From the stoop of K Llog’s Mini Mart in Brooklyn to the steps of City Hall, Puerto Ricans across the city expressed anger and disgust yesterday over the Navy’s refusal to stop testing bombs on Vieques island.
About 30 protesters, angry over President Bill Clinton’s Jan. 31 initiative that calls for the continued use of Vieques for testing and his threats to arrest protesters on the island, chanted in Spanish, “Vieques, yes! Navy, no!” in front of City Hall.
“The people of Vieques have suffered enough,” said Councilmember Margarita Lopez (D Manhattan). “President Clinton has not defended the people of Vieques his people! He has destroyed their land ...This cannot continue.”
Similar sentiments were echoed in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where many Puerto Ricans live.
“I love America, but what’s going on now is wrong,” Martin Fillipio, 56, said in front of the K Llog’s Mini Mart on Metropolitan Avenue. “This country has taken me in, and I appreciate it. I don’t think my grandchildren will feel even half the same way. They see Clinton’s America, where people are getting killed. It makes me very sad.”
Vieques has been a naval bombing test site for 60 years. After World War II, the Navy bought two thirds of the island, with civilians sandwiched in the middle, and used it as its Atlantic testing site.
“The area is blackened and devastated,” said Hiram Monserrate, president of the Latino Action Center, a community service organization in Queens. “There are warning signs and bombed out cars and shells all over the ground. |
“This is logical, not political,” said Monserrate, who visited Vieques in January. As citizens and human beings, this is too much.”
Clinton has said the tests performed in Vieques are necessary for national defense. That assertion has been questioned by several politicians.
“Unproven grounds of national safety are not enough to justify this,” Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer said outside City Hall yesterday.
Clinton has proposed that testing continue at Vieques until next year, when the island’s 9,400 residents will vote on a referendum to end the bombings. For many people, next year is too long too wait.
“People in the community, of every party, are outraged and want something done now,” said Gloria Quinones, of Todo El Barrio Con Vieques, which has lobbied Congress for the end of bombing on the island. “They feel that these bombings are unjust and demand that we have a say. Not in a vote next year, but now.”
Melissa Mark Viverito, a member of Todo Nueva York con Vieques, said her group is prepared to respond if the government arrests protesters on Vieques. “If the government forcibly arrests the peaceful protesters in Vieques, not even giving them a say in their own destiny, we will mobilize at 5 p.m. on that day and march to Times Square in protest,” she said.
In Williamsburg, frustration is clearly mounting over the issue.
“Forget Elian,” said Sandy Reiol, 36. “He’s cute, but people are dying in Puerto Rico. |