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<div class="gmail-td-post-header"><h1 class="entry-title"><font size="1"><span style="font-weight:normal"><a href="https://prcc-chgo.org/2020/07/17/betrayal-in-the-barrio/">https://prcc-chgo.org/2020/07/17/betrayal-in-the-barrio/</a></span></font></h1><h1 class="entry-title">Betrayal in the Barrio:
<strong>Rafael Marrero and FBI Repression against Chicago’s Puerto Rican Independence Movement</strong>
</h1><div class="gmail-td-module-meta-info"> <span class="gmail-td-post-date">July 17, 2020</span><div class="gmail-td-post-views"><span class="gmail-td-nr-views-11637"><br></span></div></div></div><div class="gmail-td-post-sharing-top"><div id="gmail-td_social_sharing_article_top" class="gmail-td-post-sharing gmail-td-ps-bg gmail-td-ps-notext gmail-td-post-sharing-style1"><div class="gmail-td-post-sharing-visible"><a class="gmail-td-social-sharing-button gmail-td-social-sharing-button-js gmail-td-social-network gmail-td-social-facebook" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fprcc-chgo.org%2F2020%2F07%2F17%2Fbetrayal-in-the-barrio%2F" style="opacity:1"> </a><a class="gmail-td-social-sharing-button gmail-td-social-sharing-button-js gmail-td-social-network gmail-td-social-twitter" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Betrayal+in+the+Barrio%3A&url=https%3A%2F%2Fprcc-chgo.org%2F2020%2F07%2F17%2Fbetrayal-in-the-barrio%2F&via=Puerto+Rican+Cultural+Center" style="opacity:1"> </a><a class="gmail-td-social-sharing-button gmail-td-social-sharing-button-js gmail-td-social-network gmail-td-social-pinterest" href="https://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=https://prcc-chgo.org/2020/07/17/betrayal-in-the-barrio/&media=https://prcc-chgo.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/rampage3.png&description=Betrayal+in+the+Barrio%3A" style="opacity:1"> </a></div></div></div><div class="gmail-td-post-content gmail-tagdiv-type"><div class="gmail-td-post-featured-image"><a href="https://prcc-chgo.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/rampage3.png" class="gmail-td-modal-image"><img class="entry-thumb gmail-lazyloaded" src="https://prcc-chgo.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/rampage3-696x439.png" alt="" title="rampage3" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="456" height="288"></a></div> <p><em>by National Boricua Human Rights Network</em></p><p><strong>INTRODUCTION</strong></p><p>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<br>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). </p><a class="gmail-td-modal-image"><img src="https://prcc-chgo.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/rampage1-1024x625.png" alt="" class="gmail-wp-image-11638 gmail-lazyloaded" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="456" height="278"></a><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p><strong>HISTORY OF COINTELPRO</strong></p><p>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.</p><a class="gmail-td-modal-image"><img src="https://prcc-chgo.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/rampage2-1024x597.png" alt="" class="gmail-wp-image-11639 gmail-lazyloaded" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="456" height="266"></a><p>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).</p><p><strong>A PLANT SETTLES IN CHICAGO</strong></p><p>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. </p><a class="gmail-td-modal-image"><img src="https://prcc-chgo.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/rampage3-1024x646.png" alt="" class="gmail-wp-image-11640 gmail-lazyloaded" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="456" height="288"></a><p>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. </p><p><strong>MARRERO ORCHESTRATES 1992 BOMBING</strong></p><p>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. </p><a class="gmail-td-modal-image"><img src="https://prcc-chgo.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/rampage4-5-1024x550.png" alt="" class="gmail-wp-image-11641 gmail-lazyloaded" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="456" height="245"></a><p>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. </p><p>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.</p><p><strong>THE FBI & GRAND JURY</strong></p><p>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.</p><p>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. </p><p><strong>THE PROPAGANDA OF EL PITO</strong></p><p>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. </p><a class="gmail-td-modal-image"><img src="https://prcc-chgo.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/rampage6-1024x451.png" alt="" class="gmail-wp-image-11642 gmail-lazyloaded" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="456" height="201"></a><p><strong>CONTROVERSY AT ROBERTO CLEMENTE HIGH SCHOOL</strong></p><p>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. </p><p>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. </p><a class="gmail-td-modal-image"><img src="https://prcc-chgo.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/rampage7-998x1024.png" alt="" class="gmail-wp-image-11643 gmail-lazyloaded" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="444" height="456"></a><p>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. </p><p>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.</p><p><strong>WHERE WE ARE TODAY</strong></p><p>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. </p><a class="gmail-td-modal-image"><img src="https://prcc-chgo.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/rampage8-1024x523.png" alt="" class="gmail-wp-image-11644 gmail-lazyloaded" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="456" height="233"></a><p>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. </p><p>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. </p><p>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.</p><p>—————————</p><p><em>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.</em></p></div>
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