Vieques, Puerto Rico

Archaeological evidence suggests that Vieques was first inhabited by ancient Indigenous peoples of the Americas who traveled mostly from South America perhaps between 3000 BCE and 2000 BCE. Estimates of these prehistoric dates of inhabitation vary widely. These tribes had a Stone Age culture and were probably fishermen and hunter-gatherers.

Excavations at the Puerto Ferro site by Luis Chanlatte and Yvonne Narganes[7] uncovered a fragmented human skeleton in a large hearth area. Radiocarbon dating of shells found in the hearth indicate a burial date of c. 1900 BCE. This skeleton, popularly known as El Hombre de Puerto Ferro, was buried at the center of a group of large boulders near Vieques's south-central coast, approximately one kilometer northwest of the Bioluminescent Bay. Linear arrays of smaller stones radiating from the central boulders