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Puerto Rico Update
#30, Summer 2000 The Western Lands of Vieques: Community Revival or Colonial Land Grab? by Déborah Berman Santana Throughout the last year the more than half century-old struggle to evict the United States Navy from the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico has increasingly made headlines worldwide, and attracted interest from environmental, anti-military and social justice activists. Most reports include some mention of the Navy's expropriation of 26,000 of the island's 33,000 acres (over 75% of the land) during and immediately after World War II, disrupting the mostly agricultural and fishing economy and forcing thousands of viequenses into exile. Most of the media attention has focused on the eastern part of the island, where for the last fifty years the Navy has practiced troop maneuvers and bombing, using everything from depleted uranium to napalm, in addition to more conventional bombs. Such activity has caused immense environmental destruction and serious health threats to the more than 9,000 viequenses who still inhabit the center of the island. Much less attention, however, has been paid to the western third of the island, also in Navy hands, whose immediate future is currently being debated in the US Congress and in Puerto Rico. A brief historical overview can help bring some perspective to the current struggle for control of the "western lands." Moreover, the fate of these lands should be of great interest not only to viequenses and Puerto Ricans, but also to all who understand the relationship between a community's survival and the degree of its control over development planning and resource use. The western lands were among the first to be expropriated in Vieques by the US Navy during World War II, under federal legislation which justified such a move by declaring a war emergency. While a few wealthy landowners were paid market value, the vast majority of residents were offered $25-50 and told to vacate their homes within 48 hours. Those who refused were thrown out at gunpoint while their homes were bulldozed. People who remained on Vieques were assigned plots of land in the center of the island without, however, acquiring clear title to that land. This uncertainty indicated the military's desire to eventually force all viequenses to leave. In the early 1960s the Navy proposed to remove even the remains of loved ones in the municipal cemetery, which was defeated only after considerable active opposition from viequenses and their supporters on the "big island" of Puerto Rico. During the past forty years small areas of land claimed by the Navy have been successfully occupied and reclaimed by viequenses, especially in the western lands adjacent to the civilian sector. The Navy has countered by currying political favor with political leaders in both Vieques and in Puerto Rico, particularly among those in favor of Puerto Rico becoming the fifty-first state of the United States. The military also has been supporting attempts by North Americans and other outsiders to buy land in the civilian areas of Vieques, particularly in areas closest to the western lands. Navy offices have helped expand the Vieques airport runway, which "will permit the operation of larger commuter aircraft essential to the success of resort hotels planned for Vieques," according to a Navy document released last year. More than 8,000 acres comprising the "western lands" are known as the "Naval Ammunition Facility," which are used primarily for storage of a wide variety of ammunition. This includes reports of nuclear weapons, which if confirmed would violate the U.S.-ratified Treaty of Tlatelolco banning nuclear weapons in all of Latin America and the Caribbean. Additionally, the western lands also house the military radio antennas on Mount Pirata as well as the Raytheon-built ROTHR Radar, which is supposed to help in the "war on drugs" but is reportedly powerful enough to move a hurricane and set fires over a thousand miles away. Today the Clinton administration and the pro-statehood Puerto Rican government attempt to portray transfer of the western lands as a new concession, although the Navy has acknowledged it does not need them. In both 1994 and 1995 bills were introduced to the US House of Representatives which would transfer those lands to Puerto Rico. The Navy lobbied against those bills, however, and they did not pass. The Vieques activists, who were organized as the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques (known as CPRDV for its initials in Spanish), work with a growing number of scientists, planners, attorneys and other experts to document the environmental, economic, and social destruction caused by the Navy's occupation. They are also developing plans for remediation and alternate development of the lands which would improve the island's environmental and social health. The experts, located mainly in the Big Island, became known as the Technical Support Group. In 1996 CPRDV invited Columbia University team to produce a detailed proposal for community-controlled, environmentally and socially sustainable economic development of the western lands. The final report recognized that no land control option - public or private, federal, state or local - could by itself guarantee that lands relinquished by the Navy would not fall victim to speculation or misuse. Nonetheless, local control could offer the local community the best chance of influencing land use in favor of the economic and social interests of the majority of viequenses, while providing for long term environmental restoration and protection. Consequently, the report called for creating a "Community Land Trust," an entity to which transfer of the lands could be made and which could administer and oversee land use. It also advocated that a "Community Extension Program" be initiated to develop the necessary research, education and training to enable viequenses to successfully carry out the land use plan, which included ecological and archeological conservation areas, agricultural development, limited urban expansion, and development of small scale, locally-owned and -operated tourism. Puerto Rico's Planning Board, a government entity based in San Juan, also has a plan for the western lands. However, while some aspects are similar to the CPRDV-supported proposals, the San Juan plan asserts that water is too limited to permit agriculture, even though before the Navy takeover the island successfully exported sugar and the best beef in the Caribbean. Even more troubling is that the Planning Board offers only vague, lukewarm support to protect land prices from speculation that could make it impossible for native viequenses to buy land. Such speculation would facilitate a takeover by outside interests - what some viequenses refer to as the "Hawaii-zation" of their island. President Clinton and Puerto Rico Governor Rosselló have also hailed the Navy's recent transfer of 100 acres of western land to expand the municipal airport as evidence of the integrity of the recent deal for a "compromise" on the Vieques issue. Yet the Navy had agreed to surrender that small parcel several years before the anti-military protests captured the headlines. The airport is located just over a mile from the forbidding walls of a luxury tourist complex, owned by Dallas-based Rosewood Hotels and Resorts, which is scheduled to open in December 2000, and promises to double Vieques' room capacity. At present the airport's runway cannot accommodate large planes, a situation which favors the Vieques-owned firm, Vieques Airlink. At least two US-owned airlines plan to add service to Vieques once airport expansion is completed. Recently an employee for one of those companies boasted to me that they would drive the locals out of business - perhaps with the help of the Navy, who in May forced Vieques Airlink to temporarily suspend several pilots for allegedly flying too low over military and police operations against the anti-Navy protesters. The Clinton administration is trying to win Congressional approval for transfer of the western lands - minus some 700 acres of contaminated land and 100 acres housing the ROTHR radar and military antennas - to the Government of Puerto Rico by the end of December. Since Environmental Impact Statements have not yet been completed, cleanup of toxic wastes by Navy-employed contractors has not yet begun, and no agreement has been reached on exactly which entities - federal, state, or local - would control the conservation or other lands, what exactly is the hurry? If Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) has his way, restoring permanent "live fire" training in the eastern part of the island will be a condition for transferring the western lands to Puerto Rican control. He claims that control of the lands by Vieques or San Juan would open the door to speculation. However, the senator's insistence on renewal of bombing casts doubt upon his concern for the wellbeing of viequenses. More likely, he would oppose any settlement - such as a locally-controlled community land trust - that might allow the viequenses to actually benefit from returned lands, a benefit which would probably strengthen their efforts to oust the Navy from the eastern training area. There is genuine cause for concern about who will control the western lands. The so-called "expatriate" (read: colonizer) community in Vieques is keenly interested in buying up any land that the Navy might vacate. Some have imported workers from the United States and Europe for their businesses, and made little effort to hide their contempt for the natives. The Puerto Rican government - whose leaders sometimes have taken bribes in return for sale or leasing of publicly owned resources - is lobbying strongly to gain control of the western lands as quickly as possible. Moreover, those who advocate control by the US Department of Interior fail to note that federal "conservation" control often allows for outside commercial speculation, as witnessed in Culebra after the Navy left that Puerto Rican island, and as appears to be the case in San Francisco's Presidio National Park. Supporters of independence or greater autonomy for Puerto Rico would also oppose any plan granting ownership to the US federal government. It is worth repeating that the farther away the seat of control is located, the harder it will be for those who have fought so long and hard for Vieques and its people to have any say in the island's future. In order to to establish an entity with enough power to safeguard their just inheritance, Vieques activists will need strong and continuing support from their friends and allies in Puerto Rico, in the United States, and internationally, who have supported the struggle for "ni una bomba más" - not one more bomb. To this refrain we should add "Vieques for viequenses, for a just and sustainable future." The struggle of Vieques is not only a struggle for peace, but also for justice for indigenous and long-colonized peoples and communities. Fellowship of Reconciliation ©2001 Fellowship of Reconciliation |