[News] Betrayal in the Barrio: Rafael Marrero and FBI Repression against Chicago’s Puerto Rican Independence Movement

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 https://prcc-chgo.org/2020/07/17/betrayal-in-the-barrio/Betrayal in the
Barrio: *Rafael Marrero and FBI Repression against Chicago’s Puerto Rican
Independence Movement*
July 17, 2020

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*by National Boricua Human Rights Network*

*INTRODUCTION*

The FBI has a long and sordid history of political repression. Employing a
wide range of tactics, it has sought to disrupt, destroy and neutralize
national liberation movements and radical left organizations for decades.
One egregious episode began in the late 1980s, when the FBI planted an
agent-provocateur in the Puerto Rican Cultural Center (PRCC). The PRCC was
founded in 1973 by a group of community activists which included Oscar López
Rivera, Carmen Valentín, Carlos Alberto Torres, Ida Luz Rodríguez, José E.
López, Rev. José A. Torres, Alejandrina Torres, Dr. James Blaut, and
América Sorrentini. The PRCC emerged as an outspoken proponent of Puerto
Rican independence and was the life force of international campaigns to
free Puerto Rican political prisoners and prisoners of war. It also set out
to create decolonizing “parallel institutions” responsive to the needs of
community residents. The FBI alleged that the PRCC and its leadership were
the above ground face of the Puerto Rican revolutionary organization, the
Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (FALN).

With the intent of “neutralizing” this radical project, the FBI recruited
and handsomely paid Rafael A. Marrero to criminalize community leaders,
slander community organizations, and recruit community members to commit
violence. Although Marrero participated in violent acts for which others
paid time in prison, he was never even criminally charged for these
actions. Instead, after he emerged from the Witness Protection Program, he
began to accumulate personal wealth and professional prestige in the heart
of Miami’s conservative Cuban community. Thirty years after his life as an
agent-provocateur, he hawks himself as an expert on helping minority
businesses access the federal marketplace, while hiding his deplorable past.

Marrero might have put his past behind him. But members of Chicago’s Puerto
Rican community have not forgotten him or his role as an FBI
agent-provocateur. He harmed many lives, damaged reputations, and impaired
important community-based work. Although the FBI and Marrero forced the
PRCC and its members to divert their energy and resources to self-defense,
the attacks also strengthened the community’s resolve. After expending
considerable effort in rebuilding relationships and reputations, the PRCC
today thrives and has broadened support for its bold vision.

*HISTORY OF COINTELPRO*

In the 1950s, the FBI launched its secretive Counter Intelligence Program.
COINTELPRO, as it is more commonly known, was created to squelch dissent at
any cost. Its overt and covert tactics included infiltrating political and
community organizations with agents-provocateurs; harassment through the
legal system; spreading fake, defamatory news to discredit community
leaders; disrupting political organizing; spreading fear and distrust; and
far more destructive moves, such as false imprisonment and assassination.
While this illegal government program was allegedly dismantled after a 1975
U.S. Senate Select Committee found rampant abuse, the government continues
to use the same and similar tactics to illegally spy on and disrupt current
movements. This was seen in the aggressive surveillance of the Muslim
community after 9/11. More recently, the FBI has falsely labelled the Black
Lives Matter movement as “Black Identity Extremists,” tracked its members,
and infiltrated its chapters with government and right-wing
agents-provocateurs. The following history will hopefully serve as an
example of not only this repression and its insidious damage, but of a
community’s subsequent struggle to repair and rebuild.

The Puerto Rican Independence Movement, in Puerto Rico and in the diaspora,
has long been high on the FBI’s list of political targets. In Chicago, FBI
surveillance of Puerto Rican activists intensified after the 1966 Division
Street Riots. In this period, it aimed to weaken and destroy various
organizations, including the Young Lords, a politicized Puerto Rican gang
modeled on the Black Panther Party. By the mid-1970s, the lion’s share of
FBI attention in Chicago focused on the Puerto Rican Cultural Center (PRCC).

*A PLANT SETTLES IN CHICAGO*

The FBI found in Marrero a hard worker and a malleable, ingratiating person
who understood the key role Chicago’s Puerto Rican community played in the
independence movement and in the diaspora. The FBI hoped to use him to
disrupt, destroy and neutralize this work. Lying about his educational and
professional credentials, Marrero moved from Puerto Rico and settled in
Chicago. Over time, he worked his way close to José E. López, Executive
Director of the PRCC and leader of the pro-independence organization, the
Movimiento de Liberación Nacional. López was a long-time FBI target as a
result of his leadership position in the independence movement in the
diaspora, as well as his staunch resistance to government efforts to
destroy the movement. This included going to jail for refusing to testify
at a 1977 federal grand jury investigating the movement. He is also the
brother of Oscar López Rivera, then wanted by the FBI for clandestine
activities as part of the FALN. José E. López was also a key architect of
the campaign for the release of the two generations of Puerto Rican
political prisoners serving the equivalent of life in prison for seditious
conspiracy, a political charge for conspiring to overthrow or to destroy by
force the Government of the United States in Puerto Rico.

