Puerto Rico

Our work over the past ten years with the Puerto Rican independence movement and its political prisoners culminated in a tremendous victory - unprecedented presidential clemency extended to eleven of the prisoners. We are proud to have played a role in this historic campaign and salute Luis Nieves Falcón, José López, Congressmen Luis Gutierrez and all the other human rights activists that were part of this struggle. The clemency was the result of an intense and broad-based campaign for the prisoners’ release which took us to the White House and beyond, while at the same time we continued our work of monitoring the conditions of incarceration, defending those who supported the prisoners and fighting for the interests of the Puerto Rican community.

Prison conditions

Throughout the past decade the conditions under which the political prisoners were held continued to require Jan’s attention. Jan traveled to prisons throughout the U.S. to meet with the prisoners and carried out a range of other activities, from advocating that the prisoners be permitted to attend the bedsides of their dying parents or the funerals (permission was never granted), to insisting that they be provided with necessary medical care (including traveling to the federal medical prison at Springfield, MO and securing an outside physician to review medical records), to intervening when family members traveling from Puerto Rico were barred from visiting when a new drug-detection technology malfunctioned. The extreme isolation under which Oscar López Rivera was held for the 12 years spanning 1986 through 1998 - he was placed at the U.S. Penitentiary at Marion, Illinois, then moved to its high-tech successor, the Administrative Maximum Unit [ADX] at Florence, Colorado, and then back to Marion - kept Jan involved in the movement to close control unit prisons. Jan worked to educate and inform the press and the public about control units, cooperated with the committees to free the prisoners, and maintained the long relationship with Amnesty International, begun in 1983 with the lockdown at Marion and continued through 1986 to 1988 with the Women’s High Security Unit at Lexington, Kentucky. Amnesty eventually charged that Oscar’s return to Marion after successfully completing the program at ADX constituted punishment for his political beliefs in violation of international norms. The U.S. government never deigned to respond to Amnesty’s charge, but ultimately relented and transferred him to an open population maximum security prison.

Albizu Campos Statue

Parts of Chicago’s Puerto Rican community, led by the Juan Antonio Corretjer Cultural Center and its dynamic executive director José López, spent the past many years resisting gentrification in Humboldt Park and creating a radical Puerto Rican presence in Chicago. In 1993, after successful efforts to name the part of Division Street which runs through the heart of the community after Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos, the Nationalist Party leader who spent many years in U.S. prisons for his pro-independence efforts from the 1930’s to the 1950’s, a broad coalition purchased a statue of Albizu to donate for display in Humboldt Park. The Chicago Park District refused to accept the donation, although it had previously accepted donated statutes from a variety of other national communities even though the coalition met the requisites set forth by the park district’s screening committee, including paying to have the statue cast in bronze. It was obvious that Albizu’s militance, directed at the U.S. government, was not looked upon favorably by park district authorities, and was the real reason the donation was declined. Jan and Flint worked with Richard Saks of Milwaukee in representing the coalition in a civil rights action challenging the park district and seeking that the statute be placed in Humboldt Park. After much community mobilization and a ruling denying the park district’s motion to dismiss, lengthy negotiations resulted in the statue being mounted in a private park near Humboldt Park, a solution pursued by some of the coalition members.

Citizenship

In 1994, while Michael was at the Center for Constitutional Rights, he worked with Juan Mari Bras, a well-known attorney and independence leader on the island, in his attempts to renounce his U.S. citizenship. Mari Bras was the leading figure in a series of renunciations of U.S. citizenship and assumptions of Puerto Rican citizenship which challenged the imposition of U.S. citizenship on Puerto Rican people in 1917 (despite the objection of the Puerto Rican legislature), and opposed U.S. colonial control over the island. The process revealed the disarray in the United States’ policy toward Puerto Rico, when, months after the State Department accepted his renunciation, they notified him they were rescinding their acceptance, thus refusing to allow him to assume Puerto Rican citizenship.

A return from the underground

1994-95 saw the resolution of a 1986 case, when, after almost ten years of clandestine living, Claude Marks and Donna Willmott, along with their families, returned to face charges in the government-made conspiracy to plan the escape of Puerto Rican political prisoner Oscar López Rivera. Michael negotiated their turning themselves in, and Michael and Jan resisted the government’s argument that they be held without bail, presenting to Judge Moran moving testimony and supportive letters from Claude and Donna’s friends, neighbors, and employers in Pittsburgh, where they had spent the past seven years contributing to the community and raising their children. Although the right-wing bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building took place just two weeks before their sentencing hearing, and in spite of the U.S. Attorney’s personal appearance and plea for the maximum 10 years, Judge Hart sentenced them to five and three years.

