Vieques, the Navy, and Puerto Rican Politics (New Directions in Puerto Rican Studies) Review

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(More customer reviews)The little island of Vieques, a few miles off the eastern tip of Puerto Rico, was made famous in the American media after an errant Navy bomb killed a civilian guard, David Sanes Rodriguez, in 1999. But there was a far, far longer history of resistance to the American military occupation that began in the early 1940s and finally succeeded, in May 2003, in evicting the Navy. For any visitor who wants something more than a vacation in a seeming paradise, Barreto's book--thoroughly researched and briskly and accessibly written--is an excellent companion. Barreto himself has a personal connection with Puerto Rican resistance to colonization as the grandson of a man who maintained a "minishrine" in the town of Lares in western Puerto Rico, site of 1868 rebellion against Spain that remains a landmark in the history of Puerto Rican anti-colonialism. While this connection animates his interest in Vieques, Barreto writes as a historically informed political scientist, not as a propagandist. His interest in the way political myths arise and then shape events drives his account. For this reader--just returned from a first trip to Vieques that included exposure to the pro-Navy myth--this element of the book was particularly valuable. The book enabled me to understand much better the signs reading FUERA LA MARINA (NAVY OUT) that are present throughout the island. Barreto's treatment of the controversy is fair, but the evidence of deceit on the part of the Navy is overwhelming. The book is a case study in United States arrogance masked as benevolence.

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In this analysis of the dispute over the U.S. Navy's bombing range in Vieques, Puerto Rico, Amilcar Barreto looks at the political fallout from the accidental killing of a civilian in 1999, including its impact on Puerto Rican nationalism and ethnic mobilization. In so doing, he finds in the Vieques crisis a metaphor for a larger set of Puerto Rican crises and conflicts. Barreto sets the scene for understanding why Vieques has become a defining protest issue in Puerto Rican politics by providing a comprehensive historical account of protest by Puerto Ricans living in Puerto Rico and in the United States and by telling the story of the island's nagging colonial status under the United States. While the political nature of the Vieques issue remains the focus of the book, he highlights its military aspects, particularly the policy stances of the U.S. Navy. He demonstrates how the U.S. military in the Vieques crisis became not just a catalyst for but an unwitting accomplice in the process of Puerto Rican ethnic mobilization, helping to set the stage for the emergence of a more vigorous and militant cultural nationalism. Barreto also supplies a credible explanation for the surprisingly consensual reaction among Puerto Ricans of all political stripes to what many observers regarded as an unjust assault on the life and livelihood of Vieques residents and an example of U.S. political arrogance. In the course of identifying Vieques as a defining protest issue in Puerto Rican politics, Barreto avoids a weakness common to other treatments of the island's politics by documenting the links between protest and activism in Puerto Rico and in the United States.