Sanes is the sister of David Sanes, who was killed by a bomb during a Navy training session April 19. Since that date thousands of Puerto Ricans have mobilized to demand the Navy get out of Vieques.

The battle over Vieques is at a critical juncture. Any day now, U.S. president William Clinton is expected to announce plans to resume bombing practice there, which has been suspended since April. Under the Navy's current schedule, the battle group of the USS Eisenhower is supposed to sail from Norfolk, Virginia on December 2, to be trained in the use of live munitions on Vieques. The ships are to return to the United States by Christmas and be deployed in the Middle East in February. Under a 1983 agreement with the Puerto Rican government, Washington is supposed to give 15 days' notice before using the bombing range in Vieques.

The weekend of November 19-21 saw an increase in the tempo of activities in Vieques, including the Saturday evening rally in front of Camp García and the reinforcement of camps where protesters have been occupying the bombing range for months. The weekly vigils at the entrance to Camp García are more accessible to a wide range of people than the civil disobedience camps, which can only be reached by boat.

The strengthening of the camps was both political and physical. Hurricane Lenny, a late season storm, passed to the south of Vieques November 17 and destroyed buildings at a number of the camps. On the south side of the island, the storm shelter built by the Puerto Rican Independence Party was flooded and had to be evacuated The small chapel built on the National Hostos Congress camp was also destroyed.

"We are preparing to increase the civil disobedience," said Ismael Guadalupe, a leader of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques. "We want a Vieques without fences, without the threat of bombs without feeling that we are prisoners in our own land."

The Puerto Rican secretary of justice, José Fuentes Agostini, appealed for "calm" if U.S. authorities order the arrest of the protesters in the Vieques camps. He stated November 23 that the government of this U.S. colony was prepared appeal to the U.S. court in Puerto Rico if Clinton orders the resumption of military exercises in Vieques. Under the pressure of the mass sentiment among working people throughout Puerto Rico against the U.S. military presence on Vieques, even the pro-statehood governor, Pedro Rosselló, has tried to paint himself as a defender of the island.

"We do not know what the Navy will do," said Frente Socialista leader Rafael Bernabe, "The only thing we can do is not to lose the will to fight."

The Frente Socialista has called a picket for 4:30 p.m. November 24 at the main gate to Ft. Buchanan, in the San Juan suburb of Guaynabo. Ft. Buchanan is the headquarters of the U.S. Army South units that were forced to relocate from Panama recently. This base will also be the scene of protests if the protesters in Vieques are arrested.

On Sunday morning, November 21, the roughly 100 people who had spent the night at the protest camps on the north side of the live impact zone marched to Observation Post 1, the three-story building where David Sanes was killed.

Hector Pesquera, a leader of the National Hostos Congress, said that when the marchers arrived at the high security facility the gate was open but nobody was visible. One person climbed up the outside and put a Puerto Rican flag on the facility.

"The Navy and Clinton have been immobilized," said Pesquera. "The morale of the Navy is very low."

If Clinton does try to reopen the bombing range, Pesquera said, he will encounter the Puerto Rican people in struggle. Pesquera said his organization and others plan to send waves of people to Vieques to replace the people arrested at the camps. If transportation to Vieques is blocked, then the protests will shift to military installations on Puerto Rico.

Since World War II, the presence of the Navy on two-thirds of the land of Vieques has stunted the economic development of the island. Many young people moved to the nearest island that had work. About 30 miles southeast of Vieques is St. Croix, in the US Virgin Islands. With an oil refinery and an aluminum smelter, St. Croix had more work available than Vieques. Angel Parrilla left Vieques in 1958 and is now a supervisor with the Virgin Islands Port Authority. He estimated that between 20 and 25 percent of the 50,000 people who live on St. Croix are Puerto Rican.

"When I retire" said Parrilla "I will go to Vieques to join the struggle to remove the Navy from there, if this had not yet happened."

On Nov. 14, 1493, on his second voyage to the Americas, Christopher Columbus arrived in Puerto Rico. That date is a holiday here. The night before "Discovery Day" is celebrated at schools all across the island with an outpouring of folkloric pageants that stress national identity. Noche Puertorriqueña is even celebrated at schools on U.S. military bases in Puerto Rico.

This year the date was chosen for coordinated protests in many cities in the United States in solidarity with the struggle to get the U.S. Navy out of Vieques. About 25 people picketed a new Navy recruiting station in a working-class neighborhood south of Minneapolis that day; 75 rallied at the federal building in Hartford, Connecticut; and more than 300 demonstrated in New York City (see article on page 4).  
 
 
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