Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (Puerto Rico)

The Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (English: Armed Forces of National Liberation, FALN) was a Puerto Rican clandestine paramilitary organization that, through direct action, advocated complete independence for Puerto Rico. At the time of its dissolution, the FALN was responsible for more than 120 bomb attacks on United States targets between 1974 and 1983. The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) classifies the FALN as a terrorist organization.

Overview

The FALN was led by Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, who was one of the FBI's most wanted criminals. The group served as the predecessor of the Boricua Popular Army. Several of the organization's members were arrested and convicted for conspiracy to commit robbery and for firearms and explosives violations. On August 11, 1999 then United States President Bill Clinton offered clemency to sixteen of the convicted militants under the condition that they renounce any kind of violent manifestation. This decision drew criticism towards the Clinton administration from figures that include the United States Attorney, the FBI, and the United States Congress.

Political position

The organization’s ideological basis consisted of five reforms that they expected to implement, these were:

1. Directing the armed and political struggle in accordance with the Marxist-Leninist principle of a broad front including a popular sectors willing to [join ] the armed struggle right away
2. Agglutination of all forces based upon the principle of coordination between political work and military work under the leadership of a party composed of combatants assigned to different tasks
3. Application of the principle of internal ideological debate, a study of Marxist-Leninist ideology and the use of criticism and self-criticism
4. Implementation of the Stalinist ideological position on the concept of "nation" with regard to American reality
5. Application of the principle of the priority of the struggle for independence of Puerto Rico over any question of internal solidarity, demanding concrete support for our armed struggle as a priority matter in the international struggle against colonialism

History

The Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional was founded in the 1960s under the leadership of Filiberto Ojeda Rios. They were one of several organizations established during this decade that promoted "clandestine armed struggles" against the United States government that the movement described as the "colonial forces of the United States". The group was founded following decades of alleged harassment, attacks, illegal imprisonments and assassination against members of the Puerto Rican independence movement. The group was part of a movement that included other clandestine organizations, including the Movimiento Independentista Revolucionario Armado, Organización de Voluntarios por la Revolución Puertorriqueña and Los Commandos Armados de Liberación, and served as predecessor for what would become the Boricua Popular Army. The organization's intention was to draw attention to what they descried as the "colonial condition" of Puerto Rico through armed action against the United States government and military.

The modus operandi of the FALN was to perform bombing and incendiary actions and then admit responsibility through press releases. The first of these news releases announced the group's intention; in this document they expressed that they attacked several important locations in New York to weaken the "Yanki capitalist monopoly", and demanded the release of five political prisoners, these were: Lolita Lebrón, Oscar Collazo, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Andres Figueroa and Irvin Flores. In this communique the organization warns that they had opened two fronts, in Puerto Rico and the United States respectively, the goal of these were to organize a People's Revolutionary Army which they expected would "rid Puerto Rico of Yanki colonialism". Both fronts were supported and maintained by allies within Puerto Rico and North America.

The group openly expressed their opposition towards any government that was guided by any other system besides the Marxist-Leninist principles and rejected any kind of support or solidarity towards the Puerto Rican independence coming from the government of these countries. Of these countries they accused the governments of Mexico and Venezuela directly, expressing that the actions taken by these governments where hypocritical in origin, citing that while the Venezuelan government supported the independence of Puerto Rico they also supported the regimen led by José Napoleón Duarte in El Salvador. The group went further and claimed that the Venezuelan government was a "protector and enforcer of the Yankee imperialist plans to expand their grip in the Caribbean and Central America" and claimed that Venezuelan Army was receiving modern weapons in exchange. In their fifth communique the FALN expressed their dislike for several agencies of the United States government, they mentioned the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of Immigration. They claimed that the Department of Immigration was trying to blame the use of a failing economic system on the Chicano population, and that it was responsible for massive deportation and repressive action against Chicano and Mexican workers. In the communique the organization also expresses their confidence on the ability of the group's mobile guerrilla units to attack any location within the continental United States. Regardless of their activism against the American government the FALN extended friendship and solidarity towards the United States working class, whom they descried as "allies in the struggle against Yanki fascism". They said that the reason for this was that the American working class was being pushed out of work forced to unemployment while the nation's corporations where gaining billions of dollars in profits. The FALN used some of their communiques to advertise other causes that they fell where fair, including support towards the government of Panama when this country wanted the control of the Panama Canal.

