Federico Lora López Fighter for Social Justice and Human Dignity
July 30, 1945–June 14, 2019
By Victor Quintana
quintana.victor@gmail.com
September 14, 2019
quintana.victor@gmail.com
September 14, 2019
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| Federico Lora Lopez. (Family Photo.) |
Federico Lora López was a revolutionary who fought most of his adult life for social justice and for Puerto Rico’s independence. Federico was not born in Puerto Rico nor was he the son of Puerto Rican parents in the United States. Rather, he was born in the Dominican Republic on July 30, 1945. His parents immigrated to New York City when he was a child and established the Upper West Side of Manhattan as their home. Federico’s new neighborhood in New York City was the home to many Puerto Rican families. His closest friends growing up were Puerto Rican, and he was accepted as one of them. He, in turn, became very familiar with Puerto Rican culture—its values, norms, and practices.
Federico was a product of the cultural, social, and political zeitgeist of the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. During those decades, the dominant message of the mass media, as well as educational, religious, and cultural institutions, was to portray the United States as a paragon of democracy, freedom and technological innovations. All other countries and societies were depicted as severely deficient in one respect or another. This was also a period of rampant anti-communism. The United States and the Soviet Union, along with its allies in eastern Europe and Communist China, were locked in a war of ideas and political interests—the Cold War—which was rhetorically intense and sometimes bloody. As a consequence, the United States opposed any national liberation struggle that advocated for socialism and received support from the Soviet Union and/or its allies.
Infused with the anti-communism that shaped the thinking of his generation, Federico joined the U.S. Marine Corps in 1962 after graduating from high school. By this point, the United States was engaged in a war in South Vietnam, opposing the movement there, led by socialists and nationalists, to create one nation out of North and South Vietnam. Federico served a tour in Vietnam where he was twice wounded. Because he was a “grunt”— the affectionate term for a Marine infantryman —Federico was exposed to Agent Orange, a poisonous defoliant, which compromised the lives of hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops, and caused the cancer that took his life on June 14, 2019.
While serving in the Marine Corps, Federico married Carmen Martell, with whom he had a son, Richard Lora. After his discharge in 1968, Federico enrolled in Pratt Institute. He subsequently transferred to Columbia University School of Architecture, where he quickly discovered that the culture there was politically toxic. Federico decided to transfer again, this time to Fordham University, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree.
Federico’s military service affected his views of American society. He became more acutely aware of how pervasively racist American society and culture were. He began to see more clearly the injustices that working people, particularly Blacks, Puerto Ricans, and other people of color, faced.
Federico’s social justice organizing started in the neighborhood in which he was raised. In 1970, he was a founder of El Comité, a neighborhood organization in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Along with a group of other residents of the neighborhood, he became active in Operation Move-In, a grassroots campaign to oppose the decision by the City to remove low-income residents from their tenement apartments, demolish the buildings, and construct middle- and upper-income housing. The City argued that its goal was to achieve urban renewal by clearing slum housing, and that the displaced residents could come back to the new housing.
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| El Comite storefront on 88th Street and Columbus Avenue. ©Maximo Colón |
As a result, the activists of Operation Move-In correctly concluded that the City’s real goal was to transform their neighborhood from a low-income, working class enclave to a community for middle- and high-income residents—one that had easy access to the business and cultural centers of Manhattan. El Comité emerged out of the efforts of these low-income, working class residents to oppose the City’s plans.
Early in El Comité’s history, Federico became its recognized leader and grew to be widely known and respected in Operation Move-In and the Upper West Side community. His comrades admired his intellectual acuity, commitment, and fearlessness which he exhibited in public meetings, demonstrations, and building takeovers.
Over the next five years, to a large degree because of Federico’s leadership, El Comité evolved from a community group to a political organization. Between 1970 and 1975, the members of El Comité expanded their community organizing to include a successful fight to establish a bilingual program for students in District 3, which covered public schools in Harlem and the Upper West Side. Because of an influx of new members who lived and worked in the Lower East Side, El Comité led a successful fight in that community to increase the representation of local residents on their school board.
