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Carmen Valentín

Carmen Valentín is one of the 11 Puerto Rican former political prisoners granted clemency by President Clinton in September 1999. She immediately returned to Puerto Rico, where she and her compañeros/as were met with a huge welcome celebration. For updates on this clemency, see www.prisonactivist.org/quesalgan

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The background description below is adapted from Can't Jail the Spirit (March 1998).

Carmen Valentín was born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico on March 2, 1946. At the age of 9, her family moved to Chicago. She has a son, Antonio, who lives in Chicago. Carmen graduated from Northeastern Illinois University with a Master's Degree in Spanish. She was very active in community struggles for better services and education. Carmen led the fight to reverse a 73% drop-out rate among Puerto Rican youth in the Chicago Public School system. She was a counselor at Tuley High School and Central YMCA Community College where she helped in the struggle for better conditions for Third World students.

Carmen was captured April 4,1980 along with other comrades, and was sentenced to 90 years on seditious conspiracy and related charges. Throughout her capture, trial and incarceration, she maintained her position as an anti-colonial prisoner of war (POW) resisting the illegal U.S. occupation of her homeland.

From prison, her poetry was published in Have You Seen La Nueva Mujer puertorriqueña? Carmen has contributed articles to Libertad and art to the Puerto Rican Cultural Center in Chicago. John Langston Gwaltney, the author and anthropologist, documented part of Carmen's life in a book entitled The Dissenters: Voices of Contemporary America.

This page is maintained by the Prison Activist Resource Center. Updated 27 September 1999.