1 10 2 https://vieques.iac.gatech.edu/files/original/170bbbec54764b6186f06de1a963979c.jpeg f255c3a70ea9a3806834626784fae4cb Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1998 - Present Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Juan Carlos Rodriguez Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Stacey Notine OHMS Object Text This field contains the OHMS Index and / or Transcript and is what makes the contents of the OHMS object searchable in Omeka 5.4 Unknown Date Interview with Stacey Notine B Vieques Struggle: A Digital Video Archive Stacey Notine Juan Carlos Rodriguez 0 https://youtu.be/IU7ppde9zCY YouTube video STACEY NOTINE: … again, you have to understand this perception, you know, this young North American woman, my Spanish, el español mío… you know, I tend to feel more comfortable to speak, you know, if people say “¿Hablas español?”, and certainly if there is no understanding of English, then I will speak in Spanish. But I was very much… you know, there was a perception about me that I also had to deal with. And that was also very difficult. PREGUNTA: Never in relation to someone in the movement suspecting that you might be an agent or…? STACEY NOTINE: No sé, de verdad, pero eso es interesante… Nunca, no, no… PREGUNTA: Pero… STACEY NOTINE: Claro, claro… I never even think of… you know… PREGUNTA: Yo se lo pregunté a Bob porque siempre ha habido ese… STACEY NOTINE: No, I know with Bob this has been announced. I know, at times I even thought this about Bob. Because, you know, we have very divergent… I thought “Well, the CIA couldn’t do any better than to have people like this…” You know, so when people first mentioned that to me, I was so taken aback, but then, you know, it’s a perception. It’s just a perception. But it’s interesting you bring it up. And very likely, I would imagine there must have been people… A lo mejor sí, claro. You know, but it wasn’t… eso no fue… I never felt en términos de part of the struggle… I mean, really, it’s very idealistic… PREGUNTA: But you still sympathized with it… STACEY NOTINE: Oh, claro… oh, claro… It was a way of being, of having a voice in it… of having… not just a voice, but feeling that I could help or participate. Y en términos de… of that part of the protest, the violence really was a concern to me. PREGUNTA: When you talk about the violence of the struggle… STACEY NOTINE: Oh, I was afraid that they would kill people, that they would just kill us, the military would just open fire and kill us. That was very clear to me. My first… you know, as I was saying… eso fue… this was right at the time of coming and beating… you know, this was right before they are getting arrested. And, you know, this helicopter coming, and I’m telling you, I mean, we, this is women and children and nuns. And they chased us with the helicopter, I mean they could have decapitated… you know, there was no… they had no concern for… and that was very obvious, and that then, you know, made a very big impression on me. PREGUNTA: Did you feel the same way when you got the news that Ángel Rodríguez Cristóbal was killed? Did that really contribute to your feeling of uncertainty or fear or…? STACEY NOTINE: But then you get into… I guess you intellectualize, you think “We need to have a dialogue…”, you know, this dialogue, and you know, so of course I was not… I had no doubt that they had killed him, you know, that he was killed. It didn’t occur to me otherwise, that it could be otherwise. He didn’t kill himself. And what little I did know him, this is not a person who would kill himself. This is not. I mean, I cannot conceive… unless he had been drugged by them. I even… into some strange delusion, I mean, this was not who he was. This was not a man who thought of… in any way, you know, taking his life, at all. You know what I mean? You know? This was not a man who would have depression or viewed anything, any challenge in that sense, not at all. Not, you know, but then it was a… you know, the (no se entiende) was really “We need dialogue, we need…” PREGUNTA: That’s basically your take in the… STACEY NOTINE: And in that time actually my friend was helping, at that time, to manage the “Casa del Francés”. And I became very close then with a lawyer who was coming with his family, who was very much involved in the civil rights and getting him in touch, being in touch with him, with Bob, this kind of discussion of… this is someone, too, who had represented the political prisoners. The first release of the political prisoners in Puerto Rico. And so it was, the conversations began there and, you know, steps you take in terms of “Could there be a possible dialogue?.” I sort of… I… I became more, you know, I really felt in many ways working with the community in terms of education, I’ve always felt this is a more important… and for me, it interests me more. It’s… I must say, though, that it’s also… it’s very frustrating and I don’t really feel like I’ve gotten very far or that anyone has gotten very far on this… PREGUNTA: Coming back to the question of, you know, the role of perceiving yourself as a young woman in relation to this, you know, group of people involved in the struggle… How was your perception of some of the strategies that they were…? STACEY NOTINE: Una de las cosas que tengo… I felt, what happened with me was a separation, as I came more to know la comunidad… you begin to hear all of the different splits or arguments within the group, that to me, really, the voice of the community was more credible to me. And for the most part, the perception, the community at large was “this is all politics. This is all individuals with their own agenda.” And trying to weigh all of this out as a growing, you know, you get involved very emotionally, to a degree. And also, you know, just perception is what it is. My… my… tendency was more to be with the community, with families that spent more time taking care of their family than getting involved in what were very political and dangerous... Yes, to me that was that part… to me, dialogue was, we got to figure out… I really kept thinking there was a way to dialogue. I mean, now I really do think, yes, I continue to think that. But, how impossible it is. You cannot deny how impossible it is in terms of the United States and Vieques, specifically. PREGUNTA: For example, you, in 78, 79, you would say instead of stopping Navy maneuvers with boats, with fishermen boats, you considered it would be better, maybe, to enter into a dialogue… STACEY NOTINE: Yes, in part… I was not ever against… no, no, no… I think, this is a battle. In that sense, I mean in that way you bring back to this gentleman, and I wish I could remember his name because… You know, the dignity of… because it was done with such dignity. And you know you are seeing, you are physically, you are seeing what’s going on. You are seeing, then, the military, the look on their face, who they are. There’s no question in terms of… yes, yes, pursue your path, you know, you know, your coraje with… Yes, but realizing these people are using a helicopter. They’ll kill us. You know, there was also that. And then, you know, in the community, when there wasn’t the protest, when it was day to day life, you know, more important was what can we do, you know, with education, what can we do with the immediate needs of the community. This was a terrible, this a terrible time. PREGUNTA: No, yo te entiendo. Simplemente quería clarificar un poco… STACEY NOTINE: No, no, I wasn’t… just to put… you know, there was no stopping, I mean, I could see in the eyes of these people, they would kill us. You know, we mean nothing to them. You know, that was what I realized. That was very clear to me. PREGUNTA: So, in that case, realizing that, in retrospect, maybe to think that there was no possibility for that over that time… STACEY NOTINE: Yeah, but there was… I couldn’t… you know, you intellectualize it. You know, you read, you talk with lawyers, you talk with, you know, community activists, they weren’t called activists… you know… You know, and I came from a background of this, so there was always… music, you know… Bob Marley, you know, you get into that… you get into what other aspects, exactly what you are doing here. This is something, personally, that I thought was needed then, documentaries, this avenue. Because at the same time, too, one of the things I was learning about and realizing was from the North Americans here, their perception. And these are very wealthy, for the most part, well-educated, very successful business people. You know, the twenty, thirty groups who had bought property here. And especially in this area here where I live. Which at the time, when I first came here, there was no one walking, you know, I was just walking around the island, you know, just taking different hikes. I would just sleep where… you know, in the forest, where… and it was different friends, it was fun, just discovering Vieques. And so we’d walk up here and say “Oh, this is really lovely”. And you see, it’s abandoned houses, so they know where they have vacation homes where they just come on the weekends. And I leased a place right on the boulevard there… and Frank said “Oh, no, this is dangerous, you are right on the road, you are a woman by yourself, you should not do this…” The Camacho family particularly said “We don’t think this is a good idea, you are by yourself.” So, I wound up coming more in. This was actually a little shed that this very wealthy North American woman by the name of Elizabeth Langhorne, who began this Vieques conservation trust, who was… and this was something, this was a dialogue I got into, this idea of this Vieques conservation trust, historical trust, and there was a man by the name of Paul Caron who at that time was the owner of Casa del Francés, and trying… he was struggling to make it a national historic site. So, there were those dialogues going on, thinking in terms of “OK, what can we do to help