[Dryerase] Vieques

[Shawn G]

Asheville Global Report
www.AGRnews.org

Reprinting permitted for not profit organizations, and the Dry-Erase News 
Wire

US Navy bombs Vieques as resistance, arrests continue

By Clare Hanrahan

Asheville, North Carolina, Sept. 17(AGR) -- The tiny Caribbean island of 
Vieques has been bombarded for sixty years with every weapon in the US 
arsenal of death –from Agent Orange and Napalm to depleted uranium. On Sept. 
3, Navy destroyers returned to begin three weeks of bombing and war games at 
the Atlantic Fleet Weapons Training Facility, despite promises from 
President Bush that the Navy would leave Vieques by May, 2003.
By the first ten days of maneuvers, twenty-eight persons had been arrested. 
Resisters entered into military-controlled lands to act as human shields to 
halt the assault on the Viequense people and the delicate ecosystem of their 
homeland. A study commissioned by the US Navy and reported in July 2001 in 
the Fayetteville Observer said Fort Bragg and other military facilities in 
North Carolina, including Camp Lejeune, Cherry Point, and ranges in Dare 
County could be part of a “promising alternative” to Navy training on 
Vieques.
La Isla Nena, or “the little sister,” as Vieques is affectionately known, is 
a sparsely developed island of about 33,000 acres situated eight miles off 
the southeastern coast of the big island of Puerto Rico. It is twenty-one 
miles long and four miles wide. There are more horses than residents on 
Vieques, people say, adding to the wild beauty of this Caribbean island. 
Vieques is home to 9,311 people, rare birds, turtles, bioluminescent bays, 
coral reefs, and miles of undeveloped beaches—all endangered natural 
treasures. Flamboyant trees grace the eye with vivid yellow, orange, and 
purple blooms, while fruit trees yield a contaminated abundance. The 
island’s water is unsafe to drink. With an island of such rare magnificence, 
it is criminal madness that the US Navy occupies, controls, and bombards 
Vieques with arrogance and impunity and continues to poison and terrorize 
the residents.
Opponents to the bombing arrive daily at the Peace and Justice Camp, across 
a two-lane road from the US Navy’s Camp Garcia, to stand in solidarity with 
the people of Vieques in the nonviolent people’s movement known as the 
Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques.
I traveled to Vieques with Darcel Eddins and Sharon Martin, both 
envrionmental and social justice activists, and Elizabeth Eames Roebling, a 
member of the Asheville Friends Meeting. Roebling was arrested for civil 
disobedience at the bombing range in 2001. Her deep concern for the people 
of Vieques and their struggle has been the focus of her work for several 
years.
In the 1940s the Navy seized 26,000 acres of Vieques from its 12,000 
inhabitants in the name of national defense. Residents were offered no 
option. They received as little as 24 hours notice to vacate and only $50 in 
compensation for their homes. Whole villages were abandoned and destroyed.
Until 1999 the residents were subjected to as many as 270 days a year of 
bombardment—the constant noise and earth-shaking assaults cause continual 
anxiety, particularly among the children. That was the same year that two 
live bombs missed their target killing civilian security guard David Sanes. 
This catalyzed a resurgence of resistance and a renewed call for an end to 
the military occupation and bombing. As many as fourteen protest camps were 
set up inside the Navy base. For over a year, these peaceful warriors held 
their ground and halted the bombing until hundreds of US federal marshals, 
FBI agents and military police moved in to remove them.
The US Navy retains ownership of one-third of the 52 square mile island and 
has conducted live fire training there since 1941. As a result of massive 
and sustained civil disobedience, US Navy lands on the west have been turned 
over in various pieces to the Department of Interior, the Commonwealth of 
Puerto Rico, and the Island of Vieques. Seventeen contaminated areas in 
these reclaimed lands remain fenced off as superfund sites. Hundreds of 
concrete bunkers built to store and conceal an obscene quantity of 
ammunition and weapons now sit empty, like massive burial vaults.
Over the years plant life on the island has absorbed heavy metals, such as 
lead, cobalt, nickel and manganese, which are concentrating and moving up 
the island’s food chain, according to biologists Arturo Massol and Elba 
Diaz, who analyzed plants in the Vieques impact area in February and March 
last year. Vieques has at least a 27% higher rate of cancer in adults and a 
rate 50% higher in children than the rest of Puerto Rico, and 45% of the 
Viequenses examined by the College of Physicians and Surgeons showed toxic 
levels of mercury. A large percentage of residents are also contaminated 
with lead, cadmium, and aluminum, and cancer has invaded nearly every island 
family.
“The activities of the Navy in Vieques have had a damaging and unrelenting 
effect on the environment, ecology, unique archaeological sites, natural 