FALN Pardons of 1999

On August 11, 1999, Bill Clinton commuted the sentences of sixteen members of FALN that set off bombs several times in New York City and Chicago, convicted for conspiracies to commit robbery, bomb-making, and sedition, as well as for firearms and explosives violations. None of the sixteen were convicted of bombings or any crime which injured another person, and all of the sixteen had served nineteen years or longer in prison, which was a longer sentence than such crimes typically received, according to the White House. Clinton offered clemency, on condition that the prisoners renounce violence, at the appeal of 10 Nobel Peace Prize laureates, President Jimmy Carter, the Cardinal of New York, and the Archbishop of Puerto Rico. The commutation was opposed by U.S. Attorney's Office, the FBI, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons and criticised by many including former victims of FALN terrorist activities, the Fraternal Order of Police, and members of Congress. Hillary Clinton in her campaign for Senator also criticised the commutation, although she had earlier been supportive.

Incidents

Date	Description	Reference(s)
1974-12-11December 11, 1974	Angel Poggi, a police officer, lost an eye and was permanently disabled by one of FALN's bombs at 336 East 110th Street in East Harlem.
1975-1-24January 24, 1975	FALN, through their Communique No. 3 claimed responsibility for the bombing of the Fraunces Tavern, killing four people and injuring more than 50. No one was ever prosecuted for the bombing.
1975-4-3April 3, 1975	FALN took responsibility for four bombings in New York City, by leaving their Communique No. 4 for the Associated Press at a phone booth. The four bombs went off within a 40 minute period. The first bomb exploded on 51 Madison Avenue, the New York Life Insurance Company. The second bomb exploded on 45 East Forty-Ninth Street, the Bankers Trust Company plaza. The third bomb exploded on 340 Park Avenue South, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company headquarters. The fourth bomb exploded on 5 West Forty-Sixth Street, the Blimpie Base restaurant. At least five people were injured from the bombings.
1977-8-3August 3, 1977	FALN bombs exploded on the twenty-first floor of 342 Madison Avenue in New York City, which housed Defense Department security personnel, as well as the Mobil Building at 150 East Forty-Second Street. The first attack came at 11:30 when an employee noticed a handbag left on a window sill. He found a clock-like device and alerted fifty co-workers to flee the office. The bomb went off twelve seconds later, blasting the office doors off their hinges, but causing no injuries. An hour later, the Mobil bomb killed Charles Steinberg, twenty-six, a partner in an employment agency in the building, and injuring eight others. The FALN. warned that bombs were located in thirteen other buildings, including the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center. One hundred thousand office workers were evacuated in the rain during the afternoon. Eighty more crank calls were received in Brooklyn. On August 4, New York Police announced the arrest for illegal possession of a shotgun, revolver, and one hundred rounds of ammunition of David Perez, twenty-seven. His roommate, Vincent Alba, twenty-six, was also questioned. Marie Haydee Beltran Torres, twenty-two, was charged by federal authorities with the Mobil bombing. A federal grand jury in Chicago on September 7 indicted her husband, Carlos Alberto Torres, twenty-five, and Oscar Rivera, thirty-four, on conspiracy and a “variety of explosive related charges.”
1977-8-8August 8, 1977	A bomb attributed to FALN was found in the AMAX building in New York City.
1977-6-9June 9, 1979	FALN exploded a bomb outside of Shubert Theatre in Chicago, injuring five people.
1977-3-15March 15, 1980	Armed members of FALN raided the campaign headquarters of Carter-Mondale in Chicago and the campaign headquarters of George H. W. Bush in New York City. Seven people in Chicago and ten people in New York were tied up as the offices were vandalized before the FALN members fled. A few days later, Carter delegates in Chicago received threatening letters from FALN. On April 5, 11 members of FALN were arrested for attempting to rob an armored truck at Northwestern University; three were linked to the raid on the Carter-Mondale campaign headquarters.

Notable group members

Name	Remarks
Antonio Camacho Negrón	released from imprisonment by Bill Clinton's clemency
Filiberto Ojeda Ríos	co-founder former leader (killed by the FBI in late September 2005) former FBI's Most Wanted Fugitives

See also

• Boricua Popular Army
• General Intelligence Directorate

Footnotes

References

• Mahony, Edmund (1999). Puerto Rican Independence: The Cuban Connection. The Hartford Courant. Hartford, Connecticut (USA).
• Mahony, Edmund (1999). The Untold Tale Of Victor Gerena. The Hartford Courant. Hartford, Connecticut (USA).
• Mickolus, Edward F., Todd Sandler, and Jean M. Murdock (1989). International Terrorism in the 1980s: A Chronology of Events – Volume I: 1980-1983. Iowa State University Press. Ames, Iowa (USA).
• Mickolus, Edward F., Todd Sandler, and Jean M. Murdock (1989). International Terrorism in the 1980s: A Chronology of Events – Volume II: 1984-1987. Iowa State University Press. Ames, Iowa (USA).
• Daniel James (1981). Puerto Rican Terrorists Also Threaten Reagan Assassination. Human Events. United States of America.
• Mickolus, Edward F. (1980) Transnational Terrorism: A Chronology of Events 1968 – 1979. Greenwood Press. Westport, Connecticut.
• Chronology of FALN activities in the United States