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Article: Vieques and the US Navy.(Vieques, Puerto Rico)(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- The Nation
- Article date:
- December 13, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 The Nation Company L.P. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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While preaching the virtues of democracy to the world, the United States is practicing old-style imperialism in Puerto Rico. The role of the US Navy on the small island of Vieques, la Isla Nena (the baby island), off Puerto Rico's east coast, has become a flashpoint in the increasingly unstable relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico. Whether it will lead to a fundamental change in that relationship is unclear at this point, but already it has led Puerto Ricans of all political stripes to join in a denunciation of US policy.
In 1940 the United States expropriated more than 70 percent of Vieques for the Navy's Roosevelt Roads military complex, the ...