Category: Ana Belen Montes
Ana Belén Montes culmina su año dieciséis tras las rejas
worker | December 24, 2017 | 8:17 pm | Ana Belen Montes | Comments closed

http://www.claridadpuertorico.com/content.html?news=8E1CBD5DC7872D8EF4E2B6FB66AB446D

Ana Belén Montes culmina su año dieciséis tras las rejas

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Publicado: miércoles, 20 de diciembre de 2017

Por Miriam Montes Mock

Especial para CLARIDAD

Una noticia devastadora: cáncer del seno derecho. Una mastectomía. El trauma físico y emocional. La soledad. Las visitas al hospital, encadenada, adolorida. El descubrimiento de la solidaridad en sus compañeras de celda. La incertidumbre. Otra vez el dolor. La añoranza de su familia. Y recientemente, la noticia que le sacó lágrimas cada vez que advirtió, a través de la cadena CNN en español que transmite la prisión Carswell, el destrozo de Puerto Rico tras el paso del huracán María.

Así entiendo que fue el año 2017 para mi prima.

Se llama Ana Belén Montes. Es una prisionera puertorriqueña que extingue una condena de veinticinco años por obedecer su conciencia y solidarizarse con el pueblo cubano ante las políticas de agresión del gobierno estadounidense.

Este año, Ana Belén cumplió dieciséis años encarcelada.

Aún está sujeta a las medidas administrativas especiales, las cuales limitan su acceso al mundo fuera de la prisión. Lleva dieciséis años silenciada y aislada. Sólo se le permite comunicarse con un puñado de familiares y amigos que la hayan conocido antes de su arresto. Nadie puede citar las palabras que Ana ha hablado a partir de su encarcelamiento. Nadie puede hacerse eco de su dolor, ése que experimenta cualquier mujer ante la mutilación de su cuerpo y la incertidumbre de su futuro. Nadie. Sólo imaginarlo.

El cáncer es una enfermedad debilitante para todo ser humano, mucho más cuando se sufre dentro de una prisión. Me duele pensar que Ana enfrenta esa condición de salud sin el apoyo de sus seres queridos, sin la posibilidad de escoger un médico de su confianza, tratamientos alternos o paliativos, una dieta rica en vegetales y frutas frescas, o al menos alguien con quien desahogarse. Por el contrario, a Ana le ha tocado enfrentarse al cáncer en un ambiente de constante vigilia. En un lugar donde impera el ruido, la violencia, la hostilidad emocional…y la soledad. En medio de ese caos, Ana convaleció de su cirugía.

Los carceleros la llevaban de la prisión al hospital, encadenada de manos y pies, con una cadena gruesa amarrada a la cintura, de la cual cuelga un grillete pesado donde se unen las cadenas de la cintura con las de los pies. Y una herida en el pecho.

Durante este año tormentoso, Ana se dedicó s recuperar sus fuerzas.

Su meta a corto plazo: estar viva y libre de cáncer por los próximos cinco años. A pesar de las condiciones en las cuales vive.

Su meta a largo plazo: regresar a la libre comunidad, si no antes, al menos el primero de julio de 2023.

Ana es fuerte. Al menos, eso es lo que pienso. Durante casi cuatro meses estuvo imposibilitada de escribir cartas. Luego comenzó de a poco: media página, una página, dos… mientras soportaba la punzada que le provocaba un nervio pinchado en su brazo derecho. Le volvieron los dolores de espalda. Sus compañeras en la prisión la cuidaron. Fue, tal vez, un abrazo del cielo.

Reinició sus lecturas. “Conoció” a Pedro Albizu Campos y su sacrificio a favor de la independencia de Puerto Rico. Se acercó a las gestas nacionalistas puertorriqueñas. “Viajó por el mundo” con el Papa Francisco y se dejó impregnar de su espíritu compasivo. Sonrió al “escuchar” los diálogos entre el Dalai Lama y el Arzobispo Desmond Tutu. Se ha interesado en estudiar, con su usual minucia, la Carta Autonómica del 1897, el Tratado de París, y otros documentos que evidencian la trayectoria política de la Isla. Pero a Ana tampoco se le permite articular públicamente sus reflexiones sobre el trayecto político de Puerto Rico; ni sobre las corrientes ideológicas a nivel mundial; ni sobre filosofías o religiones.

Hoy día, Ana Belén resiste la muerte, ésa que muestra sus rostros de fealdad dentro de cualquier prisión. Día a día. Con la mente alerta. Con el corazón sensible ante el mundo que ella percibe desde sus rejas. Con la esperanza viva.

