The Caribbean island that spent sixty years as a live-fire military testing ground
In short: Vieques, a small Puerto Rican island, was once a strategic target range for the United States Navy. For over six decades, the military conducted live munitions exercises, displacing local residents and leaving behind a legacy of environmental contamination and unexploded ordnance that continues to shape the island's recovery today.
Known as Isla Nena, or 'little girl island,' Vieques has a history marked by colonial struggle and strategic exploitation. Indigenous peoples first inhabited the island thousands of years ago, but by the 19th century, it had become a plantation-based economy reliant on sugarcane. This era ended abruptly in 1941 when the U.S. Navy seized nearly eighty percent of the land to establish a base intended to protect the Panama Canal and serve as an Atlantic counterpart to Pearl Harbor.
The military's presence transformed the island into a testing ground for live munitions, with bombardments occurring on average 180 days per year. Starting in 1972, the Navy utilized depleted uranium munitions, a practice that local residents believe contributed to higher cancer rates. Tensions reached a breaking point in 1999 after a civilian employee, David Sanes, was killed by a misfired jet bomb. This tragedy ignited a massive civil disobedience campaign, drawing support from international figures, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Rigoberta Menchú, eventually forcing the Navy to withdraw in 2003.
Today, the former military lands are a national wildlife refuge, but the cleanup process is immense. A 2021 Government Accountability Office report estimated that millions of items of potentially explosive material were present, with remediation efforts expected to last until 2032. Beyond the environmental challenges, the island faces significant infrastructure hurdles. Hurricane Maria devastated the local economy in 2017, and the subsequent closure of the only hospital led to a humanitarian crisis, highlighting the ongoing struggle for health and stability for the 8,249 residents who call Vieques home.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Vieques, Puerto Rico
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