A cowardly assassination

Workers World condemns the cowardly assassination of 72-year-old Puerto Rican liberation fighter Filiberto Ojeda Ríos by the U.S. government and the FBI. He was well-known and respected among Puerto Rican people as the leader of the Popular Boricua Army, known popularly as the Macheteros, an organization fighting for Puerto Rico's liberation from U.S. colonial rule. This FBI execution proved once again to the world that the biggest terrorists are in Washington.

To hunt down this one Puerto Rican, it is reported that the FBI used 300 agents armed to the teeth. They surrounded Ojeda Ríos’ farmhouse in Hormigueros, Puerto Rico, on Sept. 23 while he and his wife, Elma Beatriz Rosado Barbosa, were inside. As two helicopters hovered above his home and 30 vehicles surrounded it, two dozen sharpshooters carried out the execution.

Back in 1992, Ojeda Ríos had been sentenced in absentia in the United States to 55 years in prison for allegedly participating in the fabled 1983 robbery of $7 million from a Wells Fargo depot in Hartford, Conn. According to many sources, the money was used to buy toys for children as well as to support the liberation struggle.

Since then, he had been considered a fugitive and was on the FBI’s "most wanted" list. Nevertheless, he was a well-known political figure in Puerto Rico and sometimes granted interviews to the press.

Friends and neighbors who rushed to the scene after the shooting were turned back by the FBI. It was later learned that Ojeda Ríos, who had been hit in the chest by an FBI sniper bullet, lay inside his house for almost 24 hours, bleeding to death, while the FBI refused to allow even medical personnel to enter.

Until late the following day Ojeda Ríos’ wife, Rosada Barbosa, was held in federal prison, preventing her from being able to tell the public what had really happened. The FBI exposed the true colonial nature of Washington's relation to Puerto Rico when it neglected to even inform the colonial administration in San Juan or its police of the armed assault until hours after the execution.

Puerto Rico has been a U.S. colony ever since it was seized from Spain during the Spanish-American War. Its finest sons and daughters for over a century have fought for the liberation of their nation.

We send our heartfelt sympathy to Rosada Barbosa and Ojeda Ríos’ family.

We stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in the Puerto Rican liberation movement who have lost a hero.

We send our solidarity, too, to the Puerto Rican people in general, who are already reacting with courage and anger to this atrocity, both on the island and in the diaspora.

We call on all progressive individuals and organizations in the United States to join the protests against this latest U.S. crime against the Puerto Rican people and to dedicate ourselves to solidarity with the just struggle of the Puerto Rican people for self-determination.