Biography
María Cueto was the director of the National Commission on Hispanic Affairs of the Episcopal Church and a well-known grand jury resister. Subpoenaed in 1977 and again in 1981 before federal grand juries investigating the FALN and the Puerto Rican independence movement, she refused to testify on principle. After jailing for civil contempt, she was among five resisters (with Ricardo Romero, Julio and Andrés Rosado, and Steven Guerra) indicted for criminal contempt and each sentenced to three years.
The early-1980s movement history reprinted in Que Ondee Sola, March 2010, identifies Cueto as Chicana-Mexicana and places her with Myrna Salgado and Raisa Nemikin among grand-jury resisters imprisoned for over ten months. Its statement that Cueto, Steven Guerra, Julio and Andrés Rosado, and Ricardo Romero face another grand jury is prospective at the original text's date; it is not proof of a new executed arrest or continuous imprisonment into 2010. PDF page 12. Source: https://queondeesola.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/QOS-March-10.pdf#page=12
The interview introduction recalls actual grand-jury confinement beginning in March 1977 and ending in January 1978, described as ten months. This corroborates the existing detention; month references are not fabricated day-level endpoints. Source: The Witness, April 1978, PDF page 18. https://digitalarchives.episcopalarchives.org/the_witness/pdf/1978_Watermarked/Witness_19780401.pdf#page=18
Separate 1980s imprisonment
Cueto’s 1977–1978 civil-contempt detention is retained as a separate case. The previously omitted criminal-contempt case had a June 7, 1983 sentence, April 1984 prison entry, and May 16, 1986 release from FCI Pleasanton. April 1 is a month-storage placeholder; no exact admission day is asserted.
Sources: Guerra v. Meese, background and note 8; Libertad, June 1986, page 8.
A March 4, 1983 contemporary report identified Charles Sifton as the judge in the Brooklyn federal criminal-contempt trial in which the five grand jury resisters were convicted on February 16, 1983.
The John Brown Anti-Klan Committee’s November 1984 account names María Cueto among five grand-jury resisters arrested in 1982 and reports that their separate criminal-contempt prison terms began in April 1984. The arrest and the later sentence service are different events. Its prison directory identifies the institution where each resister was then held.
Stop the Grand Jury!, John Brown Anti-Klan Committee, November 1984, PDF page 15; Stop the Grand Jury!, John Brown Anti-Klan Committee, November 1984, PDF page 16.
Libertad names this imprisoned resister in a May 10, 1985 habeas challenge to parole treatment.
The grand-jury article reports actual jailing the previous week for refusal to testify in the FALN inquiry and notes the women said they had already answered FBI questions in November. The newspaper calls their refusal principled and demands dismissal. Its up-to-fourteen-month forecast is not actual service and does not replace independently documented statutory limits. The printed parenthesis reverses executive-director/secretary roles relative to other records; those roles are not silently changed. An individually captioned photograph identifies both women.
