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Shortly afterwards, the workers took matters into their own hands and launched a gen-
eral strike in 1915. This helped improve conditions quite a bit but in the end Vieques be-
came a victim of its own success. Through over-cultivation of the land, the big plantations
essentially dried themselves up. By 1935, sugar cane was no longer king.
As if this weren't bad enough, in the late '40s the U.S. military claimed over seventy
percent of the island for military use. This meant shipping out a third of the civilian popu-
lation to other islands (mainly St. Croix) and squeezing the remaining Viequenses into the
central third of the island.
Needless to say, this was a somewhat unpopular move.
I try to imagine how I'd feel if my condo were appropriated by some foreign super-
power and I was herded, along with my fellow D.C. citizens, into a small quadrant of the
city so that the land I once lawfully owned could be used for bombing practice.
But that's what happened. The bombs were stored on the western end of the island
and blown up, for target practice, on the eastern end. The locals, clustered in the middle,
covered their ears and swallowed their pride for half a century until they couldn't take it
any longer.
Things came to a head in the late '90s. In 1999 a civilian security guard was killed when
the Navy accidentally bombed an observation tower on the naval base. Widespread protests
ensued. Demi-celebrities like Al Sharpton, Edward James Olmos and Bobby Kennedy, Jr.
came to the island to join in the fun and were promptly arrested, which only added to the
publicity value of the story.
In May 2003 the Navy left the island forever.
As far as I can tell, not one tear was shed.
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