Not only did Marrero insinuate himself into the leadership core of the
community; even more perversely, he insinuated himself into an activist
family. He married Evelyn Rodríguez, whose sisters—Lucy and Alicia—were
then political prisoners, and whose mother, Josefina, was a spokesperson
for the international freedom campaign for her daughters and the other
political prisoners. As if that were not sufficient, he readily abandoned
his wife and their daughter after causing profound damage to the PRCC and
other organizations, where he also sowed discord and division.

*MARRERO ORCHESTRATES 1992 BOMBING*

Marrero knew that the campaign for the release of the Puerto Rican
political prisoners had amplified and grown beyond the initial anchoring
support of militant independentistas and allies of conscience. To foment
discord in the campaign and the movement, he began to bait activists by
claiming that the PRCC leadership had “gone soft” and abandoned its
militant politics for electoral politics. Marrero then began to lure
disaffected activists to promote Puerto Rican independence through violent
means. Well aware that the issue of clandestine armed struggle was
controversial and would adversely affect the growing support and the
possibility of winning presidential commutation for the political
prisoners, he formed a clandestine organization, the Frente Revolucionario
Boricua (FRB, Boricua Revolutionary Front). Among those he recruited was
José Solís Jordán, a DePaul University professor who Marrero had
“befriended,” as well as other community activists. Of course, none of
those Marrero recruited were aware that he was an FBI agent-provocateur.

In the name of his pseudo organization, Marrero planted two pipe bombs at a
military recruiting center on December 10, 1992, in Chicago. One explosive
started a fire. No one was hurt or killed. Years later, as the statute of
limitations was set to expire, Marrero, under the direction of the FBI,
wore a wiretap to record Solís making incriminating statements about the
action. Soon after, Solís was charged with conspiracy, attempted
destruction of government property and illegal possession of explosives.
The FBI then revealed its main objective: it offered to drop all charges
against Solís on the condition that he name José E. López as the
intellectual author of the bombing.

As is the case with government informants, the prosecution’s case against
Solís rested on Marrero’s testimony. For this, he received not only
immunity from prosecution, but also cash payments in excess of $100,000,
among other benefits. The FBI essentially bought his testimony. During the
trial, Marrero admitted to planning and executing the bombing, claiming
Solís’ participation. Solís vehemently denied any role in the bombing and
challenged the FBI’s claim that he had confessed to the action. Largely on
Marrero’ word – an FBI plant — the jury found Prof. Solís guilty on all
counts. He was sentenced to 51 months in prison, leaving his wife alone to
support their five children.

*THE FBI & GRAND JURY*

Marrero’s work for the FBI did not end with the bombing and subsequent
imprisonment of José Solis Jordán. He also aided the FBI in a wave of grand
juries, supposedly to investigate the l992 bombing. The U.S. government has
a long and shameful history of using the grand jury as a repressive tool to
coerce people to testify against their own movements and to jail them if
they refuse to be used as the government’s political pawns. U.S.
authorities, and Marrero, were well aware of the Puerto Rican Independence
Movement’s proud history of resistance to the grand jury.

Marrero supplied the FBI with the names of several other Chicago-based
independentistas, including Juan Marcos Vilar, Diana Vázquez and Ruben
Rivera, who were among several subsequently subpoenaed to a federal grand
jury. Vilar, a respected teacher at the local Roberto Clemente High School,
was at the time the chair of the national committee in the U.S. for the
release of the Puerto Rican political prisoners. Fortunately, no one went
to jail, although the subpoenas sowed anger and fear in the community.

*THE PROPAGANDA OF EL PITO*

Using a staple COINTELPRO tactic, Marrero, again at the FBI’s direction,
assembled a team that included right-wing, pro-statehood interests, real
estate developers interested in furthering the gentrification of the
community, and disaffected criminal elements in the community, to
anonymously publish and distribute a vulgar broadside known as El Pito.
Littered across the community, it used “fake news” and lewd cartoons to
mock and defame José E. López and other leaders and local elected
officials. Through El Pito and Marrero, the FBI sought to undermine the
credibility of individuals and organizations that supported the local
school reform movement and the campaign to free the Puerto Rican political
prisoners.

*CONTROVERSY AT ROBERTO CLEMENTE HIGH SCHOOL*

Roberto Clemente High School, in the heart of Chicago’s Puerto Rican
community, emerged from a long battle by Puerto Rican parents and
activists. In the late 1980s, the Local School Council (LSC) Reform of 1988
gave the LSC the authority to set budget priorities, develop school
improvement plans and, most importantly, the power to hire and fire
principals. Strengthened by struggles against racist teachers, Clemente’s
LSC developed an innovative school reform plan. Drawing on critical
pedagogy, the plan had four objectives: 1) to develop a curriculum that
addressed the needs and aspirations of its youth; 2) build a program that
emphasized self-discipline (with the idea to end the presence of
professional security); 3) transform the local school council into a real
instrument of democratic government; and 4) transform the school into an
effective community of support services.

The FBI made these school reforms the unlikely target for its next round of
repression, insidiously seeking to delegitimize the community’s ambitious
plan for its school. Once again, Marrero served as a key player. He alleged
that the Puerto Rican Cultural Center and the Movimiento de Liberación
Nacional had misappropriated Chapter I state anti-poverty funds through the
LSC. These funds, he charged, were used to finance the independence
movement and the campaign to free the political prisoners. He also claimed
that there was a “huge patronage scam” to employ parents to monitor the
school instead of security officers and metal detectors. Armed with
Marrero’s allegations, a conservative local state representative
ideologically opposed to Puerto Rican independence launched a state
investigation and public hearings.

The prosecutor at the hearings, former assistant federal prosecutor Steven
A. Miller, who had a history of persecuting the Puerto Rican independence
movement, refused to allow Marrero to respond to questions about Marrero’s
relationship with the FBI, posed by State Rep. Constance “Connie” A.
Howard, the only African-American member of the nine person panel. Miller
responded falsely stating that he didn’t know whether Marrero was involved
in FBI investigative activities — he most certainly did know — and arguing
that any such information should remain secret. In order to keep Marrero’s
relationship with the FBI from being exposed, the hearings were terminated.

The investigation and hearings, which cost over 1 million in taxpayer
dollars and empaneled four or five grand juries from 1992 to 2002, failed
to produce any evidence that the Roberto Clemente High School’s LSC
violated the state requirements governing the use of Chapter I monies. To
the contrary, the evidence showed that the Chicago Public Schools approved
the LSC’s use of Chapter I funds, and that the use of the funds was well
within the existing guidelines for Chapter I use. While an audit of
Clemente did find some irregularities in documentation and equipment
inventories verifying Chapter I expenditures, there was no evidence of any
illegal activity, and no evidence that these irregularities were the
product of a conspiracy by Puerto Rican independentistas. Nonetheless, the
investigation and hearings, widely covered in the local press, with
hysterical headlines like “School Funds Used to Push Terrorists’ Release,”
cast a dark shadow over the school reform and severely undermined
reputations of school administrators, teachers, community leaders, and the
PRCC.

*WHERE WE ARE TODAY*

Today, after years of feeding at the FBI trough, Marrero lives comfortably
in Miami, touting himself as the chief operating officer of a premier
business management consulting company to assist minority businesses in
accessing federal government contracts and funding. Now rooted in a new
“community” of ultra conservative Florida Cubans, he boasts of having
worked directly for the son of Jorge Más Canosa, the man who the CIA
trained for the Bay of Pigs and who founded the Cuban American National
Foundation, his life dedicated to trying to overthrow the Cuban Revolution.
Not surprisingly, the ingratiating Marrero used his company’s social media
to cheer the death of Fidel Castro, and to seek out advantageous photo
opportunities, such as with Florida Congressman Díaz Balart.

Even as Marrero has apparently moved on from his betrayal of Chicago’s
Puerto Rican community, the PRCC and its leaders have struggled for years
to repair the individual and organizational reputations he sullied. They
have worked to rebuild relationships that infiltration and government
cooperation undermined. They have labored to reimagine the PRCC and become
an organization that foundations could trust with grant monies, so that
they may continue to provide much needed services.

These post-Marrero efforts at repairing, rebuilding and reimagining, while
arduous, have borne fruit. Most of the Puerto Rican political prisoners —
including Marrero’s two sisters-in-law — were released by presidential
commutation in 1999. The PRCC has never been stronger, with fifteen
programs providing services to the community, including the Dr. Pedro
Albizu Campos High School, serving youth pushed out of Chicago Public
Schools; the Consuelo Lee Corretjer Child Care Center; El Rescate, a
shelter for LBGTQI youth; Vida/SIDA, a pioneering HIV/AIDS prevention
program; and many more programs and services.

Today, progressive and radical organizations are swelling with activists
seeking an end to the colonial and systemic racism that defines this
country’s history. Fake news, bogus charges, and the targeting of community
activists by media and legal means are on the rise. With these new agendas
for change, and #BLM and #DefundPolice protests and struggles continuously
in the news, making headlines such as the New York Times, “Black Lives
Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History,” government use of the
infamous tactics of COINTELPRO and the repression of liberatory community
activism is sure to increase. As such, it is important to return to the
rarely discussed and vaguely remembered history of FBI repression against
Chicago’s Puerto Rican independence movement. This history offers important
lessons for today’s movements and our collective future.

—————————

*The National Boricua Human Rights Network is composed of Puerto Ricans in
the US and their supporters that educates and mobilizes the Puerto Rican
community, the broader Latin American community, and other people of
conscience regarding issues of justice, peace, and human rights.*
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