National Latino Opinion Leaders Survey

Puerto Rican Opinion Leaders: Oscar Lopez Rivera, Hero or Terrorist?

By Angelo Falcón

The NiLP Report (June 4, 2017)

Highlights

• Vast majority of Puerto Rican leaders generally supportive of Oscar Lopez Rivera
• However, Puerto Rican leadership divided over Oscar Lopez Rivera as "national freedom hero"
• Only about a third of Puerto Rican leaders view him as a national hero
• More Puerto Rican women leaders than men positive about Oscar Lopez Rivera legacy
• U.S.-born Puerto Rican leaders more negative towards Oscar Lopez Rivera than the Island-born
• More Mexican than Puerto Rican leaders view him as a national hero

CONTENT

The Findings on the Role of:

Ideology

Political Party

Puerto Rico Political Status

Nativity

Region

Sex/Gender

Discussion

As the controversy surrounding the Puerto Rican Parade's honoring of nationalist Oscar Lopez Rivera continues over their designating him a "National Freedom Hero," it has generated a debate about whether or not the majority of the Puerto Rican community agrees. There are no reliable opinion surveys of the more than 5 million stateside Puerto Ricans as a whole, making it necessary to rely on anecdotal evidence that is often too subjectively inaccurate to generalize from.

To attempt to at least begin to address this problem, the National Institute for Latino Policy conducted a brief online survey of Puerto Rican and other Latino opinion leaders on the subject. This survey was conducted on May 29-June 1, 2017 and includes 372 respondents from 26 states, Washington, DC and Puerto Rico. Since this is not a scientifically derived sample of community leaders, our results are only suggestive but we believe they can be useful in putting the issues involved in some context. The pool for these respondents is made up of experienced Latino professionals and academics in all fields. Please note that their views are not generalizable to the entire Latino adult population in the United States but may be to this particular activist/professional stratum.

Those on both the Puerto Rican left and right seem to generally argue that their position on Oscar Lopez Rivera being a hero or a terrorist is the majority view in the Puerto Rican community (also see). In a perhaps oversimplified way, one can characterize, in the Puerto Rican case, the left as largely supporters of independence for Puerto Rico and the right as supporters of statehood. Our survey results suggest that the reality is more complex than this, however.

In this NiLP survey we divide the positions of the respondents, depending on their answers, to four types regarding their view of Oscar Lopez Rivera:

• Strong Supporter: "He is a national hero fighting for the independence of Puerto Rico"
• Moderate Supporter: "He is not a hero but is a patriot fighting for the independence of Puerto Rico"
• Moderate Critic: "He is a radical associated with a terrorist organization, the FALN"
• Strong Critic: "He is a terrorist directly responsible for the death of innocent people"

We first focus solely on Puerto Rican opinion leaders. This is followed by briefly looking at the other Latinos who took the survey.

The Findings

While the vast majority of Puerto Rican opinion leaders have a positive view of Oscar Lopez Rivera, this majority was equally divided between Moderate Supporters (a patriot, not a hero ) (35 percent) and Strong Supporters (national hero) (35 percent). The critics of Oscar Lopez Rivera together make up 26 percent, with Moderate Critics (15 percent) outnumbering Strong Critics (11 percent). While Oscar Lopez Rivera has strong overall support among the Puerto Rican opinion leaders, there is a sharp division among these on their view of him as a "national freedom hero," as he was originally designated by the National Puerto Rican Day Parade Board of Directors.

Ideology. Underlying contending views of Oscar Lopez Rivera's legacy is ideology. While a large majority of the Puerto Rican opinion leaders who identified as progressives viewed him as a "national hero" (58 percent), only 10-12 percent of those who considered themselves conservatives or moderates agreed. On whether he was a "terrorist," 48 percent of the conservatives thought so, compared to only 1 percent of the progressives. More generally, 95 percent of progressives, 66 percent of liberals, 42 percent of moderates and 24 percent of conservatives held positive views of Oscar Lopez Rivera.

Political Party. Related to ideology is political party affiliation. As expected, there was much lower support among the Republican Puerto Rican opinion leaders than among the Democrats. While 77 percent of the Democrats held positive views of Oscar Lopez Rivera, only 14 percent of the Republicans did. The majority of stateside Puerto Ricans are Democrats, with a relatively small number being register Republicans and a large number being Independents.

Puerto Rico Political Status. With a plebiscite on the political status of Puerto Rico is being held on the Island, and some speculation that this affected the controversy surrounding the Puerto Rican Parade in New York City, the Puerto Rican opinion leaders (who are not eligible to vote in this plebiscite because they are not Island residents) were asked their status preferences.

Based on this, we found that only 33 percent of those supporting statehood had positive views of Oscar Lopez Rivera, compared to 94 percent of those supporting independence and 61 percent of those supporting Commonwealth.

