Margarita Pérez Knowing of the good work for peace of the American Friends Service Committee, I was gratified to find an office in Puerto Rico founded by the AFSC office. It is known as the Proyecto Caribeño Para Justicia Y Paz. Although it became independent of AFSC in 1986, and manages its own program, AFSC continues to provide some administrative and financial support and cooperates with its programs. It was to the "Proyecto" that we called for help when we shipped our camper to Puerto Rico. From their office, Rick Hall put in a full day's work exercising his fluency in Spanish to extricate us from an incredible amount of red tape. Directing the Proyecto since 1982 was the young and enthusiastic Margarita Pérez. From childhood, she had been active in Catholic community work. By the age of thirteen, she was teaching in the church. Having been living in the United States, she went to Puerto Rico in the sixties, where she continued her interest in social work, and participated in a popular education program in La Perla, a notorious slum area. She met friends there involved in political action who instilled in her a concern for the independence of Puerto Rico. She learned that many nuns and priests were pro-independence, but working quietly for the cause. The official stand of the Catholic Church is still pro-colonial. The office had opened in 1971 in support of the struggle to get the United States Navy off the little island of Culebra. Through non-violent action by Quakers and other pacifists and religious organizations, Culebra was finally returned to the people from whom it had been taken. Its activity then turned to an interchange of Puerto Rican youth with young people from the United States. Based on the premise that oppression produces adverse effects in the lives of both the oppressor and the oppressed, the young people engaged in an interchange of experiences. At this point the Proyecto was called Intercambio de Juventud or Reciprocal Youth Interchange Project. The youth from the United States going over to Puerto Rico were given work assignments for periods of four to six months. One of these assignments was at Vieques. They saw a situation there quite similar to that of Culebra, and prepared a slide show on the militarization and exploitation of the island. Another group went into central Puerto Rico to investigate the threat of exploitation of the valuable resources there by United States mining industries. They found proof that Puerto Rico has the resources necessary for economic survival. Other research was on pharmaceuticals, the ROTC, the repression of unions, and environmental pollution by multi-national industries. From the Intercambio, the organization became the Proyecto. It was now seeking reciprocal understanding of other countries of the Caribbean despite historical, cultural, and racial differences. The Proyecto is a collective force of laborers, religious workers, professionals and students working for justice and peace. It is part of a network including PRISA, the Puerto Rican Bar Association, La Conferencia de Religiosas, the Evangelical Council, the anti-nuclear movement, the Puerto Rican Institute of Civil Rights, and others. It envisions the Caribbean as a zone of cooperation and peace, and free of nuclear weapons. Through seminars, lectures, forums, publications, and materials for schools and universities, the Proyecto keeps Puerto Ricans informed of the militarization of their country. It reminds them that more than thirteen hundred Puerto Ricans died in Vietnam, twice as many as from any other state or territory of the United states. Thousands have been physically and mentally affected. This should be a warning against enlistment in the United States military. To this end, it supports COMEPAZ (Comité de Maestros, Estudiantes y Padres por la Paz) a peace organization in the town of San Lorenzo campaigning against military recruitment in the public schools. It denounces the nuclear threat and had participated in the formation of the Puerto Rican anti-nuclear movement. The Proyecto protested the detention of Haitian refugees at Fort Allen by the United States government, equating it with a concentration camp. Christmastime brought on a campaign against war toys, including a festivity in a park with a display of alternatives to violence. "Don't play war, play peace" was the theme. One of many seminars organized by the Proyecto drew together, in 1984, peace organizations not only from Puerto Rico, but from twenty English and Spanish-speaking countries of the Caribbean, Central America, and North America. Together, they examined the factors bringing about militarism, and its impact on society. In conclusion, the conference affirmed the right of a people to build a just and democratic society. "The concept of peace involves social justice and the effective right of a country to self-determination and national sovereignty." Of educative value are publications such as a treatise by Prof. Rodríguez Beruff on the militarization of Puerto Rico. Intercambio, written in Spanish, English and French, informs of the military maneuvers of the Puerto Rican National Guard abroad, the threat of nuclear weapons in Puerto Rico, the Grand Jury persecution of independentistas, compulsory military service, the United States military presence in the Caribbean, and violations of human rights. The Proyecto publication Paz, Paz, Pan (Peace, Peace, Bread) represents the collaboration of diverse organizations working for peace and human rights. A research project on Grenada was published before the invasion. With EPICA (a United States-based ecumenical organization), the Proyecto published Puerto Rico: a People Challenging Colonialism. Also published is a treatise on the Dominican Republic. A documentation center provides services to a varied group of users: unions, churches, students, researchers and journalists. It includes clippings from the five major newspapers of Puerto Rico and information on the militarization of Puerto Rico, United States foreign policy, and the Caribbean Basin Initiative. In the reading room are books, pamphlets, and newspapers in Spanish and English, as well as audio-visual resources. In 1987, Margarita attended the first Central American Workshop On Human Rights. All Central American countries participated, as well as Belize, Mexico, Colombia and Puerto Rico. The anti-colonial work of Margarita Pérez and her staff of paid workers and volunteers, in their search for justice and peace, is supported by the declaration of the American Friends Service Committee: "We call on the United States to renounce any right to power over Puerto Rico and to work with the Puerto Rican people to establish a process by which transfer of power to them, and genuine self-determination, can be assured."