Heroes to some, terrorists to others

 BY CAROL ROSENBERG

 SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Freed revolutionary Carmen Valentin, until recently
 doomed to 98 years in a federal penitentiary, spent Saturday unnerved, taking her
 8-year-old granddaughter to the doctor for a cold.

 Ricardo Jimenez, who also was imprisoned for two decades of a 98-year
 sentence, is discovering San Juan's nightlife and thinking about a career in
 computer graphics.

 Then there's Dylcia Pagan, whose former bomb-maker ex-husband is a
 two-decade fugitive from U.S. justice in Cuba: She's promoting sales of a film
 about their 20-year-old son, who was raised clandestinely from infancy by people
 picked by ``the movement'' in Mexico.

 These are the graying vestiges of 1960s and '70s Puerto Rican revolutionary
 activity, people who barely lived here but fought to forge an independent island
 nation. Six weeks after President Clinton granted 11 imprisoned radicals
 clemency in exchange for pledges of non-violence, three told The Herald in their
 first in-depth interviews that they regret nothing and remain committed to Puerto
 Rican independence.

 The movement -- but not these particular prisoners -- was linked to a wave of
 bombings that left six dead.

 STILL COMMITTED

 ``I don't think I'm a throwback to another age,'' said Pagan, 53. ``I'm a woman who
 was captured and did almost 20 years in prison but never lost contact with her
 people and the struggle for the independence of her country. I am now in freedom
 and on the island and living the daily reality of colonialism.''

 Born and raised in East Harlem by Puerto Rican migrant parents, she spoke in
 New York-accented English as she sat beneath a Che Guevara plaque in a New
 York classmate's gated community home in suburban San Juan.

 Life for Jimenez now is a bed in the former library of a professor's apartment, and
 claps on the back and bear hugs from strangers in the street. They recognize him
 from last month's airport welcome, thronged by hundreds, which was broadcast
 by local and national media.

 ``This is the longest period I've ever been here,'' said Jimenez, 43, whose parents
 took him from Puerto Rico to Chicago when he was 1 month old. Before his arrest
 in May 1980 with Valentin and Pagan in a van carrying weapons, he had only
 been back once, for less than a week.

 Self-described political prisoners, they are derided as terrorists by some here,
 hailed as heroes by others.

 DAY-TO-DAY LIFE

 Mostly, they are grappling with the mundane day-to-day realities of re-entry into
 life in the place they describe as ``my homeland'' in the dusk of the post-Cold War
 20th Century.

 And while they say their tactics have changed, they still espouse a '60s-sounding
 revolutionary fervor -- complete with salutes to their comrade Fidel Castro and
 contempt for American consumerism.

 ``The problem is not us, the problem is colonialism,'' said Jimenez. ``I still believe
 in what I believed in before. Puerto Rico has a right to independence and
 self-determination.''

 Pagan echoes his words in a separate conversation because the former foot
 soldiers of the FALN, the Spanish initials of the Armed Forces of National
 Liberation, cannot associate as a condition of their parole.

 ``My zeal of fervor of wanting my country to be free doesn't change,'' she said.
 ``But there are different tactics and different times. I think, then, that everyone felt
 that revolution was around the corner -- not just us, the blacks and the
 Palestinians. We knew of the success of Cuba and Vietnam.''

 HISTORY CHANGED

 While she was in jail, she said, ``history changed. The Soviet bloc failed, the wall
 in Berlin fell, the whole socialist thing fell. Cuba still continues and I commend
 Fidel Castro for being able to fight against an unjust embargo and the Cuban
 people are able to survive. Cuba has succeeded. It has a society that has
 education, that has employment -- I'm hoping someday to visit.''

 Meantime, she can't leave her friend's white stucco home for more than three
 days without her federal parole officer's permission.

 And, no, she says, even though her ex-husband has lived in Havana for more than
 two decades, she hasn't heard from William Guillermo Morales -- or anyone else
 on the island since arriving here in mid September.

 Has Castro called to congratulate her?

 ``I wish,'' she sighed.

 None say they regret their activities. So what changed?

 ``The movements. You have to march with the rhythm of time and this definitely
 seems to be the years of resolution,'' said Valentin, who still punctuates her
 sentences with a decidedly '60s right on. ``At that time, in different parts of the
 world, people were acting by taking up arms.''

 NEW TACTICS

 Besides, all three said, much of Puerto Rico is united behind a peaceful political
 campaign to drive the U.S. Navy from a bombing range at the eastern island of
 Vieques; two decades ago Puerto Ricans were too timid -- or too scared -- to
 confront Washington on what Valentin calls nationalist issues.

 When the Puerto Ricans were captured on the outskirts of Chicago in 1980, they
 refused to offer a defense and were convicted of seditious membership in a
 movement that was eventually blamed for dozens of bombings of U.S. federal
 buildings.

 Following the lead of Morales, who blew off part of his face and fingers in a
 bomb-making factory in Queens, they declared themselves prisoners of war and
 received nearly life-long prison sentences. By then Morales was in Havana. He
 escaped from a prison at New York's Bellevue Hospital and was spirited by black
 revolutionaries to Mexico.

 For years, their cases were mostly forgotten. Bombs blamed on the FALN have
 not exploded/ for at least a decade.

 Law enforcement authorities argue that the violence stopped because they
 arrested the ring members, and locked them away.

 GOVERNOR'S STANCE

 For his part, Puerto Rican Gov. Pedro Rossello said Friday that he supported
 President Clinton's decision to release the 11 prisoners in September, because
 their sentences were long, and they had agreed to disavow violence.

 Rossello advocates not nationalism but statehood as a solution to the island's
 commonwealth status.

 Rossello said the 11 were neither revolutionaries nor political prisoners. He
 considers them terrorists. ``If you plan to construct and detonate bombs, that is a
 crime and a terrorist action. That's the bottom line.''

 The governor added that he agreed with a 1996 Justice Department report
 released by Congress last week that characterized the group as still a national
 security threat.

 ``They exist. In reality their numbers are very small but it only takes one person to
 put a bomb,'' he said. ``The Unibomber was one person.''

 Pagan, who still sprinkles her English with New York Yiddish, bristled at the
 comparison. ``Bubbeh, we were part of a revolutionary international struggle. You
 cannot equate that with the Unibomber. Was George Washington not considered
 revolutionary?''

 Yet Valentin, 53, a former Chicago public school counselor who had a 7-year-old
 son at the time of her arrest, had no time for such soul-searching Saturday
 morning.

 While weighing a research position offer from the University of Puerto Rico, she
 was rattled by a more practical part of her island existence: finding a friend to help
 her take 8-year-old Carina to the doctor, for fear her cold could trigger an asthma
 attack.

 ``I'm still fitting into my grandmotherly role,'' she said. ``Everything is new to me.
 This is the first time I'm living here full time. I'm new at taking care of children
 also.''