Puerto Rican Indpendendence Movement under Attack

Puerto Rican Independence Movement under Attack in New York and San Juan
by Jan Susler
MR ZINE January 2008

"It appears to us to be a reinitiation of the harassment of independentists."1 -- U.S. Congressman José Serrano, speaking to FBI director Robert Mueller
An unexpected knock on the door . . . men in trench coats handing you a grand jury subpoena . . . . If you're involved in the movement for the independence of Puerto Rico, this isn't just a not-so-fond memory of the COINTELPRO era. It's 2008 in New York City, and you are Christopher Torres, a young social worker; Tania Frontera, a young graphic designer; or Julio Pabón Jr., a young filmmaker from the Bronx.
Their subpoenas have aroused vigorous support for them, not just in New York, but in cities across the U.S. and in Puerto Rico. On the island, over forty organizations united to condemn this latest wave of repression and convened a demonstration on January 11 where over a thousand people participated under the theme "In the Face of Repression, Unity and Struggle," with placards and banners calling for the FBI and the federal courts to leave the island. Simultaneous activities took place in Brooklyn, Hartford, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Orlando, Fitchburg, Massachusetts, and Cleveland. As resolutions condemning the repression emanated from the National Lawyers Guild New York City Chapter, the American Association of Jurists, the Interfaith Prisoners of Conscience Project, and the Latin America Solidarity Coalition, the New York Spanish language daily El Diario/La Prensa published an editorial ringing the alarm bell, and U.S. congressman José Serrano telephoned FBI director Mueller to voice his concern.
Why the subpoenas? Why now? And why the resounding, unified denunciations?
Dating back to the era of Spanish colonial control over Puerto Rico, Puerto Rican people have organized to wrest their sovereignty from foreign domination. That resistance continued after the U.S. invasion and occupation in 1898. When the colonizers repressed and criminalized public organizing for independence, clandestine organizations formed, including the Popular Boricua Army -- Macheteros in the 1980s. In 1985, the FBI arrested and almost killed its leader, Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, accusing him of participation in the 1983 expropriation of $7.5 million U.S. government insured dollars from a Wells Fargo depot in Hartford, Connecticut. After his release on bail, Ojeda returned to clandestine existence. In spite of the FBI's ever-increasing reward for information leading to his capture, he remained underground for some fifteen years. On September 23, 2005, however, a squad of FBI assassins circled his home, shot him, and left him to bleed to death.2 The assassination outraged the entire nation, and the FBI became a pariah.
Hoping to distract public attention from their own criminal conduct and justify their presence on the island, particularly in the post-911 era, the FBI soon went on the offensive. On February 10, 2006, allegedly in a continuing investigation of the Macheteros, they raided the homes and businesses of several independence activists and in the process pepper-sprayed the nation's journalists who were covering the FBI's paramilitary incursions. Again, the entire country expressed its outrage. Since then, activists have been stopped, searched, and harassed, with the homes and offices of many others, including attorneys and movement leaders, mysteriously broken into in events reminiscent of the infamous black-bag COINTELPRO jobs: computers, digital cameras, and cell phones are taken, while other valuable items remain untouched.
Recent rumors are that the head of the FBI in San Juan, Luis Fraticelli, is close to the end of his tenure and has given instructions to accelerate efforts to neutralize the remains of the clandestine group.3
For Fernando Martín, a leader of the Puerto Rican Independence Party, the FBI "wants to clean up its image after the assassination of Filiberto (Ojeda Ríos), because they want to be able to say that in Puerto Rico, they investigate people of all parties (and) somehow salvage their image after their selective attacks."4
Julio Muriente, a leader of the National Hostos Independence Movement, stated, "The legal facade of this repressive operation is directed against the Macheteros, but the real intention is against the entire independentist movement, including against the people of Puerto Rico," calling it "an attack which is not against any particular organization, but against a political, social, patriotic movement, and against a people."5
U.S. Congressman José Serrano (D-NY), who was instrumental in getting the FBI to disclose thousands of pages of records documenting its illegal surveillance of and intervention in the independence movement6, said of these subpoenas, "It certainly appears to be a fishing expedition,"7 which, he noted, harkens back to the days when, according to FBI director Freeh, the agency engaged in "egregious illegal action, maybe criminal action."8
The subpoenas, initially returnable on January 11, were continued to February 1. Attorneys announced they would file motions to quash the subpoenas. Frontera's attorney, Martin Stolar, noted that "if the motion is denied, Tania will have to appear before the grand jury, and may decide not to testify, invoking her constitutional rights."9
Organizations in Puerto Rico have announced they will protest in various towns of the island on February 1 in defense and support of the three young people subpoenaed, with the themes "Wake Up, Boricua, Defend Your Own!" and "the Grand Jury Is illegal!" Additional protests are being planned in U.S. cities as well.
The consequences of not collaborating with the grand jury are well known to those who support independence. Norberto Cintrón Fiallo, whose home was searched during the February 10, 2006 FBI incursion, and who participated in the January 11 protest in San Juan, refused to collaborate with various grand juries investigating the independence movement in both Puerto Rico and New York in 1981 and 1982 and served close to three years in prison as a result.110 Julio Rosado, who participated in the January 11 protest in New York, resisted grand juries investigating the Puerto Rican independence movement, serving nine months for civil contempt in 1977, and later much of his three year sentence for criminal contempt. "They have always been there, whenever they want to intimidate," he said, adding that he is convinced there will be more subpoenas to come.111
A New York daily Spanish language newspaper expressed editorial concern over the political witch hunt, in words which should give us all pause:
Because of laws initiated by the Bush Administration and passed by our Congress, the legal protections that would give political dissidents a right to due process have been eroded. The net is wide for casting someone with "suspicious" political beliefs, without having been charged, tried or convicted of a crime, as a threat. [ . . . ] Because the attacks on civil liberties and human rights and the historical intimidation and repression of Puerto Rican independence supporters are interrelated, activists must make those links.
That's all the more urgent considering the silence of most elected leaders and the virtual media blackout on the subpoenas. In the context of secret prisons, torture, detention without trial, and warrantless wiretapping, the FBI's fishing should be a concern for anyone interested in rescuing this country from a rising police state.112

