Mickey's Story

By Miguel Puig

This book is for the benefit of my children and grand children, and every other person that knows me, including members of the NYPD that worked along with me many years. This is so they understand the role of the US in Puerto Rico´s political history. The death of leader Pedro Albizu Campos in the year 1965 triggered a new combination of struggles, open, open illegal and clandestine from the pro independence groups, that couldn’t wait any longer..
Their new struggle coincided with my arrival in the USA in 1967, when they were hitting USA with bombs, incendiary and explosive. I was appointed undercover May 16, 1969 to infiltrate and inform the activities of the groups involved in the underground struggle to free Puerto Rico. In the book I relate the problems and discrimination that I faced performing the job and after.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796077162

Miguel Puig

Born and raised in Puerto Rico Miguel Puig migrated to the City of New York on September 23, 1967, ironically the commemoration of the Lares Uprising in the year 1868, an effort to regain control of Puerto Rico from Spanish dominion. His participation at age sixteen in the US Amy National Guard sparked in him a dream of being a police officer. Unable to find employment in his native island Miguel managed to enter the NYC Police and was appointed to the Intelligence Division as an anti-terrorism infiltrator. This book about his memoirs relate year after year his deeds against terrorism.

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PROLOGUE

A Short History of the Island of Puerto Rico

T he island of Puerto Rico, east of Hispaniola, became a Spanish territory after Christopher Columbus landed thereat on his second trip, November 19, 1493. Its history before Christopher Columbus’s arrival is not well known. Archaeological digs as well as early Spanish accounts have helped to piece together its history. According to a comprehensive book on Puerto Rican history written by Fray Inigo Abbad y Lasierra in the year 1786, 293 years after the arrival of Christopher Columbus on the island, the first indigenous settlers of Puerto Rico were the Ortoiroid, Arawakan, and Taino Indians that according to history originated from the area of Venezuela one thousand years before the Spaniards arrived. They were first encountered by Christopher Columbus on Hispaniola, which is today Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Versions of how the original Arawakans came to the Antilles include sailing, and accounts suggest that they were hunters.

Relics found in caves in many towns of Puerto Rico give us an idea about the culture of the Tainos in general. Two different structures were used as residences. The bohio, which resembled a round straw gazebo for regular Indians, and the yucayeque to house the Indian chiefs. There were even indications that the Indians played some sort of sport that resembled today’s American baseball. The sport supposedly was played close to a river for the players to bath after the game. The ball parks were ceremonial, and their boundaries were marked with by upright stones.

The Taino had a complicated religious cosmology. There was a hierarchy of deities who inhabited the sky; Yocahu was the supreme creator. Another god, Juracan, was perpetually angry and had control over the power of the hurricane. Other mythological figures were the Zemis and Maboyas. The Zemis, gods of both sexes, were represented by icons in the form of human and animal figures and collars made of wood, stone, bones, and human remains. Taino Indians believed that being in the good grace of their Zemis protected them from disease, hurricanes, or disaster in war. The Tainos offered the Zemis cassava bread as well as beverages and tobacco as propitiatory offerings. Maboyas, on the other hand, were nocturnal deities who destroyed the crops and were feared by all the natives to the extent that elaborate sacrifices were offered to placate them.

The Tainos lived in theocratic kingdoms and had a hierarchically arranged chief or caciques. The Tainos were divided in three social classes: the naborias or working class, the nitainos or subchiefs, and the noblemen that included the bohiques or priests and medicine men and the caciques or chiefs. Each village or yucayeque had one.

At the time Juan Ponce de Leon took possession of the island, there were about twenty villages or yucayeques, and cacique Agueybana was chief of the Tainos. He lived at Guanica, the largest Indian village in the island next to the Guayanilla River(a town today). Their complexion was bronze, and they had average stature, dark flowing hair, and large and oblique dark eyes. Men generally went naked or wore a breech cloth called nagua. Single women walked around naked, and married women wore an apron to cover their genitals, made of cotton or palm fibers. Taino crafts were few. Some pottery and baskets were made, and stone marble and wood were worked skillfully.

Skilled at agriculture and hunting, Tainos were also good sailors, fishermen, canoe makers, and navigators. They had no calendar or writing system and could count only up to twenty, interestingly using their hands and feet.

About one hundred years before the Spanish invasion, the Tainos were challenged by an invading South American tribe, the Caribs. The Caribs were fierce, sadistic, and adept at using poison-tipped arrows. They raided Taino settlements for slaves (especially females) and bodies for the completion of their rites of cannibalism. A dynamic tension between the Tainos and the Caribs certainly existed when Christopher Columbus landed in Puerto Rico. In fact, it was the Caribs that fought most effectively against the Europeans. Their behavior probably led the Europeans to unfairly attribute warlike tendencies to all the island tribes.