Vieques”, you know, what can be done… and there was getting to know, in particular these two people, who were very interested in, in… conservation efforts, which I agreed with. Although there was an incredible dichotomy of bombing this island and we talking about conserving. But there was also what was immediate for me to learn, was a sense of denial of the North Americans, of what was going on here. PREGUNTA: Even from the people showing solidarity? STACEY NOTINE: Well, that’s just it. I didn’t find any solidarity in that sense, in… you know, it was sort of like, you know, this kind of look when you’d bring, when you’d bring up the situation of the economic struggle, the lack of tools for people here. In terms of the lack of jobs, the lack… PREGUNTA: Not necessarily the political solidarity… STACEY NOTINE: What was very obvious to me was that the North Americans did not want to engage in any conversation or any perception of that… of there being a problem. PREGUNTA: And these were the people that were even involved in the conservation trust? -Yes, yes… STACEY NOTINE: This is happening all at once, you know, and understanding that the North Americans really did not want to see any of what was going here in terms of the disadvantage to people, that people were being disadvantaged. Or that people, you know, I would go so far as to say oppressed. They did not want to… they were very defensive. They were very, very defensive. PREGUNTA: And these are people that were… STACEY NOTINE: These are very educated traveled people… PREGUNTA: The people that constructed the historical image of Vieques, the kind of academic… STACEY NOTINE: Bueno, adentro del… sí, exactamente. Pues y por eso yo creo que… you really need to talk a little bit more with Alegría, because he is someone who was involved. You know, this is also an argument I had, when it’s a constant, be it in the press, be it wherever I find it. This whole attitude of “Oh, Operation Bootstrap”, you know… “all the poverty-stricken Puerto Ricans”, you know, I’ve never seen in terms of resourceful… Puerto Rican people are enormously resourceful. And that’s a wealth that now I think... I think you, your age or your generation has some perception of that, in terms of that it’s being denied or that it’s being ignored. For a few generations there we had a problem, where people were thinking. People, yes… there was poverty, but there was poverty all over the world. When people generally say “Oh, in the thirties, in the forties”… In the thirties and forties in Missouri, you know, anywhere in the world, especially in the United States, because it’s typical. You had this, you know, this comparison. There was enormous depression. There was enormous poverty in rural areas. You know, to paint this picture that is so protected, and this was also something that I’m perceiving and, you know, like the white man’s burden: “We are going to come here and save this place.” And the destruction that was wrought out of the lack of ability to understand a different culture. And the very aggressive way that the North American, you know, you know: “Let’s get it done. Yesterday.” You know, engineering linear perception and… PREGUNTA: Even in the academics, even in the…? STACEY NOTINE: Yeah… just… PREGUNTA: At least, you know, back in the seventies, Do you think that attitude of the North Americans in Vieques has changed a little bit? STACEY NOTINE: Yes, because I think, you know, in the whole more people are beginning to be a bit more… certainly, my generation, you know, that was the generation, and the generation before, the sixties, you know, the seventies, the fifties, where people were beginning to question the government, and so now there is obviously, you know, there is something more of that. But to the degree that… even with the groups that I deal with, the national groups who deal with so-called military toxics, military presence in terms of the toxic legacy. So many of them will say to me “Oh, Stacey, it’s just like… Vieques is just like, you know, anywhere in the United States any world place that has suddenly been discovered, and it’s been gentrified and it’s becoming a tourist attraction.” And it’s so amazing to me that they really… they really believe this. They really do not see, well this is not, this is not at all what… you know… there’s a big distinction. You are talking about a totally different culture… a lack of, you know, these are people who never had or were given the choice… it’s just a totally different situation. I mean, they are in denial, it seems to me. There’s no comparison. It’s apples and oranges. You know what I mean? But, yes, that is… And here I still feel, yeah, I still feel that there is a great sense of denial in terms of just how profound the oppression is and inevitable the defeat for the people here are. I don’t think that’s… you know, I have not been able to make… to engage in conversations or to, you know, which is something I’m trying to do right now. Where do we go from here? Still, again, I’m a little different, you know. No, I’m not just into protesting, yes, I am into dialogue. What is meaningful dialogue? Where can we go from here? Overall, again, I think education absolutely is the most important… you know, being able to open a university here, this is what… this, for me, is what needs to be done here. PREGUNTA: Stacey, I have a question about how… if we can map again a little the stages of the struggle… There were two positions, you know, that were kind of almost absolute and excluding each other. On the one side the Navy. On the other side a kind of… STACEY NOTINE: Pero tú estás hablando de la lucha dentro de la comunidad, de la comunidad, y no en términos de Puerto Rico as a whole political body… PREGUNTA: Bueno, lo que pasa, yo estoy hablando de la lucha el U.S. Navy contra los pescadores o el U.S. Navy después contra la sociedad civil puertorriqueña en el 99… STACEY NOTINE: Pero esto estaba, eso… You know, I think that for me that was… Don’t you… I mean, do you really not…? PREGUNTA: El diálogo, ¿tú crees que estaba? STACEY NOTINE: I mean, Puerto Rico was already so trying, I mean… from Muñoz Marín… you know, trying to make sense, you know, there was one saying that, you know, I thought this was so… you go “Well, when you go around in circles, any point is a turning point,” you know, and I see, I mean… PREGUNTA: No, yo lo veía, lo que ocurre es que, por ejemplo, ha habido ahora en la lucha una, digamos, cautela tremenda, en ocasiones un diálogo totalmente roto, tanto con el Navy como con, como con Fish and Wildlife, y yo lo que estoy viendo es si esta posición del diálogo es de alguna manera una tercera posición que puede mediar entre “No quiero hablar con el Navy” o el Navy dice “No quiero hablar con el Comité Pro Rescate o la Alianza de Mujeres o con Taso o con Ismael o lo que sea, ¿no?, un poco esa cuestión… STACEY NOTINE: Para mí, en esto, sí, exactamente, en esto… I think, you know, if you don’t have trust, you can’t have dialogue, and I have been very frustrated by that. You know, especially this whole struggle with, you know, from the beginning, you know, creating this “We have to be on the TRC,” you know, “we have to do this,” and you know, getting people to get involved in this technical review committee and this thing, staying in touch with EPA, that we have to go to these meetings, and this is before David died. You know, with the EPA when they were soliciting this permit, you know, this whole idea, yes, of dialogue. At the same time, yes, these are people we don’t trust. At the same time, yes, but there are laws here… can we take them… can we go to court?.. You know, all of this is constantly going on in my head. You know, how do we politically, legally, you know, how, you know, that when I talk dialogue, that’s what I mean as well, you know, I mean that. And so, you know, to the degree you say, you know, you are naïve about anything until you do it, until you finally, you know, begin doing it more and more, whatever it is, including court cases or… So, you know, you grow a little bit more as you get involved in these things… the limits of the law, the limits of that dialogue, the limits of the Constitution, which, you know, what is that? What are the limits of the Constitution? You know, is it a judge’s perception? Is it a Congressional debate? You know, it’s also, you know, the court of public opinion. You know what I mean? And this is a very, you know, the question of Vieques, you know, in the terminology, you know, is the Achilles heel of the relationship between, you know, Puerto Rico and the United States, you know, very graphically. But certainly more so, the problems with drugs, the lack of… the problems with education. Again, we are getting back to where we just started, you know, this… the oppression, this is the Achilles… now I’m gonna cry… This is the Achilles heel, really more so. And so, for me, I don’t… I always find, you know, I cannot assume I have the way. You know, once I’ve taken a charge, you know, but… at all… Y en esto… I do have a problem with the so-called community leaders in that exclusivity that they have. And I feel they are very unrealistic, and sort of in denial themselves that they are… they are political bodies, you know, that they are political bodies, and what that means, you know. And is that who they really want to be? En el caso de Ismael, eso… esa es la lucha de una familia… you know, it truly is. You know, I think you’ve gotten to know Ismael. I… -Te refieres a Ismael Guadalupe… Sí… -Que es una lucha de una familia… Sí, sí, and not just to say, you know, (no se entiende). But in terms of what can we do, you know… You know… communities, communities have governments. Governments exist. You know, you ignore them at your peril. You ignore them to be… you know, to only frustrate yourself. Is it frustrating to get involved with them? Yes, it is. But what… you know, when no alternative is being given, I