Casa Pueblo. Credit: Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero

By Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
SAN JUAN, Oct 1 2014 (IPS)

The heart of Puerto Rico’s central mountain range is the site of an extraordinary story of struggle and triumph.

Since the 1960s, the government of this commonwealth of the United States had intended to authorise strip mining for copper in the mountain municipalities of Lares, Adjuntas and Utuado. But a decades-long grassroots environmental campaign forced the government to desist.“We are economically self-sufficient, and because of that our talk of freedom is not mere discourse.” -- Casa Pueblo director Alexis Massol

In 1996, then-governor Pedro Rosselló forbade strip mining in the island and signed into law the designation of the parcel of land where the digging would start as “The People’s Forest” (El Bosque del Pueblo).

The successful opposition to mining was led by Casa Pueblo, a non-governmental organisation based in Adjuntas. The group was founded in 1980 by artists, intellectuals and environmentalists associated with Juan Antonio Corretjer, internationally renowned poet and one of the independence movement’s top figures until his death in 1985.

From 1937 to 1942, Corretjer was imprisoned in the United States for his association with the Nationalist Party, which engaged in armed struggle for independence.

In 1982, a secret source inside La Fortaleza (the governor’s mansion, which houses the executive branch) leaked to Corretjer’s group a mysterious map of Puerto Rico, which showed the island crisscrossed with what seemed like infrastructure projects, highways, petrochemical factories, open pit mines and military bases.

Corretjer tasked Casa Pueblo, back then called the Arts and Culture Workshop, with researching what the map meant. After consulting several sources, including the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the group uncovered Plan 2020, a secretive resource extraction and militarised economic development scheme which had strip mining at its heart.

Over 30 years after the exposure of Plan 2020, strip mining was stopped before it began, but other elements of the plan, like the construction of superhighways, continue apace in spite of environmentalist protests.

Casa Pueblo has remained vigilant in its protection of Puerto Rico’s environment and active in promoting sustainable development. From 1999 to 2003, the organisation aided protesters who engaged in civil disobedience to shut down a U.S. Navy firing range in the island-municipality of Vieques. Casa Pueblo’s volunteers carried out peer reviewed in situ scientific studies of military pollution in the firing range.

For its work for peace and development, Casa Pueblo won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize in 2002.

“This is a project of evolution and re-evolution,” said the organisation’s founder and director, Alexis Massol. “It is a response to the capitalist colonial project that the U.S. empire seeks to impose on us. Our project is dynamic; it is not afraid to face errors or contradictions. And it combines education and action.”

Casa Pueblo is named after its physical home, an old house that was taken and restored by the organisation in the mid-1980s. The house has a community library and a large hall often used for meetings and cultural and artistic activities.

Its second floor is used by an artist in residence programme. In the back there is a butterfly sanctuary and another structure which houses Radio Casa Pueblo. Founded in 2007, it is Puerto Rico’s first ever community radio station.

Independence is very important for Casa Pueblo. Since 1989, it has been funded by sales of its own artisanal brand of coffee, Madre Isla. Much of it is grown in Casa Pueblo’s own Madre Isla farm, which also has an eco-tourism project.

In 1999, the Casa Pueblo building went off the electricity grid and switched to a solar energy system.

“We are economically self-sufficient, and because of that our talk of freedom is not mere discourse,” Massol told IPS. “We speak with our own independent voice and we do not make alliances with political parties.”

The organisation’s most ambitious project is the Model Forest. This proposed forest, which has been signed into law by governor Alejandro Garcia-Padilla and is currently being amended and negotiated by the Puerto Rico House and Senate, will cover some 379,000 acres and link 20 existing natural protected areas through ecological corridors.

“The Model Forest is a project of sustainable economic development, ecological preservation and citizen participation,” according to economist Mike Soto-Class, president of the Center for a New Economy, a business think tank based in the capital city of San Juan.

“It promotes conservation while it generates business and jobs, and it contributes to the country’s food security. It is a project that exemplifies a paradigm shift in the use of resources, and in the way development and governance models are conceived.”

“A Model Forest is a territory in which people organise and participate to manage their forests and other natural resources together in search of sustainable development,” according to the Iberoamerican Network of Model Forests (RIABM). “Model Forests contribute to reaching global objectives of poverty reduction, climate change, the struggle against desertification and the Millenium goals.”

There are currently 28 model forests in Latin America.

“In this forest there will be popular participation and shared governance,” explains Massol. “It will be an ecological project but will also include economic development, especially agriculture.”

Casa Pueblo has proposed that the Model Forest be a zone of sustainable agriculture free of genetically modified crops.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

A group of visitors tours Jorge Cora's farm on Jan. 25, 2014. Credit: Elisa Sanchez

By Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
VIEQUES, Puerto Rico, Feb 10 2014 (IPS)

A decade after the United States Navy’s departure, the Puerto Rican island town of Vieques faces new challenges, and the rebirth of its agriculture sector is hampered by a legacy of toxic military trash that has uncertain consequences.

