Paradise Invaded: The U.S. Navy Bombs Puerto Rico

Around 7:00 on the evening of April 19, 1999, a U.S. Navy pilot launched two 500-pound live bombs from his FA-18 jet at a target on the Navy bombing range in Vieques, Puerto Rico. The bombs missed their target, destroying the Navy's observation post and killing David Sanes, a civilian Navy security employee, and injuring several others.

Sanes' death was the chronicle of a death foretold. For decades Viequenses have been clamoring for an end to the bombings and shelling on the island and for an end to the U.S. military presence there. As the Washington Post put it in a May 3 editorial, the killing was "more than an isolated accident"; it was "the latest instance of predictable harm to the people of Vieques that goes back through decades of military neglect of island interests." The Post editorial concluded that the military could find another site for its bombing range, as there simply should be no bombing on a small inhabited island. Political and religious leaders, as well as leaders and representatives of other sectors of Puerto Rican society, have spoken out firmly and consistently since Sanes' death, demanding an immediate end to the bombing and the end of the U.S. military presence in Vieques.

The April incident was not the first time that the Navy missed its target. In October of 1993, another FA-18 fighter jet missed by about 10 miles, dropping five 500-pound live bombs about a mile from the main town of Vieques. Luckily, no one was killed that time. During maneuvers involving Navy and Puerto Rican National Guard troops in 1998, bullets broke windows in school buses parked near the municipal government buildings in the Santa Maria sector of the island (the part that is not "Navy property"). Several government employees had to take cover until the shooting stopped. The mayor of Vieques has not received an explanation from the Navy about either of these recent "accidents" and will probably never receive much information about the killing of David Sanes.

But the bombs that hit their targets damage Vieques as well. In the past, U.S. forces have bombed the eastern end of the island with live napalm, and the Navy recently admitted that last February it fired 263 depleted uranium projectiles from a Harrier Jet into the impact area at Vieques during training for the war in Yugoslavia. (Depleted uranium is linked to the Gulf War Syndrome that affects many veterans of that conflict and poses a serious threat to the health of the people of Vieques.) Documents from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission indicate that only 56 DU rounds were retrieved; because of the danger of unexploded conventional ordinance in the area, the search for the rest of the DU was postponed.

An Island Expropriated

Vieques is an island municipality of Puerto Rico, six miles southeast of the main island. Since the 1940s, the U.S. Navy has controlled three-quarters of Vieques' 33,000 acres. The western end is used as an ammunition depot, while the eastern third is a bombing and maneuver area. The United States "rents" Vieques to NATO and to other countries for bombing practice. The Navy controls the highest points on the island, the best aquifers and the most fertile lands, extensive white sand beaches, hundreds of archaeological sites and the shortest connecting route between Vieques and the main island. (The Puerto Rico Port Authority must use an 18-nautical-mile route instead of the six-mile route controlled by the military.)

The military expropriation of Vieques caused a social and economic crisis that lasts to this day. Almost three-quarters of the island's approximately 9,000 people live below the poverty level. The municipal government reports more than 50 percent unemployment. Studies by the University of Puerto Rico School of Public Health indicate that Vieques suffers a 27 percent higher cancer rate than the rest of Puerto Rico. The Puerto Rico legislature approved legislation ordering an epidemiological study to determine the causes of the abnormally high cancer rate, but the people of Vieques and environmental and health experts throughout Puerto Rico relate the cancers to the environmental degradation caused by U.S. Navy and NATO bombing.

'More Craters than the Moon'

Fishing people have struggled for decades to get the Navy to stop bombing and leave the island. The giant military ships destroy fish traps; the bombing and other maneuvers impose severe restrictions on entering some of the best fishing areas around the island. On numerous occasions fishing boats have been damaged by naval gunfire, and fishers have been severely hurt by bombs exploding close.

Large-scale ecological destruction of the land is another result of more than half a century of bombing and experimentation with new weapons systems. According to Professor Jose Seguinot Barbosa, Director of the Geography Department of the University of Puerto Rico in Rio Piedras, "The eastern tip of the island constitutes a region with more craters per kilometer than the moon." In his study, "Vieques: The Ecology of an Island Under Siege," Professor Seguinot Barbosa adds, "The destruction of the natural and human resources of Vieques violates the basic norms of international law and human rights. At the state and federal level the laws pertaining to the coastal zone, water and noise quality, underwater resources, archeological resources and land use, among others, are violated." Another scholarly article by chemical engineer Rafael Cruz finds that "... chemicals from the bombing ... are transported by diverse mechanisms toward the civilian area. ...[T]he effective concentration of particles over the civilian area of Vieques exceeds 197 micrograms per cubic meter and therefore exceeds the legal federal criteria for clean air."

Protests Escalate

There is a long history of protest on the island against the Navy bombing. In May of 1979, hundreds of Viequenses and main-islanders demonstrated at a site the Navy calls "Blue Beach." Twenty-one of them were arrested and sentenced to prison terms in mainland U.S. federal prisons; one of the 21, Vietnam vet Angel Rodriguez Cristobal, was sent to a Tallahassee, FL, penitentiary for six months--and beaten to death there a month before he was to be freed. Viequenses now call the area Angel Rodriguez Cristobal Beach.