think this is my biggest… and it’s not… and I’m seeing people just sort of get very defensive and not give an alternative. And I feel, I really feel, you know… PREGUNTA: When no alternatives come out of the process itself or the leaders…? STACEY NOTINE: Yes, in the discussion of… for instance, I feel like the Calderón administration truly has been unlike any administration in solidarity with this community. I truly… that’s been my experience… Perfect? No, but they are available to the people, absolutely. Immediately this becomes political. You know, I say “Can’t you just look at Sila and the different people? Can’t you just look at her as a person? You know, why… Don’t attach politics to it and go and speak, you know, on those terms, and… I fear that there’s too much of a political… there’s too much of a political struggle, of a political… political agenda, political stance… el problema es que para mí… and I’m very honest with them, I say “You know, maybe you should run for governor”… perdón, “for mayor”, you know, but that’s not really who Ismael is. But then you really have to change your grow, and can you? And that’s what then, you know, when I speak of this difference between a North American del latino, there’s a way of life, and that’s part of the dignity, that’s part of it. You know, can we sit here until (no se entiende)… you know, people have to change and learn to grow, you have to conform… no, you don’t… you know, yes, you do, but not necessarily in the way that a person expects you to. You know, you can protest that, but this is where I say “Okay, but you need to realize what you are doing. But you are not offering, as a group, then, Pro Rescate, you are not offering an alternative to people.” And they need that. People here don’t need more politics. You know, they need training, they need education, and that’s what they want. They need jobs. That’s the reality. You know… PREGUNTA: And now I think it would be interesting to… for me, actually, to ask you: Do you think that sometimes the whole, you know, impulse of the struggle could run against some kind of more human impulse in the community, even to survive, to live, to enjoy, or to struggle with other things? Do you see that balance between condensing everything, either against the Navy or against Fish and Wildlife?... STACEY NOTINE: ¿Cómo si…? No entiendo… PREGUNTA: Eh… ¿hasta qué punto la lucha quizás a veces se lo traga todo y no deja quizás espacios para momentos más humanos? ¿crees que eso a veces pasa, que a veces…? STACEY NOTINE: Sí, eso yo creo que sí… eso… PREGUNTA: Que la lucha se traga… STACEY NOTINE: Hay que ver, tú sabes, en términos de la lucha, si tú vas a usar la palabra “lucha”, la lucha… siempre, cada día hay una lucha en términos de… you know, but there’s also beauty and greatness and wonderful… you know… and you have to embrace that and that’s your identity and that’s who we… as a culture… Do you have to then create a lucha because now the military is gone? No. There is lucha… you know, how do we embrace our identity, you know, embrace our community, and keep those things that we truly value that, really, ironically this strange twist of fate allowed us to have, you know, here in this community, a sense of timelessness that really exists, you know? Of course, in Puerto Rico you can go to San Juan, you go to el campo… How do we maintain that, all these things, and then again, you get back to the question of land, you get back to the question of the economy, you get back to the question… Also, overall, and in all of this, of education. Because we are being taken advantage of. And any of that, in any of this… you know, so in terms of… you know what I mean? In terms of the lucha, the lucha is in that sense a more… is not just political. You know, politics is being human. Yes, it’s political. But, you know, to be constantly, you know, the politics of… partisan politics is I think, you know, for me it’s a very frustrating… PREGUNTA: I would like to ask you how to balance… I know you’ve been an active participant of the TRC… how to kind of, maybe in between, like a committee that is working with very kind of difficult knowledge about the environment, and at the same time trying to educate the community about the dangers of what’s going on in the decisions that are going to be made by the U.S. Navy to clean up or not or, you know, the EPA, the legal, the very, very complex legal juncture that both the east and the west have… STACEY NOTINE: Which in a way becomes even more… in the end it’s very much part of this conversation we are having. Because there, again, you are dealing with governments, you know, and that’s who’s dealing with this. The Puerto Rican government, you know, has to be involved, and are involved with this. If you ignore what they are doing, if you choose not to have dialogue with them, but rather make political barbs at them, not be in dialogue, not understand, you know, why they are doing what they are doing, not present to them, in dialogue, with a desire to resolve what it is you oppose or are concerned about, you know, this for me again is, this is the frustration, where I’m seeing, you know, it becomes very political. Can we turn around and say “you are dealing with really lousy laws and none of this works. We know all of… the United States… you know, just to make it simple. The easiest thing would be what has ever been cleaned under the military, or more important, really right now. When has identification of the actual, you know, trustworthy identification, the actual magnitude of the contamination… which, for me, this is the most important thing. And this, under this process is the Safe and Clean Water Act in Massachusetts. You know, that I understand any other… from all of this. You know, we are not, especially because we are not functioning well as a TRC. We don’t do the things we are supposed to do. We do not meet. We do not review. We… It’s more of a… It’s a… You know, it’s very difficult for people to be involved in this… you know, it’s useless we get information… it provides us information… it provides us an opportunity to be in discussion with la Junta (no se entiende)… but as I’m saying, since no one really wants to pursue these discussions because of politics. PREGUNTA: And who are the… who are participating in these discussions? STACEY NOTINE: We are, as a group, the TRC. And we are not, you know, because there is no… and then I say it’s because of too much of our own politics… has become… -You want to get the cigarette… ¿Quieres encender el cigarillo? I think I did. PREGUNTA: ¿Las organizaciones han apoyado…? ¿cuál ha sido la historia de la organización y los protocolos…? STACEY NOTINE: Oh, this is all, I mean, this has been a problem. I mean, this whole idea of you know, I have to… first of all there’s been such a lack of community groups here that… unless the religious groups. But they have a very specific, you know, agenda. And you can’t dialogue, you can’t mix these two… In terms of getting involved with this group that began actually by Víctor (no se entiende), and myself, and we were really discreet, a fellow by the name of José Arroyo. Discreet activists, you know, in it. Do you know Víctor? -Aha… And this was specifically as a result of the frustration with the sports complex, el complejo deportivo allá en Puerto Mosquito… which was really one of the first disasters of the military, and for me, so sad. Because it’s just so typified and so… you know, the absolute lack of respect that the military has for Vieques, for having dialogue with Vieques. I mean their intention always was to get rid of all Viequenses, to have the island to themselves. They had never had any… that I can say… and me, perhaps, there were commanders here and there that wanted to do the right thing or… you know… None of them ever achieved it. And that… you know, building that, getting them federal funding and the federal funds being squandered. All that to me was such… so typified, you know, just this… you know, what is wrong with this relationship. Anyway, so this group was formed to start, you know, to really protest these developments. On the north shore there was the Martineau Bay, the housing development, which attached on that beach, which is to the side of Martineau, El Gallo Beach, is a… was the only public beach left on the north shore besides the dump. You know, to the civilians, to the community. You know, and that was really began getting involved in terms of the process, you know, having to deal with the Puerto Rican government, the Federal government, the municipal government. And all of us doing that. And it was very much divided. I dealt with the federales, because of the English… Bob… Bob was not… Pro Rescate was not involved. They were little bit, you know, of course Nilda was there with Pro Rescate. Bob was a little bit hesitant about this. You know, “why are we going to talk to the federales…” And, of course, Ismael very rightly, you know, saying “the EPA, there is no distinction between the EPA and…” And to a degree, yes, he’s right, you know, he’s absolutely right, the Federal government is not going to sue itself, it’s not… but, they do do it. There is… there are these thin windows there. You know, and is it worth it trying to do that? Well, that’s what we are looking at. That’s what we have to do. Has it been done? Yes. Where? In Massachusetts, you know, where you had Kennedy and Kerry and you know very powerful political… But I, we are very powerful. This is a very powerful struggle. You know, this is how I would like, you know, to see us all feeling. And just absolutely with resolve, you know, pursue what it is we want. But the problem I see, yes, is in the experience of these past three years in trying to enter this dialogue with the community leaders. Maybe that’s the wrong thing, because they really have their own political agendas… -And now… And so it’s what with who, because you just can’t be one hand