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Alberto Rodríguez
Alberto Rodríguez 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. He immediately returned to his home town of Chicago, where the Puerto Rican community met him 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).
Alberto Rodríguez was born in New York City on April 14, 1953. Before his first birthday, his parents relocated to Chicago, Illinois. He is the father of two children, Yazmin and Ricardo Alberto.
Alberto participated in his first political action at the early age of 15, when he took part in the demonstrations protesting the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He attended the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle Campus, where he obt ained a Bachelor of Science degree in Political Science. He was one of the founders of the Union for Puerto Rican Students. A member of the Committee for Community Orientation, Alberto was actively involved in community issues such as the struggle for decent housing, education and police brutality. He was also a member of the Workers' Rights Committee. Alberto was later employed as a college counselor for Borinqueña Campus, a community college program sponsored by the Puerto Rican Cultural Center. He also helped established the Latino Cultural Center on the south side of Chicago.
His political awareness as an independentista included his active participation in the Pedro Albizu Campos Collective and the National Committee to Stop the Grand Jury.
Captured on June 29, 1983, along with other comrades, Alberto was sentenced to 35 years in prison for seditious conspiracy and other related charges. From behind prison walls, Alberto has written a number of articles for Libertad, The Insurgent, Que Ondee Sola and La Voz del Pueblo. His biography was published in The Indispensables.
Immediately after his arrest on June 29,1983, Alberto was placed in solitary confinement at the Chicago Metropolitan Correctional Center, where he was kept under 23-hour lockdown. He was later moved to the Lewisberg federal penitentiary, one of the most repressive prisons in the United States.
This page is maintained by the Prison Activist Resource Center. Updated 26 September 1999.