Media Policy Liberty Security and the Future Response to Terrorism

¶ … shifting seas of global social consciousness and worldwide political hierarchy have only recently brought the word 'terrorism' to the quotidian mind of Americans, it has long enjoyed a cemented place in the construct of civilization. Daily associations between the word terrorism and the frightening images of gore and destruction rampant on the 24-hour news networks affirm the complicated understanding of terrorism in the modern world; bombings on an Israeli bus, explosions outside a Pakistani supermarket, and subway atrocities mingle with recent memories of the World Trade center and recollections of the bloody IRA, Black Liberation Army, and Basque independence movements. Personal reaction and affiliation to the events, movement, and goals of each group's paradigm resonates inside a loose definition of political violence, while governmental response is chiseled, monochromatic, and decisive. While the motives and end-results always differ, the path to terrorism is marked by similar goal posts. These similarities and divergences are magnified in examination of the Macheteros and Tupamaros, two extremist groups whose training techniques, compliance tactics, target selection, surrounding social conditions, and leadership psychology garner a greater understanding of the technologies best used to fight both foreign and domestic terrorism.

"Freedom fighters, liberators," the Macheteros call themselves.

The Puerto Rican domestic extremist group publicly seeks the independence of the American commonwealth, while its apolitical crimes leave it reasonably indicted by the Federal government and Bureau of Investigation. The left-wing Puerto Rican group, nominally the Boricua Popular Army, took root inside the historic Armed Forces of National Liberation in the 1970s, twenty years after Puerto Rico was established as a Commonwealth of the United States. The gaping differences between the obvious qualities of life in Puerto Rico and the United States have perpetuated not only the mass movement of Puerto Ricans to America and neighborhood enclaves like Queens, NY, but also the establishment of political groups resisting the second-tier territorial status of the island.

Like the Palestinian Jihad feels towards Israel, the Macheteros regard the United States within the theoretical framework of irrendtism, preempting the American commonwealth establishment and instead seeing them as occupiers of a land not theirs.

The temporal rise of the Boricua Popular Army, los Macheteros -- the machete men, coincides not only with the post-colonial inhabitance of Puerto Rico, but also plays an important role within the great Cold War politics of the era. To understand their methodology as an example of domestic terrorists, it is critical to examine their coming of age, which has since played out on not only their ability to recruit new members, but to maintain a livelihood in the shifting political climate of the world and make an impact on the growing disillusioned Puerto Rican population, both on the Island and in the States, and the leaders of government and business they intend to impress.

"One of the primary reasons terrorism is difficult to define is that the meaning changes within social and historical contexts."

When the Macheteros first began their violently apolitical regime in Puerto Rico, the United States was involved in a worldwide war against the Soviet Bloc. The United States was fighting on all continents; in the Middle East, America was struggling for access of sufficient ports to provide water access to military and business for the region; in Africa, the Nixonian Southern "tilt" was followed soon after by the Reagan Doctrine that supported the anti-Marxist groups struggling to take hold of Angola. At home, the Cuban proximity to other Caribbean islands posed the social threat of revolutionary ideology that spread through Latin America, but also to the very dangerous concept of military engagement with the little island to the south held so dear by the Red Bloc to the East.

It was in that relevant political atmosphere that the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico was established, and the political strength it posed to the forces in Washington cannot be undervalued; its importance to the American cause for democracy and Western preeminence was something understood by political divergents worldwide. "Significant collusion among groups was not evident until the 1960's when the Soviet Union embarked upon a coordinated effort to bolster movements it believed would further its political objectives," Smith writes.

"The training it provided itself, and throughout its surrogates, was the genesis of knowledge that would ultimately spread to the majority of the world's terrorist organizations. But by the time the Soviet Union collapsed, it was no longer a vital component in the terrorist training arena."

At the same time as the Soviet Union was fostering coalitions of its own in Africa and Europe, it was also combing the seas of the Caribbean and Gulf for compassionate post-colonial islands in search of stable regime. While the United States was offering one form of government, they were purporting another. In looking at the establishment of the Machetes, it has to be acknowledged that they developed as their own revolutionary movement unaffiliated with the American leaders that had come its turf to modify its leadership just as the Soviets had, but since the cementation of Puerto Rico as a commonwealth territory and not a state, it has morphed into a domestic extremist faction.

The nearly forty-year history of the Macheteros is steeped deep in the history of American utilization of the Puerto Rican island and people. While America argues, in conjunction with the United Nations and other leading operatives, that its service to Puerto Rico is one of stewardship, the Macheteros see the modern day holding of the island as a second-rate state as one of insult and abuse, as the American ideology could be, if ignoring the heart-tugging strings of patriotism and democracy, viewed as during the international Cold War between the U.S. And the Soviets. However, while the Macheteros disagree with the protectorate of the United States, most Puerto Ricans do not.

