Burn, Yanqui, Burn!

On tropic Puerto Rico, only the weather generates as much heat as the island's politics. This year temperatures -- and tempers -- are soaring unusually high as the result of a rash of fires that began to flare last October, just as candidates were warming up for what promises to be a sulfurous 1968 campaign. All the fires have been traced to the same origin: fire bombs aimed at driving U.S. -owned business out of the Commonwealth. In the past year, arsonists have set 20 fires costing $15.6 million, with department stores and supermarkets the principal targets.

No bigger than a pack of cigarettes, the arsonists' bombs are expertly fashioned from a minuscule penlight battery, a wristwatch, a flashlight bulb and incendiary chemicals (potassium chlorate and potassium permanganate) that can be bought at local drug stores. Often tucked under a pile of fabrics in a crowded store, the minibombs are timed to flare after closing hour. In one day, four fires did $810,000 worth of damage to stores owned by U.S. merchants; unexploded devices have been found in the bathroom of a girls' school and, two weeks ago, at a U.S. Selective Service office in San Juan. In April, a bomb was uncovered in a San Juan hotel and was defused; bombs have damaged two other hotels.

The Right of Violence. Police and FBI agents have failed to uncover any solid evidence. The tiny, 3,000-member Puerto Rican Pro-Independence Movement, a legal party led by San Juan Attorney Juan Mari Bras, 40, denies responsibility. "I can't conceive of any independence people carrying out such a campaign," says Bras. "But we don't deny the right of violence."

Stoking the conflagrations, police informers say, is a cabal of fewer than 50 extremists, whose efforts are abetted by Fidel Castro. Earlier this year, a band calling themselves Armed Commandos for Liberation lay claim to the fires in letters to the press. By making it impossible for businesses to obtain insurance, they aim to evict "the Yankee invader and his investment of imperialist capital" from the island.

The Commandos can already claim some victories. Despite a 70% hike in fire insurance rates for 1968, many insurers were canceling protection for U.S.-owned supermarkets and stores. To help them out, Governor Roberto Sanchez Vilella earlier this month signed an emergency law forcing insurance companies in Puerto Rico to take on up to $7,000,000 a year in high-risk policies for companies unable to obtain normal insurance coverage.

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