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<h2><b>Cerro Maravilla: Questions still
remain</b></h2><font size=2>
<a href="http://www.prdailysun.com/index.php?page=news.article&id=1311595667" eudora="autourl">
http://www.prdailysun.com/index.php?page=news.article&id=1311595667<br>
</a>By Rafael R. Díaz Torres<br>
Special to Daily Sun<br>
July 25, 2011<br><br>
The complex Puerto Rican political landscape had one of its most
difficult moments on July 25, 1978. On that day, the pro-independence
activists Carlos Soto Arriví and Arnaldo Darío Rosado were ambushed and
brutally murdered by the police in an event that, according to advocates
for the case and its victims, still has many unanswered questions and has
not been properly solved after many years of investigation by both state
and U.S. federal authorities.<br><br>
The bloody outcome of that event had several years in the
making.<br><br>
In the first half of the 20th century, state repression and filing
against people who advocated for Puerto Rican independence was not an
uncommon characteristic in the polarized political experience of the
island. The tensions and legacies from nationalist revolts from the 1930s
and 1950s were still latent after the creation of the Puerto Rican
commonwealth in 1952. Pro-independence activism was still seen as a
threat even after the creation of the commonwealth and a new
constitutional order that was authorized by the U.S. Congress in its
plenary powers over Puerto Rico.<br><br>
For the Puerto Rican police, it was not uncommon to employ the use of
informers inside revolutionary and left-wing pro-independence movements.
A young man from the San Juan Metropolitan area stood out and became the
most notorious informer of the island’s police.<br>
Alejandro González Malavé was recruited by the police in 1973 when he was
only 15 years old. His espionage tasks started while he was a student at
the Gabriela Mistral High School in Puerto Nuevo. In 1975 González Malavé
became president of the Pro-Independence Student Federation a middle and
high school organization that supports Puerto Rico’s political
liberation. His next step was to become a regular member of the
Pro-Independence University Federation as a student at the University of
Puerto Rico in Río Piedras.<br><br>
Once a “member” of the UPR’s pro-independence movement, González Malavé
did not only provide intelligence information to the police, but also
encouraged his left-wing “peers” to become involved in violent acts
against civilians.<br><br>
Under the name of “Armed Revolutionary Movement” (ARM), a group he
founded, González Malavé encouraged his “colleagues” Soto Arriví and
Darío Rosado to perpetrate an act of political protest by bringing down
the mass communication towers located at Cerro Maravilla in the
central-southern mountainous town of Villalba.<br><br>
The police knew about the plan and as three members of the ARM arrived at
the scene, agents were waiting for them and opened fire against the men.
Darío Rosado died in the act and Soto Arriví was seriously injured, but
unlike González Malavé, who received a minor wound and was immediately
transported to a hospital in Jayuya, Soto Arriví did not receive
first-aid help, nor was he transported to a medical center with a sense
of urgency. Soto Arriví died after the police decided to transport him to
a hospital once his death was deemed inevitable.<br><br>
Relatives of the victims and critics of the incident still question why
the police decided to kill the men instead of arresting them based on the
intelligence they had about the Cerro Maravilla plan and prior violent
attacks allegedly perpetrated by the members of the ARM group created by
the police informer, González Malavé.<br>
<br>
Organizations such as Puerto Rico’s Commonwealth Civil Rights Commission
expressed the irregularities in the event and denounced the illegalities
of using an informant as the author, inciter and provider of materials
for the design and making of violent or terrorist acts. <br>
The “Cerro Maravilla” case still resonates in contemporary political
debates on the island despite the imprisonment of involved police
officers and the mysterious murder of González Malavé in 1986.<br><br>
As recently as the late 90s, former Puerto Rican governor, Carlos Romero
Barceló, was still blamed for the deaths of Soto Arriví and Darío Rosado
after a group of students at the UPR protested his presence on the campus
arguing that, as the island’s first executive during that time, he knew
about the Cerro Maravilla plan, and for that reason, was not welcome to
address the students from that center of higher education.<br><br>
In an official governmental act for the commemoration of Puerto Rico’s
Commonwealth Constitution on the same day of the murders in 1978, Romero
Barceló used the official podium at the event in San Juan to congratulate
the police officers for killing what he considered a group of terrorists.
Later in 2003, the former governor and member of Puerto Rico’s New
Progressive Party and U.S. Democratic Party admitted in a radio interview
that if he would have known more about the police plot, he would not have
congratulated the murderers of the two pro-independence young
men.<br><br>
The suspicions surrounding Romero Barceló’s involvement with the Cerro
Maravilla case were brought to public opinion in 1978 and 1979 after the
left-wing newspaper Claridad and the only English-language newspaper on
the island, The San Juan Star, published several investigative reports
that suggested the former governor’s knowledge and authorization of the
plan. The reports from the newspapers also presented evidence regarding
former federal district attorney, Julio Morales Sánchez, and his
admission to having had three telephone conversations in which Romero
Barceló attempted to intervene and request an end to the criminal
investigations that were being conducted by the U.S. federal government.
Romero Barceló eventually admitted having those conversations with
Morales Sánchez.<br><br>
“The admission from Carlos Romero Barceló regarding his conversations
with federal district attorney, Julio Morales Sánchez, constituted a
self-incrimination of his undue intervention in the processes of the
federal grand jury” affirmed the deceased lawyer and former Puerto Rican
Socialist Party leader, Juan Mari Brás in a story that was published in
the Claridad editions of April 13 to April 19 of 1979.<br><br>
While many questions remain to be answered in this complex event, the
legacies of the Cerro Maravilla case are still present on an island with
an uncertain political future. Every July 25, some people celebrate the
Puerto Rican Commonwealth Constitution, others condemn the U.S. invasion
in 1898 and a group of advocates for the island’s political sovereignty
make the trip to Villalba to remember the lives of two men who remain in
the memories of those who continue to portray them as martyrs of a
movement and sources of inspiration for an unfinished political
struggle.<br><br>
<br><br>
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