I'm not a professional translator, but I did manage to get into English an opinion piece digitized in
La Jornada, a Mexico City newspaper, today. I thought you might find it interesting. I've included it below.
Dear readers, my question is simply this. Let's say you and I wanted to electrify the population of a small country. Let's say we wanted to turn them absolutely against us, make them passionately hate us, make them seek independence from us, make them do whatever it took to get that independence. Now, let me ask you. Can you think of any act more guaranteed to do that than what the FBI did down there--kill an apparently deeply respected independence hero on the island's independence day? Am I out of my mind or is the current leadership of the United States out of its mind?
Full article after the break:
"Indignation in Puerto Rico" by Angel Guerra Cabrera
La Jornada, 29 September 2005
Address:
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2005/09/29/040a1mun.php
The assassination of Filiberto Ojeda Rios, leader of the Popular Army Boricua-Macheteros, has united the people of Puerto Rico in mourning and in indignation. The repudiation of the crime has been nearly unanimous and with an attitude comparable to that which led to the struggle that expulsed the US Navy from the island of Vieques. For despite ideological differences and the method he chose to fight for independence, Ojeda was a very respected man in Puerto Rico because of the congruence he maintained between his thought and the actions he took. The money he obtained through his revolutionary activities he dedicated to the cause of Puerto Rican independence and he also distributed it in poor neighborhoods in Puerto Rico and in the United States for food and toys for children.
Outstanding trumpeter of the legendary Sonora Poncena, he abandoned the instrument to enter into armed struggle for the independence of the island. The gamut of those who have condemned his murder runs from the independence parties and the socialists, through the leadership of the both the catholic and protestant churches and includes the College of Lawyers and many important officials in both the government and the colonial parties. No word exists that is more exact than assassination to describe his murder, if one examines the obscure circumstances surrounding his death and the evidence that has been gathered at this time.
Ojeda had passed into hiding for the second time since 1990, as he was awaiting trial for the revolutionary confiscation of 7 million dollars from a Wells Fargo truck in Hartford, Connecticut in 1983. The house in which he was hiding was assaulted on the 23 of September, even though it had been surrounded three days earlier. The 23rd is precisely the date on which Grito de Lares ["Shout of Lares"], a national holiday, is celebrated, the day in 1868 when the people of the island declared themselves a republic and began their struggle for independence from the colonial rule of Spain.
Did the FBI act on this day by chance? I doubt it. Was it Bush-style fascism? That's the way it's seen. Was it a message to the Puerto Rican independence movement? It was quickly understood as such. At the same moment that the FBI burst into the area around the farmhouse, the independence moment was celebrating Grito de Lares in Revolution Square in Lares, where they were listening to a message recorded by Ojeda. The governor and the colonial police hadn't been informed about the assault. They had only been ordered to cordon off the zone in order to stop the flow of local traffic in the area. A journalist was successful in finding his way to the cordon and offered to be an intermediary; however, he was sent away by the FBI.
At the moment of his fall in combat, the guerilla leader was 72 years old and shared his life with Elma Beatriz Rosado, his wife, who was unarmed. For this reason, the only witnesses of the facts are she and elements of the FBI participating in the operation.
Contrary to the version of Washington, Rosado claims that the FBI agents initiated the shooting. Ojeda, as was the case in 1985, when also the FBI had tried to detain him, returned fire. He wounded one of the agents, and it appears that a short time later he was shot in the shoulder by a sniper, and the bullet, as determined by an autopsy, punctured the upper lobe of one of his lungs. According to the testimony of Doctor Hector Pesquera, who, at the request of the family, accompanied the forensics team, it is doubtful that the wound Ojeda received was mortal and that he slowly bled to death. This is explained by the fact that the FBI waited 17 hours before entering the residence, using the pretext that explosives might have been stored in the interior. As was affirmed by a lawyer and ex-official of the Puerto Rican branch of the CIA, Ignacio Rivera, "Some operations are designed to capture a person alive, but in this case it was an aggressive operation, whose mission was to eliminate an enemy, just as if it had been carried out in Afghanistan or in Iraq."
Funeral honors were rendered by thousands who descended into the streets in all the cities of Puerto Rico. Hundreds of automobiles filed in cortege from San Juan to the city of his birth Naguabo, where he was buried. All along the road stood teachers and school children, housewives, workers, peasants and students, all acclaiming him, raising their arms and throwing flowers in one of the most deeply felt manifestations of mourning in the history of the island.
Filiberto Ojeda has suspended armed actions and had dedicated himself in recent year to achieving a unity of independence parties, whom he called on the day of his death, to integrate into one single organization. "Keep up the fight" [p'alante, according to one website, "is a shout of protest, solidarity and social disobedience" against a repressive state] were the last words his companion heard him speak.