Imagino a Ana Belén durante estos últimos tres meses, mientras contemplaba, a través de las transmisiones televisivas, los destrozos perpetrados por los huracanes Irma y María. Me la imagino con el pesar que produce advertir una fatalidad y no poder hacer nada para remediarlo. No, el pueblo puertorriqueño nunca escuchará sus palabras de aliento y solidaridad luego de la devastación que experimenta el país.

De seguro, si estuviera en tierra boricua, Ana Belén trabajaría sin descanso para ayudar al que sufre. Es lo que le nace hacer. Como si estuviera entre nosotros, la Mesa de trabajo por Ana Belén Montes en Puerto Rico ha hecho un paréntesis en su labor educativa para ofrecer su solidaridad a los damnificados del país. Como si ella lo hiciera. En el nombre de Ana Belén.

Defending Ana Belen Montes and other Prisoners of Empire
worker | September 20, 2017 | 9:36 pm | Ana Belen Montes | Comments closed

By W. T. Whitney Jr.

 

The campaign to gain freedom for 60 – year old prisoner Ana Belens Montes needs a boost. Arrested in September 2001, Montes confessed to relaying U. S. government information to a Cuban handler. Montes, whose family origins are Puerto Rican, is serving a 25 year sentence at the high – security Carswell Federal Medical Center for women at Ft Worth, Texas. Prisoners there have psychiatric needs or are facing execution. Apparently Montes has no psychiatric illness.

 

She worked for 16 years as an analyst for the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency for whom she was the expert on Cuba. She received no pay from Cuba’s government for her espionage work.

 

The campaign on her behalf centers on humanitarian considerations. It gained steam after December 17, 2014 when the last three of the Cuban Five political prisoners returned to Cuba and many Cuban Five supporters turned their attention to Montes. She has gained support through publicity about harsh prison conditions. Indeed, prison regulations prohibit her receiving emails, packages, and telephone calls; once a week she is allowed to call her mother. Only a handful of people have been able to visit her. Confined to her cell, she is isolated from the general prison population.

 

In late 2016 Ana Belen Montes learned that she had breast cancer. Surgery took place, but little information about her condition and treatment has been available. The British Medical Journal Lancet recently concluded that “compassionate release programs in the USA are poorly managed” and that “potentially eligible inmates [are] not being considered for release.” There were reforms, but they won’t benefit Montes because even now humanitarian release doesn’t apply until prisoners are at the end of their illnesses.

 

Lawyers have explored executive clemency as a tool for remedying excessively long sentences. But Montes’ sentence is not extra-long, according to U. S. norms. One report speaks of six spies serving shorter sentences than hers, another one reports on five spies serving between 23 and 34 years, and yet another tells of eight convicted spies sentenced to 24 years or more. It turns out that prisoners serving 12 years or less spied for countries friendly to the United States, while all but three of those serving longer sentences worked for Soviet Bloc nations – or in one case, revolutionary China.

 

It’s clear that any appeal to precedent or to official guidelines on humanitarian release will do little toward securing early release for Ana Belen Montes. The possibility remains, however, of a presidential pardon or commutation of Montes’ sentence. After all, the Constitution gives the president almost unlimited discretion in issuing pardons.

 

For that to occur, a highly visible, united, and powerful upsurge of popular pressure is required, and that’s not on the horizon. Heightened pressure could also lead to Montes’ oppressive prison conditions being alleviated. The Cuban or Puerto Rican solidarity movements presently are supplying most of the people-power for efforts on her behalf. Their contributions are admirable, but the campaign’s reach is limited.

 

Potential allies stay away as they attend to other political interests. The difficulty, it seems, lies with activists’ focus on this or that single issue, none of them having to do with political prisoners. So the question is: what must be done to strengthen the recruitment of people dedicated to freedom for Montes and other prisoners, and to protecting them in prison?

 

As a magnet for recruiting supporters, anti-imperialism would be the grounding for an expanded campaign. That Montes was part of that struggle is clear from what she told her sentencing judge: “I obeyed my conscience rather than the law. … I felt morally obligated to help the island defend itself from our efforts to impose our values and our political system on it.” She added that, “All the world is one country.”

 

A model for a new campaign is at hand. International Labor Defense (ILD) labored between 1925 and 1946 to defend victims of aggressive capitalism, including jailed activists and unionists, and the racially oppressed. The organization provided prisoners with lawyers, supported them while they were incarcerated, and buoyed up their families. Its reach extended nationwide, with local chapters.

