Death at Cerro Maravilla

A Puerto Rican police shooting brings the Governor under fire

"It was outright assassination," protested Puerto Rican Novelist Pedro Juan Soto, father of one of the victims. "It was a setup that was meant to be a lesson to others," declared Senator Miguel Hernandez Agosto, head of the island's once ruling Popular Democratic Party. "The Governor planned it all. It was part of a systematic plan to wipe us out," charged Socialist Leader Juan Mari Bras.

The controversy buffeting Governor Carlos Romero Barcelo, who vehemently denies that any wrong was done, derives from the killing of two young leftists by Commonwealth police. The police insist that the two agitators for Puerto Rican independence from the U.S. were about to blow up government radio towers at Cerro Maravilla, a mountain site about 50 miles from San Juan. Yet there are so many unanswered questions and contradictory versions of the police ambush that a U.S. Justice Department investigation is looking for possible violations of civil rights, a federal grand jury is probing the case, and relatives of Carlos Soto Arrivi, 18, and Arnaldo Dario Rosado, 23, have sued the police and the Governor for $2,150,000. Their suit maintains that the young men were victims of "summary execution."

The police claim that Soto, a high school student who had no police record, and Rosado, who had been charged earlier with illegal possession of firearms, belonged to the Movimiento Armado Revolucionario, a tiny radical cell with no ties to the mainstream political parties. One of the group's five members, Alejandro Gonzalez Malave, 21, was an undercover agent for the police. He and the two youths stopped a cab on the outskirts of Ponce last July 25. At gunpoint they forced the driver, Julio Ortiz Molina, to take them up a remote mountain road.

As they reached an isolated clearing near a commercial TV station tower, a quarter-mile away from the government complex, the three men got out of the car. Shots suddenly rang out, and the terrified cabbie ducked to the car floor. Rosado died immediately. Soto lay mortally wounded. The undercover agent suffered superficial wounds. The presumed bombers carried only two boxes of matches and a box of charcoal briquettes. Police officials said they had shouted "Halt!" when the revolutionaries got out of the cab, but the two youths had begun firing.

Cabbie Molina has told interviewers that as the three men emerged from his car, they were greeted by a volley of gunfire, and Molina heard a cry, "Don't fire! I'm a police agent!" and another voice cry, "I give myself up!" Both Molina and the technician at the nearby TV tower said they heard no police order to halt. There was no convincing explanation of why it took a police car 90 minutes to get the wounded Soto to a hospital, a trip that a car can make in 25 minutes. Soto was dead when he reached the hospital.

After the ambush Governor Romero praised the police as "heroes." He deplored "those who carry guns and pistols, who go with bombs," and warned: "Those who kill must be prepared to die."

After Romero's political critics began charging him with at least indirect involvement, the Governor at first said that he had not known of the alleged plot before the ambush, but he later conceded to TIME Correspondent Richard Woodbury that he had been told of several impending terrorist attacks, including one on the towers. He said the police had assured him that they would handle the matter, and he had told them "Fine." As for the police action, Romero declared: "I have no evidence of anything improper. All there has been so far is speculation, no evidence."

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