Word: puerto
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...F.A.L.N. is the latest standard-bearer of violent Puerto Rican nationalist tradition that goes back to 1868, when machete-carrying rebels briefly proclaimed a republic in the Spanish colonial town of Lares. In the 1940s and '50s, followers of Pedro Albizu Campos not only bombed buildings and murdered officials on the island but also brought terrorism to the U.S.: gunmen tried to assassinate President Harry Truman in 1950, and in 1954 shot up the House of Representatives.* The F.A.L.N. first appeared in August 1974, when it claimed responsibility for a bombing in Manhattan's Lincoln Center. The group...
...Puerto Rican familiar with F.A.L.N. tactics is "José," a muscular, mustachioed sometime terrorist who now lives in Colorado and, at 32, describes himself as "retired." As José tells it, the F.A.L.N. is just one element-the noisiest, to be sure-in a rather fluid Puerto Rican terrorist community. Although its size is difficult even to guess at-estimates range between a few dozen members to hundreds-the community is said to be run by separate "central committees" in Puerto Rico and on the U.S. mainland. On the island, says José, terrorist cells tend to have half...
...Puerto Rican terrorism tends to be a family enterprise. Cells often contain cousins, brothers, husbands and wives. José, raised in Manhattan's Spanish Harlem, was deeply influenced by an uncle ("A man I would die for") who was active in the independence movement. After a street-corner childhood and a Navy tour that ended with a jail sentence, José developed a "total lack of respect" for the U.S. and migrated to Puerto Rico...
...Puerto Rico, terrorist activity has been declining, partly because of public aversion to the violence. In last year's gubernatorial election, radical independence parties polled less than 6% of the vote. Buoyed by a U.S.-aided rising standard of living, most Puerto Ricans-despite currently high unemployment-seem to be content with their ties to the mainland; at a conference of island editors and publishers in Dorado last week, Puerto Rico's Governor Carlos Romero Barceló felt confident enough about bedrock pro-U.S. sentiment among Puerto Ricans to call for statehood. Yet the island...
...terrorists intend to continue their campaign-especially in the U.S. But gradually, the authorities seem to be succeeding in making life more difficult for them. Says José: "Only the old cells here are really safe today. There are even Puerto Rican FBI agents...