Latest Attacks on PRCC

Información enviada al Director de Tlahui. Puerto Rico 12 Jun 1999.

In the City of Chicago, a systematic effort has been carried out to destroy the Puerto Rican community since the first children of Boriken arrived in this city. In the 50s, we were displaced from the streets of LaSalle and Chicago. In the 60s, we were removed from the area between Madison and Harrison streets. During the 70s, we were taken out of Lincoln Park and Lakeview, the cradle of the Young Lords Party by speculators that transformed that neighborhood into one of the most exclusive in Chicago.

Beginning in the 90s, the Juan Antonio Corretjer Puerto Rican Cultural Center, in conjunction with several other grass-roots community organizations, developed a plan to stabilize the Humboldt Park, the last community in Chicago with a high concentration of Puerto Ricans, and one of the oldest. From this effort were born the iron flags that delineate the Paseo Boricua. The Casita de Don Pedro was born, home of the statue of our beloved leader, Pedro Albizu Campos. From this effort was born a spiritual and cultural change where the presence of political prisoners and the claim of our community for their freedom was palpable in the murals that adorn the walls, posters hanging on the buildings with the cry of "Freedom (for our) Patriots."

The plan was to stop an new wave of displacement that advanced like a torrent, soaking our people. What these efforts provoked on the part of the enemy was a combination of reactionary forces against the work that the Cultural Center and its allies carried out.

To stabilize the neighborhood an effort to reinforce and develop organizations and base institutions in the community, inspiring and impulsing positive changes in the community of churches, public schools, community organizations and community spaces. The growth was incredible and it was not surprising that in a few years, the attacks began to develop. From morning to evening there appeared a number of people that began to carry out an agenda of divisionism in the community.

Today, we see what began as attacks against organizations small and vulnerable like HIMRI (Humboldt Park Infant Mortality Reduction Initiative which was raided by the FBI and was closed on the basis of this operation) today reaches huge proportions when we see persons of the stature of Miriam Santos (ex-City Treasurer) and Migdalia Rivera (ex-Executive Director of the prestigious Latino Institute) vilified and their careers destroyed. In the case of Miriam Santos, criminalized and facing a jail sentence. We also see how the achievements of the school reform at Roberto Clemente Community Academy were attacked and smeared, causing the expulsion of dozens of Puerto Rican/Latino teachers followed by the expulsion of more than 1000 students in the last two and a half years. As if this were not enough, the reputation and integrity of organizations like the Center for Development and ASPIRA have been sullied by the State's of Illinois', the IRS and the FBI investigations, which are nithing more than a witch hunt.

Unfortunately, in many cases, it is Latinos and Puerto Ricans who are being used to destroy that which is ours. Just naming the pro-statehooders, Gloria Ch vere, Manny Torres, Dennis Pérez, Ray Rubio aka Ramón González, Edgar López, the State representative, Charlie Serrano, Jos "El Gato" Alvárez and very particularly the agent provocateur and FBI employee, Rafael Marrero, gives you an idea of the plague that is sweeping our community. This people, along with the FBI and real estate speculators like Larry Ligas, Casey Korolenko and Christine Kopko, want to destroy the Puerto Rican Cultural Center because the Cultural Center represents a space of action and reflection of self-determination, independence and Puerto Rican community power and allegedly for its unconditional support of the freedom of Puerto Rican political prisoners.

For the last five years, the FBI has carried out a campaign that aims to destabilize the educational and teaching programs at the PRCC. They have used unscrupulous and shameless methods such as carrying out a public trial in the English language press and behind the scenes manipulation of the legislative hearing of the State of Illlinois carried out by Edgar LÓPEZ. These people, together with the FBI and the real estate speculators, such as Larry Ligas, Casey Korolenko and Christine Kopko want to destroy the JACPRCC. These attacks have not ended.

Now more than ever, the Puerto Rican Cultural Center needs your help. O June 2, the Cultural Center and its HIV/AIDS program were cited by the FBI with subpoenas that are all-encompassing that asks for information from 1988 to the present to a federal grand jury. The subpoena asks for all documents, including minutes from meetings held at the center since 1988, all information about the employees salaries and volunteers, program participants, fiscal information, in sum the total records of the PRCC. The subpoenas are dated May 26, the day which sources allege that Rafael Marrero testified before that very same Grand Jury. It is not a coincidence. It is not a coincidence that the subpoena asks for information from 1988 to the present, as it was that year that the agent provocater, Rafael Marrero arrives in Chicago.

Rafael Marrero has received more than $125000.00 from the FBI for his participation in entrapping Dr. Jos Sol's, professor at the University of Puerto Rico. Solis had been recently found guilty by a white jury of placing two bombs, which by Rafael Marrero's own testimony, he placed in December of 1992. That is, by Marrero's own testimony, he placed and now blames Dr. Sol's and various community leaders, including the Executive Director of the Puerto Rican Cultural Center, Jos E. López.

For more information, call 77/342.8023, 773/278.0885 or write to our email at prpowpp@aol.com
From: National Committee to Free Puerto Rican Prisoners prpowpp@aol.com
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