In a move reminiscent of a U.S. Marine invasion of a foreign country, the FBI descended in droves on Puerto Rico on February 10. Without breathing a word of the invasion to either the colonial governor or the chief of police, heavily armed, militarized units of the FBI, including the Special Weapons and Tactics Unit from Miami, hit six different spots throughout the island. Their purpose, they claimed, was to execute search warrants on six independence activists they identified as suspected leaders of the clandestine independence organization, Ejercito Popular Boricua/Macheteros, the same organization whose legendary leader, Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, who the FBI assassinated five months earlier. Their true purpose was widely understood as other: with their show of force, to continue their long campaign to intimidate and criminalize those who support independence for Puerto Rico, particularly in this moment of the resurgence of the left throughout Latin America; and, of course, to detract from their own criminal conduct in taking Ojeda's life. Landing in military-style helicopters, accompanied by caravans of vehicles, sometimes with the license plates obscured, FBI agents swarmed private residences and businesses in Trujillo Alto and Río Piedras (in the San Juan metropolitan area), and Mayagüez, San Germán, Aguadilla, and Isabela (in the west of the island), terrorizing entire neighborhoods. The search warrants bore the names and addresses of veteran labor leaders, community leaders, known independentists, and even a Protestant minister respected for his work promoting small projects of self-empowerment for poor people. [more]
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