Why Are We in Vieques? (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine October 2001

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Why Are We in Vieques? (Cont.)

ABOUT TWO HOURS went by before the searchers spied Eddie in his white shirt, two miles away on a ridgeline. MPs were dispatched to snatch him. Fifteen minutes later they had him in custody, and we heard an officer radio the message, "Range is hot," followed by the distant report of naval gunfire.

Eddie told us that he'd fallen asleep under a bush after eluding the helicopter. When he woke up, he was worried that the Navy would start up the bombing again, so he took a little hike. The soldier who finally caught him got his autograph and told him, "You won Survivor!"

Our captors drove us all to the naval compound at Camp Garcia, where they turned us over to a less refined crowd. Our new guards made us kneel upright on sharp gravel, searched us, and took our shoes, socks, and belts. Then they marched us toward a chain-link enclosure containing 24 other male protesters. An adjacent enclosure housed about seven female prisoners, including Commonwealth Senator Norma Burgos, vice-president of the Puerto Rican Statehood Party, and Myrta Sanes, sister of the slain security guard, David Sanes.

As we approached, the prisoners cheered and chanted, "¡Kennedy! ¡Olmos! ¡Vieques, sí! ¡Marina, no!" A guard ordered them to shut up. When they didn't, five soldiers opened up with pepper spray, shooting the prisoners through the fence. They writhed on the ground in their handcuffs, fighting to escape the agonizing burns. Some of them fainted and urinated on themselves. One man crapped in his pants. We were thrown in among the groaning, miserable bodies.

We spent the next few hours parboiling in the steamy Caribbean sun. Eventually we were loaded onto a bus and driven to the beach for a trip, via cargo barge, to Roosevelt Roads Naval Base on the Puerto Rican mainland.

We sat handcuffed on the open steel deck for roughly four hours. Beside us, Norma Burgos laughed and chattered, her lively elegance undiminished by handcuffs and dirty clothes. She had sneaked through the Camp Garcia fence four days earlier, hiked 11 hours to the live impact area, and slept in the bushes, feeding herself from underground caches stocked for thedisobedientesby the Vieques Fishermen's Association. She finally raised a white flag when the bombs began dropping around her that morning.

Norma told us that the military police had brought in a new group of detainees after they caught us, including Robi Draco, whose boat had been turned back by the Coast Guard. He had returned to the harbor and climbed through the fence near Camp Garcia with a number of protesters, including U.S. Representative Luis Gutierrez of Chicago.

As Norma later told the Congressional Hispanic Caucus during a hearing on Capitol Hill, she saw the guards beat Gutierrez. His knees hurt from kneeling on the rocks, and he bent to sweep a space smooth of pebbles. One guard kicked his ribs from behind and then, with the help of another guard, picked up the handcuffed congressman and flung him face-first onto the gravel. Norma told us one of the guards then put his foot on Gutierrez's neck and ground his face into the gravel, saying, "You don't like the rocks on your knees? Try some on your face." Gutierrez confirmed the story when we saw him in federal prison the next day.

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