A number of organizations met in Vieques September 26 in a popular assembly and decided to continue their protests demanding an end the U.S. Navy's bombardment and occupation of large sections of the island. The meeting took place as a naval battle group composed of 12 warships led by the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy began a second week of military exercises. The mock assaults include air and sea bombings of the island of Vieques. The naval group, which involves some 12,000 U.S. Marines, is expected to soon join Washington's military deployment against Afghanistan.

The U.S. Navy has occupied and used two-thirds of this small populated island as a shooting range and ammunition depot since the end of World War II, despite massive opposition from the population, destruction of the environment, and ruination of the livelihoods of fishermen and farmers on the island. Through its colonial overlordship over Puerto Rico, Washington uses Vieques without consent of the population as a joint forces training base for Navy fleets, and for preparation for wars and invasions such as against Grenada in 1983 and the imperialist assault on Yugoslavia two years ago.

The same day as the meeting in Vieques, the U.S. Congress passed a $345 billion Pentagon budget with a rider canceling a referendum Washington had planned to hold in Vieques on continued use the island by the Navy. Instead, the bill gives the Navy the power to decide to stay in Vieques if the military brass says it is needed for training exercises. In a ballot organized by the Puerto Rican government last July, 68 percent of the people of Vieques voted for the U.S. Navy to leave immediately and to return all occupied lands. In the wake of that vote, Washington began to reconsider holding its own referendum.

Over the past weeks, several small protests against the maneuvers have been organized at the main entrance of the base, despite threatening security forces made up of U.S. Marines and federal cops deployed to try to intimidate opponents of the U.S. Navy. Some of the organizations involved in earlier mobilizations called for a moratorium on civil disobedience actions because of the tight security measures around the base. Others decided to suspend protests in the wake of the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington.

Following the September 26 meeting, Ismael Guadalupe of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques encouraged opponents of the Navy exercises to relaunch and extend a civil disobedience campaign that has been one aspect of the protests over the past year or more. "This struggle has to be maintained among the people," Guadalupe said. Given heightened security by U.S. forces around the military base, Guadalupe suggested alternative sites for the protests, including on the main island.

Closing ranks with Washington's call for "unity" in its drive to war against Afghanistan, some bourgeois forces and individuals that had been drawn to support the demand to close down the bases now say that the fight to get the U.S. Navy out of Vieques is a secondary issue to supporting the U.S. war drive.

"To differ at this moment is to be unpatriotic and to be with the terrorists," said Congressman Luis Gutiérrez of Illinois, justifying his vote for the legislation. The congressman is one of a number of bourgeois politicians that participated and got arrested during civil disobedience protests and other actions last summer.

Others such as Dennis Rivera, president of the hospital workers union in New York who was jailed for participating in a civil disobedience action, told El Nuevo Día, "The problem is that Vieques seems distant. The attention is going now to resolving the dramatic problems that the city [New York] has. We continue committed to get the Navy out, but (promoting that effort) has been made more difficult," he added.  
 
 
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