Calle 13 calls for release of political prisoner Oscar Lopez Rivera

Last Sunday’s Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York City marked the 57th year the parade strolled up Fifth Avenue, but it was a much different event than in recent years. This parade wasn’t just a cultural celebration; parade organizers called for the release of Oscar López Rivera, who has spent 33 years in prison for seditious conspiracy.

Like Lopez Rivera, this year’s Grand Marshall, or ‘king’ of the parade, has strong political views: Organizers chose the frontman of Grammy Award-winning group Calle 13, René Perez Joglar, to lead the parade. Perez Joglar supports independence for Puerto Rico and unlike most Latin pop stars, is known for being very vocal about his political views, which makes him controversial.

It was a full circle moment for Perez Joglar, who first visited the parade with his dad and brother when he was an 18-year-old college student. He might’ve watched from the sidelines then, but he was already politically conscious. That day he wore a t-shirt of Puerto Rican nationalist Pedro Albizu Campos, who’s considered the father of the Puerto Rican independence movement from the U.S..

René Perez Joglar showed Fusion a photo of when he attended his first Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York City. “I was already scheming what I was going to do. Planning it,” he told us.

López Rivera, the man who parade organizers called to be released, is a modern-day nationalist who has been in jail for 33 years under “seditious conspiracy” charges. His daughter, Clarisa Lopez, walked alongside Pérez Joglar and hundreds of parade participants.

Seditious Conspiracy

“Seditious conspiracy,” from Title 18 of the U.S. Code, declares that a crime only needs to be planned, not actually attempted, to be against the law. First used during the Civil War against secessionists, “seditious conspiracy” was not applied again until 1937 when Albizu Campos was charged after organizing pro-independence marches in Puerto Rico, according to attorney Luis Nieves Falcón in a 2013 Democracy Now interview.

In 1981, Oscar Lopez Rivera was convicted of “seditious conspiracy, use of force to commit robbery, interstate transportation of firearms and ammunition to aid in the commission of a felony, and interstate transportation of stolen vehicles” for his alleged involvement in the paramilitary group Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (FALN) in Chicago during the 1970s. A decorated Vietnam veteran, Lopez Rivera was not charged with killing anyone but according to the Department of Justice, his offenses “arose out of his role in FALN” and was charged with a 55 year sentence. Fifteen more years were added to his penalty in 1988 for conspiring to attempt to escape prison.

Out of the 33 years he’s been in jail, Lopez Rivera spent 12 of those in solitary confinement. The United Nations says solitary confinement beyond 15 days can amount to torture and result in lasting mental damage.

In 1999, President Clinton offered clemency to more than a dozen imprisoned Puerto Rican nationalists, including Lopez Rivera. He however, refused clemency since it required to “renounce the use of terrorism to achieve their aim of independence for the Caribbean commonwealth,” according to a 1999 New York Times article.