Ismael Guadalupe Ortiz was a high school theater teacher in Vieques when the U.S. Navy was still using the island as a testing ground for bombs. He was moved to protest these actions by the death of a 12 year old boy, Chulto Legrán, in 1953. Guadalupe Ortiz died this month, at the age of 82.
In 1964, he organized one of the first demonstrations against the Navy’s use of Vieques. In 1979, he testified on the damage done by these military exercises on an island that was already inhabited by U.S. citizens. In 1999, following the accidental death of David Sanes Rodríguez, a security guard, Guadalupe Ortiz became even more active, spearheading a grassroots movement that became a global phenomenon.
The Navy in Vieques
The U.S. Navy began using Vieques for various military purposes in the 1940s. It tested bombs and other munitions, but also practiced amphibious landings and troop exercises. The Navy eventually occupied about 75% of the island, excluding civilians from areas where dangerous events were taking place, but not evacuating the residents.
The land was acquired in two ways: the largest tracts of land were bought for about $50 an acre from the Benítez family and Eastern Sugar Associates. But the great majority of resident of Vieques lived on small family farms for which they did not possess documents. Since they were unable to prove they owned the land, many were displaced without compensation. Others received small payments for their land, which did not allow them to buy new homes elsewhere. Residents of Puerto Rico saw similar issues following the devastation of Hurricane Maria, when many people were unable to receive FEMA benefits because they didn’t have clear titles to their homes.
There have been concerns about the health effects of living downwind of the tests on Vieques, and about contamination of the Island in spite of cleanup efforts since the Navy left in 2003.
Popular pedagogy
Guadalupe Ortiz staged sit-ins and demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience, allowing himself to be arrested on multiple occasions, but remaining non-violent in his protests throughout. He believed that educating people about the issues at Vieques was the most effective way to bring about change. He called his method of educating people “public pedagogy.”
In an interview in Radical History Review, he explained, “Popular education is the form and the way in which we, members of the community, work to provide a new counternarrative to the traditional education that people get in schools and in the media. Let me give you a concrete example. In organizing citizens to struggle against the Navy, we faced the fact that the written record, the books that had been published on Vieques, did little more than reproduce the official narrative that actively supported the Navy’s presence. We then began the task of becoming involved with other community members, talking and listening to those who had lived through the Navy’s arrival and installation, but whose voices had not been recovered. We began reminding them of that history and educating them, because their history had been excluded from the official version…Popular education requires a bold effort. Bold in the sense that is a new model, different from the traditional or official one. When the people begin appropriating their own history, it becomes theirs, it begins producing changes in the way they think, and community action follows.”
Through sharing oral histories in leaflets and on the radio, Ismael Guadalupe Ortiz and others working with him were able to make more people aware of the problems faced by residents of Vieques. More than 1,500 people were jailed for participation in protests against the Navy’s use of the island. The case became well-known around the world.
Vieques and the issue of Puerto Rico’s status
In February of 2000, then-President Bill Clinton was asked about Puerto Rico’s colonial status as the possible root of this problem behind local discontent with Navy bombing and military exercises on the island. Clinton confirmed that he did not believe that the uprising was related to Puerto Ricans’ lack of committment to issues of national security. Instead, he said that that “the root of the problem [was] the unwillingness of the Congress to give a legislatively sanctioned vote to the people to let them determine the status of Puerto Rico.” As he affirmed: “I want the people of Puerto Rico to decide this….I wish they could decide their status. If it were just up to me, if I could sign an Executive order and let them have a sanctioned election, I would do it today.”
When the Navy left
In May of 2003, the U.S. Navy left Vieques, transferring most of the land they had controlled to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. This area is now the Vieques National Wildlife Refuge. Other parts of the island were transferred to the Municipality of Vieques. Cleanup is still ongoing.
The following year, the Roosevelt Roads Naval Station closed. This major naval base had brought about $300 million into the local economy each year. Vieques suffered with the Navy present, but has suffered economically ever since the Navy left. While tourism has grown since then, the poverty rate among local people is about 59% and the average annual income of $19,803 is lower than that of Puerto Rico as a whole. Gentrification is a concern, with local people being priced out of the housing market. With average annual income below $20,000 and the average sale price of a home at $100,000, housing has become a serious problem.
Guadalupe Ortiz continued his activism after the U.S. Navy left Vieques, focusing not only on the lengthy cleanup and other local problems, but on environmental issues as well.