clapping, one person. And the rest of the community, you know, they just sort of roll their eyes. PREGUNTA: And what else has been the experience with the TRC in relation to itself, you know…? STACEY NOTINE: That’s what I mean, we don’t… we have a problem. And there’s been lack of honesty with that, which very much disturbs me, that, you know… PREGUNTA: You were mentioning that there have been some problems in terms of the language protocol, the Spanish versus the English… STACEY NOTINE: Well, very much so, from the beginning everyone saying “This is all in English”, you know, “it needs to be in Spanish.” And that’s absolutely true, but in the meantime, the meantime, all of these activities, which would be so-called investigations, which then come to further action or no further action, as they have these acronyms for everything that they do. And it’s all within a time frame, and it’s all within, you have a commentary period, you have a review period, etcetera, it’s very bureaucratic. If you are going to sit and say “I refuse to get involved because it’s in English.” Well, then, obviously you are going to have a problem because you are not going to be able to, you know, you are not going to meet the deadlines that you need to meet in order to be effective. Inclusive, you are not going to be able to dialogue, you know, if you don’t read this stuff, you know, what are you going to talk about? You can talk about it politically, but, you know, that’s… you are in the wrong… I’m not going to say it’s totally the wrong form. It does have… it is important… but we are specifically talking… you know my specific fear? We really don’t know what the contamination is. And this is after millions of dollars have been spent all this time of… you know, for me, personally, just reviewing all of this… you know, we… you know, the basic questions are still not being answered. And how are we going to answer those…? How are we going to find out? I really would like to know how, you know, we need to do that. And how are we going to do that? You know, because of that situation with Rosselló, I really was thrown, myself and my son, into a kind of perspective of a… you know, political activist or… which I’m not a political activist, you know, I’m not… I’m not a really a person who really… I look at politics more as… not theater… but I don’t… my ideologies are not political ideologies, they are more spiritual or intellectual games or perceptions…. Religious, spiritual, not political. So when the argument comes to me: “We can only pursue this under independence, this identification and clean-up.” I mean, that doesn’t make any sense to me. PREGUNTA: Clean-up with independence? STACEY NOTINE: Yeah, you know… First of all, I think we are… the United States absolutely should pay for this. You know, that… that is absolutely, for me, that has to be done. You know, Puerto Rico should not be in any way… and obviously Puerto Rico is paying for this. Puerto Rico has been paying for this for a hundred years. You know, it’s paid enough. And that’s part of the conversation. Yes, so in that sense, you want to say that’s political. But I think… politics, any party… except, I must say, with Calderón. What they have done so far, you know, they allowed that discussion to take place. Do you know what I mean? -Aha, aha… PREGUNTA: Lo que quieres decir es que la gestión política ya se está haciendo con el gobierno central, con el gobierno estatal, un poco… -Muy poco… Muy poco, pero hay algo. STACEY NOTINE: Hay algo, pero para mí lo que está mal es… again it’s being taken in a very personal level, very defensively. There’s a lot of egoistic… and you can say it’s childish, or it’s specific to this group of people. Other people you would really be able to get into a dialogue. You really… this is a truly big undertaking, and you have to, you know, these are very slick people that are… you know, that are doing this worldwide. They know exactly what they are doing. You know, you have to beat them at their game. You cannot hesitate. You cannot keep bringing up… For me to bring up the fact that we have been oppressed by a hundred years, you know, by this military, you know, has its place. But just to stay with argument, you are not going to find out what’s in your ground water, you know, and have them clean it up. And that’s what needs to be done. What’s in the air? What’s in the ground water? What’s in the fish? We need to do that… we are now… how many years? I get, you know, from the time of first sampling… Clinton, I feel the one thing he did give us, if we were to talk about it this way, was a year out there. And I think you can talk about it that way, and it’s worthwhile to talk about it that way. And we should have been sampling… Yes, we should have been sampling everywhere. You know, just to mention the word “environment” at that time, people were very angry with me. How dare you mention “endangered species”, “environment”. I’d say: “Where do you think the illness comes from?” PREGUNTA: Do you think that people, some of the leaders resented that you got involved with the TRC? STACEY NOTINE: I mean… yeah, that I pushed it so much. Yeah, yeah… and then Bob would, yeah, you know, he has a short memory about it. Very much so. And it was, you know, it was really very frustrating. And also very frustrating to hear people say: “Stacey, you do it so well, keep doing it.” You know, it’s like: “You don’t understand. This is not. That does not… you know, I’m one person. I’m not a scientist, I’m not a lawyer. You know, I’m getting involved in these other… with scientists, with lawyers, more so with lawyers because more lawyers were available.” We need all these things, and we need to begin, you know, we now have incredible mass of information we have to go through. And just saying: “Stacey, go ahead and do it,” you know, it’s not going to work. Because three years down the line, you are going to say: “What’s going on here?” And then it’s really going to be difficult to try to explain what’s going on here. You know, so even if you don’t trust, which I don’t. I do know it’s our only avenue. This is what is there. And we don’t have anyone forward saying: “Let’s sample.” I know no one, at least. Maybe it is going on. Es algo that’s really been very amazing to me. Again, I think to speak of this oppression. Why is it that lawyers, that scientists have not come here in droves to…? Not in droves, but this is… -To support your… No, no el mío, but Vieques, you know. PREGUNTA: Pero de alguna manera eres una de las personas que representa el esfuerzo viequense, por eso te digo que tu esfuerzo de, tu decisión de alguna manera de… instead of closing every avenue of dialogue… opening it up because there’s nothing else, at least now, or at least it’s important to be present in what’s going on… STACEY NOTINE: Well… sí y no… because they know that there’s no continuity in this… you know, they… -Who knows? Oh, the Navy absolutely knows and uses it. PREGUNTA: They are doing this to just cover the procedure… STACEY NOTINE: No, they legally have to do this. PREGUNTA: That’s the obligation they feel… STACEY NOTINE: Well, but they legally have to do this. You know, they do. And this is, you know, in one thing. Does the EPA have any (no se entiende)… You know, it hasn’t happened before. The only thing you accomplish is, you know, you say: “A bomb is there and you need to remove it.” If you get so far as to say “a bomb is there.” We are not even getting that far. By now we should be by far, we as a community should be far more engaged in dialogue… they are not even engaged, you know, and we should be. We are losing, because you need to be, you know, you need to be talking “what is it that you want, what is it you want, what do you want to know, what is not happening in this process, what is not available, what is not going to happen in this process, what could (no se entiende) to improve this, why won’t they do that…” In a very real sense, not to just make a political statement and be in the press. But legally, you know, what is the… that dialogue needs to be had… and it’s not… you understand what I mean? It’s… and any… you know, anybody can do that. It doesn’t take even necessarily reading all of this stuff. That just happens to be who I am. You know, the way… I can’t talk about something unless I have some perception of, you know… and this is how I get it, as well as talking with other groups, military toxics, etcetera, you know, other communities in Massachusetts. Hola… Julián, this is Juan Carlos. Have something to eat. Come. Again, this is for me… at this point I’m trying to… Okay, what do we do? Because we are spinning wheels here, and we are wasting time, and we are going to lose Calderón. And I don’t know what that’s going to mean. If Rosselló comes in, I shudder to think… I have no idea what could happen. It could be disastrous. The lack of dialogue with the municipality is disastrous. The lack of dialogue con el municipio that is… everyone is in competition with each other for center stage. We are… it’s a big problem. Porque ahí mismo es como, you know, divide and conquer. Es como el Navy… it’s like they never left. And it’s the leaders of the community doing it, and I’m going: “Why am I seeing this and other people don’t mention it?”