Murder Under Two Flags: The U.S., Puerto Rico, and the Cerro Maravilla Cover-Up

Three years ago, Puerto Rico experienced its own Watergate when televised hearings by the Puerto Rican Senate revealed an elaborate cover-up by island and U.S. officials of the 1978 deaths of two young dissidents atop Cerro Maravilla, a mountain outside Ponce. In this well-crafted account, Nelson, a freelance journalist, shows how the statements of Puerto Rico's pro-statehood administrationsthat ""terrorists'' Carlos Soto and Arnaldo Rosado were killed by police acting in self-defensewas rubber-stamped by the U.S. Justice Department but gradually crumbled as Puerto Rican reporters and the later hearings produced evidence that the victims, active in the independence movement, were murdered. Nelson views the complex scandal against the turbulent history of relations between the U.S. and Puerto Rico, where the ``halfway'' status of commonwealth has sparked political violence for three decades. Photos not seen by PW. (April 23)