Word: puerto
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BOSTON--A small group of Harvard students protested by day and camped by night outside the JFK Federal Building this weekend, joining over 100 other protesters against the U.S. Navy occupation of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques...
...crowd marched in a circle holding signs and waving Puerto Rican flags, saying they will not leave the area until the U.S. permanently stops testing bombs on the island...
This year the macarena's not going to cut it; Al Gore had better work on his salsa moves. With the Cuban-American political leadership already enraged at the administration over the Elian Gonzalez case, Wednesday's raid on protesters at a Navy base in Vieques could certainly dampen Puerto Rican enthusiasm for getting out the Gore vote. U.S. marshals and FBI agents began in the early hours arresting protesters who're trying to stop the U.S. Navy from reopening its bombing range on the island, among them nuns, priests, labor leaders and U.S. congresspeople from Illinois and New York...
...pollsters have clearly found that Vieques is one instance in which the First Lady oughtn't be standing by her man. Mrs. Clinton has opposed the administration's decision, saying "a small, inhabited island should not be used for target practice" and supporting the call by a number of Puerto Rican politicians that the referendum be held before any bomb testing resumes. But with the Navy determined to reopen its primary Atlantic combat training facility, this time there's no easy exit for Al Gore from the administration's line, because siding with the protesters means slapping down the military...
...from locals some 50 years ago and considered vital by the military, became the focus of nationalist protest after a security guard was killed by a stray bomb last year. But Clinton's bombing-for-cash deal with the local political establishment appears to have left more nationalist-minded Puerto Ricans unimpressed, creating the current standoff. The protesters may not be able to stop the Navy from resuming its bombing exercises, but they're hoping the spectacle of federal agents dragging off passive resisters will make the political cost of removing them prohibitive to the Clinton administration. Local politicians...