Environmental for Food Justice

Moderator’s note: Speaking of the American Empire, the prison complex at Guantanamo Bay on occupied Cuban soil is not the only case of an unwanted and damaging U.S. military presence in Latin America and the Caribbean. The U.S. naval bombing range at Vieques in Puero Rico is often overlooked. From 1999 to 2003, it remained at the heart of one of the preeminent anti-militarism struggles by environmental justice activists in the Western Hemisphere. I first became aware of the struggle against the bombing range at Vieques through the work of Professor Deborah Berman Santana , a renowned environmental justice scholar, who penned an influential paper on environmental justice at Vieques in the journal, Social Justice ( 2002 ). In that paper, Santana makes the case that military installations and activities are among the worst sources of pollution. Deborah’s work presciently connected connected militarism to environmental racism and eloquently documented the long campaign to evict the Navy ...