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Lopez was considered a top leader of the Armed Forces of National Liberation, or FALN, an ultranationalist Puerto Rican group that claimed responsibility for more than 100 bombings at government buildings, department stores, banks and restaurants in New York, Chicago, Washington and Puerto Rico during the 1970s and early 1980s.

Lopez-Rivera helped found the violent terrorist group FALN.

In 1999, Bill Clinton's offer to commute the sentences of members of FALN, a Puerto Rican paramilitary organization, was seen as a way to shore up Hispanic support for then-First Lady Hillary Clinton's future run for a New York U.S.

The dust-up centered on the parade honoring Oscar López Rivera, a 74-year-old Puerto Rican convicted in 1981 for conspiring to overthrow the U.S. government in connection with his membership in a Puerto Rican paramilitary group known by the Spanish acronym FALN.

A political prisoner in the tradition of Nelson Mandela to his followers and a terrorist to critics, Lopez Rivera is fresh out of federal prison, where he served 35 years for his leadership role in the Armed Forces of National Liberation, or FALN, blamed for more than 100 bombings in the 1970s and early 1980s.