JOSE SOLIS
Another Puerto Rican added to list of political
prisoners
By
Carlos Rovira
One of the most easily identifiable features of an oppressed
people is the imprisonment of its freedom fighters. The name
Dr. Jose Solis Jordon is the latest to be added to the list of
Puerto Rican political prisoners.
Solis was a professor at the University of Puerto Rico until
the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested him in San Juan on
Dec. 9, 1997.
Solis was accused of a car bombing that occurred outside a
military recruiting station in Chicago on Dec. 9, 1992. On
March 12 of this year, Solis was convicted on four counts of
conspiracy.
He will be sentenced July 7. He faces a possible combined
maximum sentence of 30 years in federal prison.
There is reason to believe that his case is part of a secret
war waged by the FBI and police against members of the
Chicago-based National Committee to Free Puerto Rican Political
Prisoners and POWs. For years this group has been a target of
police repression and grand jury investigations.
Right-wing groups that favor the colonization of Puerto Rico
and the virtual enslavement of all Latino people have waged a
media campaign against the committee for advocating
self-determination.
When the FBI arrested Solis, it offered him release in
exchange for information leading to the arrest and conviction
of Jose Lopez.
Lopez is director of Chicago's prominent Puerto Rican
Cultural Center. Over the years, this community institution has
provided services for the mostly Mexican and Puerto Rican
community. These services include academic programs like
reading and writing as well as arts and crafts, including
ethnic studies.
Lopez is also the leader of the National Committee to Free
Puerto Rican Political Prisoners and POWs and the brother of
political prisoner Oscar Lopez.
The U.S. government's case against Solis is similar to the
Cointelpro operation during the 1960s and 1970s. That covert
FBI program was aimed at destroying the anti-war movement and
movements of the nationally oppressed.
The Solis case shows how, even by the most bourgeois
standards, the government bends legality in order to discredit
the movements that freedom fighters represent.
Such ruthlessness is used when a struggle poses a threat to
Wall Street's flow of super-profits from abroad or to strategic
Pentagon bases--like that on the Puerto Rican island of
Vieques.
This was seen some years ago when 15 Puerto Rican political
prisoners received life sentences on "seditious conspiracy"
charges--a charge that requires no presentation of concrete
evidence to the court.
"Seditious conspiracy" was not used against Solis, but the
setting is the same--the historical quest for national
liberation and the hatred displayed by the colonizing ruling
class.
The FBI used an "oral confession" Solis allegedly made the
day he was arrested. Solis has repeatedly denied making such a
statement. The FBI also used the testimony of paid informant
Rafael Angel Marrero, who said he went with Solis to arrange
the car bomb explosion at a recruiting station at 9 p.m. on
Dec. 9, 1992.
Throughout the trial proceedings, Solis insisted that he
never confessed to anything. He also insisted that on the night
of the bombing he was teaching a class until 9 p.m. at DePaul
University, some distance away from the explosion.
The court chose to maliciously ignore this fact, which
should have been sufficient to get the charges dismissed. This
is similar to what happened in the trial of Black Panther
Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt). This innocent person spent 27 years
in a California prison because the state quashed evidence
showing he was 500 miles away at the time of the murder. Ji
Jaga was finally released in 1997.
Many Chicago activists believe that although the
government's case against Solis was weak, the trial proceeded
in retaliation for his refusal to cooperate with the FBI.
Court documents revealed that the government spent
desperately needed public funds to convict Solis. Marrero
received $118,979 from the FBI as "reimbursement" for expenses
he incurred during the investigation. In addition, he received
a lump sum of $40,000 to be used at his own discretion for
"relocation" expenses.
Solis is to be sentenced on July 7. ProLibertad Amnesty
Campaign and the National Committee to Free Puerto Rican
Political Prisoners will sponsor protests in various cities.
The organizations have also called a joint national
demonstration to call for the freedom of all Puerto Rican
political prisoners on July 24 in Washington.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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