WHEN CARMEN VALENCIA WAS FIVE YEARS OLD, troops came banging on her door. Her mother grabbed a long machete. “I had no idea what was going on, but I thought, if they come in here, they’re going to kill us,” she recalls. Now 78, Valencia has lived most of her life on Vieques, one of the Caribbean’s most picturesque islands, under the thunder of bombs. They roared from navy planes just over the hill by her mother’s house, leaving the smell of smoke hanging thick in the air. She was even more frightened of the troops, who would stalk her neighbourhood looking for women to harass. Valencia and her whole family are US citizens. Vieques is part of Puerto Rico, a US territory. She wasn’t living in an enemy country but a 135 sq km island of farms and cattle ranches, ringed by pristine gold beaches and crystal waters. To the US navy, Vieques was what an admiral called its “crown jewel”: the perfect environment to use for target practice. From 1941 until 2003, the navy fired an appalling quantity of explosives into Vieques’ land and sea, and 20 years on, islanders still bear the devastating consequences.
ORMERLY A SPANISH COLONY, Puerto Rico was seized by the US in 1898 as a war prize. In the following years, a series of racist supreme court rulings defined Puerto Rico’s status as a territory “belonging to” but not “part of” the United States, citing its “alien races” and “savage tribes”. Though Puerto Ricans were made US citizens in 1917 – partly so they could be drafted into the first world war – they still can’t vote in presidential
