Bernard Hopkins' recent 12th round knockout of Puerto Rican boxing champion Tito Trinidad for the middleweight title was something of a metaphor for the effects of September 11 on the Vieques movement. Perhaps more than metaphor: Trinidad, a champion of the Vieques movement, wrote Paz ("Peace") on his armbands, while Hopkins sported a U.S. flag kerchief that read "WAR."
War indeed. Two weeks earlier, September 11 and "America's New War" seemed to blast any chance of closing the weapons range on the island of Vieques that the Navy calls its "crown jewel" (see "Vieques Wins the Eleventh Round"). September 11 cut to the bone: Over 400 Puerto Rican New Yorkers dead and missing at the World Trade Center, in the city that had been a bastion of the Vieques struggle. And for a Caribbean island heavily dependent on U.S. tourism and air travel, September 11 was also grim economic news. In Puerto Rico, war drums energized the pro-Navy sectors.
September 11 also occurred at a critical juncture of the Washington debate on Vieques. In August, the House Armed Services Committee passed a bill that cancelled a Federal referendum scheduled for November in Vieques under directives issued by President Bill Clinton last year, and enacted by Congress. The House bill also left the Navy's exit from Vieques at Navy discretion. With House passage virtually assured, the Senate was to consider the House amendment in late September. To boot, the debate around Vieques in Congress is interwoven with the Puerto Rican government's lobbying for tax incentives to address the island's worsening economy.
Anti-Navy groups dropped plans for massive civil disobedience to protest scheduled Navy maneuvers on September 24, in respect for the victims of September 11 and out of concern for protesters' safety. For the first time in two years, the Navy maneuvered in Vieques unperturbed.
Pig heads and dog pounds
In the months prior to September 11, officials arrested more than 1,400 protesters for civil disobedience on the Vieques range. Round after round of Navy maneuvers was met with civil disobedience; a hysterical federal court in Puerto Rico locked up African-American political figures, Hollywood actors and rock stars.
The Navy's treatment of arrested protesters in April bared the knuckles of its decades-long presence in Vieques. In The Washington Post, Mary McGrory wrote that, thanks to "a pigheaded performance by Navy brass, and brutish, not to mention jackbooted behavior by Navy police -- many of them strip-search specialists --Vieques has become world famous."
A video of the detentions in a dog pound in the Navy base in Vieques and testimony by several detainees drew gasps and tears from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in June. The arrested were required to pay bail -- extraordinary for people accused only of trespassing and who posed no danger of flight. At the same time, the protesters had none of the safeguards of a more serious infraction, such as trial by jury. And no federal magistrate allowed a defense of "state of necessity," common in civil-disobedience trials in the United States.
Navy maneuvers
In early May, in the midst of bad press generated by the April arrests, President Bush spoke publicly on Vieques for the first time. Bush said that Vieques was indeed a problem, and that after a reasonable amount of time the Navy had to find another place for its exercises. Meanwhile, the Puerto Rican government pursued quiet negotiation with top Republican leaders, appealing to their interest in the Hispanic vote.
But in late May, the Navy announced new maneuvers for June 13. Incensed that the Navy was sabotaging the ongoing negotiations, Governor Sila Calderón announced that the Puerto Rican government would hold its own referendum in Vieques. Puerto Rico's criollo referendum -- as it was immediately called -- was to include the option of immediate suspension of Navy maneuvers, an option that the Federal referendum scheduled for November did not allow. Including this option in a Vieques referendum was a major campaign promise of Gov. Calderón, who had promised to oust the Navy from Vieques in 60 days. In the November federal referendum there were to be only two choices:
- The Navy stays indefinitely in Vieques and uses live fire a maximum of 90 days a year, with a one-time $90 million economic assistance package for the viequenses, and devolution of surplus Navy land in western Vieques
- The Navy must leave by 2003, and uses only "non-explosive" ("inert") ordnance until then, with a $50 million less in economic assistance
In mid-June, as the Navy exercises began in Vieques, the Bush administration was poised to announce an immediate closing of the Vieques range. This would follow a recommendation made by Republican New York Governor George Pataki (who had just visited Vieques), who gained the endorsement of top Bush political advisor Karl Rove. Both were well aware of the importance of Vieques for Puerto Rican voters in the U.S., and for many Hispanic political leaders across the country. And the Navy-out position would probably win the criollo referendum.
