Macheteros

Los Macheteros—Spanish for “the Machete Wielders” (and also known as Boricua Popular Army; Ejercito Popular Boricua; EPB Movimiento Popular Revolucionario; Partido Revolucionario de Trabajadores Puertorriquenos)—was one of the more successful and dangerous Puerto Rican militant nationalist organizations. A splinter group of the FALN, another nationalist organization, the Macheteros 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, the Macheteros concentrated on bombing military sites, including military recruiting stations, defense contractors, and post offices where men registered for the draft, as well as attacking military personnel. The message of the group was clear: Puerto Rico was a country occupied militarily by the United States.

In October 1979 the Macheteros took responsibility for several bombings of federal installations in Puerto Rico; no one was hurt in these incidents. That December, group members fired automatic weapons at a bus carrying 18 U.S. Navy personnel, leaving 2 sailors dead and 10 injured. This was a combined attack, also involving the Organization of Volunteers for the Puerto Rican Revolution and the Armed Forces of Popular Resistance, in retaliation for the death of the 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, or 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, the 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, the Macheteros claimed responsibility in a communiqué sent to the [Page 372]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. Most of the money disappeared with Victor Manuel Gerena, a Machetero who worked at the Wells Fargo depot as a guard. Gerena fled first to Mexico, and then to Cuba, where he remains in exile. (It is believed that the group 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.

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