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Why Are We in Vieques? For decades, the U.S. Navy has used a verdant, biodiverse Puerto Rican island as a target-practice bull's-eye, raining high explosives onto an idyllic tropical landscape. What's a loyal citizen to do when his government seems so thuddingly wrong? Sometimes even a lawyer's gotta break the law. By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
As I sit by the sink in my cell, I've resolved to use the final week of my confinement to consider, with my contraband ballpoint, the events that led me to spend my summer vacation in a Puerto Rican prison. How did I get here? The short answer is simple: On July 6, 2001, I was convicted of trespassing and sentenced to 30 days in jail. But like most of my fellow inmates, I have a longer explanation. As the sun rose on April 28, 2001, I stood on the patio of the Casa Cielo, a small hotel overlooking a lush, green valley that unfolds down toward the tiny port of Esperanza on the island of Vieques, off Puerto Rico's eastern shore. Two miles away I could see a dozen fishing boats race out of the harbor to divert the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard vessels that patrol the waters leading to the "live impact area" of the naval bombing range on the east end of the island. "Those are the decoys," explained Wilda Rodriguez, a former journalist and union organizer who is one of the leading Puerto Rican activists on Vieques. With us were Dennis Rivera, a good friend and head of the Service Employees International Union Local 1199, which represents 215,000 health-care workers in New York State; actor Edward James Olmos, another friend; and Puerto Rican pop star and songwriter Robi Draco Rosa. About ten miles to the southeast I could see a group of dark silhouettes—cruisers and destroyers from the Navy's U.S.S. Enterprise Battle Group, preparing to begin the day's exercises. Closer in to shore, a Coast Guard cutter blocked access to the firing range from Esperanza's harbor. As the fishing boats approached, a pair of Zodiac pursuit craft left the cutter and gave chase. With the decoy action underway, we jumped into a waiting van, sped downhill toward the harbor, jostled through a crowd of journalists, and boarded two fishing boats. Mine was a gunmetal blue 13-foot fiberglass panga with a deep keel and an 85-horsepower Evinrude motor. A fresh coat of marine paint obscured the registration numbers. Two fishermen hovered around the console, staring at us through eye slits in the purple shirts they wore as masks. We could hear the Navy guns firing offshore as a marine patrol from the Puerto Rican police escorted us from the harbor. At first I presumed the patrol would arrest us, but then the boat's uniformed officers approached the gunwales and saluted our small convoy before turning back. They were on our side! Outside the harbor, the waves were high enough that we had to grip the bowlines to keep our feet. Between bone-jarring bumps, I could hear the naked screw whining as the prop went airborne. A third boat packed with journalists and photographers trailed us. About two miles out, we saw the decoy fishing fleet running back toward the harbor, hounded by the Coast Guard Zodiacs. When the crews aboard the pursuit craft realized what we were up to, they peeled away to intercept us. The masked man at the wheel of our panga buried his throttle in the console, and we began a thrilling ten-mile chase. When the Zodiacs pulled in front, we skirted their sterns and raced onward. In each Zodiac, a heavily armed team of five men wearing flak jackets and helmets shouted fiercely for us to heave to and allow them to board. Instead we went faster, skipping across water like the flying fish that issued from our bow wake in thick schools. Finally, as they were closing in yet again, we veered toward shore and crossed a line of breakers onto the reef. Soon we were speeding across the near-shore shoal, a shallow boneyard of rocks and coral heads. The Zodiacs had turned at the reef, reluctant to follow us into the shallows, but the cutter continued to shadow us a half-mile out, burying its bow in the froth. Meanwhile, a Navy SH-3 Sea King helicopter churned above us as a half-dozen spotters with high-power binoculars followed our movements from the military's hilltop observation post, perched on the edge of the live impact zone. Our panga approached the beach; we scrambled onto the bow for a quick debarkment. Eddie turned to Dennis and me and said, "Let's try to hide from them and see if we can stop the bombing for one day." We leapt to shore as our fishermen threw the boat in reverse to run the blockade back to Esperanza. We would later learn that they evaded the Coast Guard Zodiacs on their way home, racing them at full throttle toward the harbor shore. The fishermen hit the boat ramp, and in a seamless maneuver, their boat was up on a trailer and moving down the road toward the forest. "In three seconds they were gone!" marveled a witness to the escape. The Zodiacs were left bobbing in their wake. We sprinted across the silver beach onto a muddy, crater-pocked moonscape that was once a rich mangrove estuary. Dodging discarded equipment, twisted metal, unexploded shells, rockets, and parachute flares, and eating dust from the chopper's downdraft, we scurried up a ridgeline, figuring that once we reached the other side we would at least be out of sight of the observation post. Then we all took off in different directions. The naval police, we knew, were already on their way.
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