Thirty years ago, the brutal killing of two young pro-independence Puerto Rican activists in a police ambush—the Cerro Maravilla Incident—would sear in the minds of many Puerto Ricans how far the state will go to wash its hands of responsibility for its own crimes.
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There, the three planned to set fire and sabotage several communication towers on the island to protest the unjust imprisonment of five Puerto Rican freedom fighters. These five nationalists were convicted of the 1950 assassination attempt on U.S. President Harry S. Truman and the 1954 shooting at the United States Capitol where five members of Congress were injured.
Malavé alerted the police of the youths’ plan prior to their arrival. Heavily armed police waited for them on the mountain top. Once there, the two youth were confronted by the police and killed.
The incident and subsequent events are remembered as some of the most controversial in Puerto Rico’s political history. What follwed was a long, drawn-out process of contradictory stories piled on top of a police cover-up.
Initially, the officers claimed to have acted in self-defense, stating they only returned fire after the activists refused to surrender and started shooting.
Then-Governor of Puerto Rico Carlos Romero Barceló of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party (PNP) praised the officers in a televised address, calling them “heroic” for putting their lives in danger and preventing a “terrorist attack.” Initial interviews would corroborate the officers’ stories Two investigations by the Puerto Rico Justice Department and one by the Puerto Rico Police Department immediately after the incident each cleared the officers of any wrongdoing.
The holes in the official story were not so easy to cover, however. Statements by the taxi driver and other witnesses would spark intense accusations of a police cover-up. In attempts to silence the matter, the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and the FBI performed special investigations on separate occasions between 1978 and 1980. Both agencies reaffirmed the conclusions of the Puerto Rico Justice Department and the case was closed due to “lack of evidence” proving otherwise.
Puerto Ricans demand answers
Puerto Ricans were not nearly as eager as the investigators were to put the matter to rest. , In the general elections in November 1980, Barceló’s party lost control of the state legislature to the opposition Popular Democratic Party (PPD) due largely to Barceló’s deteriorating public image following his handling of the Cerro Maravilla case.
The legislature quickly started new inquiries and hearings into the incident. Investigations performed between 1981 and 1984 brought to light a plot to assassinate the activists and a possible, though inconclusive, conspiracy by high-ranking local and federal officials to cover up the killings of Arriví and Rosado.
Testimony was collected from the taxi driver, various witnesses and the three officers who were present at the time of the incident. The officers were granted immunity by the prosecution to later testify against the commanding officer and other officers involved in the killings.
The testimony collected during the second wave of investigations proved that the cops did not act in self-defense. The taxi driver contended that there had been a short exchange of gunfire. When he emerged from behind the dashboard, the two young activists were alive and being beaten by “10 heavily armed [unidentified] men.” The driver affirmed the two activists were “alive and disarmed” before police removed him from the scene. The driver then heard a second round of gunfire as he was being moved to a nearby location. Later, he was asked by the police and investigators of the Puerto Rico Justice Department to forget about the second gunshots.
Various witness confirmed the taxi driver’s account of two distinct sets of gunshots. An officer who quit the force shortly after the shootings also indicated there were “two bursts of firing.” Another officer admitted that the Commander of the Intelligence Division of the Puerto Rico Police Department had said that “these terrorists should not come down [from the mountain] alive.” The young activists were seen on their knees and surrendering to police before their cold-blooded execution.
During the span of the second investigations by the legislature, the mounting accusations of a cover-up brought public and political pressure on all investigating agencies. The scandal resulted in several reassignments, demotions and resignations among top officials within the Puerto Rico Justice Department. In 1984, a total of ten officers were indicted and found guilty of perjury, destruction of evidence and obstruction of justice. Of those, four officers were also convicted of second-degree murder. The ten officers received prison sentences of six to 30 years.
Later that year, Barceló lost his gubernatorial seat to his PPD rival. The former governor blamed the defeat on PPD’s claims that Barceló’s was involved in the conspiracy. Barceló asserted that the officers involved had deceived him. Speaking of Barceló’s claims, then-San Juan Mayor Hernán Padilla said, “A chief executive, commander-in-chief of the police to whom the Secretary of Justice answers, cannot claim deception unless he claims incompetence.”
Puerto Ricans learn what independentistas always knew
Many in Puerto Rico believe Barceló was indeed implicated in the incident. The belief is that the PNP and Barceló demonized the two young victims as “terrorists” so as to discredit the island’s growing independence movement in an effort to advance the party’s cause for statehood.
In the 1990s, Puerto Rican investigators continued looking into a possible conspiracy implicating the Carter administration and the FBI in the plans to impede inquiries into the killings. They hoped to show that Carter and the FBI helped orchestrate the executions in order to guarantee Barceló’s win at a time when Puerto Rico’s status as a commonwealth was up for vote.
In 1992, 14-years after the police killings, a public apology from Drew S. Days III, who headed the Justice Departments Civil Rights Division from 1978 to 1980, was issued for what he believed had been an FBI “cover-up.” In response, then-Senator Fernando Martín, a member of the Judiciary Committee and vice-president of the Puerto Rican Independence Party, described Cerro Maravilla as but one example of the repression pro-independence fighters have suffered under both pro-statehood and pro-commonwealth administrations.
“The independentistas have always known that the independentismo has been persecuted, the difference now is that the people of Puerto Rico also know it,” stated Martín.
As Martín pointed out, the Cerro Maravilla Incident was not the first time Puerto Rican youth went to such measures in an attempt to call attention to the colonial status of Puerto Rico and its people’s continued drive for independence. It certainly was not the first or last time the repression of pro-independence leaders by colonial rulers was made evident to the public.
Puerto Rican nationalists have increasingly become the victims of the U.S. colonial governments great injustices towards the people’s demands of independence. Cerro Maravilla is part of a long list that includes: the 1935 Rio Piedras massacre; the Ponce Massacre of 1937; the jailing of independence leader Pedro Albizu Campos for his advocacy of violent resistance against colonialism; the 1950 and 1954 revolts against U.S. President and members of the House of Representatives, respectively; the extra-judicial murders of nationalists, like Filiberto Ojeda Ríos in 2005; and most notably, the continued status of Puerto Rico as a virtual colony of the United States.
In spite of repression, the Puerto Rico people continue to stand up against injustice and demand independence. Their struggle serves as an inspiration to all those who continue to fight against oppression wherever it arises and validates the right to resist in whatever forms the people see fit.
