Comerio, Puerto Rico
Unveiling of the Mural in Comerío, Puerto Rico
"The 32 of OSCAR LÓPEZ"
Wednesday, May 29, 2013, 6:30 pm
Plaza of the Troubador "Germán Falcón Walkway"
Diverse organizations and leaders of the community in Comerio, united across society and inspired by humanist objectives in this demand, will unveil the mural pictured below, by various artists and which represents the sentiment of the Comerio people in the Spirit of the Jibaro Festival, which is dedicated this year to the Puerto Rican Cultural Center in Chicago and the Comerio leader Gloria Berríos.

PROGRAM
7:00 pm. Church Service at the Temple of Christ of Well-Being- For Oscar López Rivera and all those who have suffered oppression for the cause of Justice.
8:00 pm 32 Bell Tolls - One for each year of prison of Oscar López.
8:30 pm Unveiling of the mural - Graphic designers and leaders of the organizations which have approved Resolutions in Solidarity with Oscar.
9:20 pm Share and Artistic Event, - with the participation of musicians, organizations and volunteer interpreters like the School of Fine Arts, Miguel Santiago Díaz, Angel Luis Pérez, Ricky Torres and Carlos Quiles, ...
10:00 pm Urging to unite with the Vigil for Oscar which is happening simultaneously en 5 public plazas in Puerto Rico.

Your Presence Counts We are all Oscar We Await You
Additional info: Centro Cultural (Maricarmen Ortiz-462-2567; Norberto Falcón 616-2208)

Aibonito
Event:  "Oscar López Rivera: Between Torture and Resistance" 32 years of imprisonment of Oscar.
We'll have a conversation with attorney Jan Susler-Oscar's attorney, who ail speak on the condition os confinement and legal proceedings; and Clarisa López, Oscar's daughter and Javier Jimenez Perez, Mayor of San Sebastian (birthplace of Oscar) both of whom will share the municipal and family fabric of Oscar's life.

Thursday, May 30, 2013, 7:00pm
Aibonito, Puerto Rico -Casa Museo Federico Degetau

Info: 787 312-6587 
COMITE DE DERECHOS HUMANOS DE AIBONITO

United States
Orlando, FL
VIGIL

32nd Anniversary of the arrest of Oscar López Rivera, Puerto Rican Political Prisoner, who is the longest-held Puerto Rican political prisoner in the Western hemisphere.

It's only with Solidarity and Action of all progressive, political, religious, labor and community groups, can we return Oscar to his homeland.

Wednesday, May 29, 2013, 6:30pm
Prince of Peace Church (on Semoran Blvd and Curryford Rd.

Oscar López Rivera: a community organizer, Viet Nam veteran, father, grandfather, independentista, 70 Years old, 32 Years in a prison in the US. Freedom Now!

Vigil at Cristo y San Ambrosio Church. Wed. May 29th. For more info: inezr@boricuahumanrights.org

A group of thirty-two women will be demanding the freedom of Puerto Rican political prisoner so scar López Rivera this Sunday, May 26, from 4pm to 4:32pm at the Puente Dos Hermanos (Two Brothers Bridge) at the Condado, said Attorney Josefina Pantoja.

"His sentence, it bears repeating, is 13 times longer than that of a person convicted of organized crime and extortion, 8 times longer than that of a person convicted for the violent rape of a women, 7 times longer than the the person convicted of first degree murder, and 5 times larger than that of a person convicted of armed robbery or bank robbery," emphasized the spokespeople."Oscar did not kill anyone, nor has he violently wounded anyone. His crime is to defend the independence of his homeland," "said spokesperson Alida Millán Ferrer.

 

 

Visit the website here... 

FACEBOOK

Calls  on all organizations and individuals to come join the contingent to FREE OSCAR LOPEZ RIVERA AT THE BRONX PUERTO RICAN PARADE.

Sunday, June 2nd, 2013

 

Let's make sure we come in out very large numbers.

 

We will be handing out information and getting petitions sign for Oscar Lopez Rivera, 32 years is enough, let's FREE HIM NOW!!!!!!

SUNDAY, JUNE 2, 2013

192 ST.- GRAND CONCOURSE 

(Contingent will convene at this street)

BRONX, New York

 

MEETING TIME: 11:30 A.M.

 

* PLEASE BRING: YOUR OSCAR T-SHIRT, FLAGS, POSTERBOARDS, WHISTLES, MARACAS, PANDARETAS,  NOISE MAKERS

 

The longest held political prisoner in the United States, with 32 years in prison, is also the most invisible in the world.

 

No one can explain the reason why Oscar López Rivera, who is 70 years old, has been a prisoner for so long, including a decade he spent in a regimen of isolation, without being able to see his people or communicate with the outside.

 

One asks why so many years of silence and hidden reality have passed. What circumstances have come together for there to be no great repercussions about the case. In other words, to drown in this other isolation more harmful than the physical, which is that of indifference in his own Homeland.

