A different kind of 'terrorism' on Vieques

Melanie Feliciano / SF Chronicle 8apr02

Melanie Feliciano, 26, is a contributor to Pacific News Service. She is also the associate editor and Web master for Youth Outlook (YO!), a magazine by and about Bay Area youth published by Pacific News Service.

WHEN U.S. Navy planes resumed the dropping of nonexplosive bombs last week on the firing range in Vieques, I felt compelled for the first time to protest on behalf of my Puerto Rican hermanos y hermanas.

Having written for Latino-focused media in the past, I wasn't completely ignorant of the struggles between the people of Vieques and the U.S. Navy. But I never cared.

Even when two Marine jet bombs were dropped off target, killing a Puerto Rican guard working on the range in April 1999, I was unmoved from my cozy sofa in California, eating rice and beans and watching Ricky Martin prance around on TV. It may as well have been Afghanistan or Israel or some other faraway place. Why should I care about something that was going on more than 3, 000 miles away? My Puerto Rican surname wasn't a good enough reason.

Such was my attitude when I hopped on a plane a month after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. I chanced flying the emptier, but friendlier, skies between San Francisco and Puerto Rico because I refused to let a bunch of terrorists bust up my vacation plans.

Initially, my ambition was selfish, but the trip taught me the true multilayered complexity of terrorism, and changed my ambivalent feelings about the island of my cultural roots.

My father and mother were born in Puerto Rico, in Guayanilla and San Sebastian, respectively. Each town is small compared to the Big Apple, where they moved with their families when they were kids. I was born in New York, which is why I consider myself a Nuyorican.

Like many Nuyoricans, I never felt particularly connected to Puerto Rico. Every summer, I would visit my grandparents' farm in Fajardo, a small town that overlooks the rain forest, El Yunque. But those visits never moved me to love the island of my parents and grandparents, or to write poetry about my long-lost "isla del encanto," like the tragic poet and playwright Miguel Pinero, who felt he had been robbed of his tropical birthright when his parents moved him to New York for "una vida mejor," a better life.

"Better than what?" I used to ask.

In between lounging on beaches and sipping from coconuts during my two-week excursion in October, I happened to take a ferry to Vieques. That's when I understood why so many Puerto Ricans leave the island for New York. They get no respect.

Since 1941, the Navy has used two thirds of Vieques as its personal training range. Planes drop bombs, ships hurl shells at the shore and Marines practice amphibious landings. According to those who want the Navy out, the rate of cancer in Vieques is much higher than the rest of Puerto Rico. The drinking water is contaminated. There is a higher incidence of lupus, asthma, scleroderma, telarquia, kidney and heart disease and child mortality. Unemployment runs high and educated kids take off for college and rarely return.

Until an alternative location becomes available, the Navy's claim to national security may prevent President Bush from keeping his promise to move the Navy out by May 2003. Earlier this year, other locations were used for live-bomb exercises, including Camp Lejeune in North Carolina and Pinecastle range in Florida.

I heard various opinions about the Navy from the people of Vieques during my visit.

"Most Viequenses are not anti-Navy," said Richard Fitz, a retired New Yorker who runs a hostel on the island. "The Navy just offered to staff our hospital, and our idiot mayor refused."

Meanwhile, he added, "the boat to Fajardo is filled with the elderly and children having to go for X-rays because our hospital does not have the equipment or the personnel to run it. That is a typical political injustice that we endure here. I believe that the forces behind getting rid of the Navy are big developers who can't wait to rape our island."

But many others -- including a taxi driver who stopped at his daughter's school to give her lunch money before taking me to the beach -- said that the Navy is not only contaminating their children's futures, but also preventing many of the island's 10,000 people from earning the living they need to raise their families. Military control of much of the best land slows the development of agriculture or tourism, they say. Fishermen claim Navy exercises have damaged marine environments.

"Vieques Libre" signs were everywhere on the island, but I didn't see any protesters picketing along Navy boundaries. The protest movement, which had gained worldwide attention in 1999, has lost vigor and support since Sept. 11, probably because the Navy ceased training and refocused its immediate attention on New York and Washington, D.C. I happened to visit during the break in the bombing. Picturing it now as a bombing zone disturbs me as much as the images of the planes crashing into the World Trade Center towers.

I saw an island that seemed too pristine for the kind of terror people said it was experiencing. The water was a fresh, turquoise blue. The sand slipped like powdered sugar through my fingers. But it is not pristine or untouched. Just because I couldn't see the poisons, doesn't mean they weren't there. Just because I couldn't see the bombs falling on April 1, doesn't mean it didn't happen.