1 José Delgado, "Habla con el jefe del FBI," El Nuevo Día, January 9, 2008.
2 In the white papers designed to avoid criminal liability, the government blamed some of the errors in the operation on Luis Fraticelli, the Puerto Rican special agent in charge of its San Juan field office. Not coincidentally, Fraticelli had also participated in the 1985 near assassination of Ojeda Ríos. See: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, "A Review of the September 2005 Shooting Incident Involving the Federal Bureau of Investigations and Filiberto Ojeda Ríos," August 2006, available at www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/index.htm.
3 José Delgado, "El caso de Nueva York," El Nuevo Día, January 14, 2008.
4 Combined Services, "Denunciation of persecution of independentists:Fernando Martín criticized the newspaper El Nuevo Día for articles published December 23," El Nuevo Día, January 4, 2008.
5 AP, "Repudio independentista a citaciones a Gran Jurado," El Vocero, January 7, 2008.
6 The disclosed documents are being classified at Center for Puerto Rican Studies of the City University of New York at Hunter College. See: www.pr-secretfiles.net/.
7 José Delgado, "Habla con el jefe del FBI: José Serrano le expresó a Robert Mueller el malestar que existe entre los boricuas en Nueva York por la citación de tres jóvenes," El Nuevo Día, January 9, 2008.
8 Matthew Hay Brown, "Puerto Rico Files Show FBI's Zeal; For Decades, Secret U.S. Dossiers Targeted Suspected," Orlando Sentinel, November 06, 2003.
9 Ruth E. Hernández Beltrán/Agencia EFE, "Posponen citación a independentistas de Nueva York," Primera Hora, January 11, 2008.
10 José "Ché" Paralitici, Sentencia Impuesta: 100 Años de Encarcelamientos por la Independencia de Puerto Rico, Ediciones Puerto Histórico (San Juan, Puerto Rico: 2004), pp. 339-341.
11 Ruth E. Hernández Beltrán/ Agencia EFE, "Posponen citación a independentistas de Nueva York," Primera Hora, January 11, 2008, http://www.primerahora.com/XStatic/primerahora/template/nota.aspx?n=146663. Rosado was one of five supporters of independence so imprisoned. Ricardo Romero, Steven Guerra, María Cueto, who are Mexican, and Rosado's brother Andres, simultaneously served time for criminal contempt of the same grand jury. See: United States v. Rosado et al., 728 F.2d 89 (2nd Cir. 1984).
12 "Constructing an Enemy," Editorial, El Diario/La Prensa, January 17, 2008.


Jan Susler is a partner with the People's Law Office in Chicago, which she joined in 1982 after a six year stint at Prison Legal Aid, the legal clinic at Southern Illinois University's School of Law. Her long history of work on behalf of political prisoners and prisoners' rights includes litigation, advocacy, and educational work around USP Marion and the Women's High Security Unit at Lexington, KY. Her practice at PLO focuses in addition on police misconduct civil rights litigation. For several years she was an adjunct professor of criminal justice at Northeastern Illinois University and has also taught at the University of Puerto Rico. Representing the Puerto Rican political prisoners for over two decades, she served as lead counsel in the efforts culminating in the 1999 presidential commutation of their sentences. She continues to represent those who remain imprisoned.

Grand Jury Puerto Rican Activists and Artists

Pro-independence Puerto Ricans subpoenaed by NYC grand jury
The Associated Press
Saturday, January 12, 2008

NEW YORK: The case of three young Puerto Rican activists and artists ordered to appear before a Brooklyn federal grand jury has stirred up protests around the country and provoked outrage among supporters of the movement to grant independence to the U.S. territory.

Attorneys for two of the activists Christopher Torres and Tania Frontera said they had successfully filed motions to postpone their clients' Friday court dates. Supporters said that a third, Julio Pabon Jr., also received a postponement.

Hundreds of people demonstrated Friday in front of the Brooklyn courthouse in protest of the subpoenas. Rallies also took place Thursday in Puerto Rico and other U.S. cities.
"We don't know why this investigation is taking place," said Ana Lopez, a professor of Caribbean history at Hostos Community College in the Bronx who helped organize the rally in New York. "All we know is that its purpose is to harass and intimidate hard-working Puerto Rican people."
Federal grand jury investigations are secret by law. Officials with the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office of the Eastern District of New York said they had no comment. None of the three Puerto Ricans have been charged in any crime.

Supporters of the three speculated that the FBI had expanded a probe that began in Puerto Rico that they said was aimed at harassing the legal movement to obtain independence for the U.S. territory.

In February 2006, FBI agents searched homes and a business to thwart what the agency at the time said was a "domestic terrorist attack" planned by the violent separatist People's Boricua Army, also known as the Macheteros, or "cane cutters."

The group was responsible for bombings and attacks in the 1970s and 1980s and had claimed responsibility for a 1979 attack in which gunmen killed two U.S. sailors.

In 2005, the group's leader, Filiberto Ojeda Rios, who was wanted for the 1983 robbery of an armored truck depot in Connecticut, was killed during a shootout with FBI agents when they came to arrest him at a farmhouse on the island.

Federal investigators later said the FBI agents were justified in killing Ojeda because he opened fire first. Frontera's attorney, Martin Stolar, said it appears the "government is investigating what remains of the Macheteros" after Ojeda's death.

He said his client, a Manhattan graphic designer, has no connection to any organization. "But she's definitely been a lifelong supporter of independence," he said. Frontera was a member of a local group opposed to the military bombing of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques by the U.S. Navy during the 1990s, her supporters said. Her father is also a leading member of the Puerto Rican Independence Party. Stolar said such political activities were "very much aboveground." He questioned the federal government's probe. "We see it as a targeting of aboveground individuals and organizations and associations and conflating that with someone who is involved with the Macheteros," Stolar said.

Attorneys for Torres, a social worker and community activist, and Pabon, a Bronx filmmaker and graduate of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, declined to comment.
Pabon's father, Julio Pabon Sr., said he was at his sports memorabilia shop in the Bronx a few days before Christmas when agents who identified themselves as members of the FBI/NYPD Joint Terrorist Task Force showed up asking for "Julio Pabon." The elder Pabon, a lifelong pro-independence activist, instinctively thought they were looking for him.
"We want the younger one," he said the agents told him, adding that they only wanted to talk to his son.

The elder Pabon was astonished, he said. "I have been an activist all my life," he said. "My son is not involved." But he said his 27-year-old son was definitely pro-independence like his parents and, while at the university, had organized a group of fellow students from Wesleyan to travel to the U.S. naval base in Groton, Connecticut, to protest the bombing of Vieques. Pabon said he and his son knew the other two who had been subpoenaed as well.

Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens since 1917 but they cannot vote for president and have no voting representation in Congress. The island was seized by the U.S. at the end of the Spanish-American War.

Fabricando un enemigo 17 de enero de 2008 Editorial de El Diario La Prensa, Nueva York La citación judicial de tres puertorriqueños para que se presenten ante un gran jurado es una señal de alarma no solamente para el movimiento independentista puertorriqueño. Las citaciones fueron emitidas a un trabajador social, a una diseñadora gráfica y a un cineasta supuestamente en conexión con una investigación del FBI sobre los Macheteros. El director del FBI Robert Mueller supuestamente no sabía de las citaciones, de acuerdo al congresista José Serrano. No es nuevo que el FBI elija como blanco a cualquiera que defienda la independencia de Puerto Rico. Las anteriores vigilancias de la agencia están detalladas en 1.8 millones de páginas, algunas de las cuales fueron hechas públicas en el año 2000. El entonces director del FBI Louis Freeh reconoció que la agencia había realizado acciones notoriamente ilegales, posibles crímenes, contra los puertorriqueños. Incluso el primer gobernador elegido de Puerto Rico, Luis Muñoz Marín, fue etiquetado como subversivo. Hay otro siniestro retroceso. Debido a las leyes presentados por la administración Bush y aprobadas por nuestro Congreso, las protecciones legales que les darían a los disidentes políticos un derecho al proceso debido han sido corroídas. La red es amplia para incluir como amenaza, a cualquiera con creencias políticas “sospechosas” sin tener que acusarle, juzgarle o condenarle de un crimen. Organizaciones como el Centro para los Derechos Constitucionales ha estado retando la mentalidad de estado policial que se ha permitido se convierta en algo normal y legal aquí. Debido a que los ataques a los derechos civiles y humanos y la histórica intimidación y represión de los independentistas están relacionados, los activistas tienen que hacer esos enlaces. Todo ello es de lo más urgente considerando el silencio de la mayoría de los líderes electos y la censura virtual que los medios han hecho de las citaciones. En el contexto de cárceles secretas, tortura, detención sin juicio y grabaciones sin permiso judicial, la pesca del FBI debería preocupar a cualquiera interesado en rescatar este país de un creciente estado policial.

FBI vuelve al ataque contra jóvenes...

El FBI vuelve al ataque contra un grupo de jóvenes puertorriqueños

El FBI vuelve al ataque contra un grupo de jóvenes independentistas residentes en Nueva York. El 20 de diciembre de 2007 el FBI entrego las citaciones para los jóvenes comparecieran ante un Gran Jurado el 11 de enero de 2008 día que conmemoramos el natalicio de Eugenio María de Hostos. En la víspera y durante ese día más de un millar de puertorriqueños se movilizaron para solidarizarse con los jóvenes y repudiar el gran jurado ilegal.

En un gran jurado los ciudadanos no pueden estar acompañados de su abogado, el proceso es dirigido por un fiscal y si los testigos se niegan a responder las preguntas pueden ser encarceladas por desacato civil aunque nunca hayan cometido ningún delito. El gran jurado es un instrumento político utilizado para perseguir a los ciudadanos. El gran jurado no cumple con el debido proceso de ley, es anti-democrático e ilegal.

Los tres jóvenes citados son Tania Frontera, nacida y criada en Puerto Rico. Tiene 35 años de edad y artista gráfica graduada de la Minneapolis University y tiene una Maestría de la New York University. Actualmente una de sus obras se exhibe en el Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico. Se destaco en la lucha del pueblo en defensa de Vieques.

Christopher Torres, nació y se crió en Nueva York y tiene 31 años. Es graduado del Hunter College de NY y es trabajador social. Trabajó en proyectos como el de VIDA-SIDA y actualmente trabaja en una agencia que rescata a niños y adolescentes con problemas familiares. Ha visitado a Puerto Rico una sola vez con motivo de una marcha por la paz en Vieques.

Julio Pabón nació y se crió en Nueva York y tiene 27 años de edad. Se graduó de la Wesleyan University de Connecticut. Es cineasta y activista cultural en el sur del Bronx. Como estudiante fue líder estudiantil de la comunidad latina en su universidad. Su familia se ha dedicado a resaltar los valores de los atletas boricuas en Nueva York.

Los jóvenes citados al gran jurado son profesionales respetados en su comunidad, defensores de los derechos de los puertorriqueños y cuentan con un sólido respaldo de sus familias y vecinos. Tu puedes unirte a la campaña “Despierta boricua: defiende a los tuyos”. Escribir cartas, enviar correos electrónicos, llamar a los programas de radio, pintar un mural, celebrar un acto ecuménico de solidaridad, protestar y denunciar los atropellos del FBI contra los ciudadanos que luchan por la descolonización de Puerto Rico.

El viernes 1 de febrero el Gran Jurado cito so pena de desacato a los jóvenes independentistas. El pueblo puertorriqueño repudia el uso del gran jurado para intimidar, coartar la libertad y perseguir al movimiento independentista. Durante más de 70 años FBI en Puerto Rico ha sido incapaz de combatir el narcotráfico, la violencia y tráfico de armas en Puerto Rico. Desde que esta agencia federal se estableció en la Isla utilizo el Gran Jurado para perseguir y encarcelar al Lic. Pedro Albizu Campos. En la década del 1960 el FBI promovió la división del movimiento independentista y en los 1970 protegió a los asesinos de los jóvenes Arnaldo Darío Rosado, Carlos Soto Arriví, Santiago Mari Pesquera, Carlos Muñiz Varela y recientemente el FBI asesino a Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, Responsable General del Ejército Popular Boricua - Macheteros (EPB-M). ¡Despierta Boricua defiende a los tuyos! ¡Gran jurado ilegal!