[Pnews] Oscar López Rivera Plans His Future After Being Pardoned

[Prisoner News]

http://www.thedawn-news.org/2017/02/03/oscar-lopez-rivera-plans-his-future-after-being-pardoned/ 



  Oscar López Rivera Plans His Future After Being Pardoned

For the first time, Clarisa López Ramos comes out from seeing his father 
with a smile. Photo Credit: Teresa Canino 
<http://www.thedawn-news.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/oscar-clarisalopez.jpg>For 
the first time, Clarisa López Ramos comes out from seeing his father 
with a smile. Photo Credit: Teresa Canino

By: José A. Delgado / Source: El Nuevo Día / The Dawn News / January 30, 
2017

Everything is different. The clandestine caresses and the capability of 
laying in his shoulder when they can avoid the guard gaze or when he 
just ignores them.

But, in 107 days, at most, everything will be just a memory.

After over 150 visits in the last 18 years to the jail in Terre Haute, 
it is time to plan the future.

Oscar López Rivera, the last Cold War´s revolutionary Puerto Rican that 
it is imprisoned and that spent more time on American prisons will be 
freed at the latest on May 17, after almost 36 years.

“He is happy, really upbeat”, said on Saturday López Ramos, at the end 
of the first of 2 visits she would give him this weekend.

When the past January 21 she entered for the first time to the jail 
after that president Obama had commuted her father´s sentence, the world 
just looked different.

The vicissitudes have not changed. After all, for the federal government 
he still is the old militant of the Armed Forces of National Liberation 
(FALN), a group that claimed the authorship of decens of bombs attacks 
that caused 5 casualties.

López Rivera never denied his vinculation with the FALN. But he denies 
having blood on his hands.

Like in other visits, her daughter – that first met him at a Chicago 
prison months after his arrest on May 29, 1981-, still has to obey the 
routine that the jailer imposes. Reporting through an intercom that 
authorizes her official entry to the Terre Haute correctional complex, 
located at the city with the same name at Indiana State, of 62,000 
inhabitants and three and a half hours south from Chicago city.

Prisoners get naked to get searched before and after they get visited. 
When Clarisa entered the saturday to the visits room, along with the 
president of the Municipal Council of New York, Melissa Mark Viverito, 
as usual, the prison guard told her where to sit.

The custody officials determine where the prisoners and their families 
are placed. The prisoner and the visitor sit shoulder to shoulder, in a 
saloon that may seem like the waiting room of an office or hospital.

Visitors may salute the prisoner on the way in. After that a barrier is 
in the way until the moment of saying “goodbye”.

The system tells Clarisa López Ramos how and when to embrace his father, 
even though she has him by her side for almost 7 hours.

“We are both counting the days, the seconds, the moments to fulfill more 
dreams. At last we talked about the pending things we have outside 
prison”, said López Ramos, in an interview with El Nuevo Día, in the 
Roberto Clemente school of the Puerto Rican neighbourhood of Chicago, 
when she talked about her first visit to the jail after receiving “the 
good news”.

The past weekend she went to see her father along his lawyer. On 
Saturday the councilwoman Mark Viverito joined her. Yesterday, along the 
councilwoman, came to the visit the lawyer Susler, the democrat 
congressman Luis Gutiérrez, his uncle José López Rivera and the 
secretary of the Board of Directors of the Puerto Rican Cultural Center 
of Chicago, Alejandro Molina.

Once president Barack Obama, on the 17th of January, commuted López 
Rivera´s sentence to 70 years in prison, he is not supposed to stay in 
the Terre Haute penitentiary anymore.

Therefore, López Rivera had to immediately initiate the solicitude for 
the transfer process to a partial time penitentiary institution -that 
would allow him to go out to work-, or under house arrest.

His intention is to fulfill his sentence in Puerto Rico, where San 
Juan´s Mayor, Carmen Yulín Cruz, offered him a job. “My father´s wish is 
to live with me”, said López Ramos.

But there is not any warranty that the bureaucratic procedure will end 
before May 17.

Anyhow, López Rivera has already begun his removal. His belongings, 
accumulated during his 35 years in captivity, are stored in boxes and 
sent to Chicago. Others, are already headed towards San Juan.

López Rivera does not taste Puerto Rican food since over 3 decades, but 
with his daughter -an enthusiastic cook- they are planning which recipes 
he would like to eat.

“He asked me if I remembered how to make my grandmother’s yam doughnuts. 
He told me cook pineapple vinegar. He says it is vinegar, but it is 
actually pineapple pique”, sustained her daughter.

The countdown is running. To end, for once and for all, with the goodbyes.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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