Even before Navy Secretary John England and White House staffers had fully consulted Congress on the proposed decision, news leaks reported that the White House had decided to stop bombing Vieques.
Once the leaks pushed the negotiations under the public glare, immediate cessation was out of the question. It would not be cessation "before 2003," with immediate cessation a possibility -- apparently Pataki's and Rove's proposal -- but rather "at 2003." Secretary England announced the less proximate dating, and also announced that since the exit date was assured, the referendum scheduled for 2000 would be cancelled. A panel of senior Navy and Marine Corps officers would be created in order to find alternatives to Vieques. In fact, a study completed for the Navy in 2000 had already concluded that alternatives to Vieques did exist.
No surrender
On the same day that Bush confirmed the White House decision, an indignant Bob Stump, Republican of Arizona and chairman of the House Armed Forces Committee, announced that the Committee would hold hearings on the announcement. Most of the congressmen argued that a firm 2003 withdrawal date equaled surrender before the protesters, whom they insisted were only a "handful." Several urged England to go for a referendum victory that seemed possible if the Navy played its cards right.
More realistic than the congressmen -- and with unusual candor -- Secretary England stressed that opponents of the Navy presence were a clear majority in Vieques, and that the Navy best steer clear of a referendum. He noted that the electoral vote for the anti-Navy mayoral candidate in 2000 was almost 64 percent (England was also probably aware of a poll conducted in early June in Vieques by the largely pro-Navy San Juan Star, where 61 percent supported the Navy's exit). The Navy would probably lose the referendum, and would have to leave Vieques anyway by 2003. To England, this would set a dangerous precedent where vote by a civilian community would shape military policy. Far better to have no referendum and to hold to a pre-set 2003 exit date.
The Puerto Rican government went ahead with its referendum. The July 29 vote provided a resounding victory for the Navy-out movement. With voter participation at 80.5 percent, 68 percent voted in favor of the "immediate and permanent termination of the military exercises and bombings of the Navy in Vieques" as well as "cleanup and return of viequense lands to its citizens."
Mr. Backlash
Several congressmen were outraged that the Puerto Rican government had gone ahead with the criollo referendum, even if it was non-binding. The congressmen understood the broader implications of Vieques -- that local civilian communities should have a say on the local effects of military power -- and they did not like them either. This was, after all, the first time in U.S. history that a local population has been consulted over the future of a defense facility. And the congressmen liked the referendum results least of all.
The House Armed Services Committee met two days after the Vieques referendum and torched the statute that had largely enacted the Clinton 2000 directives. The committee passed an amendment that eliminated the referendum, but also allowed the Navy to continue bombing Vieques until the Navy found an equivalent or superior site. Moreover, the irate members of the committee voted that no Navy range land in Vieques would be returned. Instead, all devolved land would remain indefinitely under Navy control in case of a national emergency. In effect, the Navy's exit date from Vieques would be set by the Navy itself, if and when the Navy felt it had an alternative to the Vieques range.
In the Senate, the House bill sputtered and went to conference committee -- where it stood on September 11 -- and where it has remained. Since the final terms of the referendum were still undefined, as the November 6 referendum date approached there was only agreement that the date was impracticable. The Navy, under the unprecedented prerogatives that the referendum law granted it, postponed the referendum to January 25.
After the non-celebration of the November referendum, three major developments occurred in November: First, in yet another "leak," the Washington Times revealed that top Navy and Marine Corps brass is pushing for a renewal of live-fire practice in the upcoming Navy exercises in January. Live fire would certainly re-ignite the Vieques movement. Gov. Calderón registered her indignation -- though she has stopped short of saying what, if anything, her administration would do to block the live fire maneuvers. Second, the U.S. Army Southern Command let it be known that it is considering moving out of Puerto Rico, in part due to anti-American sentiment in the island.
And third, the Vieques groups announced that the moratorium would not apply to the next exercises, and that civil disobedience would be renewed -- while the far right pro-statehood groups are abuzz about going to man the Navy fences in Vieques against the desobedientes, live fire and all.
