Five Years Later: Remembering Filiberto Ojeda Ríos

[subsuelo]

May 11 2010
Juan A. Ocasio Rivera and Elma Beatriz Rosado

Few incidents have galvanized the Puerto Rican nation as much as the FBI’s extra-judicial killing of independence leader Filiberto Ojeda Ríos in September 2005. Indeed, the politically divided country exploded in outrage over the incident, and Ojeda Ríos’s funeral procession was the largest ever attended in the island’s history. Since then, his image and his message have been repeatedly projected by supporters of independence. Indeed, striking student activists across the island who have shut down the public university system protesting increases in tuition are revisiting his speeches, communiqués, writings, and interviews to inform their developing activism. As the U.S. Congress reviews legislation this month proposing a change in the island’s status, independence supporting organizations continue to grapple with the revolutionary’s final call for unity as the necessary ingredient to move their agenda forward. To an increasing number of Puerto Ricans, the image of the fallen martyr and his message is never far off.

Ojeda Ríos (1933–2005) led a life of revolutionary activity in Puerto Rico as early as 1961, when he first went underground. He was arrested in 1970, after being accused of belonging to armed anti-colonial insurgency groups, but he evaded prosecution by again returning underground. Later, in 1978, he helped found the Ejército Popular Boricua-Macheteros, also known as Los Macheteros. Notorious for its brazen attacks on U.S. military interests, the guerrillas proclaimed their goal of securing the independence of Puerto Rico through revolutionary action.

In 1985, the FBI launched raids against independence activists across the island, angering even the local Commonwealth government, which had not been warned in advance. After a dramatic firefight, Ojeda Ríos was among those arrested, but was later acquitted. While his acquittal was for charges stemming from his armed resistance to the FBI’s arrest attempt—which he claimed was an assassination attempt—the real charges brought by the FBI immediately after the acquittal included seditious conspiracy and charges for the 1983 Wells Fargo bank heist, which the Macheteros publicly took credit for. Ojeda Ríos knew that they had been pursuing him since the late 1960s and was clear on the need to protect his life and his organization.

Ojeda Ríos returned underground in 1990, causing widespread embarrassment to the FBI. Over the next 15 years, his would be the voice of rebellion and revolution, of social justice, of the working class, and of his ultimate vision of a Puerto Rico emancipated from the dependency and control of U.S. colonialism. His name and figure became legendary; his voice and image repeatedly emerged in the form of videos, voice recordings, and even exclusive TV interviews.

Unrelenting in its pursuit, the FBI sent Quantico’s Hostage Rescue Team to attack Ojeda Ríos’s home in the mountains of Hormigueros in September 2005. Elma Beatriz Rosado, his wife, safely made it out of the home during the firefight that ensued. She witnessed the ambush in which Ojeda Ríos was left to bleed to death after an FBI sniper’s single bullet wounded him. News reports suggested that agents tampered with the scene, and officials at FBI headquarters discussed portraying the incident as a suicide in order to cover up misconduct.


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[Bacchus39]

1. a eulogy from fellow independentistas

just for some context, the independence movement is less than 5% of the population. given that many if not most of the followers of the Partido Popular Democratico also "say" they are independentistas, but whenever there is a vote, the independentistas always get about 4%.

[Judi Lynn]

2. The Puerto Rico Civil Rights Commission Investigates the Death of Filiberto Ojeda Ríos

The Puerto Rico Civil Rights Commission Investigates the Death of Filiberto Ojeda Ríos
Posted by: ivetteromero | November 28, 2009

The Puerto Rico Daily Sun reports on the ongoing investigation by the Puerto Rico Civil Rights Commission into the September 23, 2005 death of Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, leader of the Macheteros. Commission Executive Director Vance Thomas said the panel is already writing the report on its investigation, the results of which should be ready by December 31.

Ojeda Ríos, who was born in 1933, headed the Macheteros, a pro-independence militant group that in 1983 robbed $7 million from the Wells Fargo in Hartford, Connecticut. He was accused of that crime and sentenced to 55 years in jail. However, in 1990, he escaped detention after taking off the electronic bracelet used to track his movements. After living as a fugitive for about 15 years, FBI officials shot Ojeda Ríos in 2005, after finding his home in Hormigueros, Puerto Rico. Ojeda Ríos’ widow, Elma Beatriz Rosado Barbosa, surrendered and survived the raid. There has been much speculation as to why, after he was shot, he was left to bleed for over 18 hours without any medical assistance. The autopsy performed on Ojeda Ríos’s body revealed that his wound was not life-threatening and that he could have survived if he had received proper medical attention. Instead, he slowly bled to death. Amnesty International suggested that the killing had the blueprint of an “extrajudicial execution.”

As Félix Jiménez (The Nation) writes, the timing of the execution could not have been more incendiary—“it was staged during the commemoration of the 137th anniversary of El Grito de Lares, a failed 1868 rebellion against Spanish colonial rule and the most important date for independence advocates on the island, a holiday whose highlight for the past fifteen years had been a taped message by the man who was left dying. By shooting Ojeda Ríos one hour after his last political speech aired, broadcast over radio and television, the agents tapped an emotional nationalist reserve.”

While Thomas has declined to reveal details about the probe, the Civil Rights panel has investigated allegations that FBI agents altered the scene of the bloody event in front of Puerto Rican government officials so that they could not be accused of killing Ojeda Ríos and that agents tried to make Ojeda Ríos’ death appear as a suicide to try to discredit his wife. To this day, the FBI has maintained that the Office of the Inspector General interviewed all the officials who took part in the raid and has cleared the agency of any wrong doing.

http://repeatingislands.com/2009/11/28/the-puerto-rico-civil-rights-commission-investigates-the-death-of-filiberto-ojeda-rios/

http://www.aporrea.org.nyud.net:8090/imagenes/2008/10/jpg_filiberto_ojeda_rios.jpg

Filiberto Ojeda Ríos
Thank you for bringing this subject forward to be remembered, subsuelo. It should never be forgotten.

Evil won again. Hope those bastards who did it will be forced by fate to relive that cowardly dirty assassination every time they try to go to sleep.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Recommending. Thanks, subsuelo.

:kick: :kick: :kick: :kick: