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news:
Conference targets
Vieques dilemma
By Tanya Dellaca
Summer Forty-Niner
The controversy
surrounding the U. S. Navy's presence in the island of Vieques
was addressed last Saturday at Cal State Long Beach.
A conference and
lecture, given by Victor Rodriguez, associate professor of
the Chicano and Latin studies department, addressed the Navy's
expropriation of about two-thirds of the island's land off
the coast of Puerto Rico.
The land being
used for military exercises and bombing practice since 1941
is one of the largest and best strategically located Navy
installations in the world. It was built during World
War II.
"The Navy
has no interest in developing the land so they can take it,"
Rodriguez said.
A film directed
by Johanna Bermudez Ruiz, showed an inside look at Camp George
and gave insight into the organized civil disobedience being
conducted by the locals in order to reclaim their land.
Vieques women are
very involved as leaders in the protests and organization
"It's the women who do most of the work," Rodriguez
said.
One Vieques woman
in the film shared her experience. "Imagine receiving
a letter saying, leave your house, it will be knocked down,"
she said.
The lecture, also
sponsored by the Puerto Rican Alliance, presented an explanation
of the United States' attitudes and procedures of confiscating
land from the natives.
"The government
offered to relocate the people and the cemeteries," Rodriguez
said.
According to the
film, those who chose to remain on the island face imprisonment,
by FBI and U. S. Marshals, economic hardships, toxic waste
exposure, to which some attribute their cancer development.
"It is a live
impact area, bombings have caused the destruction of mangroves,"
Rodriguez said, "and toxic waste has been found on the
ocean floor.'"
Rodriguez also
presented statistics showing population to be down from 11,651
in 1920 to 9,106 in 2000, citing environmental damage and
a 26.7 percent higher cancer rate in Vieques than in Puerto
Rico. Rodriguez also said inadequate health care facilities
added to the problem.
In 1999, the government
of Puerto Rico established a commission to investigate and
to make recommendations on the Navy's presence and its effects
on the island.
"This is not
a fringe radical group. It's the Puerto Rican government,"
said Rodriguez.
The group concluded
that the more than 9,000 remaining Vieques residents are citizens
and have rights.
"This is a
fight for justice. Puerto Rico is a colony of our States,"
supporter Al Duncan said. "We have a special obligation
to stand up for them."
Rodriguez said
to the audience that, "Only empires have colonies."
Further stating that the U.S. is a democracy, and that democracies
do not do what the U.S. is doing in Vieques. He also points
to the U.S. losing its seat on the United Nations Human Rights
commission as a result of the treatment of the Viequenese
people.
"The United
States overpowered the law in Puerto Rico, politically and
economically," Rudy Torres of the Puerto Rican Alliance
said. "We now have to serve the American Army."
Puerto Rican Alliance
chairman, Antonio Arriaga also presented the group's goals
for ending the Navy's presence in Vieques.
"The Navy
will leave, no doubt about it," Arriaga said. "We
need to find an alternative [site]."
Arriaga hopes to
gain support for the issue by circulating petitions, flyers,
soliciting donations and by spreading information by word
of mouth.
For further information,
one may call, Victor Rodriguez at (562) 985-8560, the Puerto
Rican Alliance at (805) 527-0273 or at viequeslibre.org.
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