Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

510 • ORGANIZATION OF VOLUNTEERS FOR THE PUERTO RICAN REVOLUTIONTruce Supervisory Observer Group in Lebanon. Hezbollah continuesto deny any relationship to the group.ORGANIZATION OF VOLUNTEERS FOR THE PUERTO RI-CAN REVOLUTION (OVPR). The OVPR was a political-militarygroup dedicated to winning Puerto Rican independence through armedrevolution. This group was closely associated with the Macheteros,having conducted its first operation jointly with them in a 3 December1979 ambush and machine-gun attack upon a U.S. Navy shuttle bus,killing two sailors and seriously wounding 10 others. In addition, on 25January 1985 the OVPR shared credit with the Macheteros in a rocketgrenadeattack on a U.S. courthouse in San Juan. On 7 November 1985the group shot and seriously wounded a U.S. Army recruiting officer,Major Michael Snyder, as he was riding his motor scooter to work, toprotest the 6 November 1984 visit to San Juan by William H. Webster,director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).In April 1986 OVPR terrorists murdered a former informant of thePuerto Rican police, Alejandro González Maleve, and vowed to murdernine other policemen who were implicated in the killing of youngPuerto Rican separatists. The OVPR has also made other bombingattacks within Puerto Rico but has largely been inactive from the late1980s. See also MACHETEROS.ORGANIZED CRIME AND CRIMINAL SYNDICATES. Duringthe post–cold war era, organized crime and terrorism appear to occupythe same gray areas within transitional states and in the changinginternational nation-state order. Some observers claim that thereis an increasing convergence, or synthesis, of criminal enterprisesand terrorist organizations, while others claim that the two activitiesremain separate but are increasing their tactical and even strategiccoordination. Other analysts claim that, while terrorist and criminalorganizations share many common features and similar tactics, theiroverriding objectives are both different and ultimately incompatible,such that any joint actions will be infrequent and exceptional ratherthan part of a developing netwar of coordinated or converged terroristand criminal activities.The apparent convergence or coordination of terrorism and organizedcrime activities has been cited in such events as the contactsand coordination between leftist terrorist movements in Colombiaand Peru and narcotics traffickers; the open warfare of the Pablo