Intro for Oscar López Rivera
Intro for Oscar López Rivera by Cherríe Moraga
“Two Years Later – Resistance Nd Resilience, Northwest Coast Tour”
Multicultural Center, UCSB
February 26, 2020
As fresh as this morning, I finished reading Between Torture and Resistance – the story of Oscar López Rivera, edited by Luís Nieves Falcón. I spent a good two days combing the pages of Oscar’s story para encontrar las palabras truly deserving of a man of his stature, his integridad, his courage. His is a brutal story of physical and psychic pain from the imprisonment he endured for more than 30 years, and before that, a haunting five years underground. His crime: “seditious conspiracy” against the U.S. His calling: ceaseless struggle toward the independence and decolonization of Puerto Rico and its diaspora.
Oscar López Rivera was born in San Sebastian, Puerto Rico in 1943. His family moved to Chicago when he was 14 years old. His ideas about Puerto Rican Independence or (better said) where his political consciencia was born occurred in the early 1960s, while serving in the Vietnam war (he had been drafted at 18). Out on duty, he spies the Puerto Rican flag painted on the helmet of a fellow soldier, and something moves in him. It is an epiphany of sorts, when he suddenly recognizes himself as a member of a pueblo, a people distinct from the U.S. He had been tricked; summoned by the United States to pay the “blood tax” as a Puerto Rican draftee, Killing the Vietnamese fighting for their own liberation.
He returns to the US (medals in hand), but a changed man and thus, begins his road as community activist, turned revolucionario.
In every story, we hear or read of political prisoners, the question arises . . . how did they manage? How do they not betray their loyalties to their people, submit under the slavemaster’s whip?
But over and over again, Lopez’ chronicle of courage lays testimony to López sustained belief in the promise of freedom for Puerto Rico, su Boriquén, y su pueblo Boricua.
We measure ourselves against them – Political prisoners of his courage. We recognize how we have never been wholly tested; perhaps, yes, in small acts of resistance, speaking up. ‘Truth to power’ we call it. But I assure, mi Raza, we all pale in comparison to the valor of this man, Oscar López Rivera. What most struck me was learning that in 1999, after nearly twenty years in prison, López Rivera was offered clemency by President Clinton, with the caveat of good behavior for another ten years. This would have cut his sentence nearly in half; but Oscar refused the offer when it was not extended to all of his co-defendants.
In Lopez’ book, he writes with a small “i” when referring himself, to cast the light away from himself and toward the broader “we.” Solidaridad is the measure of this man.
While in prison, he hungered for communication and expression, which was consistently denied him -- writing with pencils smaller than the size of his thumb. “Words without wings” he called the theft of his letters, the lack of tools to communicate.
And then, he discovered Art. Art would come to sustain him, when the paints were allowed; and when prohibited, the sheer desire to paint sustained him to want something more than survival, to seek expression that he was more than his anger, his resistance, his suffering. He is not a caged animal, his painting attested; he is an artist, a lover when decade after decade he was denied the touch of his familia, his beloveds. For Oscar, Painting Was to “Open windows in a place without windows.”
In 2017, as the result of a massive human rights campaign, President Obama commuted Oscar López Rivera’s sentence on January 17, days before Donald Trump took office. Sum total, he had spent 36 years (out of a 55 year sentence) in federal prison—12 of them in solitary confinement.
TODAY. Since returning to Puerto Rico, López Rivera has continued to advocate for an end to U.S. colonialism and has resumed his role as a community organizer and educator. He has worked to establish a holistic community center in Río Piedras, while focusing on deepening his relationship to the underserved municipalities of the island.
One thing we learn early on his cry for the sovereignty of Puerto Rico is that it is everyone’s call. Puerto Rico is América and represents any place where people struggle for the right to land and language, country and cultura.
Today, prisons abound. The steel and concrete and barbed wire walls of López Rivera’s cell and the cement cold of his bed now house our relatives from the South en masse. So much work left to be done, compañero, Oscar, so much work. But it is something to know that you now walk with us; it is something to know your spirit is the most resilient of all.
Throughout Oscar’s chronicle of courage, he referred to the prison industrial system from parole boards to judges down to the prison guard as his “jailers.” Oscar’s life work requires us to name our jailers at each turn; from within and outside prison walls, especially that internal colonization that imprisons our minds and spirits.
I thank Oscar for the profound reminder y el regalo de su presencia esta noche. Ahora -- Oscar López Rivera.