When the Spanish settlers first arrived in 1508, and there was no reliable documentation, anthropologists estimated their numbers to have been between twenty thousand and fifty thousand, but maltreatment, disease, fights, and unsuccessful rebellions had diminished their number to four thousand by the year 1515; in 1544, a bishop counted only sixty, but these too were soon lost. The Tainos rebelled most notably in 1511 after the drowning of Diego Salcedo in 1510.

Columbus returned to Spain bringing proof of the island discovery, including several Indians that were alive and most likely against their will. According to history, the slavery suffered by the Indians at the hands of the Spaniards on behalf of Isabella I of Castilla caused their extinction in about thirty years. The invasion of their land of Puerto Rico was never welcomed or understood by the Taino Indians that according to the real Puerto Rican history rebelled many times against the Spaniards.

The brothers Agueybana I and Agueybana II were the main Indian chiefs of Puerto Rico when the Spaniards arrived at Boriken, the Taino name of Puerto Rico now. The presence of gold in the island motivated the Spaniards to call the island rico or rich in the English language, naming the port of entry Puerto Rico and the whole island San Juan in honor of John the Baptist. The original coat of arms of Puerto Rico reads in Latin, JOANNES EST NOMEN EJVS, meaning John is his name, most likely in honor of John the Baptist.

There are many tales about the discontent of the Indians. A classic one tells that the Indians were under the impression that the Spaniards were immortal, so they worked a plan to find out if they were actually eternal. The cacique, or Indian chief, Urayoan in the year 1510 ordered his warriors to drown Diego Salcedo to determine if the Spaniards actually had divine powers. After Diego Salcedo drowned, it is told that they watched him for several days until they were sure that he was dead. After several days in the heat of the island of Puerto Rico, Diego Salcedo must have been in a much-putrefied state, bringing the idea of the Spaniard superpowers to an end.

In the year 1511, the Tainos, after learning that the Spaniards were mortal, revolted against the Spaniards with no success. Ponce de Leon ordered one thousand shot. The Tainos were joined in the effort by their traditional enemies, the Caribs. Their weapons, however, were no match against Spanish horses and firearms, and the revolt were soon ended brutally by the Spanish forces of Governor Juan Ponce de Leon.

The Spaniards, through time, established themselves in the island, calling themselves criollos. Many criollos over the years had to go to Spain in order to achieve a college education since Spain never allowed San Juan, the island’s original name, to establish a university. College-level criollos eventually originated a separatist policy.

In the year 1868, the first major revolt took place in the town of Lares on September 23 but was planned well before that date. Two well-educated criollos, Ramon Emeterio Betances and Segundo Ruiz Belvis, planned the revolt that spread quickly to other cells in other towns of the island. The uprising was brought under control after a few hours by the Spanish army. Francisco Ramirez Medina was the only person to be president of the Republic of Puerto Rico.

In those years (1860s), the government of Spain was involved in several conflicts across Latin America. Spain was involved in a war with Peru and Chile and had to deal with slave revolts in Cuba. Puerto Rico and Cuba were experiencing financial difficulties because of the high taxes imposed by the Spanish central government on most import and export goods. The Spanish troops needed the money produced by the taxes immediately to fund their troops in the Dominican Republic. In the mid-nineteenth century in Puerto Rico, many supporters of independence from Spain as well as others who did not support independence but called for liberal reforms were jailed or exiled, so there was a big group entertaining discontent with Spain. As a result, in 1865, the central government of Madrid addressed the problem by setting up a board of review to receive complaints from representatives of the provinces. The Puerto Rican delegation was freely elected by those eligible, who were male Caucasian property owners. Separatist Segundo Ruiz Belvis was elected to the Puerto Rican junta representing the west of Puerto Rico or the area of Mayaguez, something that horrified the governor of Puerto Rico, who at the time was Jose Maria Marchessi y Oleaga, as well as most residents of the island. Ruiz Belvis was backed in the struggle by another separatist, Ramon Emeterio Betances, who authored several statements attacking the exploitation of the Puerto Ricans by the Spanish centralist system and called for immediate insurrection. While these statements took effect in the minds of the separatists, other statement circulated, among them Diez Mandamientos de los Hombres Libres (Ten Commandments of Free Men) written by Betances in Saint Thomas in November 1867, directly based on the Declaration of The Rights of Man and of the Citizen adopted by the French National Assembly in 1789, and it contained the principles that inspired the French Revolution.

