ricans who identified with commonwealth and statehood parties behind the demand for freedom for the independentistas. Prior to their release, over 100,000 people marched in San Juan to demand that Clinton eliminate the unjust and insulting conditions he was placing on their release. An ecstatic crowd celebrated the released freedom fighters when they arrived in Puerto Rico. As Turning the Tide was going to press, the prisoners were scheduled to appear together at a rally in Lares on September 23, commemorating the Grito de Lares, the call for Puerto Rican independence from Spain. This act further challenged and obviated some of the unjust restrictions Clinton imposed in his clemency offer.

But much remains to be done. Puerto Rican political prisoner Juan Segarra Palmer, who also accepted Clinton's conditional "clemency," must serve 5 more years. Antonio Camacho Negrón, previously paroled and then returned to prison for refusing to abide by parole restrictions, is still imprisoned, having declined Clinton's offer to forgive a fine. So is Oscar López Rivera, serving a 55-year sentence, who rejected Clinton's offer to serve 10 more years prior to release. POW Carlos Alberto Torres, serving a 70-year sentence, was described by the White House as the leader of the "Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional," (FALN) and denied even a conditional clemency offer. José Solís, recently imprisoned in an FBI frame-up, was apparently not considered for clemency. Also still behind bars is Haydee Beltrán, arrested with a number of the others. She had asked that her case not be included in the campaign to free political prisoners and POW's, but clearly the campaign to win the freedom of the Puerto Rican independentistas remaining in captivity must now include her. And the eleven who were released still face illegitimate restrictions on their ability to associate with each other and with other leaders of the Puerto Rican independence movement such as Rafael Cancel Miranda, one of the Puerto Rican Nationalist prisoners released unconditionally by Pres. Jimmy Carter 20 years ago.

Why And How The Victory Was Won

Despite the conditions, the release represents a breakthrough in the struggle to gain recognition that the U.S. holds political prisoners and P.O.W.'s. "We think this is an unprecedented, historic moment," said attorney Jan Susler, who represented the prisoners and won them an unprecedented conference call to discuss Clinton's offer. "[T]he president of the United States ... recognize[d] that men and women who have dedicated their lives to the freedom of their country deserve to be free ... to participate in the political, legal process to shape the future of their country." What's more, the fact that Clinton took this action in the face of concerted political opposition not only from the Republicans but also from members of his own party and cabinet, even his wife, demonstrates that the issue of the prisoners is situated in the colonial political realities of Puerto Rico.

The victory is due, first of all, to the prisoners themselves, who have struggled to maintain their principles, their unity and their connection to the independence struggle from behind the walls far almost 20 years. The unceasing struggle to free the political prisoners and POW's which has been carried out since the capture of some of them in Evanston, Illinois almost two decades ago also deserves tremendous credit. That campaign built on the 1979 success of the movement to free the Puerto Rican Nationalist prisoners, Cancel Miranda, Lolita Lebrón, Irvin Flores and others, for whom some of the current prisoners campaigned in the years before their own captivity. In particular, the National Committee to Free Puerto Rican Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War persevered in the face of condemnations of the FALN as terrorists, COINTELPRO operations against it by the FBI, occasional political divisions among Puerto Rican independentistas in the U.S., and all other obstacles. Certainly other forces also played a key role, particularly the forces in Puerto Rico itself who made the prisoners household words and symbols of Puerto Rican identity.

But what probably pushed the campaign for release over the top was the convergence of the issue of the freedom fighters' unjust captivity with the demand to get the U.S. Navy out of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques. Both issues, intimately connected to the colonial domination of Puerto Rico by the U.S., achieved near-unanimous support among the Puerto Rican people after decades of patient agitation, led by independentistas. Puerto Ricans of all party affiliations and positions on the status question were increasingly militant in their demand that their freedom fighters and national symbols be released and that the U.S. Navy stop bombing Vieques and return the land to Puerto Rican control. When Puerto Rican boxer Felix "Tito" Trinidad won the welterweight boxing title from Oscar de la Hoya, a man at his shoulder was waving a flag with the slogan "Paz Para Vieques" -- Peace for Vieques. Faced with this unanimity on both issues among Puerto Ricans, Clinton was forced to conclude that the cost to the U.S. in Puerto Rico of not acting was greater than any political price he might pay in the U.S. for granting clemency.

Several other factors also reinforced this calculation for Clinton. First of all, support was building on both issues in the U.S. itself, based on the sentiments of the large displaced Puerto Rican community. Other Latino organizations and political figures in the U.S., along with virtually every office holder of any political affiliation in Puerto Rico, signed on to the campaign to release the Puerto Rican prisoners. Rev. Jesse Jackson and other significant political figures responded to the campaign against the US military in Vieques after the Navy killed a civilian in its bombing, and the use of so-called 'depleted' uranium ordinance was revealed. Internationally renowned people such as Bishop Desmond Tutu and the UN itself endorsed the call to free the Puerto Rican prisoners. Clinton realized that frustrating this campaign ran the risk of pushing the Puerto Ricans further towards the camp of pro-independence struggle and opening further fissures in the U.S. itself in favor of de-colonization for Puerto Rico.

