Hundreds of people joined picket lines at the chained gate of the U.S. Navy's Camp García and at several beach camps on the island of Vieques to bring in New Year's Day. The mobilization marked 257 days since the U.S. government stopped live-fire bombardment of the island.

The protesters "left their families to be with us, which shows their commitment and solidarity to the cause of Vieques," said Nilda Medina of the Coordinating Committee for Justice and Peace in Vieques.

Fishermen took most of the day to ferry the delegations by boat to the restricted zones of the U.S. firing range. Fighters demanding the United States leave the island have maintained encampments there since last April which, along with protests and demonstrations mobilizing tens of thousands, have prevented Washington from restarting its full-scale military training exercises. The protests were sparked by the death of a civilian base worker last April by a bomb dropped by U.S. forces.

Since the 1940s, U.S. naval battle groups have used the island as an essential part of military preparedness. Top military personnel in the Navy and Marines have warned of lack of battle readiness if they are not able to continue to bomb Vieques. The USS Eisenhower aircraft carrier naval group, for example, will carry out its live fire training on an island off the coast of Scotland instead.  
 

Government workers fund inquiry

Another indication of continuing broad support came from the Association of Retired Government Workers of Puerto Rico, who presented a donation of $10,000 to the mayor of Vieques January 4. The fund was raised by workers contributing $2 each and is dedicated to finding out the reason for the high cancer rates of Vieques residents. The U.S. military admits to a series of violations of federal and local environmental regulations but nothing has been done about it to date.

In addition, the fight continues against the government's use of police forces in spying and disrupting organizations that oppose the U.S. colonial policies in Puerto Rico. On January 7, the National Hostos Congress demanded the governor reopen unsolved cases of violent acts against independence organizations committed in the 1970s and 1980s, including the 1975 bombing that killed two people and injured dozens at a rally commemorating the birth of independence hero Eugenio María de Hostos.

The pro-independence newspaper Claridad recently reprinted an article from 1987 to "help refresh the memory" of the governor and others of the police actions against the labor movement. One example included was testimony to a 1987 Puerto Rican Senate hearing where a cop described obeying orders to sabotage properties of the Electrical Energy Authority while undercover in the Union of Electrical Workers so that crime could be attributed to the union.

Meanwhile, the resident commissioner, Carlos Romero Barceló, the nonvoting Puerto Rican representative to the U.S. Congress, testified at hearings of the House Committee on Government Reform in Miami. He was called by Chairman Dan Burton as part of a smear campaign against Puerto Rican independence fighters and the Cuban revolution based on a story that a Cuban agent directed the activities of a Puerto Rican organization and funneled money to Cuba from bank heists and drug trafficking in the Caribbean.

Barceló followed up this slander by urging increased federal funding for the "war on drugs" in Puerto Rico. He praised the federal installation of a new "anti-drug trafficking super radar" on Vieques that is to begin operation in the next two months as well as the recent recruitment of 6,000 more cops.

Pattie Thompson is a member of International Association of Machinists Local 1487 at O'Hare Airport.  
 
 
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