Witch-hunt in Chicago

Part of the community-affirming work took place at Roberto Clemente Academy, the predominantly Puerto Rican high school, where parts of the community which consistently played a leading role in the campaign for the release of the political prisoners worked with the local school council to enhance the educational experience for youth, including a new curriculum and cultural programs to instill a sense of identity and pride in the students, and an ability to think critically. Such efforts were not welcomed by those who oppose independence for Puerto Rico, or by those who led the gentrification efforts and were seeking to lay a foundation at the school for the children of the gentrifiers.

This combination of factors, along with the community’s close relationship with its Puerto Rican elected officials, particularly U.S. Rep. Luis Gutiérrez - also the target of the anti-independence and pro-gentrification forces - led to a vicious public campaign to criminalize the community’s leaders and undermine their valuable work. A special committee of the state legislature, working with the Illinois State Police, spent well over a year investigating alleged misappropriation of funds at Clemente High School; we worked with the individuals and agencies targeted. Even though the committee used an FBI informant/provocateur who had previously worked at the Puerto Rican Cultural Center, this committee was not only unable to find any criminal conduct, but some of the legislators on the committee applauded the creative educational efforts led by the Cultural Center.

The FBI, however, was unwilling to accept such conclusions. COINTELPRO reared its ugly face, as the FBI continued its work to disrupt, destroy and neutralize Chicago’s pro-independence forces and the efforts to win the prisoners’ release. The FBI’s informant/provocateur inserted himself not just into the work around the community and the prisoners but into one of the families of the prisoners. Taking an extreme political line, he urged that the Cultural Center had “gone soft,” as it supported electoral candidates and party politics instead of clandestine armed struggle. In 1992 he recruited his “friends,” supporters of the prisoners’ release and other community members, into a small underground cell and directed a botched bombing at a military recruiting center in Chicago. He then pursued one of those he had allegedly recruited - José Solís Jordán - and, wearing a body wire at the behest of the FBI, asked him incriminating questions in the hopes of gathering evidence. In 1997, the government indicted Solís and immediately attempted to coerce him into implicating José López, director of the Cultural Center, in the planning of the bombing. His refusal to do so did not stop the government. The FBI penetrated the community, interrogating and intimidating people. The government convened grand juries, focusing not only on the provocateur’s bombing, but also on alleged misappropriation of funds at Clemente and Vida Sida, the Cultural Center’s AIDS awareness and prevention project, and issued subpoenas for documents and testimony, reiterating their interest in getting José López. Jose Solis was convicted and sentenced to 52 months in prison and the U.S. attorney also indicated that further indictments would be forthcoming. Jan, Michael, Erica and Jeff, and members of the National Lawyers Guild, have consulted with people and organizations affected by these events and have fought this attack on the independence movement.

Campaign for the release of the Puerto Rican prisoners

In 1993, in collaboration with the fifteen political prisoners and the campaign in Puerto Rico and Chicago, Jan prepared and submitted to the Department of Justice a petition for the unconditional release of the prisoners. The petition included an analysis of their disproportionate sentences, based on Department of Justice statistics, a history of the application of pardon in the United States and an overview of the use of the power of pardon and amnesty throughout the world to reconcile longstanding political conflicts. These themes formed the basis for the campaign, which expanded beyond the independence movement, as the whole of Puerto Rican civil society claimed the prisoners as their own.

As counsel for the political prisoners, Jan formed an integral part of the campaign, working with the Human Rights Committee in Puerto Rico, directed by Dr. Luis Nieves Falcón, and with committees in the U.S., especially the National Committee to Free Puerto Rican Prisoners of War and Political Prisoners, as well as with religious and civic organizations, meeting with congressional representatives and other delegations in preparation for meetings with White House and Department of Justice staff, attending meetings with White House and Department of Justice staff, traveling frequently to attend conferences and meetings, drafting resolutions, preparing literature for the campaign, working extensively with the media, and coordinating closely with the prisoners. This work intensified during the six years after the submission of the petition, as the Puerto Rican people in Puerto Rico and the United States, all across the political spectrum on the status of Puerto Rico, unified around the issue that the prisoners had served more than enough time in prison.

