Disdain, Contempt, and Disgust

The tiny island of Vieques lies about eight miles east of Puerto Rico, bordered to the north by the Atlantic Ocean and lapped to the south by the Caribbean Sea. Beginning in the early 1940s, when the navy purchased twenty-six thousand acres—about three-quarters of the island—for $1.6 million, Vieques served as the largest training area for the United States Atlantic Fleet Forces,...