Winter PR Update

Puerto Rico Update, Winter 2005

In this Update:

Movement Against Militarism Gathers Momentum
Vieques Community Leaders and Allies Urge Attention to Health Needs
FOR Condemns FBI’s Use of Violence in Puerto Rico

Movement Against Militarism Gathers Momentum

By Wanda Resto Torres and John Lindsay-Poland

San Juan, Puerto Rico - The organizations Mothers Against War, Caribbean Project for Justice and Peace, along with more than a dozen others have formed the Citizen Coalition Against Militarism (CCCM) and are working diligently to counter the military’s strategy to recruit youth and to demilitarize the schools in Puerto Rico. They have coordinated many nonviolent protests and rallies around the island from middle schools to law schools. By late August, when high schools opened around Puerto Rico, the Coalition had visited more than 40 secondary schools to inform students on how to keep their personal information from being sent to military recruiters, and visited many of the island’s other 157 high schools by the end of September.

The CCCM wrote a letter to the Secretary of Education of Puerto Rico, expressing opposition to Department of Education policies and practices that allow recruitment in the schools and providing the Department of Defense (DOD) access to student’s personal information. The organizations also asked for information to back up DOD’s claim that the Junior Reserve Officers Training Program programs reduce alcoholism and school dropout rates.

The demilitarization of schools movement is gathering support and momentum - so much that Puerto Rico’s Secretary of Education Rafael Aragunde Torres placed a moratorium on providing the military with personal student information, as required in Section 9582 of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.  Aragunde asked the Puerto Rican Secretary of Justice for a legal opinion on whether minors may sign an “Opt-Out” form, which allows a student or parent to request that their information not be provided to the military. Puerto Rican law does not allow people younger than 21 years of age to consent into contracts or obligations. The Secretary of Justice issued an opinion in late October confirming the CCCM position that either the parent or the minor can use the Opt-Out form to withhold his or her personal information from the military.

In another victory for the CCCM, the deadline to Opt-Out was extended until November 30, and allows for the signature of either the student or the parent.

The CCCM is connected to a growing movement of Latino organizations and activists in the United States who are opposing militarism and recruitment of Latino/a youth.  The organizations include the Latino Caucus of the National Network Opposed to the Militarization of the Youth” (www.youthandthemilitary.org), Guerreo Azteca Project for Peace (www.guerreroazteca.org), and the Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities (www.projectyano.org). These US and Puerto Rico groups joined forces to launch a coordinated counter-recruitment campaign on August 29, the anniversary of the 1970 Chicano Moratorium, a massive and radical anti-war movement.

The DOD has also been very active in the past few months, visiting private and public universities from the west to the east of the island of Puerto Rico, recruiting for military and civilian jobs within the DOD. But recruiters have been met with pickets organized by a variety of groups and at one location on October 7, caused a recruiter to leave earlier than planned. On November 3, student activists took over the Army ROTC building at the UPR campus in Mayaguez, calling ROTC “the obvious intrusion into the university.”

A significant recent support for the demilitarization of schools was the decision by the Dean and faculty of the University of Puerto Rico Law School to join a group of universities in the lawsuit to oppose the validity of the Solomon-Pombo Amendment. This statute, a rider to a federal appropriations bill, directs the federal Department of Education to withhold education aid from institutions of higher education that refuse access to military recruiters. The lawsuit - Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights (F.A.I.R)  v  Donald Rumsfeld - claims that Rumsfeld is violating First Amendment rights.

According to UPR Law School Dean Efren Rivera, “the Solomon-Pombo Amendment articulates a pernicious public policy. It conditions the development of the investigation and the formation of the new generations, in a manner that obligate university institutions to welcome in the Armed Forces in conditions dictated by these and not under an academic criteria. It ties the development of knowledge to the admission of the military presence, that is to say, to a factor that is disconnected from the generation of knowledge”

Under most university guidelines, no employer may be given access to the campus to recruit students for employment if their employment practices are discriminatory. Yet, according to the military’s “don't ask, don't tell” policy regarding sexuality, no openly gay person can enlist with the military.

Many of the demilitarization groups in Puerto Rico are also challenging the refusal byschools to allow information on alternatives to militarism. There are limitations on providing equal space and time for supporters of nonviolence and anti-militarism. Dania Díaz, of Mothers Against War, has three children in the military and says that guidance counselors pressure students to enlist.  “The director called my house to tell my son that the test (to enter the armed forces) would happen in the school, but she didn’t talk with me to tell me he was failing in one subject,” Díaz said.

The need for students to hear about alternatives is more urgent because the military is not honest with recruits. An ex-recruiter, who asked that his name be withheld, told Puerto Rico Update that recruiters don’t inform recruits about the “almost certainty” that they will be sent into a war zone. He said that recruiters also don’t reveal the fact that once they sign, even if it’s for a fixed length of stay, the military can extend the person’s time based on shortage or need, for up to eight years from the date of arrival at basic training.

It is probably also certain that recruiters do not mention what Sonia Santiago, of Mothers Against War, reminds us: “More than 40 Puerto Ricans have died in the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan, more than two thousand Americans and thousands of Afghans and Iraqis have died in a war of conquest and lies to occupy a territory rich in oil.”

