CIA admits it spied on Puerto Rican independence activists
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has declassified documents showing that it monitored Puerto Rican independence groups from the 1960s through the 1980s.
Under an anti-leftist counterintelligence program known as Operation CHAOS or Operation MH/CHAOS, the agency monitored the actions of the Pro-Independence Movement (MPI), which later became the Puerto Rican Socialist Party (PSP).
The CIA is not legally allowed to collect intelligence on U.S. citizens, yet it was empowered to create and operate MH/CHAOS during the administrations of President Lyndon Johnson and President Richard Nixon.
Both U.S. presidents expressed concerns about potential alliances between independence movement activists and the radical left anti-Vietnam War movement, Black civil rights activists, and radical student activists. They were particularly concerned about any connections they may have had with the then newly formed Fidel Castro-led government of Cuba.
The Movimiento Independentista Nacional Hostosiano (Hostosian National Independence Movement; MINH) called on representatives in the Puerto Rican government to speak out against the MHCHAOS program. “The least that would be expected of those who claim to represent the Puerto Rican people is that they take a position in defense of the civil and human rights of the population,” MINH wrote in a note posted to its website.
“It’s not shocking because the FBI and police units between Puerto Rico, Chicago, and New York City have always surveilled the Puerto Rican independence movement, so the CIA rounding this out is not shocking,” Erica González, director of Power 4 Puerto Rico, a national coalition of Puerto Ricans in the diaspora, told the Amsterdam News. “The U.S. came into Puerto Rico with an agenda of extracting wealth for U.S. corporations and using the archipelago for military use. The independence movement has always represented a challenge to that agenda and to U.S. domination for those interests.
“It’s part and parcel with how the U.S., sadly, has treated liberation movements from people of color.”
During the 2024 Puerto Rican general elections, the Puerto Rican Independence Party’s gubernatorial candidate, Juan Dalmau, garnered 32.7% of the popular vote. He came in second in the contest to be the next governor.
This was a result that, at one point in Puerto Rico’s history, would not have been so shocking, said González — in the past, pro-independence parties were regularly on the ballot like any other political party. “Puerto Ricans and then younger people, in multiple surveys — even people of different status or income brackets — have shown more of a leaning toward independence. I think you have this generation that has not grown up with that chilling effect, and they see what’s happening with Puerto Rico, and this whole movement that took place after the ousting of the governor [Ricardo Rosselló in July 2019] … that builds a lot of momentum around getting, for the first time in decades, a pro-sovereignty candidate as a viable competitor …, so it has recalibrated politics in the island.”
The CIA’s gathering of information about independence movements coincided with the period of the “carpeteo,” when the intelligence division of the Puerto Rico police worked with the FBI to spy on left-leaning political activists. The carpetas program took place between the 1940s and 1987, according to photographer Christopher Gregory-Rivera, who has been documenting the surveillance program. Both agencies collected personal information about individuals and reports on the independence movements on the island through undercover intelligence agents.
In 1978, the late California Congressman Ronald Dellums sent the CIA a formal request, asking if the agency had done any work in the archipelago that affected the independence movement. Sections of the CIA’s now declassified notes put forward to respond to Dellums show that “[t]here have been two instances of Agency analysis [sections in black redacted in original documents] in July 1954 expressed an opinion that there was a trend towards pro-independence sympathies in Puerto Rico under the then . The writer merely commented that he felt that independence would be welcomed by the majority of Puerto Ricans, that independence would gain friends for the United States and that it would also improve the prestige of Puerto Rico. An Agency memorandum was published in 1976 which dealt with the Cuban effort to promote the cause of Puerto Rican independence.”
This past March 2024, Congressmembers Joaquin Castro of Texas and Jimmy Gomez of California also requested CIA information about the extent of surveillance of Latino civil rights activists, such as labor leader César Chávez and members of the Mexican American group the American G.I. Forum.
“The declassification of materials related to the surveillance of the Latino civil rights movement,” Castro and Gomez wrote in their request letter, “would not only align with our commitment to transparency and civil liberties but would also contribute to a more inclusive understanding of American history. It is imperative that we continue to confront and address these aspects of our past to ensure that such overreaches do not occur in the future.”
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