2020 Oscar López Rivera Tour

Resistance and Resilience

Join us for Oscar López Rivera Tour: Resistance and Resilience – Puerto Rico’s Recovery from Debt, Hurricanes, and Colonialism. West Coast tour with former political prisoner and freedom fighter Oscar López Rivera, author of Between Torture and Resistance.

Oscar López Rivera, Puerto Rican movement leader and former political prisoner to lead a series of discussions across Southern California campuses. Oscar will speak on the history of colonialist relations and neoliberal austerity that have given rise to the current economic and environmental crises in Puerto Rico, including the devastation caused by Hurricane Maria, recent earthquakes and lack of US support.

About Oscar López Rivera

On January 17, 2017, President Barack Obama announced the commutation of the sentence of Puerto Rican Political Prisoner Oscar López Rivera. López Rivera was sentenced to 55 years in prison in 1981. He spent 36 years in federal prison—12 of them in solitary confinement. In 1999, López Rivera was offered clemency by President Clinton but refused to take it when the offer was not extended to all of his co-defendants. While in prison he became an avid painter.

López Rivera was born in San Sebastian, Puerto Rico in 1943. His family moved to Chicago when he was 14 years old. His ideas about Puerto Rican Independence were shaped while serving in the Vietnam war (he was drafted at 18 and received a bronze star) and after returning to Chicago while working as a community organizer. His work in Chicago allowed him to witness first hand the many Puerto Ricans and others who were deprived of basic medical care, housing and quality public schools. This experience led to him becoming a community activist, and active in the Campaign to Free the Five Puerto Rican Nationalists during the early 1970’s and was forced underground due to the surveillance and repression of the USA, along with Ida Luz Rodríguez, Haydee Beltrán and Carlos Alberto Torres, in 1976.

Among the many people calling for López Rivera’s release prior to his commutation were 10 Nobel Peace Prize winners--including Pope Francis, former President Jimmy Carter and the Reverend Desmond Tutu . Senator Bernie Sanders, former Illinois Congressman Luis V. Gutiérrez, playwright/composer Lin-Manuel Miranda, federal, state, and local elected officials, and faith leaders all rallied for López Rivera’s release.

Since returning to Puerto Rico, López Rivera has continued to advocate for an end to U.S. colonialism and has resumed his role as a community organizer. He is working to establish a holistic community center in Río Piedras. He is also focused on deepening his relationship in the underserved municipalities of Loíza and Comerío where he is working on educational and community-based projects.

Readings about Oscar and the current crisis in PR: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IeGH7NMU9-MCTKAPRp6E1Vran5ixXS9voskD64wm0MY/edit?usp=sharing

Southwest Tour Coordinating Committee

Puerto Ricans in Action, Puerto Rican Alliance, SoCal for Puerto Rico, Anti-Racist Action, Whittier Poets por Puerto Rico, and Movimiento Borikua