ARREST, THREATS AND PROMISES:
U.S. GOV'T TRIES MANY TACTICS AS
PUERTO RICANS DEMAND NAVY OUT OF VIEQUES
By Berta Joubert-Ceci
While the Pentagon and the U.S. government hold hearings and
debates to decide on their next step, the people of Puerto
Rico have been stepping up their struggle to get the U.S. Navy
off the island of Vieques.
People from Vieques and other parts of Puerto Rico have been
defiantly camping on restricted areas of the island since
April, when two 500-pounds bombs killed a civilian guard
there. The U.S. Navy had been using the area for target
practice but the resistance has effectively stopped it.
Gen. Wesley Clark, who led the U.S.-NATO attack on the
Balkans, has said that the lack of training from April to
September has damaged the U.S. forces' "future readiness in
combat." Now the Pentagon has recommended that Vieques be used
as a target zone for another five years.
The U.S. Senate's Armed Services Committee will hold a
hearing on Vieques Oct. 19. Interestingly, it has invited Navy
Secretary Robert Danzig to testify, along with Puerto Rico's
pro-statehood governor Pedro Rosell¢, who wants the Navy to
end all operations in Vieques but would allow the U.S.
military to remain in the rest of PR.
However, the pro-independence PR senator, Rub‚n Berr¡os, who
has been camping in the restricted areas for months opposing
the Navy's presence on the island, was not invited.
President Bill Clinton has yet to issue a recommendation,
which will supposedly be based on a panel he has appointed.
And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have
finally agreed to investigate what Viequenses say is an
abnormally high incidence of cancer on the island.
ARREST OF ACTIVIST IN VIEQUES
Meanwhile, in PR and Vieques, individuals and organizations
are in a flurry of activities to forward their cause. One
person has already been arrested, Pablo Connelly. Ismael
Guadalupe, an activist in the leadership of the Committee for
the Rescue and Development of Vieques (CPRDV), told Workers
World that it is taking this arrest, the first since 1979,
very seriously.
Twenty years ago, two dozen demonstrators who were in the
restricted area were brutally beaten and arrested by the
military police. One, Angel Rodr¡guez Crist¢bal, who was then
sent to a federal prison in the U.S., was murdered there.
Guadalupe said that, to add more aggravation for the
activists, the Navy appointed an ex-military judge, set the
hearing date for Sept. 23--an important pro-independence
holiday--and scheduled the hearings in the Roosevelt Roads
military base. These attempts to reduce the chance for a fair
hearing have failed to quell the militancy of the activists.
Representatives from CPRDV have been very busy holding
meetings, press conferences, rallies and other activities to
gather more support and organize the resistance. They have
included labor, social, environmental, educational, religious
and other sectors. A CPRDV report says that the Vieques
Women's Alliance will participate in a forum on the Vieques
struggle at the Humacao campus of the University of PR, where
there is "a good, strong spirit of resistance."
Unions and student groups from the University of PR have set
October as the Month of Solidarity with Vieques.
Pro-independence and socialist groups for the third year are
having Anti-imperialist Days from Oct. 8 through 12 to
"repudiate the USA's imperialist policies towards Puerto Rico,
Latin America and the world."
They say: "Our anti-imperialism is internationalist. We
condemn USA's intervention in any part of the world. And we
want to be specific with the case of Colombia, where the
people, armed through the `guerrilla,' have great
possibilities of gaining the power, while Washington, with
their lackeys in Bogot , are hoping for U.S. military
intervention. We are for the self-determination of nations."
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