expropriation of their land and the environmental impact of weapons testing. The locals' discontent was exacerbated by the island's perilous economic condition.
Protests came to a head in 1999 when Vieques native David Sanes, a civilian employee of the United States Navy, was killed by a jet bomb that the Navy said misfired. Sanes had been working as a security guard. A popular campaign of civil disobedience resurged; not since the mid-1970s had viequenses come together en masse to protest the target practices. The locals took to the ocean in their small fishing boats and successfully stopped the US Navy's military exercises.
The Vieques issue became something of a cause cel�bre, and local protesters were joined by sympathetic groups and prominent individuals from the mainland United States and abroad, including political leaders Rub�n Berr�os, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, singers Danny Rivera and Ricky Martin, actor Edward James Olmos, boxer F�lix 'Tito' Trinidad, baseball superstar Carlos Delgado, writers Ana Lydia Vega and Giannina Braschi, and Guatemala's Nobel Prize winner Rigoberta Mench�. Kennedy, while serving jail time in Puerto Rico for his role in the protests, fathered a son whom he named Aidan Caohman "Vieques" Kennedy. The problems arising from the US Navy base have also featured in songs by various musicians, including Puerto Rican rock band Puya, rapper Immortal Technique and reggaeton artist Tego Calder�n.
As a result of this pressure, in May 2003 the Navy withdrew from Vieques, and much of the island was designated a National Wildlife Refuge under the control of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. Closure of Roosevelt Roads Naval Station followed in 2004
