Five Years Later: Remembering Filiberto Ojeda Ríos

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May 11 2010
Juan A. Ocasio Rivera and Elma Beatriz Rosado

Few incidents have galvanized the Puerto Rican nation as much as the FBI’s extra-judicial killing of independence leader Filiberto Ojeda Ríos in September 2005. Indeed, the politically divided country exploded in outrage over the incident, and Ojeda Ríos’s funeral procession was the largest ever attended in the island’s history. Since then, his image and his message have been repeatedly projected by supporters of independence. Indeed, striking student activists across the island who have shut down the public university system protesting increases in tuition are revisiting his speeches, communiqués, writings, and interviews to inform their developing activism. As the U.S. Congress reviews legislation this month proposing a change in the island’s status, independence supporting organizations continue to grapple with the revolutionary’s final call for unity as the necessary ingredient to move their agenda forward. To an increasing number of Puerto Ricans, the image of the fallen martyr and his message is never far off.

Ojeda Ríos (1933–2005) led a life of revolutionary activity in Puerto Rico as early as 1961, when he first went underground. He was arrested in 1970, after being accused of belonging to armed anti-colonial insurgency groups, but he evaded prosecution by again returning underground. Later, in 1978, he helped found the Ejército Popular Boricua-Macheteros, also known as Los Macheteros. Notorious for its brazen attacks on U.S. military interests, the guerrillas proclaimed their goal of securing the independence of Puerto Rico through revolutionary action.

In 1985, the FBI launched raids against independence activists across the island, angering even the local Commonwealth government, which had not been warned in advance. After a dramatic firefight, Ojeda Ríos was among those arrested, but was later acquitted. While his acquittal was for charges stemming from his armed resistance to the FBI’s arrest attempt—which he claimed was an assassination attempt—the real charges brought by the FBI immediately after the acquittal included seditious conspiracy and charges for the 1983 Wells Fargo bank heist, which the Macheteros publicly took credit for. Ojeda Ríos knew that they had been pursuing him since the late 1960s and was clear on the need to protect his life and his organization.

Ojeda Ríos returned underground in 1990, causing widespread embarrassment to the FBI. Over the next 15 years, his would be the voice of rebellion and revolution, of social justice, of the working class, and of his ultimate vision of a Puerto Rico emancipated from the dependency and control of U.S. colonialism. His name and figure became legendary; his voice and image repeatedly emerged in the form of videos, voice recordings, and even exclusive TV interviews.

Unrelenting in its pursuit, the FBI sent Quantico’s Hostage Rescue Team to attack Ojeda Ríos’s home in the mountains of Hormigueros in September 2005. Elma Beatriz Rosado, his wife, safely made it out of the home during the firefight that ensued. She witnessed the ambush in which Ojeda Ríos was left to bleed to death after an FBI sniper’s single bullet wounded him. News reports suggested that agents tampered with the scene, and officials at FBI headquarters discussed portraying the incident as a suicide in order to cover up misconduct.


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