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Elizam Escobar

Elizam Escobar is one of the 11 Puerto Rican former political prisoners granted clemency by President Clinton in September 1999. He immediately returned to Puerto Rico, where he and his 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).

Elizam Escobar was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico on May 24, 1948. Elizam received a Bachelor's Degree in Visual Arts from the University of Puerto Rico and later continued his studies at the New York City College, Museo del Barrio and the Art Students League in New York City. From 1979-80, Elizam taught at the Museo del Barrio's School of the Arts. He is considered one of Puerto Rico's most illustrious revolutionaries, poets and painters. His paintings have been exhibited in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and in many Puerto Rican cities. The paintings he created in jail are currently being exhibited throughout the United States.

His works have been published in several magazines including Beginnings, Currents, and Left Curve. He published a series in De Pie y En Lucha. His works have also appeared in the Anthology of Latino Poets in New York. Some of his more recent illustrations can be found in Cuadernos de Poetica, published in the Dominican Republic. Quimera Editors published his book, Speech in the Night and Sonia Semenovena.

Elizam was captured April 4,1980 along with other comrades, and given a 68-year prison sentence on seditious conspiracy and related charges. Throughout his capture, trial and incarceration, he maintained his position as an anti-colonial prisoner of war (POW) resisting the illegal U.S. occupation of his homeland.

While Elizam was incarcerated in the federal prison at El Reno, Oklahoma, his art exhibition, "Art as an Act of Liberation," was received with enthusiastic support at the Axe Street Arena, Galeria Kalpulli, Rafael Cintrón-Ortiz Cultural Center in Chicago; at the ABC No Rio Gallery in New York City, the Dissident Voices Gallery in Philadelphia, and in Puerto Rico.

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