Freedom Summer 2015 San Juan Campus-Fundación Arana

Freedom Summer 2015

San Juan Campus-Fundación Arana

On the 23 and the 30 of July we held our Freedom Summer classes titled: decolonizing the debate on political prisoners. Around ten people gathered to discuss the sociological complexities surrounding the topic and how the media responded to this issue.

On the class were some people from Peru, Canada and the United States, whom learned from the locals the political repression that persist on our country. They were impacted by the case of Oscar Lopez Rivera, who is still in prison after 33 years of imprisonment.

Our long time committed friend Christian Jimenez facilitate one of our meetings, emphasizing on the legal aspect of political imprisonment. He asserts that on an international scenario Puerto Rican political prisoners are freedom fighters fighting for our independence and our right to self-govern. But in the colonial setting of the US-PR relation, they have been considered as criminals and condemned like that. This issue is still under discussion at international forums like the United Nations Committee of Decolonization.

The main goal of the class was to have a clear understanding of why are people in jail for political reasons, and to decolonize the way we think about that people. Our objective was not to tell the story about the political prisoners but to tell the story of the colonial relations in  society that have led this people to jail under the name of “political prisoners” .

Reynaldo Padilla-Teruel

UNSIF