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THE NEW YORK TIMES
Freed Puerto Rican Militants Revel In Life On The
Outside
by Mireya Navarro
January 27, 2000
Copyright © 2000 THE NEW YORK TIMES. All Rights Reserved.
SAN JUAN, P.R. -- Luis Rosa had never seen El Yunque, Puerto
Rico's renowned rain forest. He had never tasted a seafood stew
like the one he ate the other day or tried many of the tropical
fruits people here pick from their backyard trees.
Mr. Rosa, who was born and reared in Chicago, is only now getting
to know the country in whose name he took up a life of political
violence as a teenager and for which he spent more than 19 years
in a federal prison.
One of the Puerto Rican radical nationalists granted clemency
by President Clinton last September in a firestorm of controversy,
Mr. Rosa, 39, said he had spent much of his four months of freedom
bursting into tears -- at the sight of El Yunque, hearing Puerto
Rican string music, gazing at a landscape.
"It's been a real emotional experience," Mr. Rosa
said. "Everything that you fought for and dedicated yourself
to, you see. It's alive. It's tangible."
The 11 Puerto Rican prisoners released last year -- 5 women
and 6 men -- have spent most of their time catching up with life.
Some have gone to cemeteries to visit for the first time the graves
of parents.
Others are getting reacquainted with their children and meeting
new nephews and grandchildren.
But the nine of them who decided to live in Puerto Rico --
two chose to live in Chicago -- have also experienced a "homecoming"
in a country that for most of them -- whose roots were in New
York and Illinois -- was until now more a cause than home. The
11 were linked to a militant group that sought independence for
Puerto Rico, an American commonwealth with limited self-governing
powers.
And while what they still call their armed struggle against
the United States is widely condemned on this island of 3.8 million
residents, many Puerto Ricans have welcomed them, some as patriots,
but most as people who have been punished and deserve a second
chance.
"They should not be stigmatized," said Dorlizca Irizarry,
60, who unexpectedly found eight of the former prisoners at Mass
recently as guests of the Archbishop of San Juan, Roberto González.
"They should be supported so they don't fall again."
The 11 received sentences of 35 to 90 years after convictions
in the early 1980's for seditious conspiracy and other charges
in the plotting of bomb attacks and armed robberies to finance
violent activities against the United States government.
While none were convicted of any crimes that resulted in death
or injury, the 11 were accused of belonging to the Armed Forces
for National Liberation, known by the Spanish initials F.A.L.N.,
a group that waged an armed campaign in the 1970's and 1980's
to end what it saw as Puerto Rico's colonial status.
Federal law-enforcement officials tied the group to more than
100 bombings in the United States and at least six deaths.
For those like Mr. Rosa, the passion for Puerto Rico developed
in the neighborhoods and households of Chicago and New York City
where Spanish was spoken and Puerto Rican culture nurtured. In
separate interviews, Mr. Rosa and five of the other former prisoners
said their political commitment had been infused by personal experiences
with segregation and discrimination in the United States, and
the conclusion that Puerto Rico's economic problems and the need
of Puerto Ricans to migrate north stemmed from the island's status
as an American possession.
"We identified the situation in Puerto Rico as the root
of the problems of Puerto Ricans in the states," said Carmen
Valentín, 53, a former assistant school principal in Chicago
who was arrested with several of the others in a stolen van in
Evanston, Ill., in 1980.
The nationalists said an armed movement seemed a logical way
to advance the cause of independence in the wake of the civil
rights movement and with revolutions brewing in Latin America.
The view that violence was a legitimate weapon, the nationalists
and other independence supporters noted, also sprang up in response
to the Puerto Rican government's repression of independence efforts
on the island.
This pattern of harassment was acknowledged recently when Gov.
Pedro J. Rosselló, of the pro-statehood New Progressive
Party, publicly apologized and offered restitution of up to $6,000
each to thousands of Puerto Rican "independentistas"
and others who were spied on as "subversives" by a police
intelligence unit starting in the late 1940's.