Santiago adds, “We cannot remain still in the face of attempts by military recruiters to deceive our students with false promises of money, travel and study.”

Sources: CCCM blog http://nomilitarismo.blogspot.com; Claridad, 10/27/05; El Nuevo Día, 9/25, 10/8/05; “The War for Latinos,” The Nation, 10/3/05.

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Vieques Community Leaders and Allies Urge Attention to Health Needs

Leaders of 23 humanitarian and faith-based organizations in the United States concerned about environment and social justice in Vieques requested in August that Puerto Rico Governor Anibal Acevedo Vilá act affirmatively to improve the environmental and health conditions for people living in Vieques.

The groups called intolerable the fact that the local hospital in Vieques does not offer cancer treatment, forcing Viequenses who are cancer patients to travel by ferry to Fajardo, in eastern Puerto Rico and then another hour by car to the San Juan area for treatment.

Viequenses continue to be subjected to open detonation of explosives. The Navy is removing unexploded ordnance (UXOs) by what it claims is the fastest and cheapest method, the detonation of the UXOs where they are found (Blow in Place, BIP). But the process releases many toxins into the air, water and eventually into the soil. “The Navy's plan totally disregards its obligation to protect public health and the commitment to mitigate further contamination of the air and soil,” the groups said. The signers included directors of National Council of La Raza, National Puerto Rico Coalition, Fellowship of Reconciliation, and Pax Christi USA.

The letter was delivered only a few days after Vieques residents defied restrictions imposed by federal agencies to camp on the island’s former bombing range and call for an end to the open detonation of explosives.

The same week, Vieques community leaders raised the issues in meetings with Puerto Rican agency officials, supported by members of the All Puerto Rico with Vieques Coalition. The leaders made detailed demands for the Puerto Rico Department of Health to establish adequate health services for Vieques residents, including disclosure of the results of a study made in 2004 of heavy metals found in residents. Those who gave blood samples for the study still have not received findings from the Health Department. The leaders also demanded that Puerto Rico complete studies of cancer, lead in children and mercury in pregnant women in Vieques. They urged Puerto Rico’s Environmental Quality Board to demand that the Navy stop open detonation of explosives and allow full community participation in decisions about the cleanup.

In support of Vieques community demands, the US leaders’ letter encouraged the Governor to persist with the demand that the Navy find ecological alternatives to Blow In Place (BIP) for the removal of UXOs from the island, recognize the human health and environmental risk in Vieques, and make it a high priority for funding cleanup.

According to a member of the Vieques Restoration Advisory Board, the Navy has conceded many of the community’s demands to relocate soil sampling locations to determine background levels of contaminants in Vieques. Such background levels will be used to set cleanup standards for cleanup of lands used by the Navy for bombing and military training for nearly 60 years, and island activists have long asserted that areas already impacted by military use should not be used to determine “natural” background levels of contaminants such as lead, cadmium and other toxins. The Navy’s agreement to change the sampling areas represents one small victory for the community and solidarity, in what will be a long struggle to ensure full community participation, environmental cleanup, health care, and eventual return of lands used by the Navy.

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FOR Condemns FBI’s Use of Violence in Puerto Rico
September 28, 2005

FOR advocates for fair and compassionate methods of dealing with offenders against society and opposes the use of violence. It is because of these values that today we condemn the killing of Filiberto Ojeda Rios on September 23 by the FBI at his home in the town of Homigueros, Puerto Rico. The shooting occurred Friday after FBI agents surrounded a house where he was staying. According to an autopsy, Rios bled to death after being hit with a single bullet. Officials did not enter his home until Saturday, many hours after he was shot.

Filiberto Ojeda Rios for the past four decades had been a leading figure in the fight for Puerto Rican independence and against U.S. colonial rule. The FBI claimed the 72-year-old Ojeda Rios fired a weapon, but his wife – who was present – states that FBI agents fired first. Activists for Puerto Rican independence accused the FBI of assassinating him.

The killing occurred on the day of "Grito de Lares,"  commemorating September 23, 1868, when  Puerto Ricans gathered in Lares, Puerto Rico and revolted for independence from Spain.  The choice of this day for the FBI’s violent operation gives further offense.

"We are committed to support self determination and sovereignty for all people, consistent with principles of nonviolence and justice. We vigorously denounce the actions of the FBI that contravene all actions of civility and social justice with excessive force.  Such force should not be the standard operating procedures of  law enforcement," said Pat Clark, FOR Executive Director.

FOR urges US officials to heed calls from across Puerto Rico’s political spectrum to  investigate the FBI’s use of violence against Ojeda Rios.

The FOR re-commits itself to work with communities in Puerto Rico and the United States to ensure the people of Puerto Rico may be free from the chains of oppression that colonialism hangs over the island.

FOR envisions a world of justice, peace, and freedom. It is a revolutionary vision of a beloved community where differences are respected, conflicts are addressed nonviolently, oppressive structures are dismantled, and where people live in harmony with the earth, nurtured by diverse spiritual traditions that foster compassion, solidarity, and reconciliation.

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