On August 11, 1999, President Clinton made an offer of conditional clemency; the word “intensified” cannot begin to describe the process which took place after that date. The president’s offer did not extend to all fifteen of the political prisoners, did not treat equally those to whom it was extended, and included conditions which would restrict their speech, travel and association and thus impinge on their ability to integrate into the political process to determine the destiny of their country. Had the president granted the petition for the unconditional release of all 15, he might have avoided, or at least minimized, the extent of the right-wing explosion which took place while the prisoners were undergoing the arduous process of weighing the offer.

The condition that they renounce violence gave the prisoners no pause - contrary to the disinformation spread by the president’s right-wing enemies they already had, in 1997, submitted a statement to the U.S. Congress renouncing violence and articulating their desire to participate in a democratic, inclusive and open process to determine the future of Puerto Rico. What did give them pause was the partial and unequal offer, which, if accepted, would result in leaving some of their compatriots in prison, and the limitations on their travel and their ability to associate with each other and the many other national heroes who are also former political prisoners. In addition, the FBI and Department of Justice announcement, during the month-long hysteria, of their fervent opposition to the prisoners’ release was significant because the very same Department of Justice would be responsible for monitoring and enforcing the conditions imposed by the president, and because one of the terms of the offer would permit the president to rescind the grant of clemency and reimpose the original sentence in the event of a DOJ finding that a condition was violated.

During the month of weighing the offer, the entire office pitched in, with the lawyers assuming Jan’s regular caseload; Michael, José Ló and Dennis Cunningham strategizing, working with the press and handling some of the hundreds of incoming calls from the prisoners, their families and the press; Lourdes, Jill and Allison managing the phones, Lourdes making travel arrangements for what was to have been a trip to the 11 federal prisons in which the 15 were held, and everyone being wonderfully supportive in the face of what was truly an onslaught.

After three unprecedented joint conference calls with the 15 prisoners, and in the face of mounting pressure on President Clinton, orchestrated by the FBI and its allies in Congress, to rescind his clemency offer, the campaign in Puerto Rico and the U.S., wisely called on the prisoners to accept the president’s offer. The Colegio de Abogados (Bar Association) in Puerto Rico and the National Lawyers Guild in the U.S. agreed to monitor the Justice Department’s enforcement of the conditions. On September 7, eleven of the prisoners who had spent more than 16 and 19 years behind bars announced they would accept the offer, and on September 10, Edwin Cortés, Elizam Escobar, Ricardo Jiménez, Adolfo Matos, Dylcia Pagán, Alberto Rodríguez, Alicia Rodríguez, Ida Luz Rodríguez, Luis Rosa, Alejandrina Torres, and Carmen Valentín, walked through the prison doors, nine to assume residence in Puerto Rico, and two to return to Chicago. The twelfth to accept, Juan Segarra Palmer, is to be released in five years. Oscar López Rivera, rejecting the offer to serve an additional ten years, must serve the remainder of his 55 year seditious conspiracy sentence and then begin service of his 15 year sentence for conspiracy to escape. Carlos Alberto Torres, excluded from the offer, must serve out his 70 year seditious conspiracy sentence. Antonio Camacho Negrón, who rejected the offer to remit his fine, must serve the remainder of his 15 year sentence for conspiracy to commit armed robbery, and two of his co-defendants, released from prison several years ago, accepted the offer to remit their fines. Also still in prison is Haydee Beltran.

The people of Puerto Rico have extended to the former prisoners a phenomenally warm, loving, supportive welcome home, even as the U.S. congress convened hearings and passed resolutions opposing the clemency as part of the right-wing’s effort to gain political mileage and undermine the president’s exercise of the power of pardon. With the extensive press coverage of the campaign and the prisoners return home, they are recognized wherever they go. People stop them on the street, at the doctor’s office, in restaurants and shopping centers, to welcome them home, thank them for their sacrifice and their contribution to the nation. For each prisoner, the campaign arranged for housing, medical care, a modest monthly stipend, and assistance finding employment. Committees in the U.S., as well as individuals, have contributed to their reintegration. The churches, so integral in the campaign for their release, convened welcome home masses and ecumenical services to honor them, and the independence movement feted them at two massive political and cultural events. They are celebrated as the nation’s heroes and heroines. Jan has been privileged enough to witness this historic moment in Puerto Rico, to work with the prisoners during their transition and to continue her work with, and for the release of, those who remain in prison, taking a yet-undetermined leave from the office in Chicago, while Michael continues his work with those who returned to Chicago.