Mr. Rosa, who at the time of his arrest in 1980 was a college
student, said he saw violent action as a necessary propaganda
tool to draw world attention to Puerto Rico.
"It was louder than a march," he said. But in the
eyes of federal law-enforcement officials, victims of F.A.L.N.
bombings and critics in the United States and Puerto Rico, the
nationalists were nothing more than terrorists.
In granting clemency, President Clinton said he considered
humanitarian factors like the severity of the sentences. (Insisting
they were prisoners of war, most of the nationalists did not present
a defense at their trials.) But the offer set off fierce criticism
that Mr. Clinton risked reinvigorating the Puerto Rican clandestine
independence movement, and speculation that the president was
trying to help Hillary Rodham Clinton's Senate campaign in New
York, which has a large Puerto Rican population.
Critics were also found in Puerto Rico, where independence
remains the choice of less than 5 percent of the voters in referendums.
Most residents are divided between maintaining the commonwealth
and seeking statehood.
"The basic crime they committed was to try to impose their
aspirations for Puerto Rico on the people of Puerto Rico against
their will," said former Gov. Carlos Romero Barceló,
the island's resident commissioner in Washington and a statehood
proponent who opposed their release.
But many more Puerto Ricans seem to have found extenuating
circumstances. Rigoberto Díaz Jr., 41, a banker here who
also supports statehood, said he found the sentences too harsh
compared with those for crimes like murder, and attributed the
punishment to prejudice against Puerto Ricans in the states.
El Nuevo Día, Puerto Rico's largest daily newspaper,
refers to the group as "ex-political prisoners."
"The crime of sedition they were imprisoned for is superarchaic,"
Mr. Díaz said.
"How can a few people overthrow the government of the United
States? They conspired, but the K.K.K. and the white supremacists
have done worse."
While Puerto Rico remains a commonwealth, the 11 nationalists
remain fervently committed to independence.
"What justifies the struggle for independence is not its
popularity but whether you're right or not," said Elizam
Escobar, 51, who was born in Puerto Rico and left at 23 for New
York City, where he lived when arrested. "For self-respect,
we should take our destiny in our own hands."
But bombings are not an option. The 11 were required to renounce
violence to be released.
The nationalists noted that there had been a surge of nationalism
in Puerto Rico, more tolerance of independence sympathizers and
new-found unity among the three major political parties for asserting
Puerto Rican rights in the case of the United States Navy's presence
in Vieques, a nearby island the Navy uses for target practice.
All that can be channeled peacefully toward a final determination
on the island's political status, some of the nationalists said.
"I don't think there's support for the commonwealth as
it is and there's no support in the United States Congress for
statehood either," said Edwin Cortés, 44, a former
claim adjuster who was arrested in 1983. "Puerto Ricans are
waking up to that reality."
Under the conditions of their release, the former prisoners
may not associate with one another.
Only the two sisters in the group, Alicia, 46, and Ida Luz
Rodríguez, 49, have been allowed to live together. They
declined a request for an interview.
Some of the nationalists, most of whom are still living with
relatives or friends, have adjusted better than others. Some,
like Ms. Valentín, are still looking for jobs. Others,
like Mr. Rosa, who earned his bachelor's degree in prison, and
Ricardo Jiménez, 43, have enrolled in the University of
Puerto Rico.
Mr. Escobar, a painter, and Adolfo Matos, 49, an artisan, are
teaching. Mr. Cortés is a clerk in a doctor's office, and
Dylcia Pagán, 53, a television producer and one of two
New Yorkers in the group, is planning a documentary about her
first year back in Puerto Rico and learning how to drive.
All insisted there were no regrets.
"To me it was well worth it," said Ms. Pagan, whose
only son, now 21, was reared by a family in Mexico.
"We've been examples of people committed to struggle.
If you believe in something that much, you're prepared to suffer
the consequences."
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