That same year, 1867, separatist poet Lola Rodriguez de Tio, inspired by Ramon Emeterio Betances’s quest for Puerto Rico’s independence, wrote the patriotic lyrics to the tune of La Borinquena, Puerto Rico’s national anthem.

Eduvigis Beauchamp Sterling, named treasurer of the revolution by Betances, provided Mariana Bracetti with the materials for the revolutionary flag of Lares. The flag was divided in the middle by a white Latin cross, the two lower corners were red, and the two upper corners were blue. A white star was placed in the left blue corner. According to the Puerto Rican poet Luis Llorens Torres, the white cross stands for the yearning for homeland redemption, the red squares the blood poured by the heroes of the rebellion, and the white star in the blue solitude square stands for liberty and freedom.

Secret cells of the revolutionary committee were established in the island preceding a hundred more years of clandestine struggle by Mathias Brugman, Mariana Bracetti, and Manuel Rojas. The members of the clandestine cells included landowners, merchants, professionals, peasants, and slaves, but most were white criollos born in the island. The rebellion was triggered mostly by the critical state of the economy and the increasing political repression from the Spanish central government.

The town of Lares, where Grito de Lares took place, was regarded forever as an altar to the idea of the independence of Puerto Rico and to the patriots. The uprising was brought under control after a few hours by the Spanish forces. Originally, Lieutenant Colonel Francisco Puig of the Spaniard army failed to contain the Puerto Rican Forces in the town of Lares and retreated to the mountains where he decided to commit suicide rather than surrender. Lieutenant Colonel Puig was court-martialed in absentia in Spain and found innocent of desertion. The troops that he was supposedly waiting for to continue the battle against the Puerto Rican forces did not arrive on time. Lieutenant Colonel Francisco Puig, like other people with the Puig name (which in English means hill or like that of a mountain), including my family, originated in Catalonia, a region of Spain whose capital is Barcelona. The language spoken in that area of Spain is Catalonian, a combination of French and Castilian.

The beginning of the twentieth century brought into the picture a very special person for the Puerto Rican independence history. Born in the year 1891 in the town of Ponce Puerto Rico, Don Pedro Albizu Campos was disowned by his father and raised by his maternal aunt Rosa. He went to school barefoot most of his childhood but managed to win scholarships to attend schools from first grade to Harvard Law School from where he graduated with honors. Albizu turned down many job offers from the U.S. government and returned to the island in 1921 to join and eventually become president of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico. Under his leadership, the Nationalist Party took a more radical stance against the American occupation in the island, including attacks in the congress and Blair House where President Truman was resting. His involvement, claiming valor as the biggest asset of manhood, set the pace for other Puerto Ricans to defy American authorities and laws and engage in open, illegal, and even clandestine struggle to make the cause of the Puerto Rican liberation known internationally. The struggle passed through decades into the late and early 1970s when brilliant students of political status decided to attack the American system right from its guts or from its guts, meaning right in American land.

The purpose of this book is to present the steps in the late sixties to the eighties, starting with the Comandos Armados de Liberacion to the Macheteros, and the many steps taken by the many law enforcement agencies to detect and stop the members of the Puerto Rican left-wing groups from performing their patriotic acts.

One of the law enforcement ideas was to engage an undercover agent to infiltrate the groups advocating independence for Puerto Rico. There was a couple of problems with infiltrators. The main one was that the members of organizations knew their members by heart for years, and they were very careful with new members at their meetings. By the time a newcomer (or police infiltrator) approached the group of independentistas and would be picked as a trusted member to do an attempt or place a bomb, it would be years, but nothing is impossible when there is time and money. The story of that undercover man started after World War II.

* * *

CHAPTER ONE

Love at First Sight

T he weather was scorching in 1946. The train was providing services for the last days. Months later, it was closed for good. This train convoy was running from the area of Arecibo on the northwest part of the island toward the area of San Juan. The train stations were located in key areas for the benefit of the different types of people doing different things. Armed forces camps, or campamentos , were still very active after the Second World War. The train slowed down approaching the U.S. Army station of Tortuguero, or place of many turtles. A great quantity of soldiers was still stationed thereat, waiting for reassignments or a respective discharge.

The Baldwin locomotive came to a full stop at the station of Tortuguero Camp, full of soldiers in khaki belonging to the 295th Infantry Battalion that had served in World War II. For local travelers, it was a big sight to watch the soldiers at home in dozens, indicating that the war was over. That day, the locals watched the dozens of soldiers open up the line for Staff Sergeant Miguel Puig to enter the train. Puig, who was only twenty-four, had served for six years and received many promotions. Puig was now ready to reenter civilian life and, like many other soldiers of his time, contemplated joining the Federal Police Force after his discharge.

