Achieving Aims: Understanding Success and Failure in the Pursuit of Environmental Justice in Vieques, Puerto Rico

In the pursuit of environmental justice it is important to understand how communities and social movements are able to achieve success in pursuing their aims. The island of Vieques in Puerto Rico has had cause to consider these paths to success or failure given the prevailing environmental impact and ongoing cleanup mission associated with the United States Navy’s decades long occupation of the island. This occupation came to an end in 2003, following a successful campaign of resistance by Vieques residents. Contemporary efforts to improve this cleanup process, ensure environmental protections, and demand accountability from the US military continue. Given the success of the earlier campaign and the slow movement of the current one, this project uses a mixed methods approach within a formal Bayesian process tracing framework to explore competing explanations for this divergence of outcomes in an identical geographic location and a relatively small temporal window.