Nativity. The Puerto Rican opinion leaders views of Oscar Lopez Rivera were generally positive by nativity. The most negative toward him were the U.S.-born (25 percent), but only by this small minority.

Region. As the Puerto Rican migration from the Island to stateside has intensified with Puerto Rico's ongoing economic crisis, this has resulted in settlement patterns that have geographically polarized Puerto Rican political views on the status issue. This is a pattern that one might see reflected in the views of the Puerto Rican opinion leaders on Oscar Lopez Rivera.

As expected, the Puerto Rican opinion leaders residing in the South, mostly concentrated in Florida, were the least supportive of Oscar Lopez Rivera (52 percent thought he was a hero or patriot) compared to those residing in the Northeast (76 percent) and the Midwest (90 percent). Even among those residing in older Puerto Rican stateside settlements like Chicago (Oscar Lopez Rivera's hometown in the U.S.) and New York City, there are significant differences in support.

Sex/Gender. The role of women in the campaign to free Oscar Lopez Rivera from federal prison was major. Are Puerto Rican women more supportive of him as a result?

Among the Puerto Rican opinion leaders, women were overall more supportive of him (74 percent) than the men (66 percent). However, a larger proportion of the men (36 percent) than the women (32 percent) viewed Oscar Lopez Rivera as a "national hero."

Other Latinos. How do other Latinos view Oscar Lopez Rivera? To our surprise, we found greater support for Oscar Lopez Rivera among the Mexican opinion leaders (78 percent) than among the Puerto Ricans (70 percent). The most negative views about him came from the Other Latino opinion leaders (34 percent). Relatively few of the Mexican and Other Latino opinion leaders indicated they didn't know enough about his case or didn't care.

Discussion

1. This NiLP survey found that there is no consensus on the legacy of Oscar Lopez Rivera among the Puerto Rican leadership. The vast majority see him in a positive light but are evenly divided as to whether to consider him a national hero or simply a patriot. This is in sharp contrast to the sharp criticism of Oscar Lopez Rivera by the media and other American sectors, who view him from an entirely different lens uninformed of the history of U.S.-Puerto Rico relations over the past 119 years since the U.S. invasion of the Island in 1898.

2. Among the Puerto Rican opinion leaders, ideology plays a significant role in their views of Oscar Lopez Rivera. These also carry over to their Puerto Rico status preferences and political party affiliations.

3. The views on Oscar Lopez Rivera by the Puerto Rican opinion leaders also reveal a geographically-based political polarization of Puerto Rican communities in different U.S. regions. This is especially among older Puerto Rican settlements in the Northeast and Midwest, with the newer ones in the South. What general consensus that had existed for over a half century in the older areas of settlement on the support of Commonwealth and independence is in contrast to strong statehood support in the last decade or so in the newer settlements. The political implications for stateside Puerto Rican communities are not, however, entirely clear at this point.

4. The concurrent scheduling of the National Puerto Rican Day Parade and the Puerto Rico status plebiscite on the same day, June 11th, represents an interesting political relationship between these two political systems within the general Puerto Rican population. While the statehood government of Puerto Rico, for example, is wary of interacting with the mostly anti-statehood Puerto Rican politicians and activists in the Northeast and Midwest, they appear more enthusiastic about developing relationships with the stronger statehood strongholds in the South. How these relations will evolve and what their impact will be on Puerto Rican political development is currently difficult to assess.

5. While the Oscar Lopez Rivera controversy may have reinforced negative stereotypes about Puerto Ricans among some Americans, it has also promoted greater solidarity among supporters of independence within the Puerto Rican community. But it has highlighted as well how small and insolated this movement has become and how much support for statehood has grown as the current Commonwealth status falls increasingly into disrepute. The disproportionate influence the independence movement has among activists in the Northeast and Midwest is now being countered by newer migrations that disproportionally support statehood. As the Puerto Rican Parade controversy over honoring Oscar Lopez Rivera demonsrated, this will continue to be a source of tension within the Puerto Rican community as the economic crisis of the Island worsens and U.S. politics continues to lurch to the right.

6. These survey findings explain the underlying reason for the controversy surrounding the National Puerto Rican Day Parade's designation of Oscar Lopez Rivera as a "National Freedom Hero": the Puerto Rican community's diverse views on the subject. While he is considered a national hero by about a third of the Puerto Rican opinion leaders, close to two-thirds do not. Since the Puerto Rican Parade is an institution that needs to reflect the views of the entire Puerto Rican community, violating this reality was what triggered the current controversy.

Angelo Falcón is President of the National Institute for Latino Policy (NiLP). He can be reached at afalcon@latinopolicy.org.

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