resources, and surrounding waters,” a Governor’s Special Commission on 
Vieques concluded in 1999. Each time bombing occurs, even with the “inert” 
bombs now being used, dust from that bombing, and previous bombs is stirred 
up, raising toxins with it, including depleted uranium. Trade winds blowing 
from the east to the west carry the contaminants over the populated area. 
The Navy admitted recently to an “accidental” bombing with depleted uranium 
shells, a radioactive contaminant with a half life of 4,500 million years.
A disciplined and creative grassroots movement of nonviolent civil 
disobedience has brought the plight of this little island to the attention 
of the world. Over 1500 peaceful demonstrators have been arrested. Hundreds 
have been imprisoned for misdemeanor trespass and have served sentences up 
to one year, including “Mayors, legislators, lawyers, doctors, religious 
leaders, artists, workers, and students,” according to the Committee for the 
Rescue and Development of Vieques.
In July, 2001, close to 70 percent of the Vieques electorate voted in a 
government referendum for the “immediate and permanent termination of 
military practices in Vieques.” This mandate led to the promise by President 
Bush that the bombing will cease and the Navy will leave by May, 2003. The 
people of Vieques are skeptical. They have been lied to again and again.
Puerto Rico’s governor Sila Calderon is a vocal opponent of the 
bombardments, and Vieques’ Mayor Damaso Serrano Lopez, a Viet Nam veteran, 
spent four months in prison for occupying the bombing range. At a recent 
International Peace Conference the Mayor declared, “I tell you now that if 
by the first of May, 2003, the Navy hasn’t packed its bags, its machine 
guns, and the rest of its trash, as promised by President Bush, I’m prepared 
to go back to jail again, to clamor from inside prison walls, for the right 
of my people of Vieques—to live in peace.”
Along the two-lane paved road, known locally as Calle Militar, the Puerto 
Rican police began gathering on Labor Day to reinforce the guard on the 
perimeter fence at Camp Garcia. Resisters regularly cut through the fence to 
gain access to the target areas. The police guard, clustered under the mango 
and quenepa trees and in makeshift shelters all along the fence line, lean 
on wooden saw-horse barricades chatting and laughing. As many as one hundred 
and twenty young men and women in the Puerto Rico Police force, dressed in 
long-sleeved black shirts and pants, keep a round-the-clock watch on 
activities in the resistance camps, where training in civil disobedience is 
offered and direct action strategies are discussed. “In this camp we have no 
secrets. Everybody knows what we do,” one activist said.
“We call them ‘black cats,’ another says as we pass the line of police along 
the road to Camp Dona Luisa Guadalupe, the headquarters for various forays 
into the bombing range where resisters risk arrest and the hazards of 
unexploded ordinance. “We play hide and seek inside the camp,” our guide 
explained. The resistance camp has suffered repeated tear gas attacks and 
rubber bullets have been fired at the protesters who assemble there. 
Numerous spent gas canisters were lying about the campgrounds. “We just 
leave them where they fall,” he said.
Just over the fence US military personnel sit at tables inside a large 
canvas tent monitoring activities with electronic devices, nearby a camera 
is mounted on a telephone pole. Camp Dona Luisa Guadalupe is under continual 
surveillance. Resisters attempt to deter military and police intruders with 
home-grown defenses. The pods of a plant, called pica pica, are hung 
strategically in the branches of trees around the camp. When brushed against 
it releases seeds that cause intense itching. Other plants with sharp edges 
are used in the underbrush to discourage unwelcome intrusions.
Back at the Peace and Justice Camp, school teacher and activist Nilda 
Medina, takes a rare break at the large table beneath the tin-roofed, 
open-sided shelter in the compound. Nilda has a focused and determined 
presence as she directs the activities in the camp. Throughout our five-day 
visit she worked steadily in the office and on the phones preparing for the 
press conference and for the arrival of the many delegations of supporters. 
She welcomed us warmly; as she has welcomed delegation after delegation, 
including the Dalai Lama, Rigoberta Menchu Tum, Oscar Arias Sanchez, and 
other notable and ordinary citizens from throughout the world. Nilda’s 
husband and colleague, Robert Rabin, has been held in solitary confinement 
in Guaynabo Prison in Puerto Rico on a six month sentence for trespass onto 
the bombing range last April. “He is in the hole,” she told us. “They won’t 
allow telephone calls or visits.”
As we sat together around the common table in the outside shelter, island 
residents arrived one after the other to share their stories and concerns. 
The balmy breeze carried the roosters’ crows from every direction, and 
bronze-skinned young men galloped past on fleet-footed Taino horses, the 
