After being forced to suspend bombing in the area for the last seven months, the Clinton administration is preparing to resume military exercises on Vieques. The aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower and its battle group is scheduled to head for the island at the beginning of December.

Since World War II, Washington has occupied two-thirds of this small island off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico, using the land and surrounding waters for bombing and live-ammunition training. For six decades, fishermen and other residents have protested the Navy's presence and the environmental destruction it causes.

Since April, when a U.S. warplane dropped two 500-pound bombs that killed Vieques resident David Sanes, protesters have set up several camps in the Navy-controlled zones in order to deter a resumption of the bombing practice.

The Pentagon says they need to carry out a practice amphibious landing backed by live ship-to-shore artillery before being deployed to the Persian Gulf in February.

"We have to reinforce those camps because the process is reaching its final stage," said Ismael Guadalupe, a leader of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques. Protesters "cannot wait for an eviction order to move onto the Navy-occupied lands." He called for massive civil disobedience on the island beginning November 19.

The committee is working with All Puerto Rico with Vieques to provide logistical support for the increased number of protesters at the camps. All Puerto Rico with Vieques is the coalition that organized the July 4 march of 50,000 people in front of the U.S. Navy's Roosevelt Roads base in Ceiba, Puerto Rico, to call on the military to leave Vieques.

The protesters insist they will not leave the camps, and many people have already volunteered to take their place if U.S. officials arrest them.

Some 1,350 students at the University of Puerto Rico's Río Piedras campus took part in an assembly November 10 where they voted to launch student strikes and protests if the Navy resumes its bombing in Vieques. The students are seeking to publicize their fight internationally by working with student groups in the United States and around the world.

In one reflection of the breadth of sentiment against the U.S. military presence in Vieques, the Disabled American Veterans of Puerto Rico organized several of its members to be interviewed in the November 11 issue of the San Juan daily El Nuevo Día calling for an end to U.S. bombing there.

Under the pressure of the popular protests, Pedro Rosselló, the pro-statehood governor of Puerto Rico, had adopted a stance that the Navy should leave Vieques. When it became clear Washington intended to resume its bombing, Rosselló reportedly consulted with U.S. president William Clinton by phone November 13.

Following those talks, the governor floated the idea of holding a yes-or-no vote among the residents of Vieques on a plan Clinton would propose to allow the resumption the military training there. This might include the proposal to carry out the exercises without live ammunition, and for fewer days out of the year. Rosselló noted that Clinton had no obligation to consider the results of such a referendum, but insisted that the U.S. president "told me he is sensitive to the position of the Vieques residents."

The reaction in Puerto Rico was of almost universal scorn, particularly since it had been announced that Clinton had already decided to restart the bombing practice. "This is the second time that a referendum has been proposed," said Guadalupe, of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques, at a November 16 press conference. "The people of Vieques have already spoken, so the referendum should be deep-sixed."

Rosselló quickly retreated, acknowledging that Clinton would issue a directive, not a proposal, on resuming the military exercises, so a vote was unnecessary.

Meanwhile, the Hartford Courant, the big-business daily in Hartford, Connecticut, launched a "terrorist" smear campaign against Puerto Rican independence supporters and against the Cuban revolution. An eight-part series signed by staff writer Edmund Mahony recycles the slanders and lies that were used by the FBI in the 1980s to frame up the Hartford 15 — independence advocates who accused of involvement in the robbery of a Wells Fargo depot — and asserts a "Cuban connection." The paper's editors had campaigned against the Clinton administration's release of 11 other Puerto Rican political prisoners earlier this year.

Ron Richards in San Juan, Puerto Rico, contributed to this article.  
 
 
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