[News] The Toxic Legacy of US Foreign Policy in Vieques, Puerto Rico

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The Toxic Legacy of US Foreign Policy in Vieques, Puerto Rico
Monisha Ríos - April 26, 2023
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Detonation of unexploded bombs on Vieques Island. Photo: US Navy.

Puerto Ricans had no say in the U.S. war of conquest with Spain over its
colonial possessions or in the Treaty of Paris that dictated they were to
become the property of a new empire. The United States acted according
to a well-crafted
strategic narrative
<https://fpif.org/puerto-rico-the-gibraltar-of-the-caribbean-and-launchpad-for-empire/>
of white saviorism and American exceptionalism without concern for the
people whose land it stole. It wanted to further its control to the south
and east via its expansionist foreign policy – and it needed to extend
military power beyond its violently acquired borders to do so; the Monroe
Doctrine of 1823, known as the cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy, provided
the impetus.

In 1941 began the first surge of forced removals in Vieques, an island off
the east coast of Puerto Rico. Once again, there was no democratic process,
no vote, and no consent was sought or given. This land theft process began
shortly before Pearl Harbor. Sugar plantation workers lost their jobs as
families were forced from their homes and the subsistence farming plots
that fed them. With as little as a 24-hour notice, their belongings were
tossed into uncleared resettlement plots that “lacked any previous
conditioning, water, or basic sanitary provisions,” and their family homes
were bulldozed. Some, including pregnant women and children, were given
only tarps to live under for three months until the Navy brought materials
for them to build a new home.  Under these conditions, several people
became severely ill, and a pregnant woman died.

The second wave of forced removals began in the fall of 1947 with the
implementation of the Truman Doctrine. This doctrine marked the shift in
U.S. foreign policy toward interventionism in the affairs of other nations
to further the interests of the United States and expand its global
presence, leading the Department of Defense to become one of the largest
real-estate holders, with almost 4,800 sites worldwide     , covering over
27.2 million acres of property. In Vieques, the Pentagon upended the
agricultural economy with its seizures of 17,500 acres of agricultural land
to create an extensive practice range for war exercises and weapons
testing. This land seizure effectively displaced 40 percent of the
available workforce  and restricted the local food supply. By 1948, the
U.S. Navy had forcibly taken a total of 77 percent of the island of Vieques
away from its people and set the stage for an extreme assault on non-human
life.

The displaced Viequenses were either sent out of Puerto Rico or squashed
into the overcrowded remaining 23 percent of their island. Meanwhile, the
Navy allocated
<https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/HAC/PHA/reports/isladevieques_08262003pr/background.html>
the westernmost portion of the island to the Naval Munitions Support
Detachment (NASD), 100 acres of which the Navy still occupies with its
Relocatable-Over-the-Horizon Radar system (ROHR). The eastern segment was
divided into the Eastern Maneuver Area (EMA), the Atlantic Fleet Weapons
Training Facility (AFWTF), the Surface Impact Area (SIA), and the Live
Impact Area (LIA).  The Navy held its first large-scale joint training
exercise, Operation Portrex, on Vieques in March of 1950. It was the
biggest war game at the time, involving
<https://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/20140519/BILLS-113hr1726v2-SUS.pdf>
“more than 32,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne division and the United
States Marine Corps, supported by the Navy and Airforce” all with the
purpose of preparing the United States for its part in the Korean War.

Brigadier General Edwin L. Sibert, the assistant director of operations for
the Central Intelligence Group (now known as the Central Intelligence
Agency) at the time of his participation in Portrex, described how this
relatively new “practice of conducting large-scale and realistic maneuvers
in the time of peace, incorporating new developments not only in weapons
and tactics, but also in intelligence, psychological, and paramilitary
devices, provides assurance that the first battles of the next war will at
least be fought with the methods of the last maneuvers.” Conducting
large-scale and realistic maneuvers has exposed Viequenses to the same
conditions as the civilian populations of numerous target countries in U.S.
wars of choice and conquest over the course of nearly six decades. These
conditions have included being subjected to the sights, sounds, smells, and
sensations of exploding bombs, gunfire, deployment of chemical weapons,
aerial attacks, and ship-to-shore bombardment.

Conventional warfare tactics were accompanied by psychological warfare and
conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV). International Humanitarian Law
defines
<https://www.icrc.org/en/document/five-things-know-about-sexual-violence-conflict-zones>
the use of sexual violence in conflict as a war crime and can also be
considered a crime against humanity in certain contexts. Yet somehow these
considerations do not apply to all impacted communities, nor do they ensure
that the United States is held accountable for its brutal actions in this
regard.

Social scientists have collected testimonies from Viequense women
concerning sexually violent conduct of military personnel, who sometimes
numbered as many as 100,000 in place with a population of roughly 10,000
inhabitants. One woman related the “legacy of the military occupation of
the island [to] how women in the 50s and 60s were confined to their homes
by the presence of drunken sailors in the street.” Another woman told how
her mother would keep “a machete under her pillow to defend her family in
case carousing sailors broke into the house.” There are countless other
stories that have been silenced and ignored.

Many of these women have been central to resisting the militarization of
Vieques, including through the campaign Justice for Vieques Now
<https://www.justiceforviequesnow.org/about/>. Their demands are
straightforward <https://www.justiceforviequesnow.org/about/>. They have
called for demilitarization, including the removal of Relocatable
Over-The-Horizon Radar system and Mount Pirata Telecommunications Center.
They’ve campaigned for decontamination, involving enclosed detonation of
unexploded ordnance to mitigate the ongoing harm to community health from
open detonation, They’ve demanded the restoration and return of all lands
controlled by the federal government. And they’ve supported a
community-directed Master Plan for Sustainable Development of Vieques
approved in 2004, in addition to a modern hospital and compensation for
health problems related to military activity.

Although the United States paints a so-called feminist face on its
twenty-first-century implementation of the Monroe Doctrine, women in
Vieques are still fighting for justice and trying to heal their community
from the toxic legacy of U.S. foreign policy, while the very government
that claims to “defend” their “freedom” ignores their demands. The plight
of Vieques is a prime example of why U.S. foreign policy must be critically
analyzed, called into question, and restrained by the people of the United
States in whose name unspeakable harm is being done–abroad and within their
own communities. U.S. citizens should be asking who profits from U.S.
interventionism, who develops U.S. foreign policy, whose interests are
served and who pays the price, who wins when the very earth that sustains
us is contaminated by unnecessary military activity and can’t produce food.
After 200 years, the time has come to do away with the colonial law of the
past that has plagued our communities in Latin America and the Caribbean
for far too long. It’s time for the abolition of the Monroe Doctrine, the
Jones Act, and the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic
Stability Act.

*This essay first appeared on Foreign Policy in Focus.*

*Monisha Ríos, PhD, MSW (ella/she/elle/they) is a Puerto Rican
psychologist, social worker, and anti-imperialist veteran of the U.S.
Army.  Since 2013, she has been investigating the American Psychological
Association’s 104-year role in the weaponization and militarization of
psychology in service to imperialism. Monisha works to expose the
psychological warfare component of U.S.-led hybrid warfare, with a special
focus on the narratives used to destabilize peoples’ movements toward
liberation from capitalist-imperialist oppression in Latin America, the
Caribbean, and beyond. She is the founding director of Centro Solidario de
Puerto Rico.*
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