Although the West Side and Lower East Side communities won some significant victories in which El Comité played a leading role, too many residents continued to face underemployment, unemployment, discrimination, poverty, and other injustices. These realities generated discussions in the organization about the struggles taking place in other parts of the city over housing, jobs, education, health care, and other social needs. It also led to an awareness of other groups, particularly the Movimiento Pro Independencia (MPI) and the Young Lords Party, both of which were involved in community struggles and also supported independence for Puerto Rico
Federico played a critical role in establishing and maintaining these relationships with MPI and the Young Lords Party. He also spearheaded the efforts of El Comité to join with MPI and the Young Lords to build a movement to liberate Oscar Collazo, Lolita Lebrón, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Andrés Figueroa Cordero, and Irving Flores Rodriguez (five members of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party), who had been in jail for decades for militantly acting to expose and end U.S. colonial rule of Puerto Rico. He also was active in efforts to defend and liberate other political prisoners accused of violent actions in the United States in support of Puerto Rican independence.
These experiences and interactions quickly intensified the organization’s political studies, analyses, and discussions. Among the first subjects that El Comité studied was Puerto Rican history. This included the history of Spanish rule of the archipelago, and American colonial rule of Puerto Rico after acquiring it from Spain as spoils of the Spanish-American War in 1898.
In addition to studying Puerto Rican history, Federico, along with another El Comité member, Américo Badillo, strongly advocated that El Comité study the Marxist critique of capitalism, which spoke of socialism as an alternative to capitalism, with its class, race, and gender inequalities, and economic crises.
El Comité members found the study of Marxism both challenging and enlightening. It helped them understand the political economy of the United States and wherever capitalism dominated. The organization’s members read works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Mao—particularly their articulation of historical and dialectical materialism—as well as the writings of contemporary Latin American and European Marxists. They also read books about American history, particularly about the U.S. labor movement. Members were also encouraged to read beyond what was collectively studied and discussed.
During this period, El Comité started publishing a newspaper, Unidad Latina, which was sold door-to-door and at street corners. The newspaper reported on current events in Puerto Rico, Latin America, the Caribbean and the United States, particularly in New York City. Significantly, a series of articles outlined the nature of capitalist exploitation. Unidad Latina’s content and perspective were informed by the organization’s study of Puerto Rican and U.S. history and Marxism. Federico and Américo were the editors of the paper.
In addition to political education and distributing Unidad Latina, El Comité expanded its community organizing and involvement in cultural issues. Federico championed these efforts. He played a leading role in a campaign to increase and shape how the mass media covered the Latino community. As a result of that campaign, WNET, the local Public Broadcasting System (PBS) affiliate, added Realidades to its lineup of local programs, a show that focused on issues of concern to the Latino community.
On community issues, Federico encouraged a group of members to be active in the efforts of predominantly Puerto Rican livery drivers, who drove what were known as Gypsy Cabs, to obtain licenses from the city. He also advocated for El Comite’s workers’ group to be involved in efforts to expand the number of Blacks and Puerto Ricans employed in the construction industry. The workers’ group, in collaboration with African American worker allies, won jobs for minority workers on construction sites. A highlight of their efforts was a successful campaign to achieve minority hirings in the building of a new facility on the City College campus in West Harlem. Federico was also a mentor of El Comité’s student group, which organized in a number of public and private colleges to protect and expand hard won access to minority students and to improve the quality of education for all students.
Between 1970 and 1975, Federico’s leadership—in guiding the political direction of El Comité, in recruiting new members, and encouraging members to learn from the communities in which they lived and organized—was pivotal in developing a culture of commitment and sacrifice among members.
