And here I thought it was just spin that the locals wanted the Navy out of there.

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/211/nation/Vieques_votes_to_end_Navy_bombing+.shtml

Vieques votes to end Navy bombing

By John Marino, Globe Correspondent, 7/30/2001

VIEQUES, Puerto Rico - Residents here, fed up with six decades of Navy war games that they say have stifled economic development and threatened their health and the environment, voted yesterday to evict the military force from their island in a nonbinding referendum.

With all the precincts reporting, a preliminary count showed that 68 percent of voters cast their vote for Option 2, which calls for an immediate end to Navy training and the cleanup and return of the lands it controls here. Thirty percent voted for the Navy to stay in exchange for a $50 million economic development commitment.

Vieques has 5,893 registered voters, and State Election Commission officials estimated that 80.6 percent of them participated in yesterday's contest.

Some voters - 1.7 percent - chose Option 1, which allows the Navy to continue bombing until May 1, 2003, the exit date set in a federal referendum on the matter, or allow it to continue training indefinitely with live ammunition.

''Today is a beautiful day for Vieques,'' said Miguel Laureano, a 54-year-old merchant, after casting his vote. ''When the votes are counted, there will be no doubt how we feel.''

Myrta Sanes Rodriguez, 52, also voted for the Navy to go.

''After the death of my brother, I don't want anyone else to die here because of the Navy,'' Sanes said. Her brother, David Sanes Rodriguez, a civilian security guard working for the Navy was killed by a wayward bomb in April 1999, sparking a drive across Puerto Rico to end Navy training here.

''There's been enough death here. What we want is peace for Vieques,'' she added.

Yesterday's vote was called by Puerto Rico Governor Sila Calderon as part of a multifaceted campaign she has waged since taking office in January to end Navy bombing. The procommonwealth governor has filed suit against the Navy, claiming the ship-to-shore shelling it conducts off Vieques violates a new noise law she instituted and may be harming the health of Vieques residents.

She has also forged alliances with mainland politicians, notably New York Governor George Pataki, in pressuring the Bush administration to end Navy training here.

''The Vieques people made their decision today, and they spoke clearly. This was the voice of a united people,'' Calderon said.

The Bush White House has said it will seek to cancel a binding referendum slated for Nov. 6 and order the Navy to leave by May 1, 2003.

While the governor has applauded President Bush's acknowledgment that Navy training has caused harm, she said she would continue using all her resources to push for an end to Navy training as soon as possible.

Navy Secretary Gordon England has cited the likelihood of the Navy's losing the November contest in justifying his decision to find alternative training sites for Vieques by May 1, 2003. He has also said it is bad public policy to make national defense policy decisions by local referendum.

Although yesterday's vote had been criticized by opponents as little more than a beauty contest, it was being closely watched in Washington.

''If the Navy does well, if the Navy wins or shows it can win, this will strengthen the position of those who say `go and have the [November] vote, you can win,''' a Pentagon spokesman, Rear Admiral Craig Quigley, told the San Juan Star yesterday.

''The reverse, of course, is also true. If the Navy gets hammered, it strengthens the position of those who say it was a dumb idea to have a vote,'' he added.

Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe traveled here on Friday and said he would use the results of the vote to pressure Congress and the White House to abide by the will of Vieques residents. He also said he would push for the Senate, where the Democrats have a majority, to hold hearings on the Vieques issue.

Local residents also believe the vote will be noticed.

''We will send a profound message to the US government. Even though they say it is not valid, we know they are paying close attention to the results,'' said Carlos Ventura, a 39-year-old fisherman and one of the leading figures in the protest movement.

But while the vote results could strengthen congressional support for the Bush plan, Pentagon officials have said it will have no effect on the next 10-day round of Navy training, set to begin Wednesday. Protest groups here say they will continue the civil disobedience campaign they have waged since 1999 in an attempt to halt the maneuvers.

Calderon has stressed that she sees the Vieques debate as a human rights issue, not a political one.

