The Forbidden Files: Creation and Use of Surveillance Files Against the Independence Movement in Puerto Rico

Abstract

The discovery in 1987 that the Puerto Rican police had maintained thousands of secret files on alleged subversives opened up a dark part of the history of the island. After a brief review of the political status of Puerto Rico under rule by the United States, this article discusses the secret surveillance files, their creation and maintenance, and what happened to the files after they were discovered. It also considers some of the archival issues involved in the proper management of these very sensitive and political records.

Documents as weapons: secret police files in Communist and post-Communist Romania

“…Briet (1951Briet ( /2006 referred to the institution of the police as a context in which dossiers are produced on a large scale to record information (renseignements) on persons and activities (p. 18). Darnton (1999) Rady, 1991), in particular the Communist German Democratic Republic (Danielson, 2004;Jedlitschka, 2012;Lewis, 2021) and the Socialist Republic of Romania (Glajar, 2016(Glajar, , 2019Petrescu, 2016Petrescu, , 2019, but also the 18 thand 19th-century India (Bayly, 1996), the post-Saddam Hussein Iraq (Montgomery, 2001), the Popular Republic of China (Byler, 2022) or Puerto Rico (Blanco-Rivera, 2005). Petrescu (2016) and Petrescu (2019) are particularly relevant for this study, as they discuss in depth the cases of two Romanian writers surveilled by the Romanian Securitate.…”

“…One dossier focused on philosopher Denis Diderot; he was under surveillance because he was “a very clever boy but extremely dangerous” (p. 185). Scholars also looked at the management and evidentiary role of secret police records in the context of specific geopolitical areas, such as Eastern Europe in general (Gökariksel, 2020; Rady, 1991), in particular the Communist German Democratic Republic (Danielson, 2004; Jedlitschka, 2012; Lewis, 2021) and the Socialist Republic of Romania (Glajar, 2016, 2019; Petrescu, 2016, 2019), but also the 18 th- and 19th-century India (Bayly, 1996), the post-Saddam Hussein Iraq (Montgomery, 2001), the Popular Republic of China (Byler, 2022) or Puerto Rico (Blanco-Rivera, 2005). Petrescu (2016) and Petrescu (2019) are particularly relevant for this study, as they discuss in depth the cases of two Romanian writers surveilled by the Romanian Securitate.…”

Internalization of inferiority and colonial system justification: The case of Puerto Rico

“…These system-challenging movements continue to shape the collective memory of pro-independence Puerto Ricans. At the same time, they triggered U.S. backlash, including persecution of dissidents, over 175 politically motivated arrests between 1960 and 1990, and a state surveillance project (known as Las Carpetas) of more 100,000 suspected pro-independence Puerto Ricans (see Atiles-Osoria, 2016;Blanco-Rivera, 2005;Paralitici, 2011). This criminalization of the independence movement-along with the U.S. colonial project of cultural assimilation-has most likely dissuaded many Puerto Ricans from supporting national independence.…”