In 1975, after months of discussion and debate, in an assembly of its members, El Comité defined itself as a Marxist-Leninist organization, aspiring to become El Comité-MINP (Movimiento de Izquierda Nacional Puertorriqueño), whose goals were to advance the struggle for socialism in the United States and independence for Puerto Rico. Prior to the assembly, the Central Committee suspended publication of Unidad Latina. At the assembly, Federico was elected the First Secretary. Subsequently, El Comité-MINP started publishing a new newspaper, Obreros En Marcha, which was initially edited by Federico and Orlando Colón, another Central Committee member.
In the mid-1970s, New York City government confronted a major fiscal crisis, which was used by the city’s business elites, particularly large banks and real estate corporations, as a pretext to impose draconian cutbacks in social services, particularly health care, higher education, and child care. El Comité-MINP was actively involved in campaigns to protect these vital social programs. In addition, it played a leading role in the campaign to end the U.S. Navy’s use of Vieques for war games in which live ammunition was used by military ships and planes of the United States and its allies.
In 1977, a group of El Comité-MINP members—Nelson Gomez, Pedro Rentas, Noel Colón and Federico—relocated to Puerto Rico. For a couple of years prior to their departure, these four individuals made it known that their priority was to live in Puerto Rico and participate in the island’s independence and workers’ movements. Federico relocated to Puerto Rico with Jeannette Rosselló, whom he married. A few years later they became the parents of a daughter, Vanessa Lora.
Once in Puerto Rico, Federico served for a number of years as an editor of Pensamiento Crítico, a socialist and pro-independence political journal. He also worked for the Teamsters Union, Local 901, as the director of its cooperative bank that offered loans to members at affordable rates. At that time, Local 901 was one of Puerto Rico’s largest and most prominent unions. While he was working for the Local, Federico, along with Noel and Pedro, started a campaign to democratize the union and make it more responsive to the rank and file’s needs and interests, as well as a voice for Puerto Rico’s working class in general. After his period with the union, Federico enrolled in the University of Puerto Rico Law School, where he obtained a law degree. After law school, Federico and a partner started a law firm, which litigated cases in the federal and local court systems. Until his battle with cancer in 2018 made it impossible for him to do so, Federico continued his practice, often providing legal assistance to indigent plaintiffs.
Federico daily frequented a working class restaurant near his home. Because he helped so many of the restaurant’s patrons and staff with legal issues for limited fees or pro bono, Federico was fondly called the “poor people’s lawyer” by the staff of the restaurant.
Besides being a talented leader, organizer, and political strategist, Federico was a reliable comrade and friend. Both in New York City and Puerto Rico, he served as a mentor to many, offering advice and counsel and support when asked and needed. He often provided friends with pro bono legal assistance, whether to help process an inheritance issue or help a friend’s offspring deal with a drug addiction or criminal charge.
Federico was a gifted orator, a strategic thinker, and an adept and fearless social justice organizer. These qualities made him stand out as a leader and a comrade. He valued working class and oppressed peoples. He opposed colonialism in all its manifestations. He knew that the struggle for economic and social justice was challenging. And, as a student of history, he also knew that justice was obtainable, but always at a cost, and that radical social change required a long-term commitment.
Federico personally experienced the ups and downs and personal toll of organizing for social justice and for Puerto Rico’s independence. But despite experiencing setbacks in his own political organizing and work, Federico never abandoned his commitment to participating and supporting movements for economic and social justice. He never wavered in his commitment to advancing the interests of Puerto Rico’s working people and the importance of obtaining Puerto Rico’s national liberation.
Here in the United States, Federico Lora López will not be forgotten by those in El Comité-MINP who knew him as a mentor, friend, leader, and comrade, and by the many whose lives he touched as a political and community organizer and leader. The roster of people who will remember him fondly is long. He lived a life of meaning and commitment to human dignity and social justice. For that, he will always be remembered.
!Compañero Federico Lora López, Presente!
~Victor Quintana
September 14, 2019
“I understand that all you have said are my contributions to El Comité...are in reality contributions from all of you to me. In the process, you made of me a better person, you made of me a revolutionary…”
~Federico Lora López
First Assembly of El Comité-MINP
November 4, 1978