Puig entered the train, looked ahead, and noticed to his front a young lady sitting. Puig said hello with the friendliest face he probably had in years to the lady.

Hi, what town are you coming from?

From the town of Arecibo visiting my sister, she replied.

Judging by their looks, it was a good encounter. Arecibo is a town located in northern Puerto Rico named in the memory of the Indian chief prior to the Spanish colonization. Those were the last days of the train service that would be stopped for about sixty years. The cargo train hauling sugarcane remained for many years after. Memories of the passenger train are vivid today. A song was written to the beat of plena (a Puerto Rican music beat inherited from west Africa featuring tambourines for percussion), referring to the locomotive wheels slipping on the railroad while departing from the San Juan Station. The lyrics went, La maquina patinaba cuando salio de San Juan, Vega Baja, Toa Alta, Arecibo, y en Mayaguez volvio a patinar. This is song is heard often in the Puerto Rico radio stations. It became one of many Puerto Rican folklore.

The couple, Hilda and Miguel, spoke to each other between the stations of Tortuguero and Rio Piedras, passing the stations of the Last Troley and finally Rio Piedras. The couple said goodbye at the terminal where Puig transferred to the town of Caguas. Caguas received its name in honor to the original Indian chief named Caguax who was the first Indian to accept Christ as his savior. Public service station wagons were lined up outside the train terminal to drive people in groups of seven to the different towns. These vehicles were known as pisa y corre or step in and drive. The vehicles driven by independent owners provided transportation to the whole island. The price of the ride was five cents in those days.

Hilda, who was nineteen, boarded her own ride after giving Miguel her address in the town of Humacao for Miguel to visit her as promised during his next liberty pass from the army, probably a week or two from that date.

Puig’s shape was impressive. He was a bodybuilder in his spare time. His friends in the service would count on him for defense when there was trouble, which takes place in the army very often between rival groups. Puerto Rican soldiers were into the habit of wearing the army uniform for weeks after coming from active service, months in some cases. The young girls were very fond of the soldiers coming back in uniform, and for that matter, there were many confrontations in all the towns.

The town of Humacao, like many other towns in Puerto Rico, had a sugarcane plantation, with a processing or crushing machine area that the train had access to. The whole operation was known as central or ingenio.

Juan Ramos, Hilda’s father, was the carpenter-handyman for the Humacao cane central known as Pasto Viejo or old bushes. Living conditions were very optimal at the centrales. Houses for the main employees to reside were huge, which normally had four bedrooms and a big porch all around the house.

Memories were always good about being raised in the cane plantation area except for the tales about hurricanes San Felipe and San Ciriaco that took place in 1928 and 1899. Juan, my grandfather, always remembered that one of the hurricanes caused the chimney of the sugarcane plantation to fall. The chimney was about seventy feet tall, and the noise created during the fall as a result of the hurricane, according to my grandfather, gave the impression that the world was coming to an end. My grandpa, a carpenter by trade, grabbed his saw that was always sharp and managed to open a hole on the house floor for his family to exit their home in case the house crumpled.

Things went very fast between Hilda and Miguel during the next month. Miguel visited Hilda in full uniform for the first time. Hilda presented Miguel to her brothers Carlos and Jacobo, who were studying medicine. Hilda had studied shorthand steno at a college in Arecibo but was, at the time, unemployed.

Even before introduction to Hilda’s parents, Juan and Lola, Lola asked Miguel immediately about when he was going to marry Hilda. Miguel managed to answer soon. Two weeks later, the wedding took place at the small chapel that had witnessed Hilda’s baptism and first communion. Porfirio, Miguel’s best friend from the army, was the best man at the ceremony.

Hilda and Miguel made their first home in an apartment on the second floor of a grocery store, sharing the place with Miguel’s brother Quique and his wife, Santi. On December 1946, Santi gave birth to Evelyn, and on January 10, 1947, Hilda had me, Miguel Puig Junior, whom almost everyone would later know as Mickey.

Miguel Senior, during the next few years after my birth, built a small family tree for himself. Taking advantage of the GI bill, he went to school and studied commercial administration. Eventually he was hired as an armed federal guard, and that did not hold him from buying a wooden house for $900.00, which he made into a two-story cement structure.

On December 20, 1949, Hilda gave birth to Jose. According to my mother’s recollection of their last years of marriage, things were very cold between them. Months would go sometimes without a word of communication. Other complaints from her included that he was very cheap with