The vast majority of Puerto Ricans are split down the center, favoring statehood or the perpetuation of the commonwealth status, putting the Baricua ideology into the electorate minority.

The Macheteros began their war against the U.S. Government as a war against corporate America, the industrial leadership of Puerto Rico, and the established hegemony of the old sociopolitical system. They claim the United States holds on to Puerto Rico as a basin for labor and supply services that support the American capitalist economy, while ignoring the great advances in social consistency that have encouraged most Puerto Ricans to prefer close association to the United States over all other options. When the group was first active, the FBI had already infiltrated the free press and political circles of Puerto Rico, according to Puerto Rican Congressman Jose E. Serrano (D-NY).

The COINTELPRO operation, documented by the City University of New York, covertly sought the suppression of the Baricua voice, establishing the complex relationship the FBI and Macheteros would follow through the years.

While national ideology did not call for the suppression of independence voicing, the American Commonwealth did seek to ignore the violent aggression of those dissatisfied with the political regime. The Macheteros, whose recruitment existed within the very insular fringe community at odds with the American movement, became outwardly violent in January, 1977. One day after Carols Romero Barcelo, long an advocate for statehood, was sworn in as Governor, the Macheteros took immediately responsibility for two bombs placed in front of an ROTC building in San Juan. The bombs were successfully destroyed by the police, indicating right away to the officials seeking to prevent the harm of innocent civilians that the knowledge, organization, and execution of the Macheteros did not pose a massive threat to national security.

Despite the lowered degree of risk, the threat was still real, networked, and pervasive throughout the region. Only one year later, officer Julio Rodiguez Rivera was murdered by the Macheteros, and his car was stolen for use in a terrorist attack. The means available to the Macheteros was clear; unlike the modern-day Al Queda, financial support was not an option for the Macheteros. Their struggle was not religious, but instead a socio-economic concern that called for the ousting of the economic elite from whom they were financially separated. Their organization and financially ability, combined with the lack of recruiting abilities in the 70s and 80s, fostered a psychology in their leaders of desperate concern and the amoral action that affirmed them not as political dissidents, but instead as domestic terrorists.

According to the new legal definition of "domestic terrorism," a terrorist is one who, among many other things, tries "to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping, and occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States." (HR 3162 Sec. 802, "Definitions of Domestic Terrorism," Patriot Act.) Continued attacks in Puerto Rico through the 1980s were followed by the first, most famous, and most defining act of their terrorist movement. In September of 1983, the Macheteros made their first attack in the continental U.S., robbing a Wells Fargo depot of approximately $7 million in West Hartford. After having stolen the money, they wrote a press release denoting the action as a symbolic protest against the "greed-infested men and mechanisms which strain our elected officials, government agencies, and social aspirations in this country, as well as in Puerto Rico."

Strategically, the Wells Fargo, or "Aguilla Blanca" as they called it, incident created two extreme problems for both the American officials and the Machetero base. Previously, the Macheteros were responsible or struggles against the armed forces of the U.S., whom they deemed an occupying force; after the incident, they were responsible for the death of two American civilians (the truck drivers), and made public throughout the rest of the continental U.S. That publicity proved the second problem, and made its weight known within the FBI. No longer were the Macheteros creating terror in the military stage, they had transferred their criminal state to the public sector, instilling fear in the everyday lives of Americans as a means of coercion, acquiring new funds from the robbery, and gaining new publicity with the Puerto Ricans in America. The Puerto Rican base represented by Serrano was reminded of the criminal group from the island, who, at the scene of the crime, through some of the stolen money into the air from high buildings, in a pseudo-Robin Hood vesture of giving to the poor Puerto Ricans in America. While they kept the rest of the money to funnel, most likely to Cuba for the purpose of acquiring more weaponry to defend their cause and spread terrorism, the public distribution was a critical recruitment tactic for creating both sympathizers and new recruits. The social demography of the Puerto Ricans in America opened up a new line of disenfranchised youth who, lured by the false sense of nobility in the psychology of the cause, could grow the ranks, learn the guerilla tactics of urban warfare on the streets of New York, and be made to comply with the Machetero regime.

By creating that false sense of gallantry, the Macheteros fell within Coates' definition of instilling panic, disrupting business, and garnering attention -- even positive attention in some circles -- from the community.

By choosing a target location outside of the military holdouts where they had previously focused their attention, they gained new publicity, putting the media to work for them, spreading the word throughout the Puerto Rican communities clustered in that area.

