December 25, 2011
from Juan Santiago
In another grand heroic deed of the youth-students at the UPR, they started working on this mural on Friday December 23, 2011, working from 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. They continued on Christmas Eve, Saturday the 24th of December at 9:00 a.m. They worked intensely that day. It was obvious that they wanted to finish the Mural, and that it would be a Christmas present for Oscar. Midnight came, and the work was well advanced. It was Christmas. The brigade kept working. They found spotlights to light their work. It rained on them. They put up a tent. The police kept passing by on their typical rounds and saw with strange reverence how beautiful the Mural was. They worked on the details of the Mural. With dawn they continued on their course, with no sign of surrender or exhaustion. This photo was taken at 4:30 a.m. The brigade was led by the artist Abdiel Arenas, Abderaman, Cesar, Manuel, Carlos, and others whose names I don’t know. Their finished their patriotic marathon right on Christmas. It was dawn and you could hear the mist of nature that Oscar so longs for. Christmas happily sang “Justice-Freedom- Solidarity” for the political prisoner whose only purported crime was to love his homeland. This is proof of the ancestry and strength of the new generation taking on the struggle, and how they are inspired by Oscar López Rivera’s life and heroic deeds. Long live free Puerto Rico! Long live Oscar López Rivera! How welcome the Redeeming Christmas will be!