By Jason Cohen
June 8, 2020

For close to 20 years Ana Belen Montes, a Puerto Rican woman, has been held hostage in a federal prison located in Fort Worth, Texas. Due to the hard work of dedicated activists an international movement in solidarity with Montes has forced the federal government to grant her early release in 2022.

To support Ana Belen Montes in her struggle to transition back into society, an amazing social media campaign has been launched by ProLibertad and La Mesa de Trabajo por Ana Belen Montes. The campaign consists of supporters taking a picture of themselves holding a sign with the rallying cry “Ana Belen Montes Is Ours! ¡Ana Belen Montes es Nuestra!”

This campaign is meant to help spread awareness about this prisoner of conscience and help raise money that will be needed once she is free. This is an amazing campaign that will help an anti-imperialist who dared to fight against the criminal ambitions of the United States.

So what did Ana Belen Montes do? During her tenure as an official in the Defense Intelligence Agency she learned about the numerous strategies the United States had been using to destabilize Cuba. Montes has something that is hardly found in most people who work in capitalist intelligence agencies — a conscience. She allegedly shared classified information about imperialist ventures with the Cuban government for 16 years before she was incarcerated.

During her trial Montes stated: “I engaged in the activity that brought me before you because I obeyed my conscience rather than the law. I believe our government’s policy toward Cuba is cruel and unfair, profoundly un-neighborly, and I felt morally obligated to help the island defend itself from our efforts to impose our values and our political system on it.”

Montes was persecuted because she believed that the imperialist intrigues against the Cuban Revolution were criminal, and unlike the capitalist ruling class, she felt a fraternal bond with the Cuban people and with humanity as a whole.

It’s really heartening to see the work that ProLibertad and La Mesa has done in defense of Montes. They have struggled to educate the public about her case and have fully commandeered a campaign that will free her years before her original sentence would be completed, along with a nice fund that will ease her transition back to civilian life.

It is important to emphasize this because each political prisoner freed bolsters the movement to free the rest of our comrades who are wasting away in these concentration camps of the working class. In 2022, Ana will be free! May those fortresses of capital collapse under the weight of the workers struggle!

¡Ana Belen Montes es Nuestra!
¡Que Viva Puerto Rico Libre!
¡Long Live Cuban-Puerto Rican Solidarity!