The FBI did not kill Puerto Rican independence leader Filiberto Ojeda-Rios in San Juan on a random day. When agents approached where he was staying on September 23, 2005 – after staking out the place for several days – it was the 137th anniversary of the “Grito de Lares,” the famous Puerto Rican uprising against Spanish colonial rule.
But a group of Puerto Rican artists and independence activists are using that day as a way to spread Ojeda-Rio’s words and life as well as to inspire the cause for the liberation of Puerto Rico.
New York based video artist Vagabond and the Ricanstruction collective have collected a lengthy interview with Ojeda-Rios, which is guessed to have taken place in 1991, in addition to Puerto Rican news footage about him. They are showing what they call Entrevista Clandestina on the 23rd of every month in a different location in New York. The first two showings have been at a community center in East Harlem and Bluestockings, a radical bookstore on the Lower East Side. They hope to have showings in the South Bronx, Brooklyn and other places with large Puerto Rican communities in the future. They plan to have a large event to mark the first anniversary of Ojeda-Rio’s death this September.
Ojeda-Rios was a controversial, eccentric and charismatic figure. As the leader of the Ejercito Popular Boricua, or the Macheteros, he was able to unite the many armed independence factions into an actual political movement, according to Vicente ‘Panama’ Alba, one the organizers of the monthly showings.
In the main interview, Ojeda-Rios denounces what he sees as the colonial manipulation of the Puerto Rican people by the American government.
“This is a timeless interview,” Alba said. In addition to high amounts of crime, he said that there are other problems Puerto Ricans have to face in their daily lives. The unemployment rate is more than 9 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Ojeda-Rios was indicted by a grand jury in 1985 for participating in a Wells Fargo bank robbery in 1983. He went underground in Puerto Rico in 1990, but continued to be a voice of the independence movement by giving radio interviews and writing newspaper articles, said Vagabond.
According to an official FBI statement, while gunfire was exchanged on September 23, agents were not sent into the residence until they next day. They found his dead body on September 24. Ricanstruction activists insisted that the FBI did this intentionally so that he would bleed to death.
The FBI found his residence from an informant who later called Rep. Jose Serrano’s (D-NY) office and said he regretted ratting out Ojeda-Rios because he did not realize the FBI would kill him. The FBI conducted further raids on the homes of other suspected independence activists in February according to the office of Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY).
The independence movement in Puerto Rico has long lived in the political margins, as people have voted in plebiscites to remain a U.S. territory rather than become a U.S. state or an independent country. But Vagabond reiterates a point Ojeda-Rios states in the interviews. He thinks that this does not reflect the island’s true attitude because the U.S. will have the final say on Puerto Rico’s destiny no matter what the outcome is. Therefore, people who desire either statehood or independence are not encouraged to vote in the plebiscites. Furthermore, he said, with unemployment and low standards of living on the island, people are afraid to lose U.S. administered benefits such as food stamps and other forms of public assistance.
But people involved in this monthly showing, like New York based artist Yasmin Hernandez, believe the political situation is changing.
While the U.S. media did not cover Ojeda-Rios’ death to any great extent, Hernandez said, there were massive protests against the killing by people of all political orientations. Hernandez heard the news of the protests from her apolitical aunt in Puerto Rico, and said that on her last visit to the island she noticed that there is more anti-American and pro-independence graffiti in the streets.
The Puerto Rican Attorney General’s Office has been looking into allegations of FBI misconduct in the raids. House Democrats on the judiciary committee asked FBI Director Robert Mueller why the FBI did not work more closely with local law enforcement in a public hearing on March 28.
For Hernandez, the silver lining of the raids in Puerto Rico including Ojeda-Rios’ death is that the independence movement has grown in popularity.
“It is now making it fashionable to want revolution,” she said.
And that is why she believes it is important to show these interviews with Ojeda-Rios, because when unjust things happen, “it becomes our responsibility to share it.”
The next showing of Entrevista Clandestina will be on May 23 at 7PM at EL MAESTRO, 700 Elton Ave. at 154th Street in the Bronx.