Holding Puerto Rican flags and “Free Oscar Lopez Rivera” signs, dozens of community members and former revolutionaries on Tuesday filled a small Humboldt Park community theater.
The impromptu celebration on Chicago’s West Side came just hours after President Barack Obama commuted Lopez’s prison sentence for his role in an organization that in the 1970s and early ’80s plotted bombings, prison escapes and armed robberies in an effort to secure independence for Puerto Rico, a territory of the U.S.
“Obama finally listened and let Oscar out of prison,” sang the crowd, which alternated between the joyous chant and “Que bonita bandera,” Spanish for “what a beautiful flag.”
In addition to community members and political organizers, two of Lopez’s siblings turned out to celebrate, as did former FALN members who had spent time in prison. Lopez’s brother, Jose E. Lopez, said the commutation has “historical significance.”
With Obama’s commutation, Lopez, 74, will leave prison by May 17. In recent years, his cause had been taken up by pop culture figures, religious leaders and political luminaries. Former President Jimmy Carter, Pope Francis and U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Illinois’ 4th district supported his release, as did South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Reaction to Tuesday’s action by Obama, one of more than 200 commutations granted by the president on Tuesday, went well beyond Chicago. “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda in a tweet from London said he was “sobbing with gratitude” after learning that Obama had commuted Lopez’s sentence. Miranda said he would reprise his role as Alexander Hamilton at a Chicago performance for Lopez.
“I wish I was with every Puerto Rican in Chicago right now,” Miranda tweeted Tuesday.
Lopez was a leader of FALN, the Spanish acronym for the Armed Forces of National Liberation. He was found guilty in U.S. District Court in Chicago in 1981 of weapons, explosives and seditious conspiracy charges, and sentenced to 55 years in prison. He received an additional 15 years in 1988 after he was convicted of plotting to escape from federal prison.
FALN’s goal was a free and socialist Puerto Rico. The group was primarily active in New York and Chicago and claimed responsibility for more than 140 bombings since 1974. Authorities connected five deaths to the bomb blasts. Another 100 people were maimed by the bombings, authorities said.
The group’s most notorious bombing occurred at New York’s landmark Fraunces Tavern in 1975. Four people were killed and more than 60 injured. Lopez was not convicted of any role in that attack, but some still hold him responsible because of his ties to the ultranationalist group.
“I’m willing to forgive, but he never once said he was sorry, showed no remorse at all,” said Mary Connor Tully, whose husband, Frank Connor, was killed in the bombing. “He’s an old man and he’ll get to live his life free, and hopefully he can live with the sins he committed, and that he’ll answer one day to a higher power than us for what he did.”
FALN members and their supporters said those put behind bars by the U.S. government were prisoners of war and questioned the country’s jurisdiction to prosecute them.
Lopez had been a federal fugitive for five years when he was caught by police in north suburban Glenview on a traffic violation. Federal authorities had charged him in 1977 in 16 Chicago-area bombings.
At Lopez’s sentencing in 1981, a federal judge called him an “unrehabilitated revolutionary.” Lopez declined to be present at his sentencing or many previous court sessions.
Lopez was the last remaining FALN member still in prison. Lopez in 1999 rejected President Bill Clinton’s conditional offer for a reduced sentence.
Edwin Cortes, 61, who spent more than a decade in prison before Clinton commuted his sentence in 1999, was at Tuesday’s celebration in Humboldt Park and called Lopez’s release a “great victory for our movement.”
Lopez’s lawyer, Jan Susler, said Tuesday she was “elated” by the president’s decision.
“I think all of Oscar’s co-defendants have been involved in his campaign for release, and they all felt less than whole without him,” Susler said. “This now completes the cycle and it’s really marvelous.”
Activists also have spent years advocating for Lopez’s release, launching a national campaign to free Lopez. In 2011, activists and relatives marked Lopez’s 30th year in prison with a Chicago gathering attended by his family, including his daughter and granddaughter.
“There’s one thing that’s forgotten in this struggle — and it’s that Oscar is human,” Zenaida Lopez, the prisoner’s sister, said in 2011. “He’s a brother. He’s a father. He’s a grandfather. He’s a son. He’s loved deeply by his family.
“We have to struggle to see that he is released so that he becomes part of the family once again,” she said. “It is our dream. It is our hope. It is something that we talk about every single day.”
Jessie Fuentes, a coordinator with National Boricua Human Rights Network, said on Tuesday that the campaign took sacrifice and patience.
“The world believed in him because we believed in creating a more just world,” Fuentes said.
At the Humboldt Park rally, Janeida Rivera said the commutation shows that a united community can “overcome any obstacles.”
Michael Rodriguez-Muniz, a Northwestern University sociology professor and activist, summed up the mood, in Humboldt Park and on the island.
“There’s a lot of tears of joy being shed throughout Puerto Rico,” he said.
Chicago Tribune reporter Tracy Swartz and the Associated Press contributed.
gpratt@chicagotribune.com
