Battle for Vieques continues

By Jose A. Soler

The struggle of the people of Vieques, Puerto Rico for their dignity and rights did not begin with the occupation of the island municipality by the U.S. Navy in 1941.

Their struggle has been intimately connected to the struggle of the people of Puerto Rico for their right to self-determination and independence.

In 1874 hundreds of workers on a Vieques plantation rebelled. They were repressed and jailed by the Spanish Civil Guard after weeks of skirmishes that left one worker dead and many men, women, and children wounded. During the Spanish American War, the U.S. Navy imposed a four-month blockade on the island.

In 1915 Puerto Rican feminist and socialist labor leader Luisa Capetillo participated in a strike by sugar cane workers that left a number of workers dead or wounded.

The U.S. government regained control of the island by bringing reinforcements. The workers won wage hikes and better working conditions.

By 1924 the U.S. Navy began its use of the island for military maneuvers. The Navy took over two-thirds of the island in 1941 and displaced more than 3,000 people from the 22-mile-long island of Vieques.

The first protest against the U.S. Navy began in 1943. German Rieckehoff, Sr. (of the Puerto Rican Olympic Committee) founded an association of viequenses in 1947 to fight the presence of the Navy on the island.

In 1953 a group of drunken servicemen killed a viequense, Mapepe Christian. They went free. Various people are wounded in a confrontation with U.S. sailors and Puerto Rican colonial police in 1959.

During the early 1960s the Kennedy administration and the U.S. Navy announced plans to take over the rest of the island but are thwarted by a committee of the residents.

During these two decades the people of Puerto Rico won back important parts of Vieques and the island of Culebra as a result of intense struggles that included civil disobedience by independence leader Rubén Berrios and the disruption of U.S. and NATO naval maneuvers by fishermen from Vieques.

In 1979 more than 300 activists participated in an ecumenical service led by the late Monsignor Antulio Parrilla on one of the firing ranges used by the U.S. Navy. The service was interrupted by hundreds of armed soldiers led by the Navy officer Alex de la Zerda.

A number of the activists were arrested and 13 of them are sentenced to jail in U.S. prisons. One, Angel Rodriguez Cristobal, was assassinated in a federal penitentiary in Florida days before he was to be released.

These events led to attacks on the U.S. military in Puerto Rico by the Macheteros (pro-independence urban guerrilla movement) and counterattacks by the right. Alex de la Zerda was tried for bombing the Lawyers Guild in Puerto Rico and planning to bomb an anti-navy rally as well as a plane flown by independence activist Raul Mari Pesquera.

Mari Pesquera is the son of Puerto Rican independence leader Juan Mari Bras.

The 1980s and the 90s have seen the people of Puerto Rico and Vieques wage more battles against the U.S. Navy and the Pentagon. Between 1990 and 1994 the Puerto Rican health department announced that a study of Vieques shows that it has a cancer rate 26 percent higher than the rest of Puerto Rico.

This was attributed to the environmental damage that the U.S. Navy has done to the island and its fresh water sources. High concentrations of TNT, nitrates and other chemicals connected to explosives were found in the island municipality's fresh water wells.

The Navy has even admitted that it used depleted uranium bombs in its target practices on the island. They allege that this was a mistake that occurred in February. Only a few of the shells have been recovered to date.

The people of Puerto Rico have united to demand that the Navy and U.S. military leave the island.

The people of Vieques, the independence movement and others have endorsed the demands (known as the four Ds) made by the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques, Puerto Rico: demilitarization, return of all the lands occupied by the military (Devolucion), decontamination and development of the lands.

Vieques symbolizes the struggle of a people for their right to self-determination and independence against the same military that occupied Puerto Rico in 1898 and has used its land, air and sea to practice its aggressions against the people of Grenada, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, in Central America and Kosovo.

U.S. out of Vieques! Independence for Puerto Rico!