The Battle for Puerto Rico: The Cuban Exile Right and the Independentista Left in the 1960s and 70s

In January 1975, a pro-independence rally in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico was violently disrupted when a bomb exploded a block away, killing two independence activists. Allegedly undertaken by a right-wing Cuban exile group, this attack was one of dozens that targeted Puerto Rican independentistas in the 1970s. Scholars have studied the repression of the independence movement in Puerto Rico, but often by focusing on the role of the FBI in covertly harassing independence leaders. This paper studies the wave of violence that convulsed Puerto Rico through a different prism. It argues that Puerto Rico became a major theater of Cuban exile anti-communist militancy in the 1970s and sees the violent conflict over the island’s status as part of the regional turbulence related to the Cuban Revolution and the Latin American Cold War.

Drawing on FBI documents, contemporary periodicals, and other sources, this paper reconstructs the Cuban Revolution’s multifaceted influence in Puerto Rico. On the one hand, the Revolution helped radicalize the independence movement, which had long embraced radical nationalism, but now increasingly espoused socialism and armed struggle. Independentistas also found a powerful new ally in Cuba’s socialist government, which proved willing to advocate for the island’s independence in international forums such as the UN and the Non-Aligned Movement. At the same time, the staunchly anti-communist and politically influential Cuban exile community in Puerto Rico grew, and a new generation of exile paramilitary groups increasingly partnered with rightwing elements of the Puerto Rican police to attack their common enemies. These developments help explain the escalation of violence against leftwing independentistas and progressive Cuban exiles on the island in the 1970s. And they fueled the Cold War imaginaries of Puerto Rican conservatives, who saw independence as tantamount to succumbing to Castroism and argued that statehood offered the best protection from “Cuban imperialism.”