Zenón is a former president of the Vieques Fishermen's Association and longtime leader of protests against the U.S. Navy occupation of Puerto Rican territories. As a youth he watched as his home was bulldozed by the Navy in the 1940s to make way for the firing range. He was imprisoned by the U.S. government in the early 1980s after fishermen organized flotillas of boats to disrupt warships maneuvering off Vieques.

Today he is helping lead a group that has camped out on the firing range, blocking the Navy's use of the island. The protest and occupation started this spring in response to the death of a civilian security guard after a U.S. plane dropped bombs far off target.

Zenón spoke here as part of a brief speaking tour in the United States winning support for the struggle in Vieques and warning that Washington is preparing to crack down on the protesters and resume bombing runs.

He displayed a copy of the November 3 San Juan daily El Vocero featuring a front page story on the arrival at the Roosevelt Roads naval base of 300 U.S. Marshals, ready to arrest the protesters in Vieques. He said the aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower is already in waters off the island, ready to resume bombing runs in early December.

"If they arrest us they're going to have big problems," Zenón vowed. "For the first time in history, everyone in Puerto Rico wants the Navy out of Vieques. If they arrest one person, the whole country will stop to go over there and join the protest. If the Eisenhower starts bombing, I will be in the live-impact zone."

The rising anticolonial sentiment among working people in Puerto Rico and outpouring of opposition to the U.S. Navy presence has forced the colonial government and parties, including pro-statehood governor Pedro Rosselló, to pose as defenders of Vieques.

Cultural Center director José López urged the 75 participants at the November 4 meeting to volunteer to join the occupation of the firing range if the U.S. government moves to arrest protesters. He reminded them that Vieques had been used by the U.S. military as a springboard to attack other Latin American countries, from Cuba to Nicaragua to the present intervention in Colombia.

Zenón also related a story of the protesters' response to hurricane warnings earlier this fall. "We knew our wooden camp couldn't withstand the winds and we knew if we left we might never get back on the firing range," he said. "So we cleaned out an abandoned 60-ton tank they had used for target practice and set up camp in it until the storm passed. Nothing will make us leave."

Zenón detailed the impact of the Navy occupation on the people of Vieques, underscoring the reasons it has become such a flash point for opposition to U.S. colonial rule over Puerto Rico.

"Vieques has a total of 33,000 acres of land, and the U.S. Navy has 26,000 of it," he said. One end of the island is a huge munitions dump with 80,000 tons of live ammunition; the other end is the sprawling firing range. The people, some 9,000, are squeezed in the middle. Unemployment is 60 percent, and 70 percent of the people depend on food stamps. There is no hospital; sick people are flown or go by ferry to the main island. Many babies have been born in the plane; heart attack victims have died on the way, he reported.

"The Navy is poisoning our island," Zenón continued. "Our cancer rate is 26 percent higher than the average for Puerto Rico. After we occupied the firing range we found evidence that the Navy had been using uranium shells in target practice. The government first denied this, but later had to admit they had used the shells on 260 different days of bombing practice."

Zenón also saluted the 11 recently released Puerto Rican political prisoners. "We all fight for the same cause. Each time the people of Vieques talk about the Navy we also say 'Free our political prisoners!'"

Following his visit to Chicago, Zenón spoke at several meetings in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, including an event sponsored by the La Raza Student Cultural Center at the University of Minnesota and a meeting at St. Stephens Catholic Church attended by 30 people. He also visited the picket line of Teamsters on strike at Overnite Transportation.

Many of those attending the Twin Cities events signed up to participate in other activities in defense of Vieques. Organizers of the tour are now planning a picket line outside the local Navy recruiting station for November 19, to coincide with a demonstration in Puerto Rico demanding the U.S. Navy leave Vieques.

Harvey McArthur is a member of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 100A in Chicago. Tom Fiske in St. Paul, Minnesota, contributed to this article.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home