Milivi Adams

Who was Milivi Adams?

Milivi Adams was a young cancer patient from the island of Vieques in Puerto Rico who had become a symbol in the battle against the presence of the military on that island. Her face had appeared many times on the covers of Puerto Rican newspapers and magazines, and there are posters with her picture on them on many of Vieques' street corners.

The daughter of Zuleyka Calderon and Jose Adams, Milivi was diagnosed with cancer at the age of two. Although many people have blamed the military's bomb testings in Vieques as the source of her cancer, this has not been proved. Given a month to live at the age of three, she survived and her cancer appeared to go into remission. However, at the age of four the cancer reappeared, this time in her brain. She was flown to the United States by her parents, in hopes that treatment would help her.

In the United States, she had to fight other infections, and after the last one, the doctors told her parents that her body would not resist another infection treatment, so she returned to Puerto Rico with her family, where she died on the morning of November 17, 2002.

Milivi has a camp named after her in Vieques, Camp Milivi.