On the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, thousands are commemorating the 10th anniversary of when the U.S. Navy stopped using their home as a bombing range. Since the 1940s, the Navy used nearly three-quarters of the island for bombing practice, war games and dumping old munitions. The bombing stopped after campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience, but the island continues to suffer. At the current cleanup rate, the Navy says, it will take until 2025 to remove all the environmental damage left by more than 60 years of target practice. A fisherman recently discovered a giant unexploded bomb underwater. The island of about 10,000 people also lacks a hospital to treat illnesses such as asthma and cancer that may be attributed to the militarys former bombing activity. “We believe the military is really not interested in cleaning up Vieques and rather interested in continuing to punish Vieques for having thrown the U.S. Navy out in 2003,” says Robert Rabin of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques. “This is a process that we believe is happening with no real supervision, no genuine community participation.”
Robert Rabin talking:
Were remembering an enormous victory, May 1st, 2003. The people of Vieques and the Puerto Rican nation, in the archipelago and in the diaspora, with help from thousands of people throughout the world, peace-loving people, without firing a single shot, defeated the most powerful military force in history.
But 10 years later, we continue to suffer the effects of the toxic legacyhighest cancer case rates in all of Puerto Rico. Vieques is a small, poor island with no hospital, serious problems, economic and social problems. So, we are, again, remembering this enormous victory but still struggling to makepressure the government in Puerto Rico and the federal government to be responsible for the horrific ecological and health disaster created by half a century of U.S. military activity here.
I would suggest that most of that almost $200 million has ended up in the bank accounts of large U.S. corporations hired by the Navy to do the cleanup. While the cleanup is takinghas taken over 10 years so far, theyre only scratching the surface. This is a process that we believe is happening with no real supervision, no genuine community participation. We believe the military is really not interested in cleaning up Vieques, and rather interested in continuing to punish Vieques for having thrown the U.S. Navy out in 2003. So we need to continue to pressure and get the support from congressmen, like Congressman Serrano, Nydia Velázquez and Luis Gutiérrez, and now also Congressman Alan Grayson from Florida, have taken up this issue to help push the federal government to be responsible for the ecological destruction done on Vieques as well as helping with the severe health crisis that resulted from thesefrom military toxics.
Joe Serrano talking:
Robert has a key word here that I was going to use, and he used it first, which is “punishment.” I really saw, I believe, the first couple of years after that May 1st 10 years ago, that there was a resentment, and by members of Congress, sort of “How dare you defeat the military? How dare you push us out?” and in the administration. And so it was very hard to get dollars. In fact, we didnt cry over it, but I think the closing of Roosevelt Roads and Fort Buchanan was also sort of a punishment. “Oh, yeah? Well, you want that closed? Well, were going to close this one that has jobs and so on involved with it.”
So theres been that sense: “How dare you do it?” Then there is the fact that in this country, and perhaps throughout the world, 10 years becomes a long time, and people forget that theres a loss of memory of what happened there. My understanding, yesterday I learned that less than 5 percent of the munitions have been removed. So we continue to push in the Appropriations Committee, where I sit. We continue to push the administration. But there is a new emphasis now. Im seeing a new mobilization, similar to what I saw 10 years ago or 15 years ago, to say, “OK, now the cleanup has to really take a serious role here.”
There was a study by Dr. Jorge Colón of the University of Puerto Rico that was based on hair samples of the people of Vieques. He found 34 percent of the population, about a third, had toxic levels of mercury, 55 percent contaminated with lead, 69 percent with arsenic, 69 percent with cadmium, 90 percent with aluminum and antimony, whose toxic effects are similar to arsenic poisoning. These are all substances found in the ordnances used on the island, the bombs.
that was something that the activists in Vieques were saying prior to the Navy getting out, the fact that under the American flag there was no place that had such a high incidence of cancer. And then there was the correlationor the lack of itbetween the fact that the larger island of Puerto Rico did not have the same rate as Vieques did. So, obviously theres a relationship. But when youre talking to the military, the military, you know, sort of at times wants to run its own country, its own world, and just refuses to understand or react to what we want, which is an immediate cleanup and a commitment. Yesterday we spoke to the EPA folks, and they told us that the dedication is of $20 million a year. Well, $20 million of a fund, then for Vieques to participate in that fundno, we need a dedicated amount from the administration for Vieques, and thats what were pushing for.
because so much of it went into the water. So much went into it as part of the practice. You know, Im not a military person, but I know that part of it was how to get these things into the water and what effect it had. So you have X amount on land; you have X amount on water. But the fact that 10 years later only 5 percent have been removed is an insult. But I go back to the word “punishment.” I really believe there are still some people who dont care and others who say, “How dare you kicked us out? You have to pay a price for that.”
In 2005, evidence emerged that the U.S. Navy paid $1.7 million to a public relations firm to increase support for a 2001 public referendum on whether the Navy should be allowed to keep use Vieques for live-fire training. Voters ended up overwhelming calling on the Navy to stop using the site, even though the Navy spent, oh, about $358 per referendum voter in their PR effort. According to documents obtained by Judicial Watch, the Navy hired the Rendon Group to, “organize local leaders to build grassroots communications support … ensure the integrity of the voting process … develop methods and tracking procedures to increase support among citizens.”
Robert Rabin talking:
The military tried intensely to get people in Vieques to vote for the continuation of bombing practices here during that referendum. However, the overwhelming support of the community was just too much for the Navy. As you mentioned, the Navy spent millions of dollars. They gave out lots and lots of money to people as direct payments to people supposedly to start up new businesses. They were just paying people off to vote. And despite that, around 30we believe that the people of Vieques expressed themselves very clearly. About 80 percent of the eligible voters participated in that referendum, and over 70 percent voted for the immediate and permanent cessation of military activity. So it was an overwhelming victory despite Navy attempts and Navy use of millions of dollars to try to influence an electionobviously something anti-constitutional, illegal.
Vieques is undergoing a severe process of gentrification, displacement, population substitutionthings that are not uncommon to places like Vieques, beautiful places where people with powerful economic interests or people with more economic power than the local population come in, buy property, begin to develop businesses. And weve been seeing this process in Vieques for decades. It certainly took off in a greater way after the Navy left Vieques. So, we need a lot of support from the government to help local business people, local people in Vieques, to develop their own businesses. There is a Vieques microbusiness incubator project that grew out of the struggle, directed by Nilda Medina here on Vieques. Its one of the only projects thats really pushing to help people from Vieques to take over some of the niches in the economy that havent been taken over by people from outside.
The difference between Vieques and other places where gentrification and speculation take place is that these processes that are so devastating for the local economy and local populations are happening on top of a half a century of U.S. military degradation, environmental health degradation, and economic obstacles to development that went on while the U.S. Navy was here, again, over half a century, in control of over 70 percent of Vieques resourcesits best lands, its most fertile lands, best aquifers, the highest points of the island, the closest connecting point to the main island in Puerto Rico. So the Navy presence in Vieques not only was devastating to the environment and the health, but also was a horrific obstacle to economic development on Vieques for half a century. Theres a 1980 Puerto Rican government study that indicates Vieques lost approximately $100 million a year on potential tourist development that could not take place on Vieques, miscompared to the rest of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands close by.
source democracynow.org
Robert Rabin, longtime activist and founding member of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques. He spent six months in prison for participating in the mass civil disobedience campaign that helped pressure the U.S. Navy to end its bombing exercises in Puerto Rico.
Rep. José Serrano, one of Congresss most vocal critics of the actions of the U.S. military in Vieques. He represents the 15th Congressional District of New York. He was born in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico.