Documental sobre Vieques

Vieques, 16 years ago today

On a day like today 16 years ago, hundreds of peace protesters were arrested by the US government in the firing range in the island municipality of Vieques, Puerto Rico. That day I was in Marshfield, Vermont, staying at the house of my friends Judy and Jay. I was there with my compatriots Abei and Raul Noriega and Carmen Valencia touring New England to gather support for the anti-Navy struggle in Vieques. In the couple of days we spent there, we took our case to colleges like Burlington, Goddard and Dartmouth, churches in Montpelier and St Johnsbury, the media (WGDR radio and public access cable), the Vermont state legislature, and even had the chance to personally lobby congressman Bernie Sanders.

One of my gladdest memories of that trip was my visit to the revered and venerated peace activist Dave Dellinger's house for a meeting of the local Vieques solidarity committee.

On this historic anniversary, so important for the history of Puerto Rico and of the worldwide peace movement, I share with you this compilation of Vieques-related links and info resources which includes some articles of mine:

http://carmeloruiz.blogspot.com/search/label/Vieques

A Vieques op-ed I wrote in early 2000

NOT ONE MORE BOMB IN VIEQUES: A MESSAGE TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
> 
> Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero 
> 
> Millions of Americans learned in the first week of May (2000) 
> that there is an island in the Caribbean Sea named 
> Vieques, and that it is the site of a peaceful, 
> nonviolent struggle against the most powerful military 
> apparatus in the world. 
> 
> On May 4th, hundreds of U.S. marshals, FBI agents and 
> Puerto Rican riot police came to this idyllic 
> island-town of Puerto Rico to remove hundreds of 
> protesters that were camping in lands that the U.S. 
> Navy uses as a firing range. 
> 
> The Navy occupied 26,000 of Vieques's 33,000 acres in 
> 1941, and has since then used those lands not only for 
> target practice, but also for naval maneuvers, 
> amphibian landings, munitions storage and toxic waste 
> disposal. 
> 
> In April of last year a stray bomb killed a civilian 
> security guard working in the firing range. That was 
> the last straw for the residents of Vieques and for 
> concerned citizens from all over Puerto Rico. For more 
> than a year, protesters, which included members of 
> religious, student and peace organizations, camped in 
> the range in order to serve as a human shield to 
> prevent the bombing from resuming. 
> 
> Civil disobedience? Who's really being disobedient 
> here? The Puerto Rico Bar Association determined that 
> the United States government is violating its own laws 
> in Vieques, including the Endangered Species Act, the 
> Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the National 
> Environmental Policy Act and the much-celebrated 
> Executive Order on Environmental Justice, signed by 
> president Clinton himself; as well as international 
> commitments, like the United Nations Charter, the 
> Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the 1992 
> Rio Declaration. 
> 
> Defenders of the Navy are quick to claim that the only 
> obstacle to solving the Vieques crisis is the 
> protesters, who are allegedly seeking a confrontation 
> that will worsen the U.S.'s relations with Puerto 
> Rico. They point out that Clinton proposed a 
> referendum in which the island-town's residents will 
> decide whether or not they want the Navy to stay. 
> 
> Let's take a closer look at this referendum. Vieques 
> residents will have to choose between two options: the 
> Navy stays or goes. But if they vote for the Navy's 
> departure, it will stay for three more years, 
> practicing with inert non-explosive ammunition for 90 
> days a year. Plus the Navy gets to determine the 
> parameters of the referendum, even its date. 
> 
> The people of Puerto Rico do not want the Navy to stay 
> three more years or even three more hours in Vieques. 
> They want its immediate and permanent withdrawal. 
> Nothing else will do. 
> 

> The Navy has no credibility in Vieques. In 1983 it 
> signed a memorandum of understanding with the 
> government of Puerto Rico in which it committed itself 
> to help protect Vieques's environment and help with 
> its economic development. Last year the Navy admitted 
> that it had not honored the promises it had made in 
> the memorandum. In any case, how many treaties with 
> Native Americans has the U.S. government honored? 
> 
> What if this time the Navy breaks its word "by 
> mistake"? It admitted last year that it had tested 
> depleted uranium ammunition in Vieques, but claimed 
> hat it had done so by mistake. The death of that 
> security guard last year was also a mistake. The 
> bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was also a 
> mistake. And the downing of an Iranian civilian 
> airliner in broad daylight on international airspace 
> over the Persian Gulf in 1988 was also a mistake. How 
> many more mistakes or "mistakes" will have to happen 
> before the U.S. government understands that its 
> military is not wanted in Vieques, not for one more 
> day? 
> 
> And why is the military supervising this referendum? 
> In a democracy, the military is supposed to stay 
> awayfrom politics, especially electoral politics. 
> Would Americans tolerate the Pentagon intervening in 
> elections? 
> 
> Why are Vieques residents the only ones allowed to 
> vote in this referendum? Isn't this a matter of 
> concern to all Puerto Ricans? Imagine if a foreign 
> power were to occupy Oregon and Americans in the other 
> 49 states were told to butt out and mind their own 
> business. Americans shouldn't have to tolerate 
> something like that for a second. 
> 
> If an injustice were to take place in Alabama, for 
> example, it would be a matter of concern to all 
> Americans, not just to those living in that state. 
> Therefore, all Puerto Ricans should be able to vote on 
> the future of Vieques. 
> 
> Why a vote at all? Did the Navy hold elections to 
> occupy Vieques? Did it even ask for permission when it 
> evicted thousands of its residents in the 1940's? Did 
> the U.S. hold elections when it invaded Puerto Rico 
> and its warships bombed San Juan in 1898? 
> 
> The Clinton directive on Vieques has been described in 
> the media as a deal that the President made with 
> Puerto Rico governor Pedro Rosselló. It is not a deal. 
> It is an order of the President of the United States 
> to the governor of a colony with no voice or vote in 
> Washington. 
> 
> There are some who call the protesters anti-American. 
> But the opponents of the Navy presence in Vieques are 
> no more anti-American than the 19th century 
> abolitionists or the 20th century civil rights 
> movement. 
> 
> Americans living in the fifty states must make it 
> clear to president Clinton that he must do the right 
> thing as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces and 
> order the Navy to end its training activities in 
> Vieques immediately and permanently, and clean up the 
> toxic mess it made there. If the Navy doesn't like it, 
> that's just too bad. In a democratic republic, the 
> civilians are in charge, not the military. At least 
> that's what we were all taught in school. 
> 

Devon Peña comments on my Vieques article

http://ejfood.blogspot.com/2014/06/environmental-justice-gardening-bombed.html

Environmental Justice 

Gardening a Bombed Island

Devon Peña’s note: Speaking of the American Empire, the prison complex at Guantanamo Bay on occupied Cuban soil is not the only case of an unwanted and damaging U.S. military presence in Latin America and the Caribbean. The U.S. naval bombing range at Vieques in Puero Rico is often overlooked. From 1999 to 2003, it remained at the heart of one of the preeminent anti-militarism struggles by environmental justice activists in the Western Hemisphere.

I first became aware of the struggle against the bombing range at Vieques through the work of Professor Deborah Berman Santana, a renowned environmental justice scholar, who penned an influential paper on environmental justice at Vieques in the journal, Social Justice (2002). In that paper, Santana makes the case that military installations and activities are among the worst sources of pollution. Deborah’s work presciently connected connected militarism to environmental racism and eloquently documented the long campaign to evict the Navy and reclaim the island for the people of Puerto Rico.

So, how is Vieques today, some 15 years after the bombing ended and the Navy went home? It is too easy to forget such a place, even one that captured our imagination and thirst for justice, once the struggle has ended and life has moved on.

It is a pleasure to present this portrait of Vieques as it is today from the vantage point of Carmelo Ruíz-Marrero. There is growing crime and the looming threat of gentrification but Carmelo also found close-knit people working hard to restore the land and re-establish its role in maintaining a healthy community. The new island is a work-in-progress – and at its heart, local people are working to produce a sustainable heritage landscape that includes conventional growers and more innovative organic farmers. As I understand it, some of the island’s beekeepers arelearning how to produce honey from Africanized bees.

If you can get rid of the Navy’s bombers, you can certainly handle some angry bees while learning to make peace with the local landscape. The island is a crossroads of economic deprivation and creativity, as is so often the case when marginality is an inventive force.

There is another part to this story and not all is happy local food times for all! While the people are creatively obtaining right livelihoods on the island they are also trying to produce food and other materials on a landscape that still has very serious pollution problems from the decades of environmental abuse by the American military. As Carmelo notes:

Vieques was mercilessly bombed for sixty years from both sea and air. And the explosions lifted up deadly clouds of dust polluted with heavy metals and toxic chemicals used in ordnance and even particulate from uranium ammunition. These clouds of death moved downwind to the west, blanketing the civilian zone. The cancer rate among Vieques residents is 26.9% above Puerto Rico’s average…

So, the Navy may be long gone but it left a toxic legacy behind; one that is still affecting the health and wellbeing of the people of Vieques.

This essay originally appeared in Counterpunch Magazine, Vol. 21, No. 4. May 2014.

Map of Vieques used by EPA to manage Superfund sites.

Return to Vieques

ORGANIC GARDENS AMIDST TOXIC LEGACY?

Carmelo Ruíz-Marrero | Vieques, P.R. | January 2014

The ferry from the town of Fajardo to Vieques island leaves at 4:30 pm. I arrive at 4:25 and there is a line at the ticket counter, made up of Viequenses 

My article about Vieques gentrification, published back in 2003

The Second Invasion of Vieques

By Carmelo Ruiz Marrero
August 30 2003

The boom of bombs has been replaced by the real estate “boom.” With the official closure of the firing range, Vieques is now the target of a runaway race of speculators, businessmen and dealers in real estate who are fishing in muddy waters.

The people of Vieques already know this phenomenon. Residents from the United States and other countries and Puerto Ricans from the big island have been for years the owners of most of the businesses on the island, especially those related to tourism, and so they gain the most from economic activities in the island-town.

