Having written for Latino-focused media in the past, I wasn't completely ignorant of the struggles between the people of Vieques and the U.S. Navy. But I never cared.

Even when two Marine jet bombs were dropped off target, killing a Puerto Rican guard working on the range in April 1999, I was unmoved from my cozy sofa in California, eating rice and beans and watching Ricky Martin prance around on TV. It may as well have been Afghanistan or Israel or some other faraway place. Why should I care about something that was going on more than 3, 000 miles away? My Puerto Rican surname wasn't a good enough reason.

Such was my attitude when I hopped on a plane a month after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. I chanced flying the emptier, but friendlier, skies between San Francisco and Puerto Rico because I refused to let a bunch of terrorists bust up my vacation plans.

Initially, my ambition was selfish, but the trip taught me the true multilayered complexity of terrorism, and changed my ambivalent feelings about the island of my cultural roots.

My father and mother were born in Puerto Rico, in Guayanilla and San Sebastian, respectively. Each town is small compared to the Big Apple, where they moved with their families when they were kids. I was born in New York, which is why I consider myself a Nuyorican.

Like many Nuyoricans, I never felt particularly connected to Puerto Rico. Every summer, I would visit my grandparents' farm in Fajardo, a small town that overlooks the rain forest, El Yunque. But those visits never moved me to love the island of my parents and grandparents, or to write poetry about my long-lost "isla del encanto," like the tragic poet and playwright Miguel Pinero, who felt he had been robbed of his tropical birthright when his parents moved him to New York for "una vida mejor," a better life.

"Better than what?" I used to ask.

In between lounging on beaches and sipping from coconuts during my two-week excursion in October, I happened to take a ferry to Vieques. That's when I understood why so many Puerto Ricans leave the island for New York. They get no respect.

Since 1941, the Navy has used two thirds of Vieques as its personal training range. Planes drop bombs, ships hurl shells at the shore and Marines practice amphibious landings. According to those who want the Navy out, the rate of cancer in Vieques is much higher than the rest of Puerto Rico. The drinking water is contaminated. There is a higher incidence of lupus, asthma, scleroderma, telarquia, kidney and heart disease and child mortality. Unemployment runs high and educated kids take off for college and rarely return.

Until an alternative location becomes available, the Navy's claim to national security may prevent President Bush from keeping his promise to move the Navy out by May 2003. Earlier this year, other locations were used for live-bomb exercises, including Camp Lejeune in North Carolina and Pinecastle range in Florida.

I heard various opinions about the Navy from the people of Vieques during my visit.

"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."

But many others -- including a taxi driver who stopped at his daughter's school to give her lunch money before taking me to the beach -- said that the Navy is not only contaminating their children's futures, but also preventing many of the island's 10,000 people from earning the living they need to raise their families. Military control of much of the best land slows the development of agriculture or tourism, they say. Fishermen claim Navy exercises have damaged marine environments.

"Vieques Libre" signs were everywhere on the island, but I didn't see any protesters picketing along Navy boundaries. The protest movement, which had gained worldwide attention in 1999, has lost vigor and support since Sept. 11, probably because the Navy ceased training and refocused its immediate attention on New York and Washington, D.C. I happened to visit during the break in the bombing. Picturing it now as a bombing zone disturbs me as much as the images of the planes crashing into the World Trade Center towers.

I saw an island that seemed too pristine for the kind of terror people said it was experiencing. The water was a fresh, turquoise blue. The sand slipped like powdered sugar through my fingers. But it is not pristine or untouched. Just because I couldn't see the poisons, doesn't mean they weren't there. Just because I couldn't see the bombs falling on April 1, doesn't mean it didn't happen.

And just because I'm 3,000 miles away, doesn't mean I no longer care.

Melanie Feliciano, 26, is a contributor to Pacific News Service. She is also the associate editor and Web master for Youth Outlook (YO!), a magazine by and about Bay Area youth published by Pacific News Service.

©2002 San Francisco Chronicle

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