Macheteros

aka Boriqua Popular Army, Ejercito Popular Boricua, EPB Movimiento Popular Revolucionario, Partido Revolucionario de Trabajadores Puertorriquenos

The Macheteros—Spanish for “machete wielders”—was considered one of the more successful and dangerous Puerto Rican militant nationalist organizations. Macheteros, a splinter group of another nationalist organization, the FALN, emerged in the late 1970s and is believed to be responsible for numerous attacks on Puerto Rico's military and government, as well as one of the largest bank robberies in U.S. history.

On August 24, 1978, the Macheteros issued its first communiqué, claiming responsibility for the death of a Puerto Rican police officer, Julio Rodriguez Rivera, who had been shot and killed at a beach in Naguabo. The act was in retaliation for the murder by police of two independentistas, Arnaldo Dario Rosado and Carlos Soto Arrivi, at Cerro Maravilla, Puerto Rico, in July 1978.

Unlike the FALN, which primarily bombed public buildings, banks, and government offices, Macheteros concentrated on bombing military sites, including military recruiting stations, defense contractors, and post offices where men registered for the draft, and on attacking military personnel. Macheteros's message was clear—Puerto Rico was a country occupied militarily by the United States.

In October 1979, the group took responsibility for several bombings of federal installations in Puerto Rico; no one was hurt in these incidents. That December, Macheteros fired automatic weapons at a bus carrying 18 U.S. Navy personnel, leaving two sailors dead and 10 injured. This was a combined attack, also involving the Volunteer Organization for the Puerto Rican Revolution and the Armed Forces of Popular Resistance, in retaliation for the death of Puerto Rican independence fighter Angel Rodriguez Cristobal. Cristobal had been found hanged in federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida, in what the Puerto Rican groups believed was a CIA action.

Throughout the early 1980s, the Macheteros engaged in two or three actions per year, often in retaliation for Navy maneuvers on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques and for police and government actions against a squatter village, Villa Sin Miedo (“Town Without Fear”). As a calling card, members would leave a machete with a flag near the scene of the attack, contacting UPI reporters the next day to officially claim responsibility.

On September 12, 1983, the birthday of Pedro Albizu Campos, a Puerto Rican nationalist leader, Macheteros carried out its first action in the continental United States, robbing more than $7 million from a Wells Fargo depot in West Hartford, Connecticut. On September 13, Macheteros claimed responsibility in a communiqué sent to the Hartford Courant. Macheteros had named the action agila blanca—“white eagle”—to commemorate Jose Maldonado, who, during the Spanish-American War, had led a number of Puerto Rican patriots in a skirmish against the invaders from the north. It took place on the birthday of Campos.

[Page 220]Most of the money disappeared with Victor Manual Gerena, the Machetero who worked at the Wells Fargo depot as a guard. Gerena fled first to Mexico, then to Cuba, where he remains in exile. (Macheteros is believed to have had significant ties to Cuba, with many of its members trained there.) Once out of the United States, the money was used to fund nationalist activities, including a toy giveaway in Hartford and Puerto Rico.

In August 1985, investigators apprehended 13 suspects in the robbery—11 in Puerto Rico, one in Massachusetts, and one in Dallas. Four others, including Gerena, were indicted. Juan Segarra Palmer and Filiberto Ojeda Rios, two of Macheteros's founders, were the first to be tried. Eventually, all were found guilty on charges connected to the robbery and sentenced to more than 35 years. Most were released in 1999, when U.S. president Bill Clinton commuted the sentences of 16 Puerto Rican nationalist prisoners.

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