This fear on Clinton's part reflects the importance of understanding that the U.S. is an empire, with all the vulnerabilities that empires have. Every empire in history has crumbled to dust because it is impossible to sustain indefinitely the domination over colonized people. Control over Puerto Rico has been a strength of the US empire, such as projecting its military strength into the Caribbean, but it is turning into a weakness. This becomes an insoluble contradiction. The US corporate efforts to privatize the Puerto Rican telephone system led to a general strike initiated by the telephone workers union. The mobilizations over that issue, along with Vieques and the prisoners' release, has led to the re-emergence of armed struggle and organization in clandestinity in Puerto Rico. For Emperor Clinton, these were worrisome developments.

What Remains To Be Done

First of all, we must support and defend the released prisoners in their efforts to participate in and advance the struggle for Puerto Rican independence. "The FBI and Justice Department have said point-blank that the president should not have granted clemency," Jan Susler said. "Because they have showed us their hand and showed us they will not be unbiased, objective law enforcement, we have taken it upon ourselves to mobilize protection for the prisoners and watchdog groups who will be watching the people responsible for enforcing the conditions." This protection must extend to the organizations such as CUCRE in Puerto Rico (Community United Against Repression) and NCFPRPPPOW's and Pro-Libertad in the U.S. that have campaigned to free them.

Second, we must re-double our efforts to free the remaining imprisoned freedom fighters. Zenaida López said her brother Oscar "was in total agreement" with the decision of the 11 others to take the conditional clemency. López directly told Ricardo Jiménez to "go home." But he and the other remaining Puerto Rican prisoners must now become a focus of the struggle. And that struggle must be even more intimately connected to the decolonization and self-determination of Puerto Rico. Clinton was forced to act because of the strength of the Puerto Rican movement and its allies. But he was able to pick and choose whom he would release and what conditions he would try to impose because there has not been a significant, widespread anti-colonial movement in the U.S. agitating against the empire and in favor of independence for Puerto Rico. It is the U.S. flag which flies illegitimately over Puerto Rico; the U.S. military, particularly the Navy, which illegally occupies Puerto Rico, and therefore it is the U.S. People who must step forward to oppose U.S. colonialism in Puerto Rico.

This is not only out of a sense of obligation, but out of an understanding that the oppressive power that the U.S. government and corporations exert in Puerto Rico is the same power that victimizes, oppresses and exploits people inside the U.S. as well. In an empire, there are no citizens, only subjects. Defeating the empire in Puerto Rico will help liberate us all.

Finally, we need to understand and apply the anti-colonial, anti-imperialist lessons of the successful campaign to free many of the Puerto Rican political prisoners and POW's. The campaign was fundamentally grounded in the colonial case of Puerto Rico and attracted adherents out of campaigns to confront the colonial conditions and indignities experienced by the Puerto Rican people in their homeland and in the U.S., so that the prisoners came to represent the dignity and pride of the Puerto Rican people. Can this be applied to other cases? Absolutely. The unjust imprisonment of Leonard Peltier, for example, must be connected to the U.S.government's forced relocation of Navajo and Hopi at Big Mountain, to the continuing racism and oppression in South Dakota and Nebraska against the Sioux, to struggles over native sovereignty in New York and California.

The case for Mumia Abu Jamal should not be reduced only to challenging the unjust conviction of one man, but to the opposing the racist death penalty and the colonial nature of the criminal justice system. After all, Mumia himself has always stood against the racist prison system and against the death penalty as a whole. Just as the Puerto Rican political prisoners and the campaign to free them helped sustain and advance the movement for Puerto Rican independence in the face of state repression, the Black liberation movement can reassert itself by struggling to free Mumia and its other political prisoners in the context of fighting today's struggles against oppression. The struggle to free Mumia must extend to all political prisoners, particularly to other imprisoned members of the Black Panther Party and targets of COINTELPRO. After all, it was on the basis of Mumia's membership in the Black Panther Party and his life-long commitment to Black liberation that he was targeted for the death penalty. Mumia's case must be tied to the battle against police brutality and the use of the police as an occupying army in communities of color. After all, it was police brutality against Mumia's brother and the police shooting and mistreatment of Mumia himself that marked the situation that resulted in Mumia's frame-up for the death of a cop. Such connections will not weaken or isolate the campaign to save Mumia's life, but lay a firm foundation for its success.

Back to index page. Last updated 29 September 1999.