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Vol. 82/No. 7 February 19, 2018
Oscar López: ‘Crisis in Puerto Rico is colonialism’
Militant/Brian Williams
NEW YORK — Some 100 people attended a meeting at Hostos Community
College in the Bronx here with Puerto Rican independence fighter Oscar
López Rivera Feb. 1. Asked what he saw in Puerto Rico when he returned
there after serving 36 years in U.S. prison on frame-up seditious
conspiracy charges, López said, “I came home to do two things — to work
and to struggle. Prison itself was like going through a different
university, experience became knowledge.”
López visited Cuba in mid-November, something, he said, he had wanted to
do “for a long time.” He was welcomed to the island by Fernando
González, president of the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the
Peoples (ICAP). González, one of five Cubans framed up and imprisoned by
the U.S. government for their activities in defense of the Cuban
Revolution in southern Florida, shared a cell with López for four years.
“Cuba represents the best example of what human solidarity is,” said
López. “They send doctors around the world, most recently in response to
the earthquake in Mexico.”
He was asked about the impact of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and
Washington’s lack of response. “The real crisis in Puerto Rico is
colonialism,” López said. He described what has happened in his
hometown, where power was restored “through the efforts of retired
electrical workers putting up the poles,” he said.
“FEMA said they shouldn’t have done it and tried to undo this,” he said.
Sponsors of the meeting included the Puerto Rican Student Organization,
ALMA, Hostos Unidos por PR, and Common Ground student clubs. López also
spoke at Trinity Lutheran Church in Brooklyn and at the Iglesia Santa
Cruz Church in Manhattan’s Washington Heights.
— BRIAN WILLIAMS
Related articles:
US rulers tell Puerto Rico: Squeeze working people to pay off bonds!
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