This frame-up and FBI harassment is a taste of what the wealthy rulers of the United States will increasingly resort to against working-class fighters - tomorrow as well as today. But this and similar attacks can be combated by waging a broad public effort to tell the facts about the frame-up of Solís, to demand his conviction be reversed, and to demand freedom for the other 16 Puerto Rican political prisoners in U.S. jails.
For decades the U.S. government -Democratic and Republican administrations alike - has waged a campaign of harassment and repression against the Puerto Rican independence movement. Over the past 20 years they have used federal grand juries to drag independentistas to jail. The exposure of the FBI's Cointelpro operation in the 1970s led to greater public knowledge of its use of snitches, wiretapping, mail interception, disruption programs, and blacklisting of independence supporters and militant trade unionists. In face of public outrage, the government in Puerto Rico was forced in 1992 to begin releasing illegal spy files it had kept on 135,000 residents of the island.
Washington's dirty war against the Puerto Rican independence struggle exploded into the open with the exposure of the 1978 Cerro Maravilla case, in which the colonial police, with FBI complicity, murdered two pro-independence youths. They were entrapped by undercover cop and agent provocateur Alejandro González Malavé, who recruited them to a fake clandestine pro-independence group and lured them to the Cerro Maravilla mountaintop where they were executed by the cops.
Revelations in the case confirmed this cop operation was part of a systematic campaign by the U.S. and colonial authorities to paint the pro-independence movement as terrorist. For example, the FBI bombed a post office in the town of Ciales in 1978. González Malavé himself placed bombs at two post offices and several communications towers the same year.
The U.S. political police continued their repression with the arrest of the Hartford 15 in 1985. The frame-up trials against these pro-independence fighters were based largely on the testimony of FBI agents and hundreds of hours of illegal tape recordings, including doctored tapes.
Many aspects of Washington's dirty war on political rights were exposed in the lawsuit filed in 1973 by the Socialist Workers Party against spying and harassment by the FBI, CIA, immigration cops, and other political police agencies. The political campaign and lawsuit ended in 1986 with an important victory for all working people. A federal court ruled that the FBI's spying, use of informers, and other Cointelpro operations violated fundamental political rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
To frame up José Solís, the FBI resorted to its usual tactics: an informer-provocateur; a fake, unsigned confession; a secretly obtained tape recording "interpreted" by the cop informer; and testimony by a parade of FBI agents against Solís's word. As with other trials of Puerto Rican independence activists, Solís did not have a jury of his peers. And the judge did her part, allowing prosecutors to introduce the phony confession and other fraudulent "evidence." Under those circumstances it's not surprising the U.S. government got a conviction.
Why is there a step-up in police harassment and disruption of Puerto Rican activists today? It is in response to the rise in the struggle for Puerto Rico's independence, most graphically seen in the general strike of half a million workers on the island last July against the sale of the state- owned telephone company. The nationalist sentiment has also been evident in the increased activity in defense of 16 Puerto Rican political prisoners, especially among a new generation in the United States.
The frame-up trial of Solís is not an isolated injustice. The Clinton administration has taken steps to beef up police forces, expand FBI wiretapping, curtail the rights of defendants, establish a domestic military command, and other undemocratic measures under the pretext of "fighting terrorism." In Chicago, government officials have made it clear they are still targeting the Roberto Clemente High School and the Puerto Rican Cultural Center, including the center's director, pro-independence activist José López, who has refused to be intimidated.
The goal of the U.S. government's "antiterrorism" campaign is to instill fear and to isolate and silence fighters for social change. But in mobilizing support, defenders of José Solís can draw strength from the growing resistance among working people in the United States today. Workers such as the Illinois coal miners and Crown refinery workers in Texas have experience with FBI harassment and frame-ups on sabotage charges.
A public campaign that tells the truth can win backing, not only among independence supporters but much more broadly. This support can be won through forums, picket lines, and other public activities - between now and the July 7 sentencing of Solís, and beyond.
Free José Solís and all the Puerto Rican political prisoners!