The protests have intensified, however, since Sanes' death April 19, 1999. Groups of Viequenses and supporters from the main island of Puerto Rico have been occupying several areas inside the bombing zone to block the possibility of renewed bombing or maneuvers. Close to the site where Sanes was killed, a giant cross was placed April 22 by local fishing people and members of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques. Since that day, a group of young Viequense men and women and university students from Puerto Rico have maintained a permanent vigil at the site of the cross. The community has renamed the area Mt. David.

Beginning in May of that year, the Puerto Rico Independence Party maintained a permanent protest camp in the bombing range about a mile from Mt. David. On the north coast of Vieques (both Mt. David and the Independence Party camp are on the south coast), a group of fishers and other residents of Vieques also occupied the Yayi Key, an islet off Vieques, while a group of Vieques teachers and members of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques erected a chapel, school and community building at a camp on a beach directly across from the key. All of the protest camps are within Navy restricted zones--and within the bomb impact area and eastern maneuver area.

Protesters held other civil disobedience actions inside Navy-controlled territory. More than 100 protesters spent the night of May 16 at Blue Beach, a.k.a. Angel Rodriguez Cristobal Beach. The protesters--including several of those arrested with Cristobal in 1979--went by boat to the restricted area and the following day marched out of the base through the main gate of the Navy facility known as Camp Garcia. Emboldened by the success of these actions, the protests flourished. The following week several hundred demonstrators, including workers from various Puerto Rico union groups, fishers from Vieques, the Archbishop of San Juan and the Bishop of the Catholic Church for the Vieques region, forced their way into the entrance area of Camp Garcia to hold a lively demonstration. Marches, vigils, press conferences, radio and television reports about Vieques have gone on continuously since April 19. On the main island a national coordinating committee coordinates work with the community organizations.

Representatives of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques have traveled throughout Puerto Rico, in many U.S. cities and around the world to bring the issue to the attention of the public. The committee has participated at the U.N. deliberations on the decolonization of Puerto Rico, at times lobbying the embassies of several Latin American countries who participate in U.S.-directed military maneuvers on Vieques. Also, the Puerto Rican Lawyers Guild has written letters to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights at Geneva. protesting Sanes' death on behalf of the committee.

[The killing of David Sanes and subsequent campaign of civil disobedience created a firm consensus across all ideological and religious lines in favor of putting an end to the U.S. military presence on Vieques. The people of Vieques have received unprecedented attention and support from the people of the main island of Puerto Rico and the mainland United States. On May 4, 2000, federal marshals raided the civil disobedience camps, detaining (but not arresting) 200 protesters. Subsequent protest actions have resulted in hundreds of arrests, including celebrities, civil rights activists, and politicians. Elected leaders, including several governors and many members of Congress have supported the demilitarization of Vieques. The issue has had a decisive impact on elections in Puerto Rico. Two Presidents have felt compelled to address the issue, including a June 2001 pledge (but not a formal commitment) by President Bush to end U.S. bombing. Although the events of September 11, 2001--the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon--and the subsequent U.S. war on terrorism led to a temporary cessation of civil disobedience, resistance to the military occupation of Vieques continues. At the same time, limited military maneuvers have resumed on the island and support for an ongoing military presence in Vieques has grown more vocal among some of the military establishment and members of Congress. The ultimate outcome of the struggle over Vieques is far from certain, but it is clear that Vieques activists have won widespread support for their position: total demilitarization, decontamination, devolution (return of all lands to the people) and development of the island.]

For a demilitarized Vieques

The Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques has begun to articulate, with the assistance of experts from Puerto Rican universities and international organizations, a vision for the future social and economic development of a Vieques freed from the Navy. The committee recommends the creation of a land trust to keep and maintain the lands rescued from the Navy in the hands of the community of Vieques. It also recommends the establishment of a continuing education and training program in order to adequately empower the community of Vieques to manage its own resources, including but not limited to its hotels, restaurants, agricultural projects, small factories, and scientific and environmental projects. The goal is to ensure the sustainable development of Vieques by Viequenses, for the benefit of Viequenses and visitors.

With the help of the Puerto Rico Lawyers Guild and professionals in the area of social-economic development from Puerto Rico and the United States, the committee coordinates the formation of a multi-disciplinary technical team to assist the community in the struggle to create a new social and economic order based on peace and justice instead of war. A group of highly respected professionals, including architects, planners, economists, sociologists, among others, met recently with members of the committee to formally begin the creation of the technical team.

The people of Vieques have demonstrated the power of nonviolence by winning support from mainland U.S. activists including environmental, ecumenical religious, peace and trade union organizations and even elected officials to address the issue of Vieques and respond to the demand for the demilitarization of Vieques, a paradise invaded.

Robert L. Rabin Siegel is a member of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques and Director of the Vieques Historic Archives.

A version of this article was published in The Nonviolent Activist.