Carta a Clinton del Nuevo Alcalde de Vieques

[Eddier1]

Vieques, Puerto Rico 00765


November 10, 2000

The Honorable William J. Clinton
President of the United States
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Clinton:

My name is Dámaso Serrano López and I am the Mayor-elect of Vieques,
Puerto Rico. I won Tuesday+s election with 63.8% of the votes, for a
four-year term as Mayor of Vieques. My campaign focused on achieving the
immediate and permanent cease and desist of all military activities in
Vieques, which is the primary goal and demand of our people.

At the same time, the candidates in the general election in Puerto Rico
who support that same goal and demand, won in Tuesday+s elections, among
them the Honorable Sila Calderón, Governor-elect of Puerto Rico, and the
Honorable Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, elected as Resident Commissioner to the
U.S. Congress.

The demand that the U.S. Navy must leave Vieques without dropping one more
bomb, of any kind, has been the popular will of the people of Puerto Rico
in general, and of Vieques in particular, before you issued your
Directives on Vieques, and after you issued those Directives.

President Clinton, now the will of the elected representatives of Puerto
Rico, in the Mayoralty of Vieques, in the Governorship of Puerto Rico, in
our Representative in the U.S. Congress, in the Puerto Rico Senate and
House of Representatives, and in the majority of the mayoralties in Puerto
Rico, concerning Vieques is the same as the will of the people of Puerto
Rico in general and of Vieques in particular: That the U.S. Navy must be
ordered out of Vieques now, without dropping one more bomb, of any kind.

We are calling on you to respect that demand and that, before you leave
office ten weeks from now, that you issue an Executive Order implementing
that demand.

It was foreseeable that your Directives on Vieques would be changed by a
Republican U.S. Congress, especially in an election year. That is why we
insisted that you issue the Executive Order that we are demanding once
again. You still have some time to do what+s right, and the urgency of
our plight is accentuated by the fact that the Republicans will control
Congress once again.

If you don+t issue this Executive Order, your Directives (drastically
modified by this Congress and with no guarantee that they will be
respected by the next Congress) will be used to say that there is no
alternative site to Vieques, that Vieques is indispensable and that the
Navy hasn+t found another site. Meanwhile, bombing will continue in our
island of close to 10,000 people. The only incentive for the Navy to
seriously find an alternative site is if they are ordered to stop bombing
in Vieques.

Mr. President, on Election Day, during a radio interview with reporter Amy
Goodman, you urged the American people to vote for the Gore Lieberman
ticket, for First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton as Senator from New York,
and for John Corzine as Senator from New Jersey. In so doing, you told
the American public the following:

-Now, the Republicans in Congress broke the agreement, and instead
of
giving the Western part of the island to Puerto Rico, gave it to the
Interior Department to manage. If I can+t find a way to give that island,
the western part of the island back to the people of Puerto Rico, and to
honor the agreement that the government of Puerto Rico itself made with
the support of the local leaders, including the mayor of Vieques, then the
people of Puerto Rico I think have a right to say the Federal Government
broke its word, and the training has to stop right now.-

That encouraging statement, Mr. President, gives us hope that you will not
once again let our people fend for ourselves once again before a
Republican Congress, especially since you will leave office shortly. It
is easy to blame the Republican Congress for what they have done, and may
foreseeable do, regarding Vieques. But the constitutional authority to
-stop the training right now- lies with you, President Clinton. If you
fail to do so, the responsibility for the continuing suffering of our
people and the disrespect towards the will of our people and our elected
representatives, is solely yours.

I respectfully and emphatically call on you, President Clinton, to heed
the will of our people and our elected representatives and issue an
Executive Order ordering the immediate and permanent cease and desist of
all military activities in Vieques. Please call me in Vieques , or call Flavio Cumpiano in Washington, DC
to set up a meeting or a conference call in order to provide you with
whatever information or assistance we can give, or answer whichever
questions you may have, in order to resolve this critical situation and
accomplish this essential demand.

Sincerely,


Dámaso Serrano López

[Nacionalista]

Oh this is getting better. I will see if I can get an original copy of that letter to show to all these new congressman and senators that I know I will come across.