From 1999 to 2003, Vieques, which is just over twice the size of New York City’s Manhattan Island, was the site of a massive civil disobedience campaign to put an end to the presence of the Navy, which had used the island for bombing practice since World War Two. Puerto Rico is officially a commonwealth and territory of the United States.“The soils in Vieques could be safe for farming, or maybe not. There is uncertainty." -- Biologist Arturo Massol

In 2003, the bombing range was closed. But Vieques faces other challenges, like unemployment, crime, and basic infrastructure issues like health and transportation.

The principal means of transportation between Vieques and the main island of Puerto Rico is the ferry that travels the 30 kms between the town of Fajardo and the pier at Vieques’ Isabel Segunda village. The service is plagued by frequent breakdowns and delays, a situation which discourages tourism and makes life difficult for Vieques residents that need to travel to the main island.

“Transportation here is a disaster,” said Robert Rabin, a U.S. expatriate who moved to Vieques in 1980 and was a major figure in the anti-Navy movement. “This situation is an attempt against the island’s economic development and the health of its residents. When the elderly and sick have to go to the main island for medical appointments, they cannot arrive on time because of the poor ferry service.”

Rabin works at the Conde de Mirasol historic museum in Isabel Segunda and at the newly founded Radio Vieques community radio station. He pointed out that the island town of Culebra, some 15 kms to the north of Vieques, faces a similar transportation plight. “This shows the Puerto Rico government’s lack of commitment to the economic development of both Vieques and Culebra,” he said.

Local residents of both islands feel squeezed out by a large influx of wealthy new residents – mostly U.S. citizens – which is allegedly causing “gentrification”. Rabin says that this type of population displacement is also happening in the main island and in the nearby Virgin Islands.

“I see an increase in the control of foreigners, especially American, over local tourism. The government has not responded to this problem. And the local community has not been able to respond in a coherent way due to lack of organisation,” he said.

“There are some foreigners who set up businesses here and provide good jobs for local people, but they are the exception. Most of them employ friends they bring in from the U.S., and offer Vieques residents only the lowest paying jobs, like maintenance.”

Many of these migrants are “snowbirds”, the term used by local residents to describe people who come only for the winter, staying in Vieques no longer than six months a year. According to Rabin, “When they are away they rent their properties for as much as a thousands dollars a week, or even a thousand a night. Some of those houses are real palaces.”

Not all “snowbirds” are rich property owners. Some come for high-paying jobs in the tourism and construction sectors, others work as carpenters or electricians. The poorer ones live in camping tents in Sun Bay beach, in the island’s south coast.

Vieques has been experiencing a renaissance of sorts in its farming sector. New farm operations, both conventional and organic, have been sprouting up in recent years. One of these nouveau agricultural operations is the small company Hydro Organics, which is working a 30-acre farm called La Siembra de Vieques, located between the Lujan and Esperanza sectors.

La Siembra grows squash, green beans, papaya, moringa, avocado, coconut, eggplant, pineapple, guava and salad greens, among many other crops. Part of the labour is provided by woofers, international backpackers that travel from one farm to another, working in exchange for lodging and food. The farm is run according to the principles of permaculture, a discipline that combines ecological design and sustainable agriculture.

“We are getting started with community-supported agriculture,” said Hydro Organics farmer Vanessa Valedon. “We have consumer-investors who pay in advance for six months of our harvest.”

In Monte Carmelo, a hillside sector next to the old Navy firing range, is the farm of Jorge Cora. He has no running water or electricity and there is no paved road leading to his farm. He plants salad greens, okra, peppers, tomato, basil, neem, tobacco and beets, all without the use of agrochemicals.

“I get no government aid, not even food stamps,” said Cora, who prides himself on his independence. “If I can do all this with no chemicals or government help, I challenge conventional industrial farmers to do the same.”

But there is debate as to whether Vieques farm produce is safe to consume. Some point out that all of the island’s settlements are downwind from the old firing range, where shells of different calibres were exploded over 60 years, blowing up dust and debris contaminated with munitions toxic chemicals, which were carried by the winds and settled in the civilian area.

In the 1990s, the Puerto Rico Health Department determined that the cancer rate among Vieques residents was 26.9 percent above the national average. The anti-Navy movement attributed this anomaly to toxic pollution caused by military activities.

Biologist Arturo Massol, professor at the University of Puerto Rico and volunteer staffer at the non-governmental organisation Casa Pueblo, carried out peer-reviewed studies of military pollution in Vieques and how these toxins travel the marine and land food chains. He believes there is reason for concern, but advises that more studies need to be done.

“The soils in Vieques could be safe for farming, or maybe not. There is uncertainty,” he told IPS.

Massol declared that the Puerto Rican government has a duty to carry out soil tests to ascertain any toxic hazard. For its work with the people of Vieques and the anti-Navy protest movement, Casa Pueblo won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize in 2002.