Why No One in Puerto Rico Seems to Like the FBI

The Smoldering, Smothered Struggles of An American Colony

Imagine, if you can, an FBI raid on a tranquil farmhouse in a picturesque rural vista where the target is an old man wanted for connection to a bank robbery that occurred almost a quarter century earlier. Imagine, if you can, that, instead of ending a long stand-off, a sniper’s bullet begins a long stand-off. Imagine, if you can, a group of journalists being attacked by draconian government shock troops in an attempt to keep said journalists from covering a jack-booted ransacking of the home of an elementary school teacher and the offices of a Presbyterian minister.

If you are having trouble imagining any of the above, don’t feel bad because it is difficult for many Americans to imagine what is not shown to us on the television or the newspapers. And, in fairness to those who are having imagination issues right now, it is not like any of the aforementioned has been shown to many of us on the television or the newspapers. Now, it is not because what has just been described has not been happening – it has; it is just that what has been described has been happening in Puerto Rico and not River Oaks or Coral Gables.

As you read this, there is a good chance that some sort of demonstration protesting the FBI’s heavy-handed and, some contend, illegal actions in different parts of Puerto Rico is going on or, at the very least, another is being planned.

Bottom line: there is a growing number of people in Puerto Rico that are pissed off about yet another manifestation of what happens to people living in one of the world’s last colonies. That’s right ladies and gentlemen – no matter how your conscious as an American citizen proud of this country’s anticolonial struggles wants to view it, Puerto Rico is a colony of the United States of America and has been since General Nelson Miles and his U.S. troops invaded Puerto Rico at the end of July, 1898 when the outcome of the Spanish-American War was already a victorious foregone conclusion for the United States.

The natural question that many are likely asking right now is “How in the name of Patrick Henry is Puerto Rico a colony of the United States?” For starters, Puerto Ricans are not allowed to participate in national elections including but not limited to voting for the President of the country whose flag flies over every public building on the island. It is interesting to note at this time that Iraqis that have been living in places like California and Michigan for the past twenty years were allowed and even encouraged by the U.S. government to vote in Iraq’s recent series of elections. Puerto Ricans are allowed to vote on the island itself but the United States Congress does not recognize the outcome of any plebiscite on the island as binding.

But, contrary to what many people concerned about the recent immigration demonstrations across the United States may erroneously believe, Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens and, in fact, have been since the Jones Act was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson in 1917 (just in time to allow the War Department to draft able-bodied Puerto Rican men to bolster enlistment rosters being mobilized for the blood and mud soaked trenches of Western Europe during World War I). Puerto Ricans are also U.S. citizens when it comes time to pay taxes.

In Puerto Rico, the “Americaness” of its children as determined by when it comes time to die for the United States as a member of the U.S. military is known as “the blood tax.” To whit, G.I.’s from the island of Puerto Rico suffered more casualties per capita during the Vietnam War than any mainland state.

And, with all due respect to the Founding Fathers, the principle prohibiting “taxation without representation” does not apply to Puerto Rico as, since they are not allowed to cast votes from the island for mainland elections, they do not have any elected officials representing them as participatory members of the bicameral law-making body of Washington. D.C.

Of course, all of Puerto Rico’s military sacrifices are not limited to volunteers and draftees in every North American conflict from the “war to end all wars” to the current invasion of Iraq. In many regards, Puerto Rico has been a floating U.S. military base in the Caribbean ever since those first Marines landed 108 years ago. While the notorious naval installation on the former fishing island of Vieques finally closed recently, there still remains a strong military presence on this island just slightly larger than Delaware.

*With a total population of almost four million people (about what one can find in Oklahoma or Oregon) in such a small space, Puerto Rico is a very densely populated island. Some have said that if the continental United States were to have the population density of Puerto Rico (1,100 persons per square mile), every single person on Earth would be living in the 48 contiguous states.

The cancer rates for residents of Vieques that did not have any bombs blow them to smithereens like a quarter-ton piece of live ordinance did David Sanes Rodriguez on April 19, 1999 are as high as are the incidents of horrible blood disorders. The likelihood of a fisherman catching a contaminated fish in that area is as likely as the air turning a little chilly in Minnesota during winter.

