Monday, April 08, 2002
Vieques Mayor Rejects Navy Hospital Help
Melanie Feliciano's "A Different Kind of 'Terrorism' on Vieques" contains a most interesting interview:
"Most Viequenses are not anti-Navy," said Richard Fitz, a retired New Yorker who runs a hostel on the island. "The Navy just offered to staff our hospital, and our idiot mayor refused."
"Meanwhile, he added, "the boat to Fajardo is filled with the elderly and children having to go for X-rays because our hospital does not have the equipment or the personnel to run it. That is a typical political injustice that we endure here. I believe that the forces behind
getting rid of the Navy are big developers who can't wait to rape our island."
Real estate development has been the hidden secret of the Vieques debate ever since Puerto Rico's Statehood Party Governor, Pedro Rossello, demanded the Navy leave Vieques, where it has trained since WW II. During Rossello's reign, federal funds intended for hurrican victims, AIDs patients and housing for the poor were looted for the benefit of the Statehood Party. If the Statehooders got their hands on the Vieques land, millions of dollars would have changed hands.
|posted by Jim on 5:51 PM|
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