Excerpted from “Vieques, A Photographically Illustrated Guide to the Island, Its History and Its Culture”
On April 19, 1999, Viequense security guard, David Sanes, was killed by a 500 pound bomb that missed its target and exploded near the observation post where he was working. The incident led to the establishment of civil disobedience camps in the bombing range. The occupants of one of these camps built a chapel on the beach called Playa Icacos.

La Capilla Ecuménica

The chapel became the spiritual center of the movement. Priests gave mass there, holy water was sprinkled on bomb craters and unexploded ordnance in the target zone. The Archbishop of San Juan, Roberto Gonzalez gave a sermon at the chapel about civil disobedience. The Bishop of Caguas, Puerto Rico, Monsignor Alvaro Corrada del Rio, brought a statue of the Virgin del Carmen, the patron saint of fishermen and blessed it.

The chapel was damaged by Hurricane Lenny, but was rebuilt as soon as the storm had passed.

On May 4, 2000, the day when all those present at the camps were arrested and removed from the bombing range, the chapel was occupied by nuns and religious leaders who were inside praying. Heavily armed agents of the Navy, the FBI, Federal Marshals and the Puerto Rico Police Department, many wearing helmets with plastic shields or gas masks and jackboots and bulletproof vests, stormed the church, handcuffed the priests and nuns and threw them into military vehicles. The chapel was torn down by navy bulldozers.

The chapel bell, however, was preserved.

In 2002, with the support of the government in Puerto Rico, a replica of the chapel was reconstructed on the hillside directly across the street from the Capitol building in San Juan. The original church bell was recovered and placed in the new chapel.

The chapel became the scene of confrontations between pro navy supporters and those who wanted the navy to leave Vieques as well as between statehood advocates and separatists.

In 2003, the governor of Puerto Rico decided to send the chapel back to Vieques where it was to be relocated across the road from the Camp Garcia gate and serve as part of the transfer ceremonies on May 1, when the navy was to leave Vieques.

Unfortunately, Big Island officials did not include Viequenses in the church relocation plan, which resulted in logistical complications. The Ecumenical Chapel arrived at Isabel Segunda on a barge leased by the Puerto Rican government.

Meanwhile, as anyone who has spent time in Vieques could tell you, it is impossible to move something as wide as the chapel through the narrow streets of the town. This problem soon became apparent to those in charge of the relocation who now realized that the chapel would have to leave Isabel Segunda by sea and be offloaded somewhere else on the island. (A better alternative, for example, might have been Playa Caracas inside the camp)

But it was too late. The government leased barge was long gone.

Many times things on Caribbean Islands move at a slower pace than they do elsewhere. A slower pace can also be expected for government related activities, not only in the Caribbean, but just about anywhere in the world. Such was the case with the chapel relocation.

A second barge was eventually sent from the Big Island to Vieques. The barge turned out to be too small to safely carry the chapel, so back it went to the Big Island.

Vieques, A Photographically Illustrated Guide to the Island, Its History and Its Culture

By the time a third, and this time more suitable barge arrived in Vieques, it was too late to follow the original plan of locating it across from the camp gate. Alternatively, the Ecumenical Chapel was taken to the Rompeolas, offloaded, and trucked to the former Navy lands on western Vieques, where it stands today, overlooking the beautiful Vieques Sound, a symbol of peace standing on a site where war was once the order of the day.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 at 4:11 pm and is filed under Life on St. John USVI. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.