Carmen Valentín Pérez was born in Camuy, Puerto Rico, on March 2, 1946 and emigrated with her family to the U.S. when she was 10 years old. She graduated from Providence/St.Mel High School in 1965, and received a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish from Northeastern Illinois University and a Masters of Arts in Counselling from Roosevelt University. At the time of her arrest by the U.S. Government on seditious conspiracy charges was completing her Doctorate from Loyala University in Chicago.
Valentín Pérez and 11 others were arrested on April 4, 1980, in Evanston, Illinois. They had been linked to more than 100 bombings or attempted bombings since 1974 in their attempt to achieve independence for Puerto Rico. At their trial proceedings, all of the arrested declared their status as prisoners of war, and refused to participate in the proceedings.
For many years, numerous national and international organizations criticized Carmen Valentin's incarceration categorizing it as political imprisonment. Carmen Valentín Pérez was finally released from prison on September 10, 1999, after President Bill Clinton extended her clemency. Clinton cited Rev. Desmond Tutu and former President Jimmy Carter as having been influential on his decision to grant Valentin the clemency offer. Cases involving the release of other Puerto Rican Nationalist prisoners have also been categorized as cases of political prisoners, with some being more vocal than others.
Today, Valentin Perez works as an English tutor and Teacher at the Colegio Universitario de San Juan (CUSJ), where she has worked since 2003. She started at this educational institution one year after leaving prison. “We try to help them so that they can graduate from the university. They come mostly from the public schools of Puerto Rico. The students take two year in the health field and other take four year bachelor degrees in nursing. I really like my work as an educator, and would like to work here until I retire in a few years. Ms. Valentin still makes presentations on Puerto Rican television and radio on the need for Puerto Rican independence and the freedom of the political prisoner, Oscar Lopez Rivera, who has been in prison for 32 years.
In criticizing President Clinton's decision to release the Puerto Rican prisoners, the conservative U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee also categorized Valenin as a "Puerto Rican Nationalist", echoing a recent Newsweek article. In 2006, the United Nations called for the release of the remaining Puerto Rican political prisoners in United States prisons.
Her decision to return to Puerto Rico after her release was above all about family and love for her homeland. She said, “I felt like I had work to do here, caring for my mother and grand-daughter, Karina Lopez Valentin. Additionally, I always wanted to come back to live here. I never wanted to live in the United States, which I never liked anything about— not the climate, not the food, not the atmosphere. The only reason I stayed there was my involvement with the struggle for the independence of Puerto Rico.” However, she often still visits the States as her only son, Antonio and the rest of her grandchildren live in Chicago.
Valentín Pérez feels hopeful about the self-determination of the Puerto Rican people and its political Future. She says that lately the patriotic fervor that people have felt fills her with hope: “There will never be statehood here. Now I feel it, I see it, and I’m living it. This coming year, the situation will be good because there are so many disastrous policies, like firing thousands of people and the sinister plans this administration has for the Ecological Corridor. They’re trying to destabilize and destroy everything, and Puerto Rico will rise up,” said Valentin.
