Viéques Libre!

“Great is the empire that we defied, but greater than this empire is our right to freedom.”

Happy May Day and saludos to the people of Puerto Rico and all who struggled to push the U.S. Navy out of Viéques. At midnight last night, the Navy formally turned over its territory on the island to the U.S. Department of the Interior who will turn the bombing range and base into a wildlife refuge.

UCLA U.S. Navy

The struggle isn’t over, though. The end of 60 years of military exercises there is a major victory, but the land remains “off limits” to Puerto Ricans. And there’s still an enormous clean up to be done.

Tomorrow morning the people of Viéques will place a large cross on the former bombing range to commemorate those who have died as a result of illnesses related to the contamination of the site.

This 2000 UCLA map shows the geographic extent of the Navy’s territory on the island. Much of the west end of the island was transferred to the Viéques Municipality and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2001, though this 2003 Navy map still minimizes their apparent footprint. “Live impact” in a “conservation area”?

Some images of resistance from around the Web:

Mural of Milivy Adams Calderón, a boy from Viéques whose death of cancer is widely seen as a result of the military’s contamination of the water.

View of crosses and sea from Monte David.

Mural at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez. Photo by Javier Gonzalez Rivera.

Fishermen blocking US Navy military maneuvers off of Viéques.

Protestors hang banners from the Statue of Liberty, November 6, 2000.

March for the release of political prisoners, September 29, 1999.

More here.