The arrival of wealthy residents and businesspeople in an area that they find attractive inflates the prices of property, making life impossible for the original residents and forcing them to move. In 1998, Roberto Rabin of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques (CPDV) told me how the viequenses were losing their island not only to the Navy but also to gentrification.

“Investors and economic interests, mostly from the United States but also Germans and Japanese, have been buying properties in Vieques for many years,” Rabin said. “With the Navy’s departure there are new possibilities and greater motivation for speculators.” He added that on the boardwalk of Esperanza, on Vieques’s south side, 95% of the businesses are owned by people from the U.S., including hotels, restaurants, kayak and car rental businesses, and apartments.


TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE:
http://forusa.org/blogs/for/second-invasion-vieques/7984

RETURN TO VIEQUES, by Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero

http://frentesocialistapr.blogspot.com/2014/06/return-to-vieques-by-carmelo-ruiz.html

EXCERPTS:

Twice the size of Manhattan and located to the east of the main island of Puerto Rico, Vieques had most of its land occupied by the US Navy at the start of World War Two for use in war games and target practice, and as munitions depot (1). An unprecedented mass civil disobedience campaign from 1999 to 2003 forced the Navy to close down its firing range in the island’s eastern half. I had visited Vieques several times as a journalist since the 1990’s, when local residents expressed to me their feelings of frustration and hopelessness after decades of efforts to get the Navy to leave and let them be (2), and witnessed in April 1999 how a small group of protesters started a wildcat sit-in inside the firing range. The protest snowballed into a massive non-violent movement of defiance that turned all of Puerto Rican society upside down and got noticed all over the world (3).

******

...the Hydro Organics farm (5). Vanessa Valedon, the co-owner, shows us around. The 30-acre lot has squash, green beans, papaya, moringa, avocado, coconut, eggplant, pineapple, guava, romaine lettuce, and lemongrass, as well as a tilapia pond. The labor force consists mostly of woofers, internationalist backpackers that work in sustainable farms all over the world in exchange for no more than food and lodging. The farm is run according to the principles of permaculture, a discipline that combines agriculture, ecology, architecture and design.



We drive uphill through an unpaved road that is impassable when it rains, up to the farm of Jorge Cora. The farm is on a hill summit with a majestic view of the island’s south coast, including the gorgeous Sun Bay public beach and Mosquito bay, the latter famous for the nighttime glow of its waters, caused by bioluminescent microorganisms. Cora lives in this hilltop in a modest wooden structure with no electricity. He plants vegetables, lettuce, peppers, neem, beets, basil, tobacco, and other crops. He uses no pesticides and no industrial agricultural inputs, and gets no government help of any kind. Proud of his independence, Cora lives fully according to his beliefs, in the tradition of Thoureau and Puerto Rico’s rural jíbaros of yesteryear and today.

El Laboratorio Viequense from GAIA on Vimeo.

Tropicaleo: La Siembra: Vieques, Puerto Rico

Carmelo regresa a Vieques

http://alainet.org/active/72622&lang=es

Regreso a Vieques

Carmelo Ruiz Marrero



EXTRACTO:

Y por último, vamos a Monte Carmelo, comunidad con una extraordinaria historia de lucha y resistencia. Fundada por el carismático organizador comunitario Carmelo Félix Matta, Monte Carmelo es una comunidad rústica en terrenos elevados ganados a la marina tras duras batallas y confrontaciones. Mi primer viaje a Vieques fue precisamente para participar de la llamada Batalla de Monte Carmelo en 1989, en la cual la comunidad, con el apoyo de puertorriqueños de la Isla Grande, logramos asegurar la permanencia del poblado frente a intentos de la marina de desalojar el sector.

Visitamos ahí la finca de Jorge Cora, un verdadero revolucionario de la agricultura que vive y siembra en el tope de un cerro, donde no tiene electricidad, al final de un camino de roca y barro que es impasable cuando llueve. Ahí tiene hortalizas, lechuga, pimiento, nim, remolacha, albahaca, y tabaco, entre otros cultivos. Todo sin el uso de pesticidas u otros insumos de la agricultura industrial. Orgulloso de su independencia, Cora vive en total consonancia con sus creencias, siguiendo la tradición de grandes naturalistas como Thoureau y los jíbaros de ayer y hoy.

Vieques Goes from Bombs to Beets, by Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero

http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/02/vieques-goes-bombs-beets/

VIEQUES, Puerto Rico, Feb 10 2014 (IPS) - A decade after the United States Navy’s departure, the Puerto Rican island town of Vieques faces new challenges, and the rebirth of its agriculture sector is hampered by a legacy of toxic military trash that has uncertain consequences.

From 1999 to 2003, Vieques, which is just over twice the size of New York City’s Manhattan Island, was the site of a massive civil disobedience campaign to put an end to the presence of the Navy, which had used the island for bombing practice since World War Two. Puerto Rico is officially a commonwealth and territory of the United States.

Photos: Taken at Cora's farm by Elisa Sánchez

On the left, Vieques farmer Jorge Cora