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<a href="http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-ctmachetero0829.artaug29,0,4887847.story?coll=hc-headlines-local">
http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-ctmachetero0829.artaug29,0,4887847.story?coll=hc-headlines-local</a>
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</font><font face="arial" size=3>Jorge Farinacci; Los Macheteros
Leader</b></font><font face="arial" size=2> <br><br>
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By EDMUND H. MAHONY<br>
Courant Staff Writer<br><br>
August 29 2006<br><br>
Jorge A. Farinacci-Garcia, a Puerto Rican labor lawyer and one of the
radical independence advocates convicted of robbing $7.1 million from a
Wells Fargo armored car depot in West Hartford in 1983, has died in San
Juan following a yearlong struggle with cancer.<br><br>
Farinacci, who died Saturday at age 56, was a highly visible figure in
Puerto Rico's powerful union movement and was known for his leftist
political views. He was the leader of the Socialist Front of Puerto Rico
and a longtime supporter of Cuban President Fidel Castro and Cuba's
communist revolution.<br><br>
"His political trajectory was marked by the commitment to the
working class and the fight without quarter against imperialism," La
Bandera Roja, the official newspaper of the Socialist Front,
editorialized this week.<br><br>
Mainstream independence supporters also recognized Farinacci's
contributions.<br><br>
"Jorge Farinacci was an untiring fighter for the freedom of our
people and for the rights of the workers," said Juan Dalmau Ramirez,
secretary-general of the Puerto Rican Independence Party. "Always he
maintained as a political priority the advance of independence over any
other consideration."<br><br>
Although Farinacci had tempered his revolutionary persona in recent
years, in the early 1980s, he ran the political arm of the violent and
clandestine Puerto Rican pro-independence group Los Macheteros, which
translates as the machete wielders or cane cutters. Among other things,
in the late 1970s and '80s, the group claimed responsibility for blowing
up 11 military jets at a Puerto Rican air base, ambushing and shooting to
death two U.S. Navy sailors and firing an anti-tank rocket at the federal
building in San Juan's commercial district.<br><br>
But the group's best-known operation was the West Hartford robbery, in
which the Macheteros recruited a young Wells Fargo guard from Hartford
named Victor Manuel Gerena. Gerena drugged two co-workers and escaped
with more than $7 million in cash, which the Macheteros smuggled to Cuban
diplomats in Mexico City. About $80,000 was recovered. FBI sources
believe that most of the money ended up in Havana.<br><br>
Farinacci admitted being a leader of Los Macheteros and a member of the
organization's central committee, which approved the robbery. But he
denied any role in planning the theft, authorizing it or spending any of
the money.<br><br>
Federal prosecutors believed otherwise, and in 1985, Farinacci was
arrested with 17 other Macheteros. He ultimately pleaded guilty to
conspiracy and illegal transportation of stolen money and was sentenced
to 42 months in prison in 1992. <br><br>
Farinacci's death follows by 11 months the death of Filiberto Ojeda Rios,
a Cuban-trained agent who founded Los Macheteros and planned the Wells
Fargo robbery. Ojeda, who was a fugitive from the robbery charges, died
in a shootout with FBI agents in western Puerto Rico.<br><br>
Contact Edmund H. Mahony at emahony@courant.com. <br><br>
</font><font size=3>Copyright 2006,
<a href="http://www.courant.com">Hartford Courant</a> <br><br>
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<font size=3 color="#FF0000">The Freedom Archives<br>
522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br>
(415) 863-9977<br>
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