 

ILD launched highly visible, large-scale campaigns and promoted international solidarity. Sympathizers abroad agitated for U. S. prisoners and ILD reached out to foreign prisoners and unions, particularly in Cuba and Mexico.

 

ILD was anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, and pro-labor. Although ILD originated with the CPUSA, other left-leaning organizations or unions supplied many of ILD’s leaders during its early years. Famously, ILD saved the lives of the “Scottsboro Boys,” nine black Alabama teen- agers who in 1931 were charged with rape and sentenced to die. ILD orchestrated court proceedings over the course of years and had a hand in demonstrations across the world.

 

If ILD existed today, ILD and Ana Belen Montes would, presumably, be a match. One was and the other is anti-imperialist and internationalist. One had and the other has high regard for Cuba’s revolutionary potential.

 

But ILD required funding and lots of activists to do the work and both are in short supply these days. That ILD could specialize in political-prisoner work was due to sponsorship and support from larger organizations – mainly the CPUSA – with broader political agendas, including anti-imperialism. Such groups are far weaker now.

 

Though there are difficulties, the need is clear: U.S. imperialism is a scourge upon humanity, and someone who threw a monkey wrench into its machinery is in big trouble. The choice about what to do is straight-forward: stick with more of the same – and it’s not working – or turn to something new – that is to say, something old.

 

First, in line with ILD’s experience, left political parties and other activist groups with an anti-imperialist bent would encourage their own people or outsiders to engage in collective advocacy for political prisoners. Specializing, they would gain skills and experience. Meanwhile, local groups, harking back to ILD chapters, would prepare to educate communities and activists about the historical context of political prisoners and about contemporary prisoners. Soon they would be agitating on their own: writing, speaking out, and taking action. Local groups would develop relations with each other.

 

To make good on plans like these would be a daunting task. Further, they are speculative, even utopian. But they represent strategic thinking that fills what otherwise is a void of possibilities. Whatever the campaign looks like from now on, it has requirements. It must recognize, one, that the fight for Ana Belen Montes, and other prisoners, is lagging, and, two, that solidarity with their cause is central to resisting imperialism.

 

Addendum: Prisoner expresses his debt to ILD  

 

Nate Shaw, a member of the Alabama Sharecroppers Union, told his life story to author Theodore Rosengarten, who shaped it into a magnificent autobiography, published in 1974. The title is All God’s Children. There, Nate Shaw recalls 12 years of imprisonment in Alabama, beginning in 1932.

 

Shaw organized his neighbors to resist deputy sheriffs who, at the behest of local creditors and big landowners, were about to seize sharecroppers’ tools, animals, and crops. There was gunfire and Shaw was taken away.

 

Says Shaw: “They arrested me in December 1932 … And in three days here come the International Labor Defense people, two of em, white people … I knowed that they come out of the northern states. And in the next day or two in comes Lawyer Stein… he come to the jail every three weeks from then on for five months, until my trial … he come there and told me one time, ‘Shaw, you the best man we got, we goin to stick with you … We may can’t pull you out of it but we goin to stick with you.’ O, they hated his guts …

 

“Now what he done, I wouldn’t swear to it … But I know by the fact that they never did give me no trouble at all through prison that he done something. And the ILD sent me five dollars a month the whole time I was in prison. And they was helpin my wife too. That’s what the organization believed in – takin care of a man’s family when he’s pulled away from em. …

 

“The truth of it, I done less work in prison than I ever done outside … But how come I had such an easy time in prison? … It was what was behind me, I put it all to that; it was them that was standin for me and God above.”

Rene Gonzalez: Letter on Ana Belen Montes
worker | October 20, 2016 | 9:07 pm | Ana Belen Montes, Announcements, class struggle, Cuba, police terrorism, political struggle | Comments closed
Dear friends:
 
Ana Belén Montes, the courageous Puertorican woman imprisoned for protecting Cuba from the US  policies of agression, has been operated because of breast cancer. She is now recovering from the surgery.
 
Many friends around the world are writing letters of support to her. Although she is not allowed to receive mail, the message of thousands of letters arriving to her prison door would surely be a powerfull one. Please join in this effort and write a letter or a post card to Ana to the following address:
 
 
 
ANA BELEN MONTES
NO.
25037-016
CARSWELL DETENTION CENTER

3000, I St, Fort Worth, TX 76127