You are herePuerto Rico Update Archives
Puerto Rico Update Archives
Back to Archive Listing
Vieques in the News
by John Lindsay-Poland
As we went to press in late April, the people of Vieques, Puerto Rico were anxiously awaiting arrest actions by federal officials against the more than a dozen civil disobedience encampments established in the Navy’s explosive impact area of Vieques, known as La Isla Nena. The encampments were established in April 1999 after Navy bombs killed a civilian guard from Vieques, David Sanes Rodríguez. The Navy bombing range has been used since 1941 by U.S., NATO and Latin American militaries to train for wars in Europe and the Atlantic. Today, it is the site of a dramatic contest between civil development and imperial imposition, a point of pilgrimage and of the construction of chapels and schools.
On January 31, President Clinton issued a directive on Vieques that purported to be the "final word." The directive proposes to spend $40 million in Vieques for development and begin transfer of Navy lands on the western end of the island — if the civil disobedience camps are cleared and the Navy can resume bombing. It sets in motion a referendum on Vieques with two options: bombing until 2003 with "inert" munitions, after which the Navy would leave, or unlimited live-fire bombing by the Navy with no departure. The second option would carry with it an additional $50 million in funds for Vieques development projects. The date of the referendum is to be set by the Navy.
The presidential directive was followed by the arrival in Puerto Rico of Admiral Kevin Green, formerly assigned to Okinawa, who has become chief of the newly created US Navy South, which is headquartered at Roosevelt Roads in eastern Puerto Rico.
A survey taken less than a week after Clinton’s directive was issued found the vast majority of people in Vieques against resumed bombing and in support of the civil disobedience encampments there. Ninety-five percent of those polled felt that the people of Vieques should have been consulted prior to the directive. If the referendum were held then, only four percent would have favored continued live fire bombing by the Navy. A large majority — 86% -opposed actions by Puerto Rican police to assist in arrests of those in the encampments, while 79% favored the protesters remaining in the encampments.
Less than three weeks later, on February 21, the largest march in the history of San Juan called for the Navy’s departure from Vieques. Between 80,000 (Associated Press report) and 150,000 (San Juan Municipal Police estimate) Puerto Ricans marched in silence across the city, led by the island’s religious leaders.
The House of Representatives approved $40 million for Vieques as part of the emergency spending bill on March 30. The bill included funds for improvements to the municipal airport and ferry pier, as well as funds toward the referendum, but it included nothing for cleanup of the lands contaminated with explosives and heavy metals. The House defeated — by a vote of 232 to 183 — a proposal that would have required the Navy to resume training with live ammunition before the $40 million could be disbursed.
The spending bill of which the funds were part was tabled in the Senate, but may be considered together with the military budget in June, which will offer conservatives another chance to push their own agenda for the island. Representative Gene Taylor of Mississippi, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, in March suggested locating a military training school on the western end of Vieques.
On April 18, Puerto Rican church leaders met with Governor Pedro Rosselló and Jeffrey Farrow, White House advisor on Puerto Rico. They proposed that the referendum in Vieques be held on August 1 (the earliest possible date under President Clinton’s directive) and that it include a third option — an immediate cessation of all Navy training activities on Vieques.
But grassroots leaders in Vieques oppose any referendum. "The Navy did not hold a referendum to enter Vieques and they don’t need one to leave," said Nilda Medina, of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques.
Meanwhile, 18 warships from the United States, Colombia, Britain, Canada and the Netherlands trained in waters within 12 miles of Vieques during military exercises from April 4 to 10, according to Navy spokesman Jeff Gordon. The warships began the exercise off the Colombian coast on March 20.
Exercises that the Navy insisted had to take place in Vieques in March were instead carried out at and near Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. Military commanders complained that military planes, had to share air space with commercial airplanes flying between Florida and New Orleans, Houston and other points west. "Our training scenario is interrupted by the presence of those aircraft," a pilot told the Associated Press.
On April 25, the Navy again announced that it moved training exercises of the USS George Washington battle group scheduled for Vieques from May 12 to 20 to training sites in Florida and North Carolina. A plan to arrest residents of the camps, using FBI agents to conduct arrests and a thousand Marines to enforce a perimeter around the area, was scuttled when word of the plan was leaked. "If there are 100 false alarms, we will be present 100 times to make sure the rumors are not true," said Eduardo Villanueva, president of the Puerto Rican Bar Association.
Environmental Cleanup and Hotels
On February 23, more than 150 environmental, peace and religious leaders and activists issued an open letter to President Clinton urging that he "reverse this directive, give back the island to the citizens of Vieques and ensure an environmental cleanup that guarantees public participation and is protective of human health, culture and the environment."
Robert Kennedy, Jr., an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, visited Vieques April 17-18, where he witnessed the ecological destruction both on land and underwater, and promised to work for an injunction against Navy bombing on environmental grounds.
Biologists Arturo Massol and Elba Diaz, after analyzing plants in the Vieques impact area in February and March, concluded that plant life is absorbing heavy metals, such as. lead, cobalt, nickel and manganese, which are concentrating and moving up the island’s food chain. A similar study last November of violin crabs in Vieques’ waters also found elevated levels of heavy metals. Meanwhile, the Navy has produced a plan to locate and recover depleted uranium projectiles it fired onto Vieques last year, but not to treat and decommission the weapons, according to a Nuclear Regulatory Commission review of the plan.
Others point out that getting the Navy out is perhaps the easier aspect of Vieques’ struggle. In an otherwise breezy travel piece on Vieques published by The New York Times on April 9, Claudia Dreifus dwelt fondly on the island’s natural beauty and seemed perplexed by the battle over the Navy. She also disclosed that Rosewood Hotels and Resorts of Dallas plans to about $50 million, "to transform Vieques" by opening a 25-acre resort with 156 rooms. The fenced-in complex will be located a mile and a half from the airport that is slated for expansion as part of the Clinton directive’s $40 million, and "will initiate Vieques into the world of commercial tourism," according to Dreifus. The rooms won’t be cheap: rooms in winter will range from $475 for a double, to $3,000 a night for a villa. Two more hotels are in the the planning stages.
Sources: El Nuevo Dia, 2/10, 3/19, 4/13, 4/18/00; New York Times, 4/9/00; Associated Press 3/29, 3/30, 4/2, 4/13/00; Vieques Update, 4/8/00; NRC Weekly Information Report, 3/31/00.
Fellowship of Reconciliation
Puerto Rico Campaign
Produced by the Fellowship of Reconciliation Task Force on Latin America and the Caribbean
2017 Mission St. #305, San Francisco, CA 94110
Tel: (415) 495-6334, Fax: (415) 495-5628,E-mail: forlatam@igc.apc.org
