Replies

"I know my history, TRUE history, quite well. The truth is that there were no Tainos in Vieques at the time of discovery."

I presume you mean when the Spanish discovered it as opposed to the people that were already living there, when the Spanish arrived, discovered it?

Let's see how this brief, but surely untrue and misguided, History of Vieques island, Puerto Rico, by Wanda Bermudez, 1998 compares with your "TRUE historical account.

Ms. Bermudez says:

"The little we know about the pre-Columbian inhabitants (of Vieques that were slaughtered by the Spanish conquistadors) is derived from archaeological findings."

"The most important to date is the one at La Hueca where artifacts made in amethyst, agate, turquoise and jade were shaped like South American condors."

Well, of course, thanks to you, we know that someone else must have buried that Taino/Cacique stuff on Vieques to make your expert sources look bad.

"Two brave brother Caciques in Vieques, Cacimar and Yaureibo, lead separate revolts against the Spaniards. They were soon defeated and killed. What was left of the Indian population was reduced to slavery and taken to Puerto Rico."

I much prefer your "TRUE" historical, romantic tale of the necessary killing of the cannibalistic Taino men and the freeing of their captive women to marry and live a blissful life of equality, love and assimilation with their Spanish conquistador saviors.

Your "TRUE" historical account is much more pleasant to read than the horror stories that abound, throughout the 'New World', of the Spanish conquistadors that would, search for "wives" and have their 4 groomsmen hold the willing, blissful, blushing, bride-to-be down, while the proud groom consumated the marriage.

How could so many have been so misguided as to believe those native indian accounts?

"Once the Indians were expelled from the island a succession of attempted colonizations by the English, French and Danish failed. The Puerto Rico Spaniards drove them out every time.

Ms Bermudez says, "Black slaves were brought in from the neighbor British islands."

"By the time the USA took over the island in 1898, after the Hispanic (more PC) American War, there were 4 big Centrales. Sugar milling made a few families rich while most of the population worked on the fields."

Ahh, more un-TRUE history and it just keeps coming.

"When the Navy arrived in 1941, there were 10,362 inhabitants in Vieques..."

Ms. Bermudez doesn't say how many were adults or children.

"The Navy EXPROPRIATED (there's that word you don't like, again) two thirds of the land ..."

To use as a base to train for a war to save the whole free world from the Axis. How selfish!

Ms. Bermudez' bibliography includes:

Vieques en la Historia de Puerto Rico by Dr. Juan Amedee Bonnett Benitez

Vieques: History of a Small Island by Elizabeth Langhorne

Vieques Antiguo y Moderno by J. Pastor Ruiz

Hmmm, way different than your list of suggested readings. When the PIP/Marxists take over they can burn these books and keep the ones you recommended. Maybe the nazis wouldn't have gased the entire population of Puerto Rico, after all.

You can also take a look at:

History of the Navy in Vieques.

The Navy's own Vieques site.

Then there's a site created by Juan Guisti-Cordero on 8/17/2000. Guisti-Cordero doesn't list any of his credentials, but he sure sounds like one of those Marxist/Independentistas to me.

One-Stop Shopping For Navy Facts: A Response To The Navy's Vieques Website

Nothing I read there really sounded like substantiated "facts". His ramblings sounded more like histerical opinions.

For example, "the extent of the ecological damage the Navy has wreaked on Vieques."

Oh now, I guess that just depends on who you ask. It sounds like the Bio-bay group would take the condition of any beach on Vieques over any on the main island of Puerto Rico.

Which bay do they say is in better shape? Is the phosphorescent bay on Vieques healthier or the one in Lajas, Puerto Rico?

You said, "Who is to say what would or could have happened, but it should have been the choice of the people."

That's not how a 'Representative Republic' works. That's what we have, you know? It's not majority rules.

What have been the results of every referendum, that the U.S. Taxpayers have been forced to pay for, on Puerto Rico? Have a majority of the residents of Puerto Rico ever voted for anything other than the U.S. Taxpayers continued support and to pay all of Puerto Rico's bills?

What's your concept of "AUTONOMY" you keep referring to so longingly?

Is this like ungrateful teenagers wanting mommy and daddy to keep paying all their bills, but to let their non-self-supporting teenagers run the family?