. But then they go: “You, Stacey, change your perception, you have to…” So that, for me, that enters into a struggle. Again, I see the youth and I see the youth for… But we don’t have the time to take care of… I’m leaving gaps in my… It’s really all happening in that sense, and for me that’s enormously frustrating. Some people say: “Stacey, go study law, become a lawyer…” For what? You know, to talk to who? Who would be the client? You know, it would be better to teach children. But en el sentido de… again, I do not want to be… you know, like a… you know, I’m not that kind of person… “Oh, I’m going to go out on my own and, you know, start some organization.” I don’t see that as an alternative for me. So I stay with this… now we are going into this so-called… but it’s same people… I don’t have… and I see it… I mean… One thing that really bothers me is if people manipulate truth, they are in denial, I think everybody does… You know, and in that sense… you are not, you are not facing the challenges that are in front of us and we have to do something about. We are shadow-boxing. You know what I mean? It doesn’t have to be this difficult. You know, we can get answers. You know… I just… you know, we can be in dialogue. We can say: “Okey, there’s no dialogue here, we are not going to get”… We can do all that kind of… and take the next step, you know. PREGUNTA: What happened with that group of… Jorge Colón, these people…? STACEY NOTINE: It’s very disenfranchised again. You know, there’s no communication. There’s no sharing. Again, we are not… you know, one group to the other, meeting once a month, meeting once every two months, sharing information, having a goal. What are the objectives? What are people’s objectives? Just to ask that question: “What are your objectives?” What is it that you want? No, no es para que… no. It’s not. PREGUNTA: Pero, por ejemplo, una situación ahora del barco (no se entiende) que estuvo en San Juan… -Sí, Tulio está ahí… Exacto, y un poco, como que… STACEY NOTINE: En términos de que como otro… en términos de que todo el mundo estaba diciendo: “Stacey, sigue, tú estás haciendo bien, sigue con esto…” This is a perfect example. Within records there’s a particular question, there’s a terminology: “Hazardous components”. Certain hazardous components, you know, could be so-called reviewed or regulated. You know, under the military’s munitions rule… and so, if you don’t know, you know, if you know that, then reading these communications, reading these studies, you wouldn’t know… “Well, are they lacking or could they do better?” You know, within the law that we are under in this review. You know, and… a legal fight has to go by those laws. Where those laws are lacking, and they are lacking, and the evidence that they are lacking is tremendous, and it’s not just in Vieques. It’s nationwide. It’s worldwide. Use that. It’s a very powerful tool. Join with those other voices. What… you know… what is the problem? You know, what is the problem to speak English? PREGUNTA: And for example, the other kind of community that have some interest in Vieques… STACEY NOTINE: Oh, great interest, pero en esto lo que te… PREGUNTA: Pero mi pregunta… por ejemplo, no la comunidad de Vieques, sino la comunidad científica de Puerto Rico… STACEY NOTINE: No, en ese sentido yo no he visto eso… yo no he visto y esa es una buena pregunta. En términos de posiblemente… just some technical advisor that I pushed for because of my relationship with the group he works generally with, and so he became this technical advisor immediately, so-called, for what is the TRC. And I still push for him now in terms of this coming… simply because this is someone who is aware of the process, so perhaps… his name is Ted Henry… PREGUNTA: Is he the advisor for the community? STACEY NOTINE: For the technical… you know, I can say this… for the technical… for what it is going on in the… You know, what documents the military will allow him to see. Now, one of the things… again, it’s good to bring this up… that specifically come… you know, another complication, but it’s what people are dealing with everywhere. We can do it too. Ted Henry is hired by the military. He’s paid by the military. He’s only given the documents that the military, you know, is willing to give him of these investigations. PREGUNTA: And he is the advisor of the community… STACEY NOTINE: And he is the advisor… you say of the community… It doesn’t have to be limited to him. But he’s the one reviewing and making commentaries for the community members of the TRC. Now, are we in touch with him to discuss this, these documents? No, because nobody is reading them. Do people lie and say “oh, we are in touch him all the time and we are making our comments and…?” Yes, you know, which is when I hear this is like: “Well, this is fantasy land”, you know, and that’s not good. PREGUNTA: Who is not going through them? What community? The community of the TRC or…? STACEY NOTINE: The community, pero todo el mundo puede… you know, I’ve offered this to Bob, to Nilda, everybody can comment on them. You know, I mean, that’s the point. You know, again, to the degree that you feel that this is… valid. Yes, of course, it’s not totally valid, but this is what is happening within this forum. Do Ted Henry’s commentaries come with… are they a silver bullet or a way that would express all of our concerns, all of our reservations? Absolutely not. For that reason you must read. You know, you must have some knowledge of this, so you can express the concerns beyond which Ted Henry is going to express, who comes at a very particular, narrow situation. But he is aware of the process. And that is important. Because that is far more process… because you are dealing with, you know, this game of who’s responsible to pay, who’s responsible… you know, to identify it, and then if you identify it, clean it up. And you know, to the degree that you don’t want to talk about it, well, nothing is going to get done. You know, how are we going to get anything done? You know, is the Puerto Rican government doing all that they can? From what I can see in the commentaries, from what I’m engaging with them there, yes. We are now, for instance, in this “no further action” that the Navy has declared. And they declared it not just on the west, but they also are declaring it on the east. To this… the questions that I have had from the very beginning in terms of community leaders getting engaged in this remain the same, remain unanswered. You know, what is it you want to do about this? What are the objectives here that you have? So far, all I’ve seen, again, it’s not, it’s not dialogue, and it’s not totally honest. It’s… you know… it’s… PREGUNTA: Do you think that the problem might be that it involves such a knowledge and kind of a sacrifice that it overwhelms whoever, you know, whoever gets involved, you know, like the gap in knowledge…? STACEY NOTINE: Well, there again, yes, you could say... You know, it takes a particular kind of bind, certainly, to want to just sit and sift through all this stuff. But, you know, if you are going to… you know, you register your car… you know, you have to… it’s not… you know, you just have to read and react, you know, it’s not… you know, you write a thesis, you write an essay, it’s not that difficult… you know, it’s not, it’s really not that difficult… you know, in this… it’s not that difficult. It’s just, you know… PREGUNTA: I know, I understand, but why then the…? STACEY NOTINE: I don’t know… I don’t… you know, again, it’s because it’s in English… you know, well… you know, that in and of itself shouldn’t stop you, but… then… FIN.- video 0 OHMS Object This field contains the OHMS Hyperlink (link to the XML file within the OHMS Viewer) https://vieques.iac.gatech.edu/ohms-viewer/index.php?cachefile=Interview101813.xml Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 76. 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Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Juan Carlos Rodríguez Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Kathy Gannet OHMS Object Text This field contains the OHMS Index and / or Transcript and is what makes the contents of the OHMS object searchable in Omeka 5.4 Unknown Date 60 cathy ganett - Interview Cathy Ganett Vieques Struggle: A Digital Video Archive Cathy Ganett Juan Carlos Rodríguez 0 https://youtu.be/7JOK-f9CkfU YouTube video PREGUNTA: Thank you very much for opening your space to us today, and I just wanted to start talking a little bit concerning the article that you recently published, both in El Nuevo Vieques and also in Claridad regarding the housing situation in Vieques… about your findings, about how you started being concerned about it, and what you found about some research you did… CATHY GANETT: Well, the research I did was about my neighborhood. We are standing here in my house in Vieques in Barrio Esperanza, and I moved here a year and a half ago. I actually bought this house a year and a half ago. And I came to Vieques to participate in civil disobedience and to help to get the Navy to stop bombing Vieques, and I decided to stay and bought this house, and I’m renting out an apartment downstairs to tourists. That was the way that I decided I would be able to live and survive in a community that doesn’t really have much to… too many jobs, and as I’m living here, when the Navy left in May 2003, I was aware that, you know, prices of properties would go up, but I had no idea how much it would go up. It was quite amazing. So, the Navy announced, after the many, many years of protesting of the Viequenses, the Navy announced it would leave on… it started in January 2003. And they said they were leaving on the 1st of May 2003. And so… you know, I’m just going to… I’m not very good at… So I’ll start on my own, right? OK… I recently published an article about the sales of property in my neighborhood here, where I live, in Esperanza, which is really the neighborhood that has the most tourism in Vieques right now. And because I had been looking for a house to buy a year and a half ago, I pretty much knew what was for sale in this neighborhood and I knew the prices. And it was really quite a shock when the Navy announced that it was going to leave Vieques and stop the bombing in January 2003, that I saw the prices go up. I had bought my house one month before, in December 2002. And pretty much I could have bought any property in the neighborhood that was for sale, that was in price range, but there were very few buyers. I was practically the only buyer looking. And right after I bought my house, and then a month later the Navy