His rejection of amnesty intact
Translated from the original Spanish
By Leonor Mulero, El Nuevo Día

Información enviada al Director de Tlahui. Puerto Rico a 26 de Abril, 1999. Washington: Carlos Romero Barceló was the sole voice which, during the presidency of Jimmy Carter, delayed but could not impede the release of the Puerto Rican Nationalists who attacked Congress in 1954.

As he did at the end of the 70's, then governor Romero Barceló now opposes the release of 15 Puerto Rican independentists, in spite of the generalized support for amnesty in Puerto Rico. Governor Pedro Rosselló does not oppose the presidential pardon and thinks that each case should be studied separately.

Statehooders with influence at the Carter White House like Franklin Delano López asked the President to release the prisoners. But Romero Barceló's negative posture frustrated their release at the end of 1978 and the beginning of 1979, according to declassified documents recently released by the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library. Francisco Ortiz Santini analyzed these documents as well as related newspaper material.

In a letter to Carter, the current Resident Commissioner pointed out "the violent character of the Nationalist Party" and the prisoners' refusal to admit guilt or show remorse. He said that Andrés Figueroa Cordero favored violence after he was released due to cancer.

The National Security Council was key in the process of the release of the Nationalists led by Lolita Lebrón. In May of 1978, the NSC person responsible for relations with Latin América, Robert Pastor, examined the effect of commuting the sentences of the Nationalists, who he called "fighters for the independence of Puerto Rico." A week later, he learned that Romero Barceló opposed their release, in spite of the fact that he had consented to the release of Figueroa Cordero.

The NSC considered exchanging the Puerto Rican Nationalists for the release of U.S. prisoners in Cuba. There was thought of exchanging Lebrón for Larry Lunt, a supposed spy from the CIA who was serving a 30 year sentence in Cuba. Madeleine Albright, current Secretary of State, participated in the process within the NSC.

In 1978, the NSC asked the Department of Justice to send Carter a recommendation on the prisoners. The NSC alleged that these people had been in prison 25 years. Although it could not be determined that they would never again commit acts of violence, the prisoners appeared defeated and the times had changed, said the NSC.

Apparently, the release of the Nationalists had less to do with humanitarian reasons than with the international interests of the United States. Ninety countries were participating in a Non-Aligned Nations conference in Cuba. The Soviets had troops on Cuban soil and, without making an express exchange, the release of the Puerto Rican Nationalists invited the release of the U.S. prisoners in Cuba, according to the analysis.

In the process, Emilio Soler Mari, then president of the Legal Institute of Puerto Rico, and Juan Manuel García Passalacqua, leader of Carter's campaign on the island, intervened. The latter suggested to Carter in August of 1976 the release of the five Puerto Rican Nationalists as a campaign promise.

The Carter campaign noted that the Nationalists were considered common criminals. García Passalacqua, then advisor to the NSC, participated in the meeting with the pardon attorney at Justice, John R. Stanish, through whom Soler Mari sent to Stanish a petition for release. In the letter of April of 1979, Soler Mari identified himself as a lawyer of one of the prisoners. Without questioning whether Soler Mari was a lawyer of one of the prisoners, Justice used his letter to justify its study of the petition for release.

Then mayor of San Juan, Hernán Padilla, cardinal Luis Aponte Martínez, and then president of the Popular Democratic Party, Miguel Hernández Agosto, favored release.

From: National Committee to Free Puerto Rican Prisoners prpowpp@aol.com
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