Oscar López Rivera, Fighter Against Imperialism Finally Free

By Carlos Aznárez on January 18, 2017

The Puerto Rican people are celebrating with love for their motherland. And I bet that, from a distant star, that great independentista revolutionary, Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, who was murdered in cold blood by the FBI, is celebrating too. And all those other rebellious voices of Don Pedro Albizu Campos, José Antonio Corretjes, Eugenio María de Hostos, Blanca Canales and Lolita Lebrón, all of them are joyous about the news that their brother Oscar López Rivera is going to be free again in just a few months.

The tenacious and loyal Puerto Rican militant has been pardoned thanks to a relentless and massive popular mobilization, both in Puerto Rico and outside the country.

Let’s not deceive ourselves, Obama, the murderer of the people of the Middle East, who recently bowed his head to the Cuban people and acknowledged that the blockade had been harmful, has only now come to the conclusion that Oscar deserved his freedom. This could only happen because of the Boricua people who, despite their internal differences, have bent the prison bars with their relentless demand.

Oscar is a patriot. Not only because of the 36 years that he endured imprisonment and psychological torture because of his commitment to the struggle for the independence of Puerto Rico. He also worked for a society with more inclusion, less racism and, above all, he worked to break the chains of colonialism that ties his country to the U.S. Empire.

In 1981 Oscar was detained for being a member of the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN) and sentenced to 55 years in jail, and in 1988 the U.S. justice system added 15 years more. Before that, like many other young Boricua men he was forced to fight in Vietnam, he was able to see firsthand exactly how brutal the Empire could be when it unleashes its full force against other peoples.

But it was upon returning to Chicago that he began to fight for those that Fanon called “the Wretched of the Earth”.

Oscar was one of the great leaders of the fight for more social justice, housing, education, and health for the Latin American and the excluded Afro American population. He participated in countless acts of civil disobedience and confronted those who exploited his brothers and sisters. He endured repression, detentions, and torture for daring to rebel in the belly of the beast.

http://www.thedawn-news.org/2017/01/18/puerto-rico-finally-free-the-struggle-of-oscar-lopez-rivera-against-the-brutality-of-imperialism-by-carlos-aznarez/

Source: Resumen Latinoamericano