Battleship Vieques: Puerto Rico from World War II to the Korean War

The demonstrations that resulted in the U.S. Navy's being forced out of Vieques in 2003 were the result of the island's occupation during and after World War II. After German U-boats sank more ships in the Caribbean than anywhere else, the U.S. government decided to transform the island of Vieques into an unsinkable battleship. The Navy thereby ignored the cultural traditions of the Puerto Rican population, introduced racial discrimination, forced the relocation of its population, and showed no concern for the local economy, which was ruined by the occupation.

After working for ten years on different topics related to the history of Vieques, and publishing seven articles in peer reviewed journals in both the English and Spanish languages, historian José L. Bolívar and sociologist and professor of UCLA César Ayala decided it was time to incorporate all of this research in a single volume. And so began a cybernetic collaboration between Dr. Bolívar who lives in Puerto Rico and Dr. Ayala who resides in California. Battleship Vieques took two years to complete.  We added information that was not part of our original research and rewrote all that we considered outdated. As a result, Battleship Vieques is a compact yet comprehensive history of the beautiful island of Vieques, struggling with the U.S. Navy and sandwiched between the Second World War and the Korean War. An Epilogue suggests that the viequenses continued their struggled throughout the Cold War and the Vietnam conflict and it was not until 2003, that the Navy finally left the island.