Federico Cintrón-Fiallo
Biography
Puerto Rican independentista jailed on civil contempt charges for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury investigating the clandestine independence movement. His resistance was widely supported by the Puerto Rican left and human rights organizations. Documented in PFOC Breakthrough magazine.
Federico Cintrón Fiallo, a Puerto Rican independence activist and socialist from Arecibo (and brother of Macheteros commander Norberto Cintrón Fiallo), refused — with Carlos Noya — to testify before a federal grand jury in Brooklyn investigating the FALN in 1983, telling the court their refusal stemmed from "a struggle of liberation." After an August 1983 mistrial he was convicted of criminal contempt in October 1983, and on April 9, 1984 U.S. District Judge Eugene Nickerson sentenced him to two years in prison; he was imprisoned until a judge ordered his release in 1985. He is identified as a leader of the Fuerzas Armadas de Resistencia Popular (FARP) and later earned a doctorate and became a university professor.
Executive secretary of Puerto Rico's United Workers Movement (MOU) labor federation, arrested in Aug. 1975 by FBI and undercover agents on bank-robbery charges as he prepared to attend a solidarity conference in Havana; The Black Panther Vol. 14 no.6 (1975) reports his attorneys called it an attempt to cripple organized labor and the independence movement.
Criminal-contempt prison entry
The federal court confirms that Cintrón-Fiallo began serving his two-year criminal-contempt sentence in June 1984. The date is stored with month precision: June 1 is a placeholder, not a verified admission day. His actual release endpoint remains unverified.
Source: Guerra v. Meese, background.
Sentence date distinguished from prison admission
Federico Cintron-Fiallo reports June 11, 1984 admission to the Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York, in his interview cited by Luis Rogelio Torres (footnote 433). Torres reports actual November 15, 1985 release, citing Jose Che Paralitici, Sentencia impuesta, page 347. This supersedes the unsupported twelve-month duration. His separate earlier civil-contempt record is not silently combined with this criminal-contempt stay.
Sources: Breakthrough, Summer 1984, PDF page 39: both began serving sentences in June; Luis Rogelio Torres, 2022 doctoral thesis, printed page 161, footnotes 433-434: interview admission and retrospective actual release dates; Libertad, November 1985, page 2: forecasts only, not independent actual-release confirmation. Complete relevant pages visually checked. No identified Carlos Noya portrait located; namesakes and the Juan Mari Bras column-author portrait excluded.
The Spring/Summer 1985 Write Through the Walls directory individually lists Federico Cintrón-Fiallo under historical prisoner number 16900-053, with correspondence directed to Pembroke Station, Danbury, Connecticut; unit 5G. The original name, individual number and political-prisoner group context match this existing profile. This is dated historical correspondence information, not a present mailing instruction or an independently established admission, transfer, release or completed custody duration.
The Militant reported that a jury found Federico Cintrón Fiallo and Carlos Noya Muratti guilty of refusing to appear before a federal grand jury on October 20, 1983, after an earlier trial ended with a hung jury.
Libertad names this imprisoned resister in a May 10, 1985 habeas challenge to parole treatment.