In fact, the kind of training that is carried out in Vieques was already obsolete before September 11. Navy ships firing ordnance as they typically have in Vieques do so from too close to shore, and can easily be hit by handheld Sting missiles. Tomahawk missiles can hardly be fired at the Vieques range from their usual working distance of 500-800 miles. The vast, arid, mountainous terrain of Central Asia is far better replicated in the Mojave or Sonoran deserts than on a Caribbean beach; mock-ups of U.S. cities for anti-terrorist training can be erected anywhere. The proclaimed war against terrorism, in any case, calls for strategies the U.S. cannot practice on a Vieques beach, and where intelligence-gathering and path-breaking diplomacy are paramount.
Yet the Pentagon will insist on fighting to remain in Vieques, not for any genuine military reason but because of the weight of precedent. It's domino theory all over: If Vieques goes, Okinawa will be next; then dozens of ranges in the U.S. itself. The prospect of the Pentagon having to explain to local communities why a given bombing range is crucial to national defense, despite malignant local effects, seems to be too hard to bear.
Vieques USA!
The Vieques issue will not go away quietly, especially in the new militarized climate. What was until now the "Vieques" issue has become the issue for the U.S. generally: What are the limits of military power vis a vis civil society? What is the difference between civilian and military power, when it is as concentrated and global as in the contemporary U.S.? Or is civil society at its core military? Vieques' peculiar quarrel with the U.S. Navy has now become the issue of the U.S. as a whole. The U.S. has become "Viequenized." Vieques crystallized issues that will soon become issues for the whole nation. Perhaps this is why Vieques caught the imagination of so many, to the puzzlement of The New York Times and other observers.
In Puerto Rico, with a centuries-old tradition of colonial militarism, the military -- and the intelligence services -- have long ranged far and wide. That is not unique to Puerto Rico; the military typically have a privileged domain in colonial milieux. In a profound way, colonial rule is military rule, and vice versa. Consider the Patriots of 1776, who were rankled far more by the growing British military presence in the Thirteen Colonies than by a tax on tea.
In Vieques, a colony of the colony as it were, with third-class U.S. citizens living under the shadow of first-class bombs, the almost three quarters portion of the island's territory under military control is a metaphor for something deeper. Vieques (pop. 9,700) is a centuries-old civil society that for decades has been hemmed in and fenced in by military power. In the 1940s through 1960s, Navy boots routinely crossed the civilian zone; hundreds of expropriated families squatted on military land; MPs patrolled ostensibly "civilian" streets; drunken Marines knocked down civilian doors and raped young civilian girls. In the 1970s through 1990s, it translated into a local society thick with intrigue, suspicion, and informants; Navy goons prone to sheer terrorism; house searches without a warrant; airplanes flying and bombing at all hours of day and night; babies dying of cancer, and eventually also a local, broad-based, and exemplary antimilitarist movement.
In the July criollo referendum and in the campaign it had already begun for the postponed November referendum, the Navy was pulling all the stops: $4,000 checks to fishermen for lost days of work since 2000 (an attempt to dissuade fishermen from further civil disobedience), small-business loans by the hundreds, over $200,000 monthly spent on radio "public information programs." We can expect more of that if the January referendum is finally held.
The fact that Vieques has had -- as The New York Times breezily says -- "issues for everyone" -- results from the manifold consequences of historically pervasive military power. In this light, "Vieques USA!," a favorite slogan of right-wing supporters of making Puerto Rico a state, now takes on an eerie ring. President Bush signs in secret military tribunals to try civilian aliens, Congress passes what it calls (with unwitting irony) the "Patriot Act," and daily life in large U.S. cities increasingly resembles ongoing military maneuvers.
What's next for Vieques is still not clear. The Navy prances around the ring, closely eyeing its adversary, the Navy-out movement, momentarily on the defensive. If the Navy feels it can make a strong showing in the January referendum (say, with 40 percent of the vote), it will go for the knockout punch: permanent live fire. Or the Navy will make a vague, qualified "commitment" to a 2003 exit date. Or perhaps it will disregard the Clinton directives entirely, and simply renew live-fire maneuvers next January -- all in the name of al-Qaeda.
As Vieques teeters between a military and a civilian future and the Navy studies its next punch, we might ponder: perhaps as Vieques goes, so goes the U.S.
