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Esta página no está disponible en español. Viewpoint The San Juan Star Vandals In Vieques: A Glimpse Of P.R.’S Future If A Majority Stays Silent by Arturo J. Guzmán May 14, 2003 The acts of violence and destruction that took place in Vieques on the eve of our Navy’s forced withdrawal, left the overwhelming majority of Puerto Ricans revolted and appalled. The extreme leftist elements that have been leading and manipulating this issue from its inception apparently wanted to create a local version of "shock and awe" as a reminder to their local compatriots, and the rest of the world and nation, that long before Al-Queida there were Puerto Rican terrorists. While I shared with the majority its sense of repulsion, I was most certainly not shocked nor awed because it was the type of conduct we should have known to expect. As a matter of fact, in a strange manner I felt relieved and thankful. It is as if God had given this blessed Island one more opportunity by making the monster rear its ugly head one last time to serve as warning of what lays ahead if we allow these leftists and terrorists to remain acting with impunity and giving the impression they are representative of the majority of our citizenry. That same evening, we the people of Puerto Rico, were subjected to the demeaning spectacle of having to watch Governor Calderón and other prominent members of her regime, arm in arm with Lolita Lebron and others like her who embody the evils of the same type of terrorism against which fellow Americans were loosing their lives in Iraq at that precise moment. The events of that night rubbed unto our collective faces the sobering fact that in Puerto Rico many criminal acts are not determined nor judged by law but by political preference and ideology. As a society, we were made to witness once again the impotence of a police force that has been subjected to having to turn their backs before the rule of the mob and political expediency. In an act of sarcastic mockery, we were made to endure the feigned piety of religious leaders trying to justify the unjustifiable by downplaying the number of violent participants and repeating the evident falsehood that acts of violence had never been a part of their Vieques anti-American movement. Is their arrogance so great that they believe that they can insult our intelligence at will? Or is it that we are deemed mentally inferior because we don’t hide behind a collar or a robe? Regardless, I am grateful to all of them for rearing their ugly heads so publicly and revealing themselves as the monster. That was the night when Vieques became Chiapas and the unmasked nature of these deceitful cowards was shown and imprinted in our collective minds and memories once and for all. No longer can there be a denial of who they are, what they are and what they want. This is a sampling of the violence and intolerance that we will have to suffer when Puerto Rico becomes the independent nation they are forcing upon us with the acquiescence and often encouragement of a silent majority that prefers to remain silent rather than act according to their responsibilities as a majority. It is the same totalitarian, anti-democratic, dictatorial conduct that is often exhibited, of all places, at the University of Puerto Rico and other institutions supposedly of higher learning. This is the type of conduct, credo, and culture of the mob that is striving to become our absolute rulers. They are the product of an Orwellian "Animal Farm" that creates Puerto Ricans that out of their individual sense of inferiority are trying to prove with their acts of violence that they are more Puerto Rican than others. But in the end they are cowards who know they must get with the bullet what is denied them by the ballot, and who have to hide their faces not from us but from themselves because they can’t stand to look at what they would see. To them I renew a challenge that doesn’t require any act of violence: Gather the courage, integrity, conviction and valor and present the U.S. Congress with a declaration of independence. As I’ve often stated before, you will be surprised of how swiftly your demands will be met. It is easy and the way in which dignified peoples have done it throughout time. Or is it that you are so afraid of yourselves that you fear that the Congress will accede to your demands and you will no longer have a subterfuge? As a result of Vieques in the end there won’t be any surprises, and if the majority fails to act they will at least be fully accountable for the consequences because that night when the monster reared its head we saw and we’ll remember that they showed us their true faces.
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