announced that they were leaving, the prices started to go up. And in the last 18 months, from talking to my neighbors and talking to realtors, and from the research that I had done in order to buy my own property, I had found that there were 40 properties sold in this small neighborhood of Esperanza over the course of 18 months. And, again, through talking to people in the neighborhood and observing, I have come to conclude that approximately two out of those 40 buyers are from Vieques, and for me that is absolutely mind-boggling, that only two Viequenses bought. Now, what I’m making by stating this point is that… what point I’m making is that Viequenses cannot compete in a market that has now become full of buyers from outside, from the United States and from the main island of Puerto Rico. And that we have to address in a public policy way how are Viequenses going to continue to be able to afford to rent and to buy on this island. I looked at the statistics of the houses and found out that approximately 60 or 70 per cent of the 40 buyers were from the United States and maybe about 15 or 20 per cent from Puerto Rico. And, as I say, only two Viequenses bought houses during this period of 18 months, and one bought a business and one bought their home. And, oddly enough, those two did not buy their house through a realtor. I think that says something about the impact of… I’ll say that over again… And out of those 40 houses that were sold… maybe we should wait until the thunder stops… And out of the 40 properties that were sold in my neighborhood in the last 18 months, that is, since the Navy announced that they were leaving Vieques in January 2003, about 60 to 70 per cent of the buyers were from the United States and about 15 to 20 per cent were from Puerto Rico. And only a small percentage were people who already live in Vieques who were looking to buy a home. That is, as far as I know, only two buyers are from Vieques. And out of those two buyers, one bought a home and one bought a business. And, oddly enough, having talked to all the realtors in Vieques, and not all of them would talk to me, but putting all the information together, I have found out that those two buyers that were from Vieques, did not buy their property through realtors, and I don’t think that is by chance. I think that is saying that the only way Viequenses could afford to buy, was through networking and going directly to the seller. And I know there are people in this community, as I found out doing the interviews for the article I wrote about this, that believe that the real estate brokers do push the prices up and have a very negative impact upon housing availability in Vieques. Of course, we know that there are other reasons that people are coming to Vieques. We know that they are coming because it’s been written about all over the United States, from The New York Times to the Miami Herald. As soon as the Navy announced that it was leaving in the beginning of 2003, these articles starting to appear, describing Vieques as a “tropical paradise”, as a “nature preserve”, and so forth, never mentioning, of course, that two thirds of the island was formally operated by the U.S. Navy and used for bombing practices, and that it is one of the most contaminated places in the world. And I think that has been a very unbalanced reporting. I think that if the reporting was presented in a more balanced way, presenting the high incidence of illnesses in Vieques, perhaps the buyers wouldn’t be coming here as quickly. But, at any rate, we have to think about what impact it will have in a tourist area in this neighborhood, having so many buyers buying a home and saving them for a vacation home, meaning that many of them will be vacant for much of the year. I think that they will become very extreme contradictions when we see people unable to find an apartment to rent, and at the same time walking down streets and streets and streets full of houses that are boarded up, while the owners are living in their primary residence in the States. So, I pose this question, because I think it’s going to be an issue that people who are making public policy and people who are in the community to pressure the people who are making policy will have to address, will have to address providing incentives for people to rent their houses to long-term rentals, and to also perhaps talk about whether we will let entire neighborhoods be bought up by people from the outside. I think these are difficult questions. I think that some of them have been addressed by different reforms that have been… I’m familiar with the reforms from the United States, because I only came here four years ago, such as speculation, taxes, that encourage people not to buy and resell in a short period of time without doing any improvement to the property, and that would be flipping the property. I do know of a couple of instances of flipping in this neighborhood, and although many of the buyers, I think, are going to be very good neighbors, they come here because they like the culture of Puerto Rico, they like the beauty of Vieques, and there are some that will integrate themselves into the community and be good neighbors. The problem is, in my opinion, is that the vast majority of North Americans who have come to live in Vieques, have not… Wait? No… that the vast majority of North Americans who have come to Vieques to, to live here, either part-time or long-term, tend to congregate among themselves and segregate themselves. And any prejudices that they came here believing about Puerto Ricans and about Vieques are only intensified by the fact that they, that they spend all their time talking to people who look like them. And in the article that I wrote, this issue was brought up several times by the local people. And… that people need to integrate themselves to do volunteer work, they need to, you know, they need to hire Viequenses when they come here to create a business. There’s a very big problem we have in the business strip down here, in this tourist area, where many of the restaurants will hire English speaking employees over local people who speak Spanish. And, so that if you only have one language, if you are not bilingual… you can pretty much expect to be hired if you speak English, but if you speak just Spanish, no. And that’s clearly a problem, and it’s a problem in terms of how the management relate to their employees as well. So, I think that this problem of Viequenses needing housing cannot be stressed enough, because 60 per cent of the people, families who live in Vieques, are living below the poverty level. And so, the opportunity to buy a property or even to rent an apartment is very, very difficult. Most of the young families, I believe, are living doubled-up with their parents. They have applied for Section 8, and we have 260 people on the Section 8 waiting list here in Vieques, and we have over 1,000 people waiting for a parcela, a plot of land, to be able to build their own house. And we just have got to see movement, and unfortunately the movement on the part of the government programs has not been sufficient in the recent time. And the land is being bought up, and if it is bought up, there is no going back. Control of the land is control of, I think, the future of Vieques. PREGUNTA: Tell me a little bit about the dynamic of when you were collecting the information. Are some other people involved in the business of selling… did you have a good input, output, feedback…? Tell us the… CATHY GANETT: Well, in respect to the realtors I interviewed… When I was collecting information for this article, I decided to interview Viequenses and also to interview realtors, and the realtors were difficult to reach, with the exception of, of one in particular. And two of them (no se entiende) that are operating in Vieques refused to talk to me because they said: “Oh, we want to know if you are going to criticize the real estate brokers before we talk to you”. And my article really wasn’t focused on real estate brokers, it was focused on the problem, the need for housing. So, they were very, were not very… respectful in the way they responded to my request to talk with them. And, in fact, one of the realtors that refused to talk to me and was very hostile towards my request, turns out that out of the 40 properties in this neighborhood that were sold, she sold, you know, almost 14 or 15, approaching half of them. So, maybe it’s not odd that she refused to talk about it. She has something to hide. But that kind of makes me think I don’t know what she does. So, there are realtors that will say, another one that I’m thinking of in particular, will say: “Well, you just don’t understand. This is the effect of supply and demand. We don’t make the prices. The market makes the prices, and we are not doing anything wrong.” Well, I think that that’s clearly not the truth, because I’ve talked to many people who have told me stories, and in the course of doing this story, I’ve interviewed many local people, and one in particular was a woman who has had an approval from a HUD program called “Llave para tu hogar”, which allows her to get a down payment assistance and help with the financing. And she was looking for a long time, maybe a year, I believe. And the landlord where she was living said: “Well, we’ll sell you the house you are living in.” And something happened and he sold the house from under her. One day she found out she had to move. And he said: “I’ll rent you another apartment”, so she moved to the other apartment. And he said: “To make it up to you, if you want to buy this house, you can buy this house”, and she said: “Well, I’m approved for the program, but the program has a limit of 70,000 in terms of the purchase price,” but that if you wait until we are finished paying off one of our debts, that would enable her to afford the house. She would have more available income. So, one day she was out… she was