AMERICAN NOTES: Terrorism for Whom?

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Terrorism seems to have become almost the normal instrument of politics in depressingly many areas of the world —Northern Ireland, Britain, Lebanon, Argentina. Americans often have a hard time understanding the passions behind these debates of death, and can only be grateful that the U.S. has remained largely immune from such anarchic eruptions. But a tiny band calling itself the Armed Forces of Puerto Rican Na tional Liberation (F.A.L.N.) has once again proved that a few obscure fanatics can produce flickers of unexpected terror even in the U.S.

Last week bombs went off at ten widely scattered targets within 40 min utes. Explosions hit the State Department and the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, four banks and the U.S. mission to the United Nations in New York, and three more banks in Chica go; fortunately, no one was injured. A note left in a New York City phone booth declared that all ten bombs were set off by the F.A.L.N. as "a simultaneously coordinated attack against Yanki government."

The rhetoric was tiresome enough, but for whom did it really speak? A blast at Manhattan's Fraunces Tavern last January killed four people, and it too was part of a self-proclaimed F.A.L.N.

campaign of violence to gain independence for Puerto Rico. Yet the obscure "army" can claim little support on the is land. In the most recent plebiscite held in Puerto Rico, in 1967, 60% of the voters opted for continuation of Puerto Rico's commonwealth status with the U.S., 39% wanted statehood, and less than 1% voted for independence. In deed, in the 1972 gubernatorial election, the pro-independence candidates got less than 6% of the free vote.