Vieques: 100 Years of Uncertainty

On June 14, the Bush administration announced it will discontinue all bombing practice on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques by May 2003. The decision comes after two years of clashes between the United States Navy and a throng of protestors calling for an end to the island's use as a bombing range. April exercises instigated widespread resistance and over 200 protestors were arrested. Among them were the notorious Vieques Four -- New York City Councilman Adolfo Carrion, State Assemblyman Jose Rivera, Democrat Party Chairman Roberto Ramirez, and the Reverend Al Sharpton -- and various other high-profile celebrities including environmental lawyer Robert Kennedy, Jr. and Edward James Olmos.

The decision to end the bombing comes at a time when the administration fears loosing popularity among Latino voters, realizing that Puerto Ricans everywhere are heavily vested in the outcome of this dispute. Protestors were already gearing up for another round of bombing, scheduled to begin on June 18. Both the Navy and the protestors were stepping up their tactics and arrests were piling up.

Vieques is a tiny island off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico that has recently been at the center of a controversy brewing since 1898. The United States invaded Puerto Rico that year, ousting the Spanish colonists and claiming the island as its own. Since then, Puerto Rico has remained a territory of the United States, a relationship some call a beneficial partnership, others a repressive vestige of colonialism. Vieques, with its palm-lined beaches, wild horses and 9,600 inhabitants has become the unlikely setting for the most recent chapter in the tempestuous history of Puerto Rican identity politics.

The trouble in Vieques began in 1938 when the U.S. Navy forcefully appropriated 26,000 acres -- 75 percent of the island -- in order to establish a naval base. Since World War II, Vieques has served as a primary Navy training site where thousands of troops practice war maneuvers. The Navy has persistently claimed that no other location is suitable for training.

"The small Puerto Rican island of Vieques is vital to our common defense," Navy Undersecretary Robert B. Pirie, Jr. said in a May 24 speech. "There is simply no other place like Vieques."

The deep coastal waters and location far removed from commercial airline traffic enables troops to practice beach landings, air maneuvers, naval tactics and, of course, target practice. The U.S. Navy and NATO practice bombing and shelling approximately 200 days a year, provoking safety concerns among the island's inhabitants.

On April 19, 1999 a civilian security guard named David Sanes Rodríguez was killed, and four others were injured, when a Navy fighter plane missed its target and dropped two bombs onto a surveillance tower. The death of 35-year-old Rodríguez instigated anti-Navy protests throughout Puerto Rico and the mainland United States. Hundreds of protestors invaded the Navy base, erecting a 10-foot white cross on top of a tank and setting up an encampment in the area where Rodríguez had been killed.

While Sanes was the first direct fatality caused by Navy bombing, many Viequenses have long viewed the Navy's activities as dangerous as this was not the first occasion that bombers missed their targets. In 1993 a plane dropped five bombs just outside of town, rattling windows and fraying nerves. In 1997, some misguided troops accidentally machine-gunned a school bus and police car. The litany of near misses goes on, although no one was killed until 1999.

Continuous bombardment for the last 60 years also has taken a toll on the island's environment. The Navy dropped thousands of pounds of live explosives, including napalm, onto the Vieques' surface. Between 1998 and 1999 they fired over 500 depleted uranium shells. Even the ocean is contaminated by toxins from unexploded bombs, slowly reducing the area's spectacular coral reefs and myriad sea life.