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href="http://www.thedawn-news.org/2017/02/03/oscar-lopez-rivera-plans-his-future-after-being-pardoned/">http://www.thedawn-news.org/2017/02/03/oscar-lopez-rivera-plans-his-future-after-being-pardoned/</a></font>
<h1 id="reader-title">Oscar López Rivera Plans His Future After
Being Pardoned<br>
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<figure id="attachment_11094" class="wp-caption
aligncenter"><a
href="http://www.thedawn-news.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/oscar-clarisalopez.jpg"><img
class="size-full wp-image-11094"
src="cid:part2.9BAE8C68.C87F4140@freedomarchives.org"
alt="For the first time, Clarisa López Ramos comes
out from seeing his father with a smile. Photo
Credit: Teresa Canino " height="376" width="430"></a><figcaption
class="wp-caption-text">For the first time, Clarisa
López Ramos comes out from seeing his father with a
smile. Photo Credit: Teresa Canino</figcaption></figure>
<p>By: José A. Delgado / Source: El Nuevo Día / The Dawn
News / January 30, 2017</p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>But, in 107 days, at most, everything will be
just a memory.</span></p>
<p>After over 150 visits in the last 18 years to the jail
in Terre Haute, it is time to plan the future.</p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>“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.</span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>López Rivera never denied his vinculation with
the FALN. But he denies having blood on his hands.</span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>Visitors may salute the prisoner on the way in.
After that a barrier is in the way until the moment of
saying “goodbye”.</span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>“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”.</span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>But there is not any warranty that the
bureaucratic procedure will end before May 17. </span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>“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.</span></p>
<p><span>The countdown is running. To end, for once and
for all, with the goodbyes.</span></p>
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