In 1998, U.S. Representative Don Young (AK – R) introduced a proposed piece of legislation heretofore known as the Young Bill that on the surface outlined possible avenues of addressing Puerto Rico’s political state of limbo. Also included in the text of the Young Bill was the stipulation that no change in Puerto Rico’s political status (continued “Free Affiliated State” or Commonwealth; 51st state; or return to independence) would result in any change in the U.S. military presence in Puerto Rico. In other words, one Chaguaramas was enough for the Pentagon; Washington is determined to have a second Guantanamo even if Puerto Rico does finally reattain independence. That, however, would run contrary to United Nations’ policies on decolonization. As Mario Murillo, a professor at Hofstra University wrote in Islands of Resistance, “all military activities by an occupying force should cease completely before any true process of self-determination can take place.”

Indeed, United Nations Resolution 1514 (XV), which was passed in December 1960, a period of accelerated decolonization, has been cited as part of the liberation struggles for the peoples of Tibet, the Malvina Islands, Palestine, Papua, et cetera.

In part, this declaration states that “the subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation constitutes a denial of fundamental human rights….” This is significant when one looks at the disheartening economic conditions (in 2004, Puerto Rico’s unemployment rate was over eleven percent while the rate in the United States was under five and a half) that have long compelled so many Boriquas, as many Puerto Ricans affectionately and reverently refer to themselves, to leave their beloved Isla de Encanto, Island of Enchantment for life in the United States.

This significant fact becomes even more disheartening when one looks at the state of Puerto Rico’s economy prior to the arrival of General Miles. According to noted historian Dr. Eric E. Williams (who was also the first Prime Minister of Trinidad & Tobago), Puerto Rico thrived on “small farming and diversified economy, based on the cultivation of minor crops rather than plantation staples.”

Puerto Rico’s colonial status is also symbolized by the long history of both official and unofficial, blatant and subtle repression of its culture as symbolized by the varying yet perpetual degrees of colonial insistence on English being the exclusive language of instruction in Puerto Rican schools, in particular at high school levels and above.

Let us go back, however, to the unimaginable scenario described earlier.

The largest demonstrations occurring at San Juan’s Hiram Bithorn Stadium during last month’s World Baseball Classic were not the petty and childish antics of some elitist malcontents from Miami accosting the Cuban baseball team. Just outside of the stadium and outside of the interest of news directors was a series of strong showings by Puerto Ricans protesting the naked aggression against their people by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Reports indicate that the gathering of protestors stretched for at least over a half mile down a major thoroughfare in the Puerto Rican capital.

These protests were a continuation of a series of public condemnations of an upsurge in sadistic tactics by FBI agents.

On September 23 of last year, the G-men, acting on a tip from a former Marine in Puerto Rico who some sources say is a police officer who was looking to cash in on a half-million dollar reward, surrounded Filiberto Ojeda Rios in his home in a rural district. A government sniper shot Ojeda and the agents thereupon forbade anyone to enter the dwelling for approximately twenty hours.

A doctor present at Ojeda’s autopsy indicates that the 72 year old Ojeda bled to death from a bullet wound to his shoulder.

The sad irony of what many in Puerto Rico continue to describe as the cold-blooded assassination of Ojeda was that it occurred on the anniversary of Puerto Rico’s Grito de Lares, or Rebel Yell of the town of Lares, when Puerto Rican patriots declared their outright independence from Spain on September 23, 1868 – over a fortnight before Cuba declared its independence from Spain. Interestingly, both Puerto Rico’s and Cuba’s days of independence differ the United States’ Fourth of July in that both the Puerto Rican and Cuban declarations were based upon and called for the immediate and unconditional abolition of slavery whereas, after drafting and signing the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson likely went back to Monticello to rape some more of his slaves.

The death of Ojeda was not only denounced by many inside and outside of Puerto Rico but it has also served to galvanize the island’s independence movement of which Ojeda was just one of many passionate advocates.

Puerto Rico’s efforts to secure its freedom and sovereignty date back, in the modern era, to the 19th century when Paris-educated doctor Ramón Emeterio Betances first clamored for the independence of Borinquen, the name Puerto Rico’s indigenous Taino people called the island and, hence, the name that Puerto Rican patriots had chosen for their country when Spain finally gave autonomy to the island in 1897 after almost thirty years of having Puerto Rican representatives serve as participatory members of Madrid’s legislative assembly, the Cortes.

