Puerto rico secret files

Several individuals filed court petitions against the police and against the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. The courts ruled in favor of the petitioners, instructing the police to return the files to the individuals and to reveal the names of the informants.

Approximately 75, persons were listed as under political police surveillance. There were , entries encompassing individuals 74, and organizations, vehicles, boats, and geographic areas 60, These , entries in the central archives of the police were complemented by another 11, entries in regional police archives, and approximately 5, in the Bureau of Special Investigations of the Justice Department of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

Because the regional and central archives contain duplicates, and the same individuals are listed under personal files and files of organizations, the actual number under surveillance is smaller than the number of files. Approximately 15, different persons had extensive police files for political reasons. This is a significant number in an island with a population of 3.

Colonial political surveillance is of course not new. Shortly after the U. Military Governor Guy V. He was released after a year and a half by the governor himself. Imprisonment for political repression became somewhat more systematic during World War I. By the Jones Act of the U.

Congress, Puerto Ricans were made U. During that war over Puerto Ricans were imprisoned for refusing to serve in the U. Florencio Romero was among those imprisoned. Romero, a tobacco worker from Caguas, was accused of delivering speeches calling on workers to refuse the draft and to oppose the imposition of U.

Romero later contributed to the founding of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. During the second decade of U.

Many high school students forged their initial pro-independence credentials in these early struggles and became prominent leaders of the Nationalist Party in the s. Because of the limited number of immigrants, the Palmer raids following World War I had practically no effect on Puerto Rico, but the imposition of U.

The present apparatus of repression originated in the surveillance of the Puerto Rican Nationalists in the s. Puerto Rico was still ruled by North American governors appointed by the president of the United States. State repression of Nationalists and other pro-independence individuals increased during the s, particularly during the term of General Blanton Winship governor, Winship arrived in Puerto Rico in the midst of a general strike in the sugar industry that paralyzed the island in A few months earlier, a revolutionary general strike in Cuba, with massive participation of the sugar mill workers, had overthrown the regime of Gerardo Machado.

In Puerto Rico the general strike of signaled a momentary but explosive alliance between wildcat striking workers in the sugar industry and the Nationalist Party, which supported the strike and bore much of the repression of the colonial authorities in its aftermath. Starting in the mids, and continuing for over half a century, the FBI developed a secret information program in Puerto Rico — it was called carpetas.

These were secret police files, containing intimate personal information. The files were built by a network of police officers, confidential informants, FBI agents — and the amount of information they contained was staggering. Over , Puerto Ricans had carpetas opened on them.

An additional 60, carpetas were opened on vehicles, boats, and organizations. Carpetas were even opened on geographic areas: entire neighborhoods had carpetas filed on them by the FBI. Over time, the carpetas eventually totaled 1. The average carpeta contained roughly 20 pages but others were more extensive. The file on Albizu Campos filled two boxes with 4, pages.

The information in carpetas included school transcripts; employment history; religious practice; political affiliations; club memberships; bank accounts; property holdings; taxes paid; family and marital records; travel history; auto registration and license plates; meetings attended; publications written or received. His file included this:.

Since this information was never released by the FBI, it appears that the U. In this manner, the U. This is a prime example of how the carpetas program was used to control the politics and society of Puerto Rico: through fear, intimidation and outright blackmail. The program was so pervasive, that the following cartoon ran in a Puerto Rican newspaper:. A government fund was established in to assist some of the victims of carpetas.

This damage extended beyond any individual or group, and even beyond the issue of independence. As befits a sun-kissed island with wonderfully fertile soil, Puerto Ricans were an open, gregarious, cheerful people — but sixty years of carpetas , police informants, and neighbors spying upon each other, had affected the national character of Puerto Rico.

It had burned fear, secrecy, lying, betrayal and mistrust into its collective experience. The carpetas drove a permanent wound into the psyche of Puerto Rico. It is a wound that may never fully heal. For a more complete understanding of how , Puerto Ricans were followed by FBI agents, please read…. Buy it now. This book opened my eyes, and gave me a history I knew nothing about. Thank you so much for writing this.