Cerro Maravilla Murders: Cover-Up, Convictions, and FBI Role

The Cerro Maravilla murders were the July 25, 1978 police killings of two young Puerto Rican independence supporters, Carlos Soto Arriví and Arnaldo Darío Rosado, at a mountaintop communications site in central Puerto Rico. The two men had been lured there by an undercover officer, ambushed by police waiting at the summit, and, according to later testimony, shot after they had surrendered. What officials first called a heroic act of self-defense unraveled over the following years into one of the most consequential political scandals in Puerto Rican history: ten officers convicted, a governor’s career damaged, and an eventual acknowledgment that the FBI had helped cover the killings up.¹

What Happened on the Mountain

Soto Arriví was 18. Rosado was 24. Both belonged to a small militant group called the Armed Revolutionary Movement, and their plan on July 25 was to sabotage the communications towers on Cerro Maravilla as a protest against the continued imprisonment of Puerto Rican nationalists convicted in the 1950 attempt on President Truman’s life and the 1954 shooting at the U.S. Capitol.¹

They did not know that the man who had recruited them and organized the trip, Alejandro González Malavé, was an undercover police officer. He had infiltrated the group posing as a fellow member and had alerted police to the plan before the three ever left.¹

On the morning of the attack, a date that is both a Puerto Rican holiday and the anniversary of the 1898 U.S. invasion, the three commandeered a taxi and drove to the summit. Heavily armed officers were already waiting.¹

Governor Carlos Romero Barceló publicly praised the officers as “heroic” for thwarting a terrorist attack, and the initial investigations by the Puerto Rico Justice Department and the Puerto Rico Police Department cleared them of any wrongdoing. The taxi driver, held hostage during the drive, told a different story. He testified that after a brief initial exchange of gunfire the two young men were alive and disarmed, that roughly ten officers were beating them, and that a second round of shots came only after police removed him from the scene.¹

How the Killings Were Covered Up

For several years the Romero Barceló administration kept the driver’s account from moving the case. The governor refused to appoint an independent panel, and his lawyers obtained gag orders in June 1980 to prevent attorneys in a related civil suit from speaking to the press. A federal investigation opened in 1979 quietly lapsed. Questions were raised about the transfer of a federal attorney to the State Department after a meeting between the governor and U.S. Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti.²

Among the most damaging pieces of evidence to surface was a cassette tape on which a close aide reportedly said the governor had ordered “to do anything necessary to keep the police lieutenant’s mouth silent” about the incident. The San Juan Star and El Mundo drew Watergate comparisons, and a majority of Puerto Ricans polled said the administration had not satisfactorily explained the deaths.²

How the Truth Came Out

The case broke open in the summer of 1983, when the Puerto Rico Senate opened televised hearings that reopened the matter federal authorities had closed two years earlier. The hearings became a public sensation, called “Puerto Rico’s favorite program,” as witness after witness contradicted the official story.³

Testimony established that the two activists had been lured and ambushed, not confronted in a lawful operation, and that witnesses had been pressured to back the police account. A police helicopter pilot, Angel Candelas, testified that the officers he flew to the mountain said they were going to “tear off some heads,” and were carrying a box of charcoal fire starters that police later cited as evidence of the victims’ intent to burn the towers.³ Other witnesses confirmed the taxi driver’s account of two distinct bursts of gunfire, and a former officer testified that the commander of the Intelligence Division of the Puerto Rico Police Department had ordered that the activists “should not come down from the mountain alive.”¹

In October 1983, a federal grand jury was convened to determine whether officers and other witnesses had perjured themselves in the earlier investigations. Television technician Miguel Marte Ruiz, who had been at the scene, testified under immunity and told the grand jury he had “things that I haven’t dared to tell” about the event.³

Who Was Convicted

Ten police officers were indicted in 1984. All ten were found guilty of perjury, destruction of evidence, and obstruction of justice. Four were additionally convicted of second-degree murder for the killings of Soto Arriví and Rosado, with sentences ranging from six to thirty years.¹ Five of the former officers received sentences of up to thirty years each.⁴ The legislative investigation had established what the earlier inquiries had denied: the two men were killed after they had surrendered.

The Undercover Officer’s Fate

González Malavé, the officer who had steered the two young men to the mountain, faced criminal charges of his own. Murder charges against him were dropped on technical grounds but remained subject to reinstatement, and he was acquitted of kidnapping in March 1986. He was a suspended officer awaiting reinstatement on the night of April 29, 1986, when two gunmen in a white Chevrolet Nova opened fire outside his parents’ home in the Santa Juanita suburb west of San Juan. He was struck six times with a shotgun. His mother was wounded in the hand.⁵

Two groups claimed responsibility by phone: the “Organization of Volunteers for Puerto Rican Independence” and a previously unknown group calling itself “Justice of the People,” which declared, “They will fall systematically.”⁵ Authorities also examined whether the killing was personal rather than political, and a fellow police officer was investigated in connection with the murder.⁶

The FBI’s Role

In 1992, Drew S. Days III, who ran the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division from 1977 to 1980, said publicly what many had long suspected: the FBI had covered up the Cerro Maravilla killings. Days issued a formal apology during a television broadcast in Puerto Rico for the department’s role in a fourteen-year investigation that, he said, had effectively reaffirmed the false narrative rather than exposing it.⁷

The suppression fit a broader pattern. The FBI had kept between 1.5 million and 1.8 million pages of surveillance files on the Puerto Rican independence movement, dating back to the 1930s and documenting invasive monitoring of pro-independence figures and organizations.⁸

Political and Legal Aftermath

The scandal nearly cost Romero Barceló the 1980 election, with commentators saying he would have “easily won reelection” absent Cerro Maravilla.² He survived that race against former Governor Rafael Hernández Colón, but by 1984 the case had become the central issue in Puerto Rican politics, displacing the usual statehood-versus-commonwealth debate that ordinarily drove island elections.⁹ Romero Barceló insisted publicly that the case was “no longer a threat” to his campaign.¹⁰ Hernández Colón won.

The families of the two victims filed a $2.4 million civil rights action alleging a conspiracy by members of the Romero Barceló administration to kill the young men to “discredit the independence movement and to teach its supporters a lesson.” Romero Barceló himself won summary judgment dismissing the claims against him personally. The remaining parties settled after the criminal convictions, and the plaintiffs received a substantial award, though the final figure was not made public.¹¹

1
Liberation News. The Cerro Maravilla Incident
2
The Christian Science Monitor. Cerro Maravilla Case
3
United Press International. Federal Grand Jury Probe Into Cerro Maravilla
4
The Washington Post. 5 Ex-Policemen Sentenced in Murders in Puerto Rico
5
United Press International. Former Agent in Puerto Rican Political Scandal Killed
6
United Press International. Suspended Police Officer Killed in Puerto Rico
7
The Washington Post. Ex-Justice Official Cites Coverup by FBI in ’78 Puerto Rico Shootings
8
The New York Times. Decades of Surveillance of Puerto Rican Groups
9
The New York Times. Tough Skirmish for Control of Puerto Rico Is Seen
10
United Press International. Romero Barceló on Cerro Maravilla
11
Center for Constitutional Rights. Soto v. Romero Barcelo