After the CIA released historical documents proving that the agency surveilled Mexican American and Puerto Rican civil rights activists during the civil rights era, Rep. Joaquin Castro and other members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus have requested the FBI do the same.
The letter, dated Jan. 8, asked President Joe Biden to direct the FBI to “release information on the historical surveillance of Latino American communities, particularly during the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s.”
The CIA’s 55 documents, from 1968 to 1983, validated long-held suspicions that the government was monitoring and disrupting activists’ work — and viewed them as threats, according to a report from Axios, who first wrote about the records this week. They detail how the CIA sent undercover agents to infiltrate student groups in Arizona, California, and Colorado. They monitored activists like farmworker union leader Cesar Chavez and were tracking Chavez’s attendance of demonstrations, including one in New York City that marked the 3rd anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1968 assassination.
“During this time, the FBI and CIA used their authority to inappropriately monitor, infiltrate, and disrupt the peaceful activities of American citizens,” according to the letter. “Much of this surveillance is a matter of public record through press reports and previous U.S. government disclosures, but our understanding is many documents from this period remain unreleased.”
“For the last year, I’ve been pushing the FBI and CIA to release files about their surveillance of the Latino civil rights movement,” Castro wrote in an Instagram post.
The FBI’s surveillance of Latino civil rights pioneers has already been borne out through individual open records requests and news reports.
Notably: Rosie Castro, the mother of Mayor Julián Castro and U.S. Rep. Castro, was listed in an FBI informant’s notes after she “was observed buying two small posters of Angela Davis for 50 cents each, which were mentioned by Rosie Castro as having been printed in Cuba,” according to MySanAntonio.
“The FBI has neither provided a timeline for the release of any documents nor committed to releasing anything new, instead directing Members of Congress to submit a Freedom of Information Act request,” the letter said. “This is particularly concerning given the FBI’s historic role in the surveillance of the civil rights movements, including the Latino civil rights movement.”
Read more at Axios.
