Puerto Ricans protest FBI’s ‘assassination’

Yawu Miller

The FBI’s September 23 shooting of one of the Puerto Rican independence movement’s most prominent leaders has created a firestorm of controversy uniting — albeit briefly — the island’s political factions in outrage against the United States.

Last week, Puerto Rican activists held demonstrations and prayer vigils to protest what many are calling the FBI’s murder of Filiberto Ojeda Rios, who bled to death after being shot by agents who converged on a small house in rural Puerto Rico where Ojeda and his wife were in hiding.

Puerto Ricans here in Boston say the condemnation of the FBI shooting have come from a broad spectrum of islanders, including those in favor of statehood and commonwealth status for the island. Talk radio stations on the island have been inundated with calls and demonstrations have broken out in Puerto Rican towns and cities.

“There are masses of people coming out to the street,” said local Puerto Rican activist Giancarlo Buscaglia. “Their voices are being heard.”

FBI officials said after they had surrounded the Ojeda’s house for three days, Ojeda opened the door and began firing at the 20 agents there. The agents then returned fire, according to the FBI account. They entered the house on September 24 at 4 a.m. and found Ojeda dead with a gunshot wound to the shoulder and neck.

Ojeda’s wife, Elma Beatriz Rosado, gave a different version of events, claiming that FBI agents opened fire on the house before Ojeda was able to negotiate for her safe passage from the building. After Ojeda pleaded for negotiations, Rosado was arrested, blindfolded, then led away from the house before the firing resumed.

Rosado told reporters in Puerto Rico that she knew the FBI had come to assassinate her husband, who has been in hiding after jumping bail in 1990 while awaiting charges for his alleged role in a 1982 armored car heist in Connecticut.

Ironically Ojeda, who is widely seen as one of the founders of the modern armed Puerto Rican independence movement, died on the anniversary of Grito de Lares, a 19th century declaration of independence in the island’s uprising against Spanish colonial rule.

Thus, while Independentistas — as those favoring nationhood for Puerto Rico are known — were listening to a taped address recorded by Ojeda, FBI agents were removing his body from the house where he bled to death.

In Boston, Puerto Rican activists staged demonstrations and a prayer service in honor of Ojeda.

“The entire population is enraged at the assassination of this leader,” said local activist Marta Rodriguez, speaking at a rally in front of the JFK Federal building in Boston last Thursday. “They thought that by killing him on the Grito de Lares that they would intimidate us. Somehow their signals got crossed.”

Although Independentistas make up a minority of Puerto Rico’s political spectrum, advocates of statehood and those advocating a continued commonwealth status for the island were caught up in the controversy.

“No one from the government of Puerto Rico was made aware of the FBI’s operation,” note Jose Masso, the director of the Boston office of the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration. “No one found out about it until 22 hours after the fact. For some people what this says is that Puerto Rico is still a colony of the United States.”

Puerto Rican Governor Anibal Acevedo Vila, a supporter of commonwealth status, denounced the FBI operation and called for an investigation.

Masso said accounts of the shooting that appeared in the Puerto Rican press are at variance with the FBI’s recounting of the event, questioning whether Ojeda fired first.

“There’s always been a distrust with regard to the U.S. military in Puerto Rico and other countries in the Caribbean and Latin America,” Masso notes. “Regardless of Ojeda’s political beliefs and vision, folks are outraged that a 72-year-old man would die of gunshot wounds in questionable circumstances.”

Ojeda was buried last week in his home town of Naguabo, Puerto Rico. The Puerto Rican Bar Association has announced that it will conduct an investigation into Ojeda’s killing, working in conjunction with the Puerto Rican government.