For sixty years, the United States Navy occupied up to 70% of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques as a training ground for live-fire practice and as a bomb testing site. This led to the displacement of half of the island’s inhabitants who were relocated to the center portion of the island. This brought about large contests from people of Vieques against the United States’navy. In 2000, several encampments of peaceful protestors were established on the island, and on May 4, more than 200 of these civil disobedients were forcibly removed in the military’s “Operation Access to the East” (Duany, 2002, p. 3). This was a catalyzing moment further unifying the Puerto Rican diaspora to demand an end to militarization on the island. All the while, the military continued to bomb Vieques (McCaffrey, 2002). This finally led to the navy's departure in 2003 (under US President George W.Bush mandate) and the site has now become a national wildlife refuge and is presented as an ideal tourism spot. However, the clean-up process has been largely ineffective. Even though the U.S. has removed more than 16.5 million pounds of munitions so far, the clean-up is expected to run through at least 2025 and is budgeted at around $350 million. In the meantime, Vieques remains a highly toxic place to live ( high levels of PCBsm napalm, uranium, unexploded bombs, mercury, arsenic etc). Furthermore, Study results from 2000 reveal that the cancer rate on Vieques, also called La Isla Nena (the Small Island), was nearly 27 percent higher than on Puerto Rico’s big island (McCaffrey, 2002). The island also lacks an hospital to treat illnesses such as asthma and cancer that may be attributed to the military’s former bombing activity. Nowadays, the island is facing another form of invasion and injustice: land grabbing and gentrification by the rich (McCaffrey, 2008).

Location

Island of Vieques, Puerto Rico

Google maps: https://goo.gl/maps/F42A5TYqS2R2

Environmental impact

  • Air pollution
  • Water pollution
  • Land degradation (e.g. drought, soil contamination, erosion and desertification)
  • Biodiversity loss – Ecosystem destruction

Ethical/ legal issues

  • Life and personal security
  • A clean and prosperous environment and a safe and pleasant habitat

Information sources & materials

Scientific/ academic journal papers

  • McCaffrey, K. (2002). Military power and popular protest: The U.S. Navy in Vieques, Puerto Rico. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Carruthers (Ed.), Environmental justice in Latin America: Problems, promise, and practice (263-286). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

  • Amilcar Antonio Barreto. Vieques, the Navy, and Puerto Rican Politics. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002

http://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/puerto-ricans-force-united-states-navy-out-vieques-island-1999-2003

Content repository

TypeFile NameDescriptionSize

jpeg		000505-n-6492h-551A view of military vehicles parked along the beach at Camp Garcia on Vieques Island, Puerto Rico, as US Military and Department of Justice agents reclaimed the federal property on which protestors were residing for over a year.499.5k