still waiting for this landlord to get back to her, and she was out and about, and she talked to a realtor who said that he had her house listed and instead of the 85,000 that her landlord had told her, it was listed for 115,000. And that was way above her means, and once again she had been promised. So, somehow, when the realtor intervenes, the prices go up. Now, here’s the other side of the coin, which I want to be clear about: no one, including myself, would advocate that Viequenses be paid less than what they deserve for their house. So, there’s a delicate balance there, and I think the balance comes out in everybody being truthful and if the seller wants to sell it at a below market price to make it available to a local family, let that be done. I just talked to a woman yesterday who said that she’s selling her house for 60,000 to a person, a relative of hers and it’s under market, she knows it, but she and her husband are going to sell it anyway, under market, without a realtor, but that the realtor approached and said: “You know, I can get you, you know, 100,000 for it,” so there’s a lot of pressure and there are people knocking on doors, buyers, asking if the house is for sale, when there’s no sign on the house, and saying: “I can pay you cash.” There was a sign down on the Malecón, the restaurants there, this winter, that said: “Cash for your house. Call Steve,” with his phone number. So it’s creating sort of a market frenzy and that is having an effect over, I think… driving the prices up as well. So, as far as what I think can be done about this, because I… I have written a lot about the problem, but I also intend to try to do some kind of summary of what is possible, I think that first of all, we should be negotiating with the real estate brokers, telling them what kind of business practices are expected if they want to do business in Vieques. And, perhaps, some kind of a work order or checklist can be done, characterizing what kind of operation each realtor is. The problem of the banks I think is a big one. I come from Boston, where there is a very, very famous program, where the hotel workers of all the major Boston hotels have a union, and they negotiated with the banks, so the banks set aside a huge pot of money for first time homebuyers, so that the underwriting standards are not as strict as they can be. And I think we need to examine whether the banks are loaning in an equal manner to local people as they are loaning to people who come from the United States. Whether… it wouldn’t surprise me at all if there was discrimination against local people. Discrimination in Puerto Rico against Puerto Ricans in favor of North Americans, because we know that, unfortunately, white skin privilege is alive and well in the United States and that it carries over into Puerto Rico. Because there isn’t, I don’t think, enough said about discrimination at any point. It needs to be exposed. So, there are other things that we can do that have to do with creating land banks. Right now, if some Viequenses needed to sell, they could, instead of selling their land to a person coming to buy it as a vacation home, they could sell it to a community non-profit land bank, which could hold the land or the house until there came a time when the resources were available to assist Viequenses to make the purchase of their house. There are many other programs that I think could be used. And, there are community development corporations, for example. And I think even as supportive as people around the world have been of the Vieques struggle, I think if people were aware that there is right now a real, real struggle for who is going to be in control of the land in Vieques, and whether Viequenses might actually end up losing part of the control, that people might be willing to send donations to buy some of this land or houses, to make a… to preserve housing for Viequenses. PREGUNTA: Is this… I know that you have been involved in the housing… in some kind of housing research or worked before… Does this situation remind you of those situations that you found in your previous work with housing? CATHY GANETT: Definitely, I have spent many years organizing tenants in Boston, Washington, D.C., and other places in Massachusetts, and I also work in civil rights, particularly around the issue of equal access to public programs, because although Puerto Rico has many disadvantages for the fact that they are under the control of the United States government, I think one tool that could be used to the advantage of people here in Puerto Rico, is… are the federal anti-discrimination laws. And, so… what we could do is housing testing, for example, we could send in two different people to apply to buy or rent the same property and find out what is really happening. This area is ripe for that kind of discrimination and ripe for that kind of early testing. Very often the testing isn’t done until the practices have been going on for years and years. But I also think the other issue is whether the people who need housing are speaking for themselves, whether they have a voice. And, in my experience, tenants really need to form their own organizations. If they are encompassed under the, the… sort of a kind of, you know, social justice organizing, I think that their issue will be forgotten. And this is true for the issues of poor people. I really think that poor people need to be organized on their own and get assistance from those of us who can afford to contribute to that. There are many organizations, like the Campaign for Human Development in… which is a foundation of the Catholic Church, that fund exactly that kind of organizing. So I think that the key thing is to do, or to have Viequenses who are looking for housing to organize themselves and to negotiate directly on behalf of themselves with the powers that be, whether it be the Puerto Rican government, the municipal government, the banks, whether it be the realtors, whether it be face to face with their neighbors that they may be having issues with. But I think that there is a need for new organization. And to use the civil rights laws, to use the federal housing programs with a… with a… can be applied. There are a lot of subsidies, of course, with the recent changes in federal laws, there are many more funds for home ownership than there are for renting, and that is actually in accordance with the desires of people here in Vieques. PREGUNTA: You make this call for new organizations. Do you think that the organizations that have been, you know, running the struggle against the U.S. Navy have some limits, concerning maybe issues of social class or discrimination or things like that? Or do you think there should be more organizations in order to diversify the struggle? How do you feel about the organizations already existing organizing the community in relation to the issue of housing? Do you think it might be a little bit in the background or… ? CATHY GANETT: Well, first of all, I want to be respectful and, you know, any comments I’m going to make on this subject, that I am new to this community, so my opinion can be taken with that in mind. But, as I said before, I do believe that… issues of tenant organizing of people who are fighting for getting their own home and so forth and poor people, I think, historically have needed to form their own organizations, and that organizations of the struggle were formed around a very broad basis of unity, and that is wanting to get, to get the Navy out. Although, of course, there are groups who have taken a clear stand that they want to promote development in favor of the Viequenses, the future development, and that is also friendly to the environment. So there are certainly more points on the agenda of these organizations. But it certainly hasn’t looked at the different level of struggle that somebody has to face when you are a young teenage mother with no place to live and occupying one small bedroom in the home of your parents, because you can’t find an apartment to move to. That… those issues I think are beginning to be addressed by the Alianza de Mujeres, and I think they might be one of the groups that might pick up the ball. So, I think that it depends on how it plays itself out, but I think it’s very, very important that the voice of poor people and the people who are suffering from the injustice have a chance to speak for themselves, and not to be left out of the process. PREGUNTA: When people were sharing their experiences here in the community, especially people having some problems with the, with the… with housing, and finding houses and all that… Did you find a little reception to the kind of work you were doing with them? Like, was it easy for you to kind of… like, create a dialogue with the people? CATHY GANETT: Oh, yeah, when I went to somebody to talk about the issue, it is. I think I often had to break out of my own point of reference. Because I had been involved in the struggle here for so long, and because the people who are basically leading many of the organizations in the struggle here are the people who have homes, who are retired, who have a steady income coming in, who have jobs. They tend not to be the people… because first of all the struggle against the Navy was led by, predominantly, people I would say, you know, over 45, even over 50. I mean, it would vary because of the fact that it is very difficult for a young person to get an education. They have to leave to go to college, they have to leave to look for professional jobs that they’ve been trained for. And so very often that age group, even from teenage on through the thirties, I’ve found very few actually participating in leading or participating in the struggle in Vieques. So, when you talk about talking to those people, you need to go beyond your immediate reference group, because I didn’t meet those people in need when I got involved in the struggle. But they are almost invisible in