rhythmic clomping of hooves marking their swift passage. As we talked, other 
horses meandered throughout camp with the abandon and freedom of 
neighborhood cats, their grace and stature adding a primal feeling to the 
scene.
Ninety-two year old Nazario Cruz Viera, wearing a wide-brimmed black hat and 
a full and flowing white beard, drove into the camp bringing a cardboard box 
filled with island fruits. Despite the likely contamination we shared the 
sweet gift with gratitude. Nazario talked about Vieques in the years before 
the military occupation, before vast stretches of land were fenced off and 
out of bounds to island residents, before the island and her people were 
poisoned. Tourists from the big island stopped to photograph the roadside 
murals, and to have a look at the scores of white crosses commemorating the 
many who have died as a result of the Navy presence.
Maria Guadalupe’s cross is just one of more than fifty planted outside the 
gates of Camp Garcia. Her great nephew, Tato Guadalupe told her story: “I 
was born and raised on Vieques,” he said. “My family was thrown out from 
their lands, as a lot of families were thrown out. But my mother taught us 
the truth about how we lived before the Navy came. Maria Guadalupe was my 
father’s maiden aunt,” he continued. “In 1940 she lived alone on about five 
acres in the Western lands. When the Navy came to give her the papers, they 
told her she had just 48 hours to leave. She told my father, ‘You can go if 
you want, but I am staying here. It is my land.’”
Maria Guadalupe refused to move. The next morning she was found dead. “She 
practiced the highest form of civil disobedience,” Tato said, a sadness and 
pride in his voice. “Thirteen members of my family have been arrested and 
accused by the Navy,” he added. Such is the cost of this people’s struggle 
in Vieques.
Nilda approached the tourists who had stopped to sightsee along the road to 
the reopened Western beaches. “If they stop, they are going to have to hear 
the truth,” she says, “I tell them about the contamination and the bombing,” 
she added. “Sometimes they listen. Sometimes they shake their head and walk 
away.”
Paul O’Leary, a tall, thin man wearing paint-splotched jeans, walked in from 
his home in the reclaimed area known as Monte Carmello. O’Leary is the 
artist of many of the murals that hang on the perimeter fence enclosing Camp 
Garcia. He spent 17 days in prison for trespass onto the Navy bombing range 
during the last exercises.
“I feel like it is my duty as an American to be here defending democracy and 
the dignity of the people,” he said. “I’m an American. I see this as an 
American problem. American democracy is in danger here.”
“Focus on the struggle of the people,” Ismael Gaudalupe advised as I sat 
with pad in hand to listen to the stories of these brave and gentle 
warriors. Ismael is a retired drama teacher in the local schools, and a 
former union organizer with the Federation of Teachers. He showed great 
patience with my very limited understanding of the Spanish language. 
“Speaking in English comes with the struggle,” he said as he made the effort 
to answer the many questions we “United Staters” asked. Ismael is one of the 
many heroes’ of the movement to free Vieques. He has been a vital part of 
the struggle for decades. “When I was a university student in 1964 I 
organized a march from the plaza,” he recalled. The Navy wanted to take more 
land but the whole southern coast of Vieques, including the vicinities of 
Esperanza and Puerto Real were saved when the people organized a militant 
campaign to halt the process.
Ismael has been imprisoned in Atlanta, Georgia, and Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, 
as well as the prison at Guaynamo for his civil disobedience on behalf of 
Vieques. He realizes that force will not work to defend Vieques against such 
a formidable opponent as the US Navy. Civil disobedience in the tradition of 
Gandhi, King, and Chavez is the method of this people’s movement
Benito Reinosa, over seventy years old, brings an almost maternal spirit of 
nurturing love to his volunteer work at the Peace and Justice Camp. He comes 
by ferry from his home on the big island to attend to the many needs of 
visiting delegations — cooking, cleaning, and even carefully removing a 
splinter from a visitor’s foot.
“I do what I can to help,” he says. “I love America. The United States is a 
great country. They believe in peace. But what kind of peace do they show 
here? The whole world is hungry for peace. If they are going to leave, why 
do they keep destroying and contaminating? For sixty years people have been 
dying. They keep bombing. They keep killing people. If the Navy does not 
leave in May, this man will go in there,” he promised. “Everyone will go in, 
whole families and our animals.”
“I am already contaminated,” Andres Nieves said, putting down his video 
camera to talk. He pulled back the collar of his shirt to reveal a long 
scar. “I have a thyroid tumor,” he said. Nieves is a retired filmmaker from 
New York. He has been documenting the struggle in Vieques since his return 
