Over the past year, hundreds of demonstrators have maintained protest camps--now numbering 13--on the bombing range, and the Pentagon has suspended target practice on the island.

The battle over Vieques has become the focal point of the resurgence of the anticolonial movement in Puerto Rico, where political actions of all kinds around this issue--picket lines, campus teach-ins, forums, rallies, hunger strikes, cultural festivals, and demonstrations of up to 80,000--continue unabated.

This movement has increasingly struck a chord among Puerto Rican workers and youth in the United States.

The Clinton administration, concerned about the broadening of this fight, reached an agreement with the pro-statehood governor of Puerto Rico, Pedro Rosselló of the New Progressive Party (PNP), to try to defuse the crisis. According to the agreement, the Navy would resume bombing on the island and then leave Vieques in 2003 if island residents voted for that in a referendum. The deal has been sharply denounced by opponents of the U.S military presence on Vieques.

On April 2, more than 1,600 Vieques residents turned out for a 425-car Caravan for Justice and Peace on the island. "This was our referendum. The people showed their commitment to the demand of 'Not one more shot, not one more minute,' " said Ismael Guadalupe, spokesperson for the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques, which sponsored the protest.

The previous day, 180 Teamsters from the main island visited Vieques, where they held their monthly membership meeting in solidarity with the fight against the U.S. military. They then joined an action with hundreds of Vieques residents at the Justice and Peace protest camp, which for months has blocked entry to the U.S. Navy's Camp García.

Meanwhile, in face of ongoing protests over Vieques, the U.S. Navy moved its March training exercises to the Gulf of Mexico and northeastern Florida. In early April, U.S. warships carried out joint maneuvers with forces from Britain, Canada, and other governments off the coast of Puerto Rico, but away from Vieques.

Navy spokespeople said they had not yet decided whether the USS George Washington aircraft battle group will attempt to carry out its planned training in Vieques in May.

Although U.S. and Puerto Rican colonial officials have announced their intention to send cops to evict demonstrators from the bombing range, differences among the authorities have up to now put a kink in their plans. Puerto Rican police chief Pedro Toledo has repeatedly announced plans to remove the protesters, but so far has not tried to carry this out.

Meanwhile, right-wing U.S. congressmen killed a proposal by the Clinton administration to offer $40 million to Vieques residents if they accept the Navy's continued presence, an offer many islanders and other Puerto Ricans have indignantly rejected as blackmail.

In New York City, organizers of the June 11 Puerto Rican Day Parade have dedicated it to Vieques and to Pedro Albizu Campos, the historic leader of the modern fight for Puerto Rico's independence. Albizu Campos spent decades in U.S. prisons for opposing U.S. colonial rule of his country.

The dedication has sparked a big controversy in New York as well as Puerto Rico. The mayor of San Juan, Sila Calderón, and officials of the Rosselló government objected to the decision. Former governor Carlos Romero Barceló, currently the nonvoting delegate from Puerto Rico in the U.S. Congress and a leader of the PNP's right wing, condemned the decision, accusing Albizu of having been a "fascist." During World War II, U.S. officials and proimperialist forces slandered Albizu Campos as a fascist because the Nationalist Party leader steadfastly refused to support Washington, Puerto Rico's colonial oppressor, in its predatory intervention in that international slaughter.

Nonetheless, the organizers of the New York parade have reaffirmed their decision, pointing out that in previous parades they have honored figures holding a range of political views. Rubén Berríos, president of the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) and leader of one of the Vieques protest camps, has rebutted the slanders against Albizu Campos in statements that have received wide coverage in the press.

The controversy has sparked greater interest and curiosity among many Puerto Ricans, especially youth, about who Albizu Campos was and the relevance of his ideas today.  
 
 
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