Having already made clear that the social climate at the onset of the group's origination is critical to the establishment, future, and reputation of the terrorist group, the political atmosphere when the Tupamaros, an incredibly violent foreign extremist group, is necessary to understand their position in the world as highly feared terrorists. Like the Macheteros, the Tupamaros developed in the 1960s and 1970s, when the spirit of revolution pervaded Latin and Central America and, combined with the complex ideology of Cold War politics, created a tenuous political situation upon which violent dissidents fed. Also known as the National Liberation Army, the Tupamaros began as urban guerrilla organization in Uruguay named for the Inca revolutionary Tupac Amaru II. Like the Macheteros, their financial lucidity was limited, driving them to steal from banks, gun clubs, and other business to carry out their elected ends. Yet, also like their Puerto Rican successor, the Tupamaros were fueled by the revolutionary ideology of independence, a patriotism that, when taken to the extreme, makes modern-day martyrs out of Palestinian boys and then meant the distribution of stolen food and money among the poor in Uruguay's Montevideo.

While in Puerto Rico, the Macheteros were struggling to find sustenance in a largely poor economy, the Uruguan sociopolitical environment was one of affluence and stability. There was a growing middle class, and the state enjoyed more wide-spread economic stability than its neighbors. As a result of the largely peaceable nation, the Army and Police were kept small; in 1968, there were only 12,000 men in the armed forces to stand against and for a nation of 3 million.

Like the Cold War affected Puerto Rican politics and influenced the philosophy of political divergence that would serve as fodder to terrorist regimes, the Korean war brought a slump in the economy to Uruguay that fostered an unhappy populace and ripe environment for urban guerilla warfare.

The Machetero movement mobilized in much the same fashion as the Uruguan counterpart did; both were urban and struggling for social change and revolutionary politics divergent from the Western post-colonial standards. The name of the group is important; unlike the machete men, which instills the requisite fear, the name Tupac Amaru reminded the disenfranchised people of Uruguay of their former powerful leader, the last member of the Inca royal family, who was destroyed and killed by the Spanish colonizers. But unlike the Macheteros, whose attacks largely struck the American "invaders," the law-school student run Tupamaro movement was immediately violent, focused on cities, and deliberately guerilla-oriented. They drew young, radical middle class people, particularly students and white-collar workers, into their cellular structure "firing groups." The firing group captain was the only one with contact to another group for explicit security reasons, instilling fear into not only the citizens of Montevideo, but also into the members of the cells, whose position inherently lacked the trust of their affiliates.

The violence was not directed upon military alone, unlike the Macheteros. The Tupamaros robbed private citizens of their money, stole guns, and ran havoc throughout the city. Their goal was to make the government seem powerless, according to their propaganda, which, after their actions escalated to political killings, kidnappings, and assignations, they clearly had. They deprived the citizens of peace, and the police force was unable to prevent the rampant captures of those kidnapped in what they Tupamaros called, "Peoples' Prisons." While they spread the news that their motive was pure, and that they were only taking away the corrupt people, the worsening state, national unrest, and extreme violence prompted a state of emergency that lasted four years, until 1972.

Nevertheless, history reports two sides of the story. While the United States government and that of all organized societies lists them as a terrorist regime, many Uruguans took part in the student revolutions that followed, and one bank even reported that its striking employees encouraged the kidnapping of one leading banker.

The government, still under attack, refused to let left-wing newspapers print, and even refused to allow the media to mention the name of the group on the air. Training and recruitment easily continued, and the mass-appeal of the Tupamaros throughout the young intelligentsia perpetuated the ability of the group to motivate violence against the targeted audience; in this case, the ruling elite.

While the Macheteros exist within small numbers, the Tupamaros were so appealing and large a force that in 1972, the new president of Uruguay suspended all civil liberties and declared an Internal War. The asymmetric warfare was brutal, but after five months, the Tupamaros ceased to be a real threat to the state of Uruguay. While the Macheteros continue in strength and fear mongering in the United States, fighting the Tupamaros in their own manner -- gory urban guerilla warfare- proved the best way to expunge them. Perpetrators of violent crimes and extreme terrorists, the lessons learned from their history lend an interesting approach to the modern dilemma of the Macheteros. While the only effective means Uruguay found to get rid of the terrorists mirrors the current American military experience in Iraq, how does it provide a lesson plan for approaching the paralleled chivalry falsely displayed by the Macheteros in the United States?

The social conditions of each situation are incomparably different. Unlike the Tupamaros in Uruguay, the Puerto Rican demographic in the continental United States and in the Commonwealth statistically appears to enjoy its relation to the American government. While the manner of that relationship is undecided amongst the internal group, there exist no deciding "rational factors" that could provide a psychological state of mass revolt. However, the Robin Hood position that appealed to the students of the Tupamaros is politically romantic, particularly in a day and age when the Puerto Rican population in the current New York mayoral election complains that their schools, housing, and services are not to the same standards as the rest of the city. The first civil target in the continental U.S. used by the Macheteros was on the front door to Manhattan, a symbolic foray into the world of continued extremism. The key to combating this kind of terrorism exists in the mutli-faceted paradigm of information. While it is key for the government and law enforcement to be made astutely aware of the socio-political underpinnings of the terrorist movement in addition to its violent capabilities, it also needs to carefully monitor the dissemination of public information.