Is that how it works in your family?

The U.S Taxpayers still own 22,000 acres on Vieques and 11,000 acres in Roosevelt Roads in Ceiba. We gifted 4,000 acres to the whinning marxists, already.

They want the rest? The marxists can buy it back from the U.S Taxpayers at today's fair market value.

Sound fair, or do you work for free and give your family's possessions away to anybody that demands them?

I know her work and again it is a synopsis .....as was my little diatribe. The pre-columbian history of Puerto Rico and theislands immediately around it is known to every 5th grade student on the Island. Of course there were people thereprior to the Tainos. Latest data ventures to describe two prior cultures before that of the Taino. The facts are ....the taino civilization of the lesser antilles were practically killed off or assimilated by the Caribe. The "war front was that of the Culebra, Vieques and the cayos around it to the eastern coast of the main island Boriken (Puerto Rico). These cultures have been theorized to migrated up from the S.A. mainland as did the Tainos and the Caribes. Yes there were settlements on Vieques as the Caribe warfare was a small war-party thing not mass invasion (it took decades to come up from the mainland S.A..The caciques on vieques, if they were or men who assumed leadership, were independent of the big caciques on PR but still subservient to some extent.The population on Vieques was tiny in comparison because of the marauding Caribes. The few that were there got welcome relief of the se by the spaniard incursion...yes short lived as the spaniards quickly proved. Glad you are reading !! Since when is cannabalism romantic ? ....and the life of the captives was far from idyllic...that was part of that culture.Are you confused about the Taino (agrarian) and the Caribe (warlike-predatory) cultures ? The conquistadors had little to do with settling Vieques...they moved on but the spaniard settlers did all that you said and worse. Actually the black slave trade was very small coming from the Brit islands and later...1600's and up. The larger scale traders were the slave merchants from the west african shores. The plantation economy on Vieques was no different than any other island in the carribean and the southern US, slaves or no slaves.The top of the socioeconomic ladder was always the pennisulares or their "unblemished" blood descendants....same in every town in Puerto Rico. Vieques was ceded to PR in the 1850s before that an independant COLONY much like other plantation supporting islands. 10 - 20, 000 is about the size of the average smaller country municipalities in Puerto Rico at the time of the S-A War.
As far as Marxism...I'm probably more of a capitalist than you are....since you presume to know my political and socioeconomic philosophies. If you bother to check out the bibliography I listed you would find textbooks, documentary type papers,theses, US State Department and Interior Department documents and non-Puerto Rican (academic) midstream American authors. A far as the referendum goes....it should be paid for by tax dollars9as opposed to some of the ridiculus things our tax dollars are used for....including supporting foreign economies and the PLO terrorists.The money made by the federal government in tax base and the money of big private business (the vast majority of which comes back to the states) in PR more than compensates that pittens.In fact just the lives of the PR soldiers that died for their sovereign nation in WW i and WW II compensates. The % turn out for voting in PR is higher than most states. I never said the voters were any more intelligent than ours and they are just as easily malleable.There are too many lazy people on the island and the original concepts of political identity have blurred with economic privelege (or perceived privelege). Nature meant PR to be coffee , sugar cane, lesser veggies and precious wood based in economy with a smattering of light industry and responsible heavy industry. Overpopulation and too much heavy industry coupled with the average persons acceptance of the status quo will ruin it for them, family, visitors ...etc..>
My contention is that the issue of the right to acquiring that land on Vieques, for the common defense, is secondary to the issue of why PR wasn't treated like Cuba after 1898 and the Phillipines after the bloody Phillipine-American Expeditionary Conflict of the first decades of 1900s.

Plus.......the referendums are purely a poll...and a very scripted one at that. The real deal in congress....would they even consider giving up a territory without if it came to that...can they agree on anything that has to do with the well being of a people they clearly consider beneath them. How bad will it hurt their pockets and the pockets of their business constituency. The lessons in capitalism, economics and resource utilization is not lost on the few PRs who have sat up to take notice.

I will leave the last word to you (as O'Reilly says) and hopefully it won't be derogatory.

Fell free to communicate with me if it is worth your while .. Lefrep@aol.com