Four Puerto Rican terrorists go home to a heroes' welcome
For a brief moment last week San Juan's international airport took on the atmosphere of a revolutionary carnival, as some 5,000 Puerto Ricans gathered to welcome an American Airlines jet. Young couples swayed to the rhythm of revolutionary songs, vendors did a brisk business selling tiny Puerto Rican flags, and young leftists passed out leaflets calling for armed struggle.
When the plane touched down, bringing home four nationalist terrorists newly released after more than two decades in U.S. prisons, the crowd tore down protective fences and surged forward, chanting "¡Viva Puerto Rico Libre!"
"Home at last," said Rafael Cancel Miranda, 49, as he stepped out of the plane, fist high in the air. Echoed a tearful Oscar Collazo, 67, who had stormed Blair House in an attempt to shoot and kill President Truman in 1950: "I am so happy to be in a place where I am not afraid to express my emotions." (His 45-year-old niece rushed to embrace him, apparently suffered a heart attack, and died minutes later on the way to a hospital.) A third man, Irving Flores Rodriguez, 54, declared that liberty "has to be conquered by blood and fire ... our rights are not to be begged but fought for."
The toughest words came from the darling of the crowd, the still fiery Lolita Lebrón, 59, who had been imprisoned along with Cancel Miranda and Flores for a pistol attack on the House of Representatives that wounded five Congressmen in 1954. The unrepentant Lebrón told the cheering throng: "We have done nothing to cause us to repent. Everyone has the right to defend his God-given right to liberty."
For nearly an hour the nationalists hammered home the need for unity among independence supporters. The sympathetic audience interrupted frequently with bursts of applause. From the airport, the four nationalists proceeded to a nearby graveyard, where Lebrón threw herself on the grave of Pedro Albizu Campos, a nationalist leader who died in 1965 while the four were in prison.
Earlier in the week, at receptions in Chicago and New York City, they had demanded Puerto Rican independence and refused to rule out violence. During a press conference at the U.N., Collazo said, "I decide whether terrorism is necessary after I return to Puerto Rico." Lebrón added, "I am a revolutionary and a member of the atomic age ... I hate bombs but we might have to use them."