Puerto Ricans Hail Activists as Patriots : Clemency: Freed nationalists are welcomed enthusiastically. Most say little, constrained by conditions of their release.

Vilified in the United States as unrepentant terrorists, but revered by many in this Caribbean island as patriots, a group of Puerto Rican nationalists freed from prison by President Clinton was welcomed here Saturday as heroes.

Local officials lionized them as saviors of Puerto Rican honor. Airport security guards posed for pictures with four of the activists, who just hours earlier had been locked up in federal penitentiaries. Children presented them with kisses and bouquets of flowers.

But the activists themselves, part of a group of 16 offered clemency last month, seemed subdued. Most did not promise to continue the militant struggle for Puerto Rican independence that landed them in prison nearly two decades ago, when they were linked to more than 100 bombings on U.S. soil.

Instead, as a throng at the airport chanted “Freedom, freedom for the patriots now!” and other slogans, the freed inmates hinted that they were being silenced by the strict conditions of release placed on them by the Clinton administration.

“My jail has now become a cell with invisible bars,” said Adolfo Matos, 48. “And the words I speak will be like those of a caged bird.”

Under the conditional clemency offer by President Clinton last month, the activists may not associate with other felons--a requirement that may prevent them from speaking to one another. The freed prisoners must also report by Tuesday to the U.S. Probation Office in San Juan.

Nine of the 12 prisoners released Friday from a variety of U.S. prisons said they would resettle in Puerto Rico and many arrived here on overnight flights.

“We are going to take some time to see all that we’ve missed these years being absent,” said Carmen Valentin, 53, who served much of her 19 years in prison in Dublin, Calif.

Valentin and the others left behind a political climate that had become overwhelmingly hostile to their cause. Their fate became tied up with First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presumptive bid for the U.S. Senate in New York as Republicans charged that the president’s amnesty offer was a sly attempt to improve her standing with the state’s Puerto Rican voters.

There was little if any mention of Mrs. Clinton on Saturday as the former prisoners’ arrival was covered live on local television and radio. Some reporters were dispatched to remote, provincial villages to cover the emotional scenes as the released prisoners were reunited with family members they hadn’t seen in a generation.

Matos, reprieved from a 70-year sentence, traveled to his native town of Lajas, on the southern side of the island.

Lajas Mayor Marcos Irizarry told a local paper that Matos was “a hero who never killed anyone or stole anything. What he did was defend his country.” The mayor’s welcome was not unusual: Even the pro-statehood daily El Mundo greeted the news of the first activist’s arrival Friday night with the headline: “He’s Home!”

The warm reception for the convicted terrorists may seem, on the surface, paradoxical--only a small fraction of voters on the island has supported independence in recent referendums. But Puerto Rico has a long tradition of embracing its most radical militants as symbols of national honor, even while rejecting their stated goals.

Among the crowd of 200 who waited three hours in stifling heat to greet four of the ex-prisoners Saturday morning were some who did not consider themselves independistas.

“I support the idea of commonwealth,” said Maria del Pilar Cristian, 75, referring to the island’s current, complex relationship with the United States. “But I understand that Puerto Rico should conserve its traditions, its culture and its language.”

Residents of the island have been American citizens since 1917 but can’t vote in presidential elections and have no voting representative in Congress. Even many political moderates believe that the U.S. Congress has extraordinary power over the island’s local affairs.

The sense of victimization has been heightened by the ongoing controversy over the U.S. military presence at Vieques Island, which the Navy uses as a bombing range. The prisoners themselves--given sentences of up to 88 years for what some consider a purely intellectual crime, “seditious conspiracy”--have become national martyrs to many.

“There’s a tremendous groundswell for these people because they’re seen as defending the culture,” said Roland Fernandez, a sociologist and author of “The Disenchanted Island.” “It’s all about dignity and respect.”

Such sentiments helped fuel a long-running campaign on the prisoners’ behalf here and elsewhere. This year, their supporters submitted 75,000 signatures to the White House demanding their freedom.

After Clinton offered conditional clemency last month, more than 100,000 people marched in San Juan to call for their unconditional release.

Sentiment in mainland political circles could not have been more different. Although prosecutors never linked the prisoners to any deaths or injuries, the clemency offer was seen as a surrender to terrorism.

Last week, the U.S. House voted 311-41 to condemn Clinton’s action. The Senate will vote on a similar resolution Monday. A draft text condemns the president for making a “deplorable concession to terrorists.”

Those gathered at the airport to greet the freed prisoners chanted their own response to the controversy: “Colonialists! The Real Terrorists!”

“We really aren’t anti-American,” said Jose Fernando Colon, an English teacher who carried a 20-year-old picture of one prisoner, Alicia Rodriguez. “But we’re completely behind independence because it’s the only dignified status for the people of Puerto Rico.”

When Rodriguez finally appeared to face the crowd of waiting supporters, she looked wan and tired. “If we’re here today before you, it’s because you made it possible. I give you my thanks.”

Elizam Escobar, freed from a 68-year sentence he was serving in Oklahoma, was one former prisoner to express the defiant tone that made the inmates famous during their trials in the early 1980s, when many declared themselves “prisoners of war” and refused to participate in any legal proceedings.

Escobar promised to comply with the conditions of clemency, but also said he would “do everything possible to behave in a way that is worthy of Puerto Rican history. We will try to open new trenches in the struggle.”

When Edwin Cortes arrived late Friday, he held a Puerto Rican flag between his fists, raised it in the air and shouted: “Que viva Puerto Rico!”

Later, he was joined on a makeshift platform at the airport terminal by two popular singers who, under the glare of television lights, accompanied him in a rendition of a Puerto Rican folk song.

Also present was Lolita Lebron, who became an icon of Puerto Rican nationalism in 1954 when she and three compatriots pulled out pistols in the gallery of the U.S. House and fired off a volley of shots while yelling: “Viva Puerto Rico libre!” Five congressmen were wounded.

In a bit of historical irony, many of those who returned to Puerto Rico on Saturday got their start in political activism working to win Lebron’s release in the late 1970s.

On Friday, the white-haired Lebron, freed by President Jimmy Carter in 1978, posed with Cortes and declared, “The people continue in their march forward for a just cause.”