to his homeland to bury an old friend. “I am here because of the struggle, 
because my friend died. I want to stop the bombing.” He calls his video 
project Cry of Vieques. “It is done with the heart,” he said. “My budget is 
zero.” Nieves is looking for assistance obtaining the equipment he needs to 
edit and duplicate his video productions for a wider distribution so he can 
tell the story of Vieques to the world.
Nestor Torres, a nineteen-year-old student of Political Science at the 
University of Puerto Rico, joined our Asheville delegation for a swim in the 
magical waters of the bioluminescent bay the night before the scheduled 
bombings. He is a quiet, polite young man with a strong conviction. “You can 
speak in English,” he said, as I attempted to communicate in my limited 
Spanish during an interview at the camp.
“I saw the movie Gandhi and read about what Martin Luther King did in the US 
for black people,” he told me. “I wanted Puerto Rico to be free. That 
feeling in me got bigger and stronger. I came to Vieques the summer of 1999. 
I felt I wanted to help, but I was too young. It wasn’t my moment to be 
involved in civil disobedience then, but I went to all the conferences. When 
the September bombings were announced this year, I knew it was my time.”
I asked him how he felt about the risk of going into the bombing range and 
the likelihood of being gassed and imprisoned. “It is a hard decision for 
me. I left my studies to come here. A lot of lawyers involved in this 
struggle warned me about the sentences. Six months is a long time,” he 
paused. “I am prepared to take the risk. My family and friends support me. 
My teachers support me.”
Jaime Peralta, a single father and artist, worked as a security guard inside 
Camp Garcia with Ready Responsibility Security, Inc. “I worked as a 
substitute,” he said. “I worked all over the base, anywhere they sent me.” 
Jaime knew David Sanes, the security guard that was killed by the off-target 
bomb. “The Navy keeps quiet about how many have died,” he said. “Everything 
is secret.” He refused to sign a form indicating he had read a document he 
never received about the danger in working around the ROTHR radar 
installation on the island. When he expressed his concerns regarding the 
contamination he was dismissed from his $9.90 an hour position.
“The bombing is just one part of the struggle,” Manuel Silva said as he took 
a place at the table at the Peace and Justice Camp. “After the Navy leaves 
it will be one big planet of cancer.” Silva is a Vieques poet, historian, 
and musician. He played his steel drums for us on the top of Monte Carmello 
as he told the stories of the people’s struggle to reclaim that land. “When 
I was a boy,” he recalled, “there was no property selfishness, no fences—my 
father gave away half of his land.” Silva is especially concerned about 
development after the Navy leaves. “The only plan I know is a bunch of 
greedy butchers trying to make as much money as they can.”
In the early 1970s Silva became involved in the struggle to free the small 
neighboring island of Culebra. He went there to play his steel drums in a 
band and to work as a writer for the island press. Culebra was also used as 
a Navy bombing range until the people rose to evict the military. “That was 
a war. They fought wildly because they had been so abused,” Silva recalled. 
“People were throwing bottles and rocks and screaming, ‘Navy Out, Navy out!’ 
I was shocked. So I asked people about the struggle. Ismael Guadalupe gave 
me books. He changed my life. He is part of my process of becoming conscious 
of Vieques and our entire society.”
Andres Nieve began to film as Manuel Silva continued his story of how he and 
as few as 14 others walked up a high hillside inside the US Navy boundaries 
and reclaimed a piece of land, known now as Monte Carmello. “It was the only 
time in Puerto Rican history that people have taken back the land. It was 
only 600 acres, but it is like a planet.
“I was afraid many times. We had old women, pregnant women and children…but 
within two weeks more than one hundred had come.”
Mount Carmello looks out over the gentle hills of Vieques and the blue 
Caribbean waters that surround the island. It is a high vantage point for 
the long view of the poets, and dreamers, warriors and musicians of this 
people’s struggle who hope to someday see a free Vieques.
“When the Navy leaves and they clean the land,” Silva says, “I want to come 
to the party and laugh and dance and sing and maybe go onto the ground like 
a snake with the joy.”

For information: Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques, 
Apartado 1424, Vieques, Puerto Rico 00765; bieke at prorescatevieques.org
Websites: www.prorescatevieques.org/ and www.viequeslibre.org
To contact Andres Nieves regarding help with the “Cry of Vieques” project 
and to assist with needed equipment (Mac SG4 double processor and Final cut 
III): P.O. Box 849, Vieques, P.R. 00765-0849; viequense at webtv.net

You may contact the author at chanrahan at ncpress.net


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