Page 241 - Encyclopedia Of Terrorism

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Rico; no one was hurt in these incidents. That
MACHETEROS December, Macheteros fired automatic weapons at
aka Boriqua Popular Army, Ejercito Popular a bus carrying 18 U.S. Navy personnel, leaving two
Boricua, EPB Movimiento Popular Revolucionario, sailors dead and 10 injured. This was a combined
Partido Revolucionario de Trabajadores attack, also involving the Volunteer Organization for
Puertorriquenos the Puerto Rican Revolution and the Armed Forces of
Popular Resistance, in retaliation for the death of
The Macheteros—Spanish for “machete wield- Puerto Rican independence fighter Angel Rodriguez
ers”—was considered one of the more successful and Cristobal. Cristobal had been found hanged in federal
dangerous Puerto Rican militant nationalist organiza- prison in Tallahassee, Florida, in what the Puerto
tions. Macheteros, a splinter group of another national- Rican groups believed was a CIA action.
ist organization, the FALN, emerged in the late 1970s Throughout the early 1980s, the Macheteros
and is believed to be responsible for numerous attacks engaged in two or three actions per year, often in retal-
on Puerto Rico’s military and government, as well as iation for Navy maneuvers on the Puerto Rican island
one of the largest bank robberies in U.S. history. of Vieques and for police and government actions
On August 24, 1978, the Macheteros issued its first against a squatter village, Villa Sin Miedo (“Town
communiqué, claiming responsibility for the death of Without Fear”). As a calling card, members would
a Puerto Rican police officer, Julio Rodriguez Rivera, leave a machete with a flag near the scene of the attack,
who had been shot and killed at a beach in Naguabo. contacting UPI reporters the next day to officially claim
The act was in retaliation for the murder by police of responsibility.
two independentistas, Arnaldo Dario Rosado and On September 12, 1983, the birthday of Pedro
Carlos Soto Arrivi, at Cerro Maravilla, Puerto Rico, in Albizu Campos, a Puerto Rican nationalist leader,
July 1978. Macheteros carried out its first action in the continen-
Unlike the FALN, which primarily bombed public tal United States, robbing more than $7 million from
buildings, banks, and government offices, Macheteros a Wells Fargo depot in West Hartford, Connecticut.
concentrated on bombing military sites, including On September 13, Macheteros claimed respons-
military recruiting stations, defense contractors, and ibility in a communiqué sent to the Hartford Courant.
post offices where men registered for the draft, and on Macheteros had named the action agila blanca—
attacking military personnel. Macheteros’s message “white eagle”—to commemorate Jose Maldonado,
was clear—Puerto Rico was a country occupied mili- who, during the Spanish-American War, had led a
tarily by the United States. number of Puerto Rican patriots in a skirmish against
In October 1979, the group took responsibility for the invaders from the north. It took place on the birth-
several bombings of federal installations in Puerto day of Campos.

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