!Viva Vieques!

• Author: Espada, Martin

More than eighty years ago, Puerto Rican poet and political leader Jose de Diego, wrote, "Puerto Ricans do not know how to say no." And yet, he pointed out, "the no of the oppressed has been the word, the genesis, of the liberation of peoples." De Diego warned: "We must learn to say no."

Today, the people of Puerto Rico say no; the people of Vieques say no; the Puerto Rican community in the U.S. says no. We say no to the Navy, no to the bombing of Vieques. The admirals and apologists of the Navy say they cannot find anywhere else in the world to play their war games. Still we say no. They say they will use dummy bombs. Still we say no. They promise a referendum some day. Still we say no. The word no is the same in English and Spanish. Since translation is not the problem, we must assume they cannot hear us. So we must say it louder: No.

Vieques is an offshore island municipality of Puerto Rico. It is controlled, like the rest of Puerto Rico, by the United States. More than 9,300 people live in Vieques. Yet, since 1941, the U.S. Navy has occupied two-thirds of this inhabited island for war games and live-ammunition target practice. According to journalist Juan Gonzalez: "Practice at the range goes on for as many as 200 days a year. Combat planes bomb and strafe the island. Destroyers bomb it from the sea.... Maneuvers have included, on occasion, practice with depleted uranium shells, napalm, and cluster bombs."

University of Puerto Rico Professor of Geography Jose Sequinot Barbosa observes that "the eastern third of the island constitutes a region with more craters per kilometer than the moon." The coral reef and, with it, the fishing industry have been splintered. Seventy-two percent of the population lives below the poverty line, with 40 to 50 percent unemployment. Ominously, the cancer rate in Vieques is 27 percent higher than the rest of this Caribbean colony, according to a 1998 study by the Puerto Rico Department of Public Health.

Opposition to the Navy was galvanized in April 1999 when David Sanes Rodriguez, a civilian security guard, was killed and four others wounded by a stray bombardment. Hundreds of nonviolent protesters occupied the target range and pitched camps there: fishermen, teachers, priests and nuns, independentista activists. For more than a year, the protesters said no with their bodies, and the most powerful military in the world was stumped. Colonized people do not say no. They are conditioned to say yes. But these...