Biography
Pedro Baigés Chapel was imprisoned in connection with the 1979 campaign against U.S. Navy operations in Vieques. Contemporary San Juan STAR clippings preserved in the Juan Mari Brás archive report detention at the State Penitentiary on September 13, 1979 after a contempt finding for missing a September 5 hearing in the May Vieques trespass case. Ismael Guadalupe’s oral history independently recalls Baigés among those sent to prison.
The September 13, 1979 detention concerned contempt over a missed hearing. A separate documented period of service for entering Navy land in Vieques ended on February 9, 1980: a contemporary police report expressly says he was released that day, and other reports record his airport homecoming. The beginning of that trespass-sentence custody is not established here.
A police information report dated February 9, 1980 explicitly describes Pedro Baigés Chapel as released that day after imprisonment for entering Navy land in Vieques. Separate same-day reports record his actual return to Puerto Rico and his statement that he had completed imprisonment. November 1979 newspaper coverage had already documented him serving a federal sentence for the Vieques entry. These sources support a trespass-service case distinct from the September 13 contempt detention over a missed hearing. An earlier article forecast a February 11 release, but the actual February 9 release and homecoming are used instead. The contempt case remains unchanged, and no combined duration is inferred.
Juan Marí Brás dossier volume37, PDF pages261–265 and379–380.
Contemporary September 18, 1979 newspaper reports say Pedro Baigés Chapel left Río Piedras State Penitentiary on Monday, September 17, after posting $10,000 bail. This ended the contempt detention begun September 13 before Judge Juan R. Torruella; his later Vieques trespass imprisonment remains a separate case.
