Foreign in a Domestic Sense

On a recent trip to Puerto Rico, producer Jeyca Medina-Gleason discovered a piece of her family history: a manila folder with her grandfather Tomás Velez Lopez’s photo attached to the front. Across the top in bold letters, it read “Division of Special Investigations” followed by a case number.

This folder—known in Puerto Rico as a “carpeta”—contained over 60 pages detailing her grandfather’s life, including mundane information like his height, weight, and license plate number. But there was no crime listed. Instead, the purpose was simply “to determine his political activities.”

This carpeta was part of a decades-long surveillance operation that tracked more than 150,000 Puerto Ricans, primarily targeting supporters of Puerto Rican independence. For Jeyca’s grandparents, Tomás and Nancy, their activism around the independence movement made them targets of this surveillance.

A History of Uncertainty

Puerto Rico has been a colony for over 500 years, first under Spanish rule and later under American control. When the United States acquired Puerto Rico in 1898 during the Spanish-American War, it didn’t follow the traditional path of transitioning territories to statehood.

Instead, the Supreme Court created a unique and ambiguous status for Puerto Rico through a series of decisions known as the Insular Cases. As Columbia Law professor Christina Ponsa Kraus explains, the Court determined that Puerto Rico was “foreign to the United States in a domestic sense” and “domestic in an international sense”—essentially legal gibberish that justified keeping Puerto Rico as neither a state nor fully independent.

The Independence Movement and Surveillance

The independence movement gained momentum in the 1930s under the leadership of Pedro Albizu Campos, who headed the Nationalist Party. After violent clashes between independence supporters and police, U.S. authorities began surveilling people suspected of supporting independence. This was the beginning of the carpetas.

This system worked like a “three-strike” process. As photographer and researcher Christopher Gregory-Rivera explains, “If they saw you with somebody else or they saw you at a rally, you’d get another card… and when you got three of these index cards, then they would actually formally open a carpeta on you.”

The surveillance program relied heavily on paid informants—friends, neighbors, and colleagues who reported on independence supporters. Though the information was often fabricated or exaggerated, the carpetas served their purpose: suppressing the independence movement by making its supporters feel watched.

The Commonwealth Era

In 1952, as decolonization movements spread globally, the U.S. decided to change Puerto Rico from an unincorporated territory into a “Commonwealth” with its own constitution and elected governor. But this new status created even more uncertainty.

Commonwealth supporters described it as “the best of both worlds,” citizenship and connection to the U.S. while maintaining autonomy. Critics saw it as “the worst of both worlds,” still subject to congressional control while pretending to be decolonized.

As Ponsa Kraus notes, “Puerto Rico is subject to the control of Congress…and if Congress wants to take power away, it can.”

The Cerro Maravilla Murders

The true extent of the surveillance program remained hidden until something called the Cerro Maravilla scandal broke in the 1970s. The case involved the murder of two young independence activists, set up by a police informant who had infiltrated the movement.

The scandal led to public trials broadcast across the island. During one heated radio debate, a police officer blurted out that everyone knew that the police were keeping files on the independentistas. This led to years of investigations into the carpetas.

After public pressure, in 1988 the Puerto Rican Supreme Court ordered the release of the carpetas. Thousands of Puerto Ricans, including Jeyca’s grandparents, were allowed to collect their files—tangible evidence of decades of government surveillance.

The Legacy of the Carpetas

Today, the carpetas remain an open wound in Puerto Rico’s collective memory. The word “carpetear” (to make a carpeta on someone) is still used as a verb, with grandparents warning their activist grandchildren, “cuidada o te van a carpetear” (be careful or they’ll make a carpeta on you).

Though the surveillance program damaged the independence movement, it also galvanized supporters. As Jeyca’s grandmother Nancy put it, “That didn’t stop us. Because the moment we found out, the moment we got those carpetas and we knew what was going on, that only made us stronger.”

Recent years have seen growing interest in Puerto Rico’s political status, with many Puerto Ricans becoming increasingly conscious of the island’s relationship with the United States. In the 2024 gubernatorial race the candidate for the Puerto Rican Independence party got nearly a third of the vote- a historic milestone for the movement. The fight for Puerto Rican independence continues for many on the island. As Jeyca’s grandmother Nancy explains, “I will die for my country. I will believe in its independence because I believe in its people…this is me. This is where I come from. And nothing could take that away from me.”