some ways. I often say this, because especially, it’s very sad when you think of the fact that tourists come here and they go to the beaches and they go out to the restaurants, and they go up to the fort to see the museum, and they leave Vieques without any real idea of the suffering that goes on in terms of housing, health care, the high incidence of HIV infection in Vieques, the high incidence of teen pregnancy. It’s really something that can’t be glossed over. So… I’m saying… it’s not only glossed over by the tourists, but as historically has always been true, women and people who are very poor, their voices are often not heard. And that’s something that needs to be worked on in Vieques, I believe. PREGUNTA: Even with some of the organizations, the political organizations… -Yeah… Do you think the anti-Navy struggle might have helped, unfortunately, to invisibilize or… keep those voices silent? CATHY GANETT: I don’t know. I think that, perhaps, you know, I’ve heard people say that the struggle to get the Navy out was… while it was going on, it was ignoring other social problems. I think that can be taken… you can stand on either side of that thing and, you know, it’s just a matter of how you frame it. I think that struggle needed to be waged and that’s a bigger topic than we can talk about here, but I do believe that the Alianza de Mujeres Viequenses is working on a more personal level with people in Vieques. It’s working with younger people, and it’s working with victims of… survivors of cancer, and people in the community to be trained to give support to survivors of cancer. So, more direct service for people who are suffering. And hopefully they will be able to work on the housing issue as well, but I don’t think we should always expect each organization to work on every issue. And so, if I had to give you my opinion right now, of what would be more effective, having been a community organizer for many years, I would like to see the growth of a separate organization to deal with the needs of housing for poor families. That we… the issue didn’t have to… fight for space on the agenda. But, you know, it’s… I don’t pretend to have a prescription or a blue print for how it should be done. I think you can’t predict the future, but it’s something that definitely is needed. PREGUNTA: Tell me about your feelings of doing this work of a… thinking about housing in the context of Vieques, but also having the experience of buying a house… Did some people… while you were doing the research, kind of ask you about your position, your old position in the whole issue of buying, selling and all that… -Well… was a threat for some people that you were talking or…? CATHY GANETT: In terms of my own status, as a property owner, no. Because I think that… I think that I am very, very clear that the Viequenses and I think Puerto Rican people in general are very open minded and basically, you know, open to North Americans and white people being good until they prove themselves otherwise. And so, for me, I came here and I bought a house and I participate in the struggle so, you know, I’ve been very visible, and I sort of put my cards on the table. So I don’t think I have had any need to be defensive. And in the one or two situations where that happened, they were people who came to Vieques from the outside and they assumed a position of criticism, but they don’t really know the community here. And so, it hasn’t been completely nil, but… So, most of the people in Vieques are… you know, the best compliment you can be paid is to say: “Oh, Cathy, you are a Viequense.” But, they are very warm and they would say that to anybody who comes to the community with the intention of being respectful and of… becoming knowledgeable of the issues in Vieques. Because… you know, it’s really a problem of… of some people coming here to live a separate life, I think. And, although when people come here to retire, perhaps they are coming here because they are tired. A long life. But I don’t think that lets us off the hook for being aware of what’s going on in your community around you. I think that there’s a lot that can be done. As Judith Conde said, from the Alianza, when I interviewed her, she said: “Many people come here with great skills and, you know, they could come and offer them to a youth program, and so forth.” And many do, you know. But I think that the Viequenses are looking for that, they want involvement from the North Americans, or whether it be Puerto Ricans coming to Vieques. So, as far as me creating a place here that I can live and I can also gain a little income by the apartment that I have as part of my house, people have been very supportive and I see that as a positive development. I just thought of another issue that’s very important too, I think in terms of the future, harmony of life on the island of Vieques, and that is the issue of language. It’s not easy as a, as a native English-speaking person to bring this issue up in a community of Spanish-speaking people, but I have made my efforts to learn the language and… participate in all the community meetings that I go to, using the language and listening in the language. But there are North Americans who have… for whatever reason, do not understand Spanish, and I think it would become, it is very important to begin to publicize the issue through community information brochures and so forth, bilingually. That hasn’t been the habit in the groups that have been working in the struggle to get the Navy out of here. And perhaps at that moment I actually understood it because I actually couldn’t find any… many other North Americans who were against the Navy here. I kept looking for them here and I think if I had seen the need I would translated it myself. But now that we are talking about the development and the future of Vieques, many of these people are, in fact, working in their own little businesses, and we need the communicate with the North Americans who have businesses here. So, translation is going to be very important. And I hope that it is part of the future of Vieques, as well as classes in Spanish and classes in English, so that classes in English, so that the Viequenses can participate in the tourism industry. And classes in Spanish, so that the North American, native English-speaking people can provide better services in their businesses and can get to know their neighbors, for all the various reasons that one needs to communicate. PREGUNTA: I also wanted to ask you about… what led you to being interested in Vieques in the first place, and also that story you told about how you got involved in the struggle, just to… CATHY GANETT: Just a little bit, yeah… I was born in Boston and spent most of my life in Boston and had the good fortune of having many Puerto Rican neighbors and friends. So, when I made my first trip to Puerto Rico in 1986, I had heard already about the struggle against the Navy, because they had made quite a stand in the late seventies and early eighties. So I came here as part of my first trip to Puerto Rico, and ever since then I always kept my ear open to what was happening in Vieques. And I returned and visited Vieques one other time. So, back in Boston, when David Sanes died, one of my Puerto Rican friends told me, and I was shocked that a bomb had killed a civilian in Vieques. You know, having been here it touched me more than the average news report would. And that really, really blew me away when they told me that the camps had been set up and they were blocking the bombing by camping out in the bombing range. And I’m definitely a person who, who believes in direct action. I believe that we give the system some patience to change things as, you know, we have to, and we work along as much as we can for it, but there are many times when we need to get out there, and with our bodies say what we believe in. This was one of the times. And I felt, as a North American, that to… to come to Puerto Rico and to say that I don’t want any more violence in my name. I want to stand on the side of justice. That this was an opportunity to do it and with the people that I knew were loving people. So, I came here and I decided to stay, because it was such an open community, such a loving community. And I think there’s a lot of blessings being bestowed on Vieques right now, that there have been many miracles. That the international community has come together and has stood beside Vieques and Vieques is prepared to stand behind, beside other places that are fighting for… against military occupation by the U.S. military. And I think it, it… should expect a bright future, because of the miracles that have happened here, but it doesn’t hurt to have a little bit of healthy worry and anxiety that maybe we should do things a little better. -OK, Cathy, thank you very much, and hopefully we will keep our conversation open for next time… FIN.- video 0 OHMS Object This field contains the OHMS Hyperlink (link to the XML file within the OHMS Viewer) https://vieques.iac.gatech.edu/ohms-viewer/index.php?cachefile=Interview56308.xml Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 45. Interview with Kathy Gannett 2004 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 Alianza de Mujeres Viequenses American Residents (Denial of Vieques problems) Americans in Vieques Discrimination (of Puerto Rican buyers in Puerto Rico) English use (vs. Spanish use) Gentrification House sales in Esperanza Housing problems Kathy Gannett Kathy Gannett (arrival in Vieques) Kathy Gannett (experience as organizer) Kathy Gannett (experience with the Vieques Struggle) Kathy Gannett (relationship with Viequenses) Media coverage (Vieques news reporting in USA) Navy exit Participation Real estate agents Real Estate Market Real Estate speculation Sustainable development Tourism Tourists Tourists (Denial of Vieques problems) Vieques Development Vieques future Vieques social problems ignored by tourists Vieques Youth