Last February 6th, naval ships from West Germany, Canada, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina and Holland converged on the small island of Vieques, ten miles off Puerto Rico's southeastern coast. The U.S. Navy had invited fleets from these NATO and South American countries to come to Vieques to participate in Operation Springboard-several days of war maneuvers to practice surface shooting, anti-submarine and aircraft fire, missile launching and amphibious landings.
Operation Springboard never took place. The naval ships were met by a flotilla of forty wooden fishing boats belonging to local fishermen who refused to leave the area. The small flotilla of eighteen foot fishing boats remained in tense confrontation with the ships for eight hours. Finally, the naval ships backed down, turned around and returned to international waters. Led by the Vieques Fisherman's Association, the protestors had managed to halt, for the first time in 37 years, the bombardment of their island.
About 9,600 people live on the island of Vieques in an uneasy state of confrontation with the U.S. Navy. Only about twenty miles long and four miles at its widest point, Vieques is called Isla Nena (Baby Island) by its inhabitants. It is an island municipality of Puerto Rico (Isla Grande) and its citizens are Puerto Rican-that is, U.S. citizens.
Vieques is known for its miles of white beaches, claimed to be some of the most beautiful in the Caribbean, for its phosphores. cent bays and lagoons, and for rare species of fish and turtles that live in its coastal waters. But the island is also the site of one of the two largest U.S. military installations in Puerto Rico. As part of the Atlantic Fleet Weapons Range (headquartered at the Roosevelt Roads base on the island of Puerto Rico) Vieques is one of the U.S. military's most important training and weapons testing grounds in the world.
The Navy first moved to Vieques during World War II when Puerto Rico became a key area in the defense of the Caribbean and Panama Canal against German submarines. Puerto Rico has continued to be a strategic base for the U.S. in the Caribbean. In 1965, the U.S. used Puerto Rico as a launching area for the invasion of the Dominican Republic, it has been used in intelligence monitoring of neighboring socialist Cuba, and it would undoubtedly be used as a launching area for any U.S. invasion of Nicaragua.
The small island of Vieques has been particularly important to the Navy in the testing and evaluation of weapons and as a training ground- for the Atlantic Fleet forces. At one end of the island. the Navy keeps a massive munitions arsenal for use by the Atlantic Fleet in any future conflict involving Africa or Latin America.
Vieques' use as a training and testing site has been greatly stepped up since 1975 when mass protests forced the Navy to withdraw from the neighboring island of Culebra. But with the protest movement gathering force in Vieques, there is a question about how much longer the Navy will have free rein on the island.
THE NAVY VERSUS THE PEOPLE
The U.S. Navy's disregard for the rights and well being of the residents of Vieques has a long history. When the Navy first arrived on the island in 1941, residents were given 24 hours to evacuate their homes, and were then moved by trucks to a narrow strip of land in the center of the island. As one islander recalls,
I was given $30 for the house and there was nothing I could do about it except put everything we owned in the truck. I knew that those who protested were mistreated. When we arrived at Monte Santo, the relocation area, we found a sugar cane field. There were no houses or anything. Our first child was born the very next day- right there.
Today, 26,000 of the island's 33,000 acres are restricted by the Navy for military use. From 7:30 in the morning to 11 at night, six or seven days a week, naval ships and aircraft bombard the island and carry out underwater demolition.
These operations make life on Vieques like living in a battle zone. The constant noise makes it difficult for residents to go about their daily lives, creates a problem for teachers in conducting classes, and is the suspected cause of the high rate of emotional disturbances on the island. Dangers from the use of live ammunition is also very real. Two young boys have been killed by explosions, and numerous people have been maimed by grenades.
Like other Puerto Ricans, the people of Vieques have seen their traditional means of livelihood-agriculture and fishing - undermined by the U.S. presence on their island.
Extensive environmental damage, both on the island and in the surrounding waters, is one of the main reasons for the decline of fishing and agriculture. Fishermen, whose livelihood depends on these waters, find the ropes to their traps severed by naval craft.
Not too long ago they made us lose 131 traps at one shot when the ropes are broken the nets descend to the bottom of the sea where for at least one year they serve as a death trap for all sea life. The fish, seeing food inside the traps, enter them, only to become trapped themselves. And so a chain is established by which dozens of hundreds of fish can meet their death in only one of those traps.
Unexploded bombs litter the ocean floor. An anchor, striking one of these bombs, would detonate an explosion strong enough to kill everything for two or three miles around.
On the land, farmers find that their cattle and poultry produce less and less milk and eggs. Much of their grazing land is pockmarked with craters, dry and barren. The destruction of the island's vegetation by bombs has left the water table unprotected, and the Navy controls many of the areas where underground water could be tapped.
THE PROTEST GROWS
The Navy's continued presence on Vieques has become a major issue throughout Puerto Rico. After the Viequenses forced the cancellation of Operation Springboard in February, they followed up with a "Tournament of Dignity" on March 30, attended by fishermen not only from Vieques but from the main island as well. Their actions forced the cancellation of a second military maneuver, scheduled for May of this year. Operation Solid Shield, the biggest military operation in the Atlantic.
On July 1 - 4, there was a three day occupation of restricted Navy land by hundreds of Viequenses and their supporters. Even the Governor of Puerto Rico has joined efforts to oust the Navy. Governor Carlos Romero Barcelo, a strong advocate of statehood who is generally very friendly toward the U.S., has brought suit in federal court to enjoin the Navy from continuing operations on Vieques.
The issue of Vieques cannot be separated from the broader question of Puerto Rico's relationship to the U.S.-a subject that is currently being hotly debated. The recent vote of the U.N. Decolonization Committee calling for the transfer of full authority and power over the island to Puerto Ricans is only one more sign of the writing on the wall. Puerto Rico's status must change. What hangs in question is whether it will be drawn closer into the U.S. embrace as the 51st state, or whether Puerto Ricans will gain the right to self-determination and independence.
The Department of Defense is a formidable power in Puerto Rico. It owns more land, employs more people, and spends more money than all other federal agencies on the island combined. So, undeniably, the Navy is in a good bargaining position. If they leave, they take both jobs and capital with them. But weighing this prospect against the continuing bombardment of Vieques, many Puerto Ricans want the Navy out, and public sentiment has been significantly mobilized in this direction. This shift in popular sentiment and the possibility of a victory in the Vieques struggle is likely to have important repercussions for the broader debate over Puerto Rico's future status.
