Puerto Ricans Battle US Navy in Vieques.

• Author: Ruiz-Marrero, Carmelo

On May 4, 2000, the Puerto Rican island-town of Vieques was the site of one of the strangest deployments of law enforcement and military power in the history of the United States. Just before dawn, hundreds of marines, marshals and FBI agents raided the island. By sunrise, hundreds of people had been detained, handcuffed and put in the custody of the US government. Terrorists? Drug smugglers? Fugitives? Illegal immigrants? None of the above. They were ordinary citizens from all walks of life, including Catholic priests and nuns and Protestant ministers, many of them singing religious hymns as they were handcuffed and herded into trucks and boats. Welcome to the battle of Vieques.

In 1941 the US Navy forcefully expropriated 26,000 of the island's 33,000 acres. In the 60 years that have followed, these stolen lands have been used as a munitions depot and a firing range. Although the Pentagon claims that it paid a fair market price for the lands it took, those local residents old enough to remember the day tell a different story. They claim that they were forcibly evicted, and in some cases were given only minutes' advance notice before their homes were bulldozed right before their eyes, and that those who were compensated received only a fraction of their properties' market value. Those who were expropriated moved into the few lands in Vieques that remained under civilian control, to the nearby island of St. Croix, to the squatter shantytowns then proliferating in San Juan, or to American cities like New York. The island's sugar plantations closed overnight, and the population plummeted to less than ten thousand souls.

For the last 60 years, Vieques has been relentlessly subjected to bombardment from both sea and air. The startling sounds of heavy artillery, missiles and low-flying warplanes were often heard in residential areas. It wasn't just the noise. It was also stray bombs and missiles falling into the civilian area, causing hair-raising close calls and outright tragedies.

Stray bombs were not the only peril. The island's civilian sector was often visited by military personnel on leave looking for recreation, entertainment and women. They brought along with them drug addiction, prostitution and street violence, which were virtually unheard of in the island in the pre-Navy years. Not surprisingly, brawls and riots caused by Marines were not uncommon. In one such incident in 1953, drunken Marines broke into a private party and started a...