[ prisons -- issues -- political prisoners -- Puerto Ricans ]
Alejandrina Torres
Alejandrina Torres is one of the 11 Puerto Rican former political prisoners able to leave Federal prison due to clemency granted by President Clinton in September 1999. She immediately returned to her home town of Chicago, where the Puerto Rican community met her with a warm welcome celebration. For updates on this clemency, see www.prisonactivist.org/quesalgan
The description below is adapted from Can't Jail the Spirit (March 1998).
Alejandrina Torres was born in San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico on June 18, 1939, the 9th daughter of 10 children. When she was 11 years old, she and her family migrated to New York where she graduated from high school. In 1963, she moved to Chicago and one year later, married the Reverend José Torres, a community activist and pastor of the 1st Congregational Church of Chicago. Together they raised the Reverend Torres' 3 children from a previous marriage, Carlos Alberto, Norma and Nidza Margarita, as well as two daughters of their own, Liza Beth and Catalina.
Throughout the 1960's, Alejandrina was a leader in her community, first as a founding member and later a teacher, at the Rafael Cancel Miranda Puerto Rican High School, now known as the Pedro Albizu Campos High School. She later helped found the Betances Clinic and served as secretary of the 1st Congregational Church of Chicago where she organized a variety of community programs. She also participated in the Committee to Free the Five Nationalists, eventually becoming an active member of the National Committee to Free Puerto Rican Prisoners of War.
After her capture in 1983, Alejandrina was placed in administrative detention, segregated from the general population in an all-male unit. Alejandrina suffered a heart attack due to the daily trauma of her environment, the lack of fresh air and her total isolation. Although Alejandrina suffers from a serious heart condition, she was still denied access to a heart specialist or to the treatment needed.
Eventually she was moved to the Lexington Control Unit, in the federal prison in Lexington, Kentucky where she faced continued physical and psychological torture to break her spirit and health. There she joined with other political prisoners Silvia Baraldini and Susan Rosenberg to expose and oppose the inhumane and illegal conditions of the control unit. Working in cooperation with outside support organizations, they succeeded in closing the Lexington Control Unit. [Click here for more on control units]. She was then moved to the federal women's prison in Danbury, Connecticut, from which she was released in September 1999.
This page is maintained by the Prison Activist Resource Center. Updated 26 September 1999.