They finally won.

At midnight on April 30, when the U.S. military officially relinquished its jurisdiction over the occupied lands, residents celebrated with fireworks, shooting 68 rockets into the air, one for each year of the Navy’s presence on the island.

A crowd that had gathered outside the gates of the Camp García base to await the historic moment marched onto the grounds carrying the flags of Puerto Rico and Vieques, chanting "Vieques sí, Marina no!" (Vieques yes, Navy no). They drove their vehicles freely past what just a few hours earlier had been a heavily guarded U.S. military post.

Some 40 fishermen and other supporters landed from boats at different points along the former bombing range in eastern Vieques, or rode on horseback into the previously restricted areas, as they participated in a symbolic "invasion" of the military-run territory.

A U.S. Navy official signed the transfer nine hours before the scheduled departure time, and the last remaining U.S. military personnel turned over their guard and vacated the facilities well before midnight.

Since World War II, the U.S. military has occupied large parts of this small island off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico, using it for bombing and live-ammunition exercises. The Navy forcibly removed local farmers and fishermen from their property--giving many of them 24 hours to leave--and took over 26,000 acres of Vieques land to set up a bombing range, an ammunition dump, and other military facilities.  
 
Used for imperialist assaults
For generation after generation, fishermen and other residents protested the Navy’s takeover of the island. They opposed the use of Vieques as a training ground for launching Washington’s wars of aggression abroad, such as the 1983 invasion of Grenada, the 1989 invasion of Panama, the 1999 bombing assault on Yugoslavia, and the wars on Iraq. They also protested the Navy’s devastation of the island’s economy as well as the environmental hazards caused by the bombing and military presence, which contributed to a high incidence of cancer and other health problems among residents.

The struggle against the U.S. military kept reemerging--in the 1960s, as the Cuban Revolution helped spur a renewed independence struggle, in the late 1970s, and then again in 1999. On April 19 of that year, a 500-pound "inert" bomb dropped by a U.S. Navy plane during a training exercise killed a local civilian guard, David Sanes. That was the detonator for a new, sustained wave of protests.

The Vieques movement was part of a broader rise of anticolonial sentiment throughout Puerto Rico, expressed in a struggle spearheaded by the telephone workers to prevent the sale of the state-owned phone company whose high point was a two-day general strike by half a million workers in July 1998--and the campaign to free pro-independence political prisoners, which won amnesty for 11 patriots in September 1999. Demonstrators repeatedly took to the streets of Puerto Rico and U.S. cities with large Puerto Rican populations to demand the Navy’s withdrawal. Some protests in Puerto Rico drew tens of thousands.

After Sanes’s death, groups of fishermen, teachers, and other protesters carried out civil disobedience actions. They entered Navy-run territory and set up encampments, some of them in the area of the bombing range. For a year the Navy suspended its bombing practice.

In face of these sustained demonstrations, U.S. president William Clinton signed an agreement in January 2000 with the colonial governor, Pedro Rossell" of the pro-statehood party, stipulating that the U.S. Navy would withdraw by May 2003 if Vieques residents voted for such an action in a referendum. In the meantime the bombing exercises would resume with "inert" shells.

On May 4, 2000, the White House sent 100 U.S. marshals and 200 FBI agents, backed up by warships with 1,200 marines, to evict all the protesters on the Navy-occupied land. The predawn raid took place in the wake of an April 22 SWAT-style assault by U.S. immigration cops and marshals on a house in Miami, ordered by the Clinton administration in the name of returning a Cuban child, Elián González, to his father.  
 
Refused to give up
Despite this show of force, protesters were not deterred and continued civil disobedience actions. Hundreds were prosecuted and jailed. The U.S. government sought to use its stepped-up war drive after 9/11 to intimidate demonstrators. Despite this pressure, marches, rallies, and pickets continued. The pro-autonomy colonial administration of Sila Calderón, which had won office on the promise of getting the Navy to end its bombings, organized a nonbinding referendum in July 2001. A two-thirds majority voted for the immediate withdrawal of the U.S. military.

Facing a clear defeat, the U.S. authorities canceled the referendum they had scheduled for November 2001. The Bush administration said it would abide by the previous agreement and withdraw the Navy by May 1, 2003. On April 30 the Navy turned over the more than 15,000 acres of land on the eastern part of the island that were still under its control to the U.S. Department of the Interior. That agency is now charged with turning this land, plus 3,100 acres on the western part of the island that had been returned previously, into a wildlife refuge.

Many of the local residents, however, oppose handing over the land to the U.S. Department of Interior. Only 4,375 acres has been turned over to the municipality--one-fifth of the previously occupied lands. Many in Vieques see this decision, in which they had no say, as a reaffirmation of the colonial status of Puerto Rico.

"Our demand is very clear: these lands are ours," said Ismael Guadalupe, a leader of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques. "We don’t recognize the right of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to administer them."

"The Navy still holds the titles to the lands," said Imac Morales, one of the hundreds of people who had been arrested during previous civil disobedience protests against the Navy.

"The importance of this action is to send a message to both the Navy and the Department of the Interior that this is our land, and that we don’t have to ask for permission from any body to enter it," said one of the residents who participated in one of the May 1 boat landings. Local community groups report that a local fisherman, found catching crabs in the restricted areas by federal agents, was fined $25 per crab. In response, residents of the nearby Santa María neighborhood went en masse to the area and fished for three days in defiance of the U.S. authorities.

CaldeRón said it was "premature" to speak about returning the land to the residents. She insisted that it will be a "long and complex process that must be done in stages and that must not be forced artificially." Community organizations are demanding their active participation in all decisions related to the restoration and decontamination of the land in Vieques.

In a letter signed by different community organizations, they demanded the "complete and comprehensive environmental cleanup and restoration of all lands, coastal zones and other natural and cultural resources." They are calling for the cleanup to be conducted with care for the future social and economic development of Vieques, such as "fishing, camping, hiking, kayaking, guided nature tours, other eco-tourism projects, agriculture, housing, and other social uses."  
 
 
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