And just because I'm 3,000 miles away, doesn't mean I no longer care.

Military police fire tear gas at demonstrators on Vieques island;
Two detained in anti-Navy protests

LILLIAM IRIZARRY / AP 6apr02

VIEQUES, Puerto Rico -- Military police on Saturday fired tear gas at a crowd of demonstrators as officers detained a man and woman whom they said broke onto restricted U.S. Navy land.

The incidents occurred during the sixth day of military exercises on the outlying Puerto Rico island of Vieques.

Tear gas was used to disperse the crowd, which according to Navy spokesman Lt. Corey Barker, was throwing rocks at military personnel.

Witnesses denied the claim, saying the crowd began throwing canisters of the tear gas only after officers began firing.

Demonstrators routinely break onto Navy lands to thwart exercises on the firing range whose use by the Navy has raised anger that flared after off-target bombs killed a civilian guard in 1999.

On Friday night, military police fired tear gas at demonstrators who threw rocks at officers guarding the perimeter of the bombing range, Lt. Cmdr. Katherine Goode said Saturday.

Local police were called in to calm the crowd Friday. One protester, Jaime Collado, suffered a cut to the back of the head and received five stitches, said officer Cesar Gracia. Collado said there were no rocks thrown in the incident. Collado said he was injured by the aluminum tear gas canister used by the military police.

On Saturday, ship-to-shore shelling and air-to-ground exercises continued. The maneuvers could last for nearly three weeks. The Navy says protests have not stopped the bombing practices since they began Monday.

Opponents of the Navy exercises say they harm the environment and health of Vieques' 9,300 residents. The Navy denies that claim.

President Bush says the Navy will leave by 2003, and the Navy says it is looking for alternative sites.

Bombing exercise resumes at Caribbean firing range;
Navy says exercise vital to war on terrorism

MICHELLE FAUL / AP 2apr02

VIEQUES, Puerto Rico -- Thuds from inert shells shook Vieques island Tuesday as Navy ships deployed for a second day of exercises at the U.S. military's prized Caribbean bombing range, which it says is critical for troops facing combat in the war against terrorism.

The exercises, opposed by a protest movement that has lost strength since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, continued as a Puerto Rican court considered an appeal by Vieques Mayor Damaso Serrano, who wants the court to order a halt to the maneuvers on the outlying Puerto Rican island.

Serrano is appealing a decision from the District Court in the eastern city of Fajardo, which decided to move the case to a U.S. Federal Court.

"We are now a nation fighting a war against terrorism ... American military personnel are being injured or killed on the battlefield of Afghanistan," the Navy said in its court motion. "The Battle Group has no alternative ... other than Vieques, at which to conduct this critical combat training."

Serrano wants to halt the exercises on a technicality, saying the Navy has not received needed certification for compliance with federal laws on coastal management and clean waters from Puerto Rico's Planning Board.

Other court cases, including one brought by Puerto Rico's government, have failed to stop exercises in the past.

Protesters vowed Tuesday they would try to stop the Navy by continuing to break into Navy land and trying to reach the target range.

On Monday, five female members of the Puerto Rico Independence Party were arrested on Navy ground an hour after the exercises began.

On Tuesday, Navy spokesman Lt. Corey Barker said the USS Monterey, a guided missile cruiser, and the destroyer USS Barry were firing 5-inch shells. He also said planes were dropping 25-pound inert bombs.

The USS George Washington Battle Group, which includes destroyers, guided missile cruisers, an attack submarine and 35 war planes, is training for deployment in the Middle East, according to the Navy's motion.

At their camp set up in front of the Navy's Camp Garcia, leaders of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques said invoking the war on terrorism was an "unacceptable excuse."

"It's the Navy that has been terrorizing the people of Vieques for 60 years with its bombardments," said one protest leader, Boston-born Robert Rabin.

He noted that the Navy had found alternatives to train the USS John F. Kennedy Battle Group in January -- using two ranges in North Carolina and Florida. And the Pacific fleet manages to exist without anywhere to practice like Vieques, Rabin argued.

The Navy says there is no other place it can do ship-to-shore, air-to-ground and amphibious landings at the same time.

A tiny movement that for decades fought for the Navy to leave developed into a Puerto Rican-wide opposition group that won world attention when protesters invaded the range and camped out there after two bombs dropped off target killed a civilian guard on the range in 1999.

An agreement between the Puerto Rican and U.S. governments, which allowed U.S. marshals to forcibly remove the demonstrators, said the Navy would leave in May 2003. It also cut exercises to 90 days a year, down from 180, and limited the Navy to using inert ammunition.