At the time of the U.S. invasion, Borinquen was already issuing its own currency, postage stamps as part of its own postal service, was managing its own customs houses as per international travel and commerce, and had its own constitution. This was the basis upon which the legendary Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos, an Ivy League-trained intellectual giant, formed his argument against what he viewed quite clearly as the illegitimacy of U.S. rule over what was already a sovereign nation per international laws and precedents.

A WWI veteran who served as a doughboy in France, Albizu Campos saw no point in groveling for rights continually being denied to his country via more formal avenues. Reminiscent of Cuban patriot Antonio Maceo’s famous quote that “begging for rights is only appropriate of cowards incapable of exerting them,” Albizu Campos saw a moral and historical foundation for his eventual advocacy of armed insurrection against colonial oppression. After all, he reasoned, had not George Hewes and Leonard Pitt defied the British when they dumped £10,000 worth of tea into Boston Harbor and had not the Minutemen taken up arms against the red coats at both Concord and Lexington?

Albizu Campos’ dedication to the cause of Puerto Rican independence was uncompromising (“patriotism requires an offering and in this there is no partiality. It’s either all or nothing,” he once said). This dedication was to be tested through over a quarter of a century of incarceration in federal prisons and subsequent radiation torture while in custody in the 1950’s.

The long history of Puerto Rican independistas struggling for their country’s freedom, in fact, is being celebrated this month. April is being recognized as Puerto Rican Freedom Month in remembrance of a series of arrests in April 1980 that led to the detention of over fifteen Puerto Rican nationalists. Even after executive clemency signed by Bill Clinton in 2000, there are still some Puerto Ricans that have remained behind bars since 1980.

On February 10 of this year, just a few short months after the attack on the home of Ojeda, FBI agents and SWAT teams from Miami arriving either by convoy of SUV’s or Homeland Security helicopters swarmed down on the homes of various leaders in Puerto Rico’s independence movement – while most were at work. The FBI stated that the raids, which were conducted without giving local law enforcement or even the governor of Puerto Rico notice until after the raids had started, were part of a pre-emptive effort to attack terrorism.

Among the “terrorists” that the FBI had targeted for that day’s raids were Vilma Vélez Roldán, an elementary school teacher whose home was ransacked over the course of a four hour search, and José Morales, a Presbyterian minister whose community economic development offices had computers and files removed.

Despite the attempt to justify raids, that have been described as exercises in excessive force, as part of an anti-terrorist campaign, apparently no arrests were made in connection with the raids nor does it appear that any of the targeted individuals were prohibited from leaving the island.

Also on February 10th, after the raid on the home of Lilian Laboy, during which time neither Laboy’s daughter nor attorney were allowed inside by federal agents, members of the local press attempted to enter the residence in an attempt to “get the full story.” At that point, the reporters were attacked by pepper-spray wielding FBI personnel resulting in the hospitalization of some of the journalists.

According to accounts, the attacks were unprovoked and subsequently drew harsh denunciations by professional groups such as the Organization of Independent Journalists, the Journalists Association of Puerto Rico, the Union of Journalists, the Center for the Freedom of the Press, the Overseas Press Club, and the Association of Photojournalists.

That same afternoon, crowds flocked to San Juan’s federal courthouse (which also houses the local FBI office) in a show of outrage towards the continued abuse of power in Puerto Rico which Donna Hernandez of the Applied Research Center states has increased since the 2001 passage of the USA Patriot Acts.

“It was always bad,” says Hernandez, “but it has gotten worse.”

Additionally, to date, local officials complain about the degree to which federal officials are obstructing their own investigations into both the matter of Ojeda’s death and the events related to the February raids. This has only added to the indignation of Puerto Ricans both on and off the island.

It is also important to note at this point that these series of events that have been virtually ignored by mainstream media outlets in the United States. Conversely, these events have been reported on extensively by print and broadcast media on the island.

It is obvious that a gross injustice is taking place in Puerto Rico. The difficulty, however, is in determining which is the great injustice: that Puerto Rico is a colony with no apparent future of peaceful transition to dignified sovereignty or that no one in the United States seems to care.