PUERTO RICO is a not-quite-this, not-quite-that sort of place: a part of the United States but culturally and linguistically very Spanish, politically American but technically a “commonwealth”, not a state, whose people pay no federal taxes and have no vote in presidential elections. For some, this is a satisfactory equilibrium; for others, a half-way house on the way to statehood. For Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, it was a form of purgatory, an unwelcome condition between the hell of Spanish colonialism and the relatively celestial end-point of independence. But since independence was awkwardly neither desired by most Puerto Ricans nor offered by the other citizens of the United States, he would fight for it and, if need be, die for it. This he did, in a shoot-out with the FBI at a farmhouse in western Puerto Rico last Friday.

The incident made little impact in most of the country. Even in New York, which is home to over 1m people of Puerto Rican descent, it was reported only cursorily in the mainstream newspapers. The killing was noticed, though, in Hartford, Connecticut, and extensively covered by the Hartford Courant. No wonder: it was in West Hartford that Mr Ojeda Ríos had carried out his most notorious criminal act in the mainland United States, a raid upon a Wells Fargo depot in 1983 in which $7.2m was stolen. Only $80,000 was recovered. The rest was either spirited away to Mexico and thence Cuba to finance the struggle for Puerto Rican independence or, in a grand revolutionary gesture, scattered from the tops of tall buildings to protest against the “greed-infested men and mechanisms” exploiting ordinary Americans.

The raid was not all Mr Ojeda Ríos's work: he had acted with 18 members of the Macheteros (machete-wielders, or cane-cutters), an outfit he had formed in 1976. More formally known as the Boricua People's Army, they were an underground paramilitary group dedicated to freeing Puerto Rico from American “colonial” rule. Although they are said to have cells throughout the United States and even in other countries—the links with Cuba are supposedly strong—the Macheteros have never been numerous. Their number these days is put at about 1,100.

Arrested in due course, Mr Ojeda Ríos was charged not just with involvement in the Hartford robbery but also with a rocket attack a few weeks later on a federal court in San Juan, Puerto Rico's capital. But strangely—for he had shot and wounded a policeman during his arrest, and was also implicated in the Macheteros' blowing-up of 11 aircraft at a National Guard base in Puerto Rico in 1981—he was constrained only by an electronic tag. This he cut off, and disappeared, becoming one of the FBI's “most wanted fugitives”. Two years later, in 1992, he was sentenced in absentia to 55 years in prison.

Most Puerto Ricans had no liking for the methods employed by the Macheteros. Yet it was hard to dislike their leader. Unusually bright, Mr Ojeda Ríos had gone to university at the age of 15 and always showed an engaging intelligence. Former comrades who later gave up the struggle never lost their respect for him, and even FBI interrogators had a grudging admiration. Latterly he showed a single-minded dedication to his cause, yet he had other interests, notably music. His revolutionary career had been preceded by a stint in a well-known salsa band, for which he played both the guitar and the trumpet.

Perhaps all this helps to explain why the news of his death has been greeted more with sadness than anything else. There has certainly been no public rejoicing. Several hundred people gathered at a rally in Manhattan on September 26th, and a wake was planned in the barrio there later in the week. More significantly, in Puerto Rico itself questions have been asked about the circumstances of Mr Ojeda Ríos's death, and not just by his supporters. Governor Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, for instance, has described the FBI's actions as improper and highly irregular, asking why his government was not informed. Questions have also been asked by politicians across the spectrum about the time taken—the best part of a day—to fetch Mr Ojeda Ríos's body from the farmhouse after he had been shot. An autopsy has revealed that he did not die at once.

There is disquiet, too, about the timing of the shooting. It took place on the day of El Grito de Lares, the annual commemoration of the events of September 23rd 1868, when a group of Puerto Ricans rose up in protest against Spanish rule. It has become a date of great significance to the independence movement, and on it Mr Ojeda Ríos would sometimes, from a safe house, give interviews to Puerto Rican journalists.

In a second-class state

Yet if all this emotion owes something to the reluctant affection that some Puerto Ricans had for Mr Ojeda Ríos, it probably owes much more to the ambivalent sentiments widely held about his cause. Sympathy for violence there is not. But sympathy for a romantic who would fight for his little island and its 3.9m often-overlooked people, that is another matter. Like the Irish, an island nation of similar size, with a diaspora to match, Puerto Ricans often feel slighted by their big neighbour. Mr Ojeda Ríos drew on that sense of grievance, even though most of his countrymen were far too sensible to follow him.