Puerto Rico operation seeks to fulfill law and order
WORLD
SAN JUAN,
Puerto Kim (AP)
— So I tin* ns in < am
ouflago carrying
M- His chock ovary
passing car. 1 hoy stand guard
alongside schools pockmarked
with bullet holes. They patrol
nightly along lines where work
ers are putting up 12-foot walls,
topped with barbed wire
Reminiscent of El Salvador
and Vietnam, this military oper
ation is taking place on U.S. ter
ritory. battling the enemy within
— drugs, gangs and violent
crime.
Hundreds of National Guards
men and police have taken over
2'A public housing progMis in this
U S Gnribhenn commonwealth
since June, often in swift night
time operations complete with
helicopters, armored personnel
carriers and shouted orders to res
idents.
Gov. Pedro Kossello ordered
the Guard into a< tmn. seeking to
lower a murder rate worse than
any of the 50 states and to fulfill
a law-and-order campaign
pledge. It is the first time Amer
ican military units have been
pressed into routine crime-fight
ing service with police
The takeovers have ended
shoutouts at the projects and
brought back frightened repair
men. mail carriers and social
workers The operation also has
been criticized ns undemocrntn
by civil rights activists
For Santo Almodovar, repair
ing his corner snack shop inside
the rundown Vista Hormosa
(Beautiful View) project, the
takeover has returned something
he thought was lost forever —
security
As ho spoke with a reporter,
workers were busy nearby
walling off the project to stop foot
traffic, and building a gunrdpost
at the single remaining street
entranceway to control vehicles.
"It's a shame that we have to
live in forts like the cowboys
against the Indians, but it works."
said Almodovar, 44, surveying
empty streets that used to be
i rowded with outsiders, many
buying or selling drugs.
"They kill fewer people in
some of these guerrilla wars in
Latin America than they do
here." he said.
From 1980 through Monday,
killings claimed 8.204 lives in
Puerto Rico, with new murder
records set in 1991 and 1992. The
708 people killed so far this year
— including five in one recent
shootout at an unpatroled hous
ing project — is well above the
517 at the same point last year.
Police say 85 percent of the slay
ings an; drug-related, in a land
where unemployment is official
ly listed at 17.5 percent.
From the windows of her offic*
in a nearby elementary school.
Principal Armenda Perez used to
watch drug sales, some by chil
dren not much older than those
she teaches and tries to protect.
On Christmas, gangs shot up
her school for target practice.
Another time, panicked mothers,
who got wind of a shootout,
pulled half of the .120 pupils out
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Th/s phone - it stayed broke for a
month because repairmen didn’t want to
come in. The school doctor was afraid to
come.’
— Armenda Perez.
elementary school principal
of school within 20 minutes. Dur
ing another gunftght, Perez hud
dled in her office, metal shutters
drawn, with about 30 children.
A man was fatally shot outside of
the adjoining cafeteria — a half
hour before the children recessed
"The press was afraid to come
in here." said Perez, a veteran
educator from the rural central
mountain town of Utuado. "This
phone — it stayed broke for a
month btxause repairmen didn't
want to come in. The school doc
tor was afraid to come."
Vista Hermosa was not even
considered one of the worst of
Puerto Rico's 332 housing pro
jects. which are home to 332.000
of its 3.8 million people. When it
was built three decades ago, pri
vate guards rang a siren at 9 each
night to tell children to head
home. But order disappeared as
many residents with jobs left, as
its population doubled, ns ser
vices crumbled, as drugs took
hold and never let go.
Now each night, police and
guardsmen patrol the streets of
the projects, or watch TVs at
streetsidu while earning money,
a cause of resentment to some
jobless residents.
In Lopez Sicardo, a housing
project near the University of
Puerto Rico, residents complain
that authorities have closed the
community center to public
events and banned the weekend
block parties they used to hold
near the project's small, litter
strewn square.
"It's a dictatorship," said a 40
vear-old man who would identi
fy himself only as Pedro for fear
of the authorities. "At 10 o'clock,
you have to turn off your stereo
in your house."
Pedro said police continue to
check the cars and papers of pro
ject residents they already know.
He called it harassment. One
policeman is under investigation
for the shooting death of a resi
dent who was trying to enter a
housing project Sept. fl.
The island's police chief. Pedro
Toledo, counters criticism by say
ing residents from 50 other pro
jects have demanded that author
ities move in.
The government has not said
how much the operation has cost.
About 500 guardsmen and police
officers take part in the initial
sweep of a project, then 30 or so
are assigned to daily patrols.
Those doing the patrolling find
themselves face to face with a
part of the island that Puerto Rico
tries its l)est to hide.
Sgt. Ishai Home waiting out an
afternoon rainshower under the
awning of a former drug-selling
point, said the occupation of
Vista Hermosa reminded him too
much of Vietnam, whore he
fought in 1969 and 1970 as a sol
dier in the U.S. Army's 4th
Infantry.
And like Vietnam, it may have
been easier to gut in than get out.
Although the government and the
newly private management of the
projects have made some repairs,
several root problems remain: the
size, the concentration of people
and the lack of ways to keep
criminals from living there.
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