 

Here you still hear the echoes of the racket caused by the arrest of Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei, who wasn't even three months in prison (if he ever was in prison) and he received incommensurable media attention. It would have been bad if they put him in prison even for one day, although later Chinese authorities alleged that he owed two million dollars in taxes. Throughout the length and breadth of the planet - and there is no doubt that in Puerto Rico they collaborated - money was raised so that Weiwei could pay what he owed the Chinese government. I don't remember how much was collected in the end; I only know that he posed naked for posterity. An esthetic disaster.

 

In contrast, here, very few people have been abreast of the tragedy of Oscar López. He wasn't accused of any crime, or of harming anyone.

 

Only of seditious conspiracy, which is the most inhospitable way of saying that Oscar thinks that Puerto Rico should be one thing, while the potency which deprives him of this liberty maintains that the Island should be something else. There is no more simple or economical way of saying it.

 

For thinking and believing what he believes, he's been all that time in the shadows, never better said: in the unbreakable shadows. He went into prison in the prime of his youth.

 

Without him, life went on for the people of San Sebastián, where he was born. Life went on in Puerto Rico. Electoral terms came and went. Governors lived and died. Fashions were imposed and faded away. Television programs, soap operas or comedies emerged and ended. Singers, musicians, starlets triumphed and were forgotten. Boxers won and lost. Computers appeared. Cell phones burst onto the scene. Tollways and urbanizations were constructed. Some forests were destroyed. Many youth were born and died dejected. Innumerable other things happened in 32 years. And this man is in prison for seditious conspiracy.

 

Oscar López, ironically, fought in Vietnam under the flag of this same nation which, for his ideas and nothing more than his ideas, has thrown 70 years of prison at him. Theoretically, he must still serve forty-some more years.

 

While from the little window of his cell he contemplates the passing of the seasons (32 winters, summers, falls and springs of Indiana, where the prison is), life has also changed in Hanoi and in Ho Chi Minh city, those places which he certainly knows. The pilot of a Vietnamese airplane was fined a few days ago for being photographed in flight with the most famous Vietnamese actress seated on his lap. Uncle Ho would be turning in his grave, and Oscar López, who maybe hasn't lost his sense of humor, would laugh when he read this news.

 

Like almost all political prisoners in the world, this man has friends in solidarity, and he has above all a family. That family has also grown, moved, celebrated births, grieved deaths, and celebrated many new years eves without him. 

 

Maybe if one stops at the entrance of Plaza las Américas and randomly asks people if they know the daughter, sister or any family member of Oscar López Rivera, there won't be a single person who says they know them. What's more, they won't even know who Oscar is. Don't you see that he's invisible?

 

The barber of Pedro Albizu Campos, that dear human being, lived invisible and died invisible. He never killed anybody either; he shut himself up in his barber shop in Barrio Obrero, where they riddled him with bullets and gave him the coup de grace in his temple. He was a cat. He survived all that. He was in prison where he went back to cutting hair with his mutilated hands, hands missing fingers, teaching other prisoners to be barbers. He ended his days conscious that they were watching him, speaking in whispers, venting to his friends. He should be in the category of hero, but if Albizu's barber was in the category of hero, and the children were proud of him in the schools, Oscar López wouldn't be in prison. 

 

They say we are what we eat. I don't believe it. We are what we read and what we live. And also the movies we see. In my adolescence, I cried at the end of that magnificent film, "Sacco and Vanzetti," about two Italian anarchists who in 1927 were falsely accused of murder and sentenced to the electric chair (Dukakis rehabilitated their memory 50 years later). In those times, it seemed to me impossible that two innocent men, so obviously innocent, could be executed in that way solely for their ideas. I sometimes liked to hum the theme song of the film, "Here's to you, Nicola and Bart," by the great Ennio Morricone, which Joan Báez interpreted. And the final line of that song, in those days, reminds me of the years Oscar López Rivera has had to suffer in a cell where they've wanted to snatch a piece of him, eat away at him a little each day. The line is: "That agony is your triumph."

 

Of course it's his triumph. 

 

The National Boricua Human Rights Network will be opening an online store in time for the Peoples Parade in June. It will have "Oscar López Rivera: Between Torture and Resistance", the CD collection of songs authored by some of Puerto Rico's most well-known singer-songwriters is also available for sale. "La Vida Es Lucha Toda" tributo a Oscar López Rivera features Roy Brown and Zoraida Santiago, Tony Mapeyé, Lucecita Benítez and Haciendo Punto en Otro Son.

The book is available for $15.95 plus s/h and the CD for $12 plus s/h. The classic Oscar T-shirt (image left), are $10 each, plus shipping and handling, and is available in various sizes. The button (same image) is $1. 

 

To get your copy, contact alejandrom@boricuahumanrights.org. Each copy is $15.95 plus shipping & handling. The Oscar CD is also available and costs $12 plus s/h.