Los Macheteros is a revolutionary group that operates from Puerto Rico. It was set up in the 1970s by Filiberto Ojeda Rios, Juan Enrique Segarra Palmer and Orlando Gonzalez Claudio. The group began in 1976, but it can trace its origins back to the Armed Forces of National Liberation, or Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional (FALN).
The group attracted a wide variety of politically interested people, including some that had belonged to another group, named University Pro-Independence Federation, or Federacion Universitaria Pro Independencia (FUPI). FUPI was the youth arm of another group, named Movement Pro Independence, or Movimiento Pro Independencia (MPI). Those who came over from FUPI included Marta Sanchez Olmeda and Avelino Gonzalez Claudio who used the alias of Carmelo. Clearly, unlike Ruben Berrios' PIP party movement, The Macheteros has an agenda of making Puerto Rico independent by means of violence.
January 2 of 1977, one day after Carlos Romero Barcelo, who looked for Puerto Rico to become the 51st state of the American Union, was sworn in as Puerto Rico's governor, two bombs were placed at a ROTC building in San Juan. The bombs did not explode because the police destroyed them, but The Macheteros took responsibility for the incident.
The group later became also experts in bank robberies, as a way to finance their activities. Their famous robberies included one of a Wells Fargo facility in West Hartford, CT. in 1983. They have claimed responsibility for hundreds of attacks, specially many that happened during the 1970s.
They are considered to be terrorist by most Puerto Ricans and patriotic heroes by much fewer people because they seek the independence of Puerto Rico, mostly by commiting criminal acts against American targets.