Cerro Maravilla murders
The event sparked a series of political controversies where, in the end, the police officers were found guilty of murder and several high-ranking local government officials were accused of planning and/or covering up the incident.
Originally declared a police intervention against terrorists, the local media quickly questioned the officers' testimonies as well as the only surviving witness for inconsistencies.
[10] After the sinking of the USS Maine on February 15, 1898, the U.S. launched the Spanish–American War on May 1; the U.S. Army landed on the town of Guánica during the Puerto Rico campaign on July 25.
Although Soto Arriví was interested in social issues from a very young age, his political activism started when he joined a pro-independence group in high school.
[12] Around noon July 25, 1978, Carlos Enrique Soto Arriví and Arnaldo Darío Rosado, two independence activists of the Armed Revolutionary Movement (Spanish: Movimiento Revolucionario Armado), along with undercover police officer Alejandro González Malavé posing as a fellow group member, took taxi driver Julio Ortiz Molina hostage in Villalba and ordered him to drive them to Cerro Maravilla where several communication towers were located.
Their original plan was to take control of the towers and read a manifesto protesting the imprisonment of Puerto Rican nationalists convicted of the 1950 assassination attempt on U.S. President Harry S. Truman, the 1954 United States Capitol shooting incident where five members of Congress were injured, the commemoration of the July 25 Constitution Day observance, the day U.S. soldiers landed in Puerto Rico in 1898.
[15] Then-Governor of Puerto Rico Carlos Romero Barceló (PNP) praised the officers in a televised address by calling them “heroic”, stating that they acted in self-defense and stopped a terrorist attack.
[15] Two days later, in a follow-up interview by WAPA-TV news reporter Enrique Cruz, the taxi driver stated that when the first shooting occurred, he heard one of his three passengers shout "I'm an agent!
[15][17] Facing public pressure due to the taxi driver's conflicting statements, Governor Romero Barceló ordered two separate investigations by the P.R.
Justice Department in addition to the ongoing standard Police investigation, all of which concluded that the officers' actions were free of any wrongdoing, despite various inconsistencies in their stories.
[13] The second investigations performed between 1981 and 1984 by the legislature, the U.S. Justice Department headed by Daniel Lopéz Romo, and the local press uncovered a plot to assassinate the activists and a possible, though not conclusive, conspiracy to cover-up these actions.
[20] Other inquiries obtained similar testimony from witnesses, including the taxi driver who now stated that the activists were “alive and disarmed” when the police removed him from the scene.
[16] The statement regarding two different volleys of shots was upheld by various people, including ex-officer Jesus Quiñones before a Federal grand jury (he quit the force shortly after the shootings), and three other civilian witnesses in a San Juan Star interview.
Almost 45 days after President Carter won the nomination by only one delegate, the U.S. Justice Department announced that due to lack of evidence it was bringing its investigation of the case to an end.
[16] A Justice Department internal memorandum that was issued the same month of Romero Barceló's and Civiletti's meeting later proved that the investigations were closed even when agents were still investigating important evidence of the case that could potentially incriminate the officers, including “several unexplained contusions” on a victim's face and the fact that one of the police officers recanted his original story, stating that there was in fact “two bursts of firing”.
[citation needed] The second investigations led to ten officers being indicted and found guilty of perjury, destruction of evidence, and obstruction of justice, four of which were convicted of second-degree murder in 1984.
[14][18][21] The convicted officers, who were no longer on active duty, and their status with the Puerto Rico Police were:[citation needed] That same year, in the general elections held in November, Romero Barceló lost his gubernatorial seat against former governor and opposing party rival Rafael Hernández Colón (PPD).
It is widely accepted that Romero Barceló lost the elections because of this case, since his public opinion rating had deteriorated substantially during late 1984 as the investigations progressed, and since his political rivals used his defense of the officers as an indication of a possible conspiracy.
[13][15][21] Alejandro Gonzalez Malavé, the undercover agent who was accompanying the activists, was not indicted for his part in the slayings because he was granted immunity for testifying against other officers, but was removed from the police force due to public pressure.
Days stated: "I think that certainly an apology is justified with respect to the way the federal government handled its investigation: the FBI, the Justice Department, and my division... it was not done in the professional way that it should have been done.
"[18] FBI Director William S. Sessions had made similar concessions in a written statement in 1990, stating: “In hindsight, the eyewitness should have been interviewed and a civil rights investigation initiated”.
Romero Barceló admitted in a public radio interview that it was “an error of judgment” and “a premature declaration” to laud the police officers, since at that time he believed they were telling the truth about their self-defense.
