Carpetas: Government Surveillance Program

The carpetas (folders) were secret surveillance files maintained by the Puerto Rico Police Intelligence Division from the late 1940s through the 1980s. The program compiled dossiers on an estimated 150,000 Puerto Ricans — roughly 5% of the population — who were suspected of harboring pro-independence or left-wing sympathies.

The files documented the political activities, associations, movements, and personal lives of targets including independence activists, labor organizers, journalists, professors, artists, students, and even their family members. The intelligence was used for political persecution: individuals with carpetas were denied government jobs, harassed, arrested, and in some cases killed (as in the Cerro Maravilla murders).

The program was exposed in 1987 when a group of activists filed a class action lawsuit. In 1992, a federal court ordered the files destroyed, but not before researchers documented their scope. The Puerto Rico Civil Rights Commission confirmed the program's existence and scale.

The carpetas program was Puerto Rico's equivalent of the FBI's COINTELPRO — and in fact operated in coordination with the FBI. It demonstrated the systematic use of state power to suppress political dissent and the independence movement through surveillance, intimidation, and violence.