But the pro-Navy campaign waged here, which features posters of Fidel Castro asking residents to vote against the Navy, had portrayed yesterday's vote as a referendum on whether Puerto Rico wants to continue its ties with United States or become independent.

Two of the Navy's closest congressional allies, US Senator James Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, and US Representative James Hansen, Republican of Utah, published a column in local newspapers Thursday saying that a vote against the Navy would lead to Puerto Rico's independence.

Some political opponents of Calderon, such as former Resident Commissioner Carlos Romero Barcelo, had called on residents to vote for the Navy as a protest against what they say is Calderon's anti-Americanism.

''My conviction as a US citizen and retired soldier is that the Navy should stay here,'' said Adaligio Monel Huertas, 75, who cast his vote for the Navy because he says that federal social benefits Puerto Rico receives depends on it.

Other supporters here said the Navy has been unfairly demonized.

''I lived here my whole life. I was here when the Navy arrived and everything they say about the Navy is a lie,'' said Maria Pereira, 69, recalling how the military force provided jobs to her family and how a sailor helped her sister get to a hospital in Puerto Rico after she broke her arm.

But for many residents, the vote boils down to one issue: the Navy has done too little over the years to contribute to the community and has overstayed its welcome.

''The people are asking the Navy to leave because the Navy has never been a good neighbor, as they call themselves, and never will be one,'' Ventura said.

-- Anonymous, July 30, 2001

Answers

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/210/region/Memories_of_how_the_U_S_Nav y_t:.shtml

Memories of how the U.S. Navy took over Vieques still very much alive

By Michelle Faul, Associated Press, 7/29/2001 17:35

VIEQUES, Puerto Rico (AP) First came the man with the letter telling Severina Guadalupe's father they had 24 hours to pack up their belongings. Then came the bulldozer that ripped down the wooden farmhouse.

''They came up with this huge mechanical thing and came up to the porch and whup! They just drove over our house,'' recalled Guadalupe, 74.

Her memories of how the Navy took over two-thirds of Vieques island were very much alive as she prepared to vote Sunday in a referendum on the Navy's military exercises that have gone on for nearly 60 years.

For decades before the Navy came in 1940, Guadalupe's extended family lived on 27 acres devoted to sugar cane sold to the nearby refinery and vegetables like yucca and plantain, which they ate.

It was a peaceful, self-sufficient lifestyle.

Then came the notification.

''There was an American and a man who spoke Spanish. They came with this letter telling my father that we had 24 hours to collect our belongings and leave,'' she said.

''But we refused to leave our land, our farm, so when that machine came it destroyed everything our cooking pots, our clothes they left us with nothing,'' said Guadalupe, who was 13 at the time.

The Navy paid her father and his brothers $70 for each acre. Her father's share was a mere $350, she said.

Her family rented a small house in the island's main town of Isabel Segunda for $3 monthly, with her 14 brothers and herself sleeping in a couple of overcrowded rooms.

Her father did whatever jobs he could to get by a bit of carpentry, handiwork around houses and her mother, who used to sew all the family's clothes, turned to dressmaking to make a living.

For three years, some of her 14 brothers got work helping the Navy construct a munitions warehouse on the western end of the island where the foundations of their home remain.

Then there was no work, so most left for the nearby Virgin Islands or the mainland United States. More than a third of the island population was displaced in this way.

Guadalupe married a man who bought two gas stations, and they managed well until he was murdered by robbers.

Today, only she and one brother remain on Vieques. Four other brothers who stayed on the island died of cancer not an unusual statistic here.

Guadalupe has no money to retire, so she manages a shop for a friend, selling a mishmash of goods from motor oil and bicycle tires to canned tuna fish and tomato paste.

She thinks her life would have been better if the Navy had never come.

''We never wanted them here. I have always fought for them to go,'' she said. ''It's too late for me now, but if they go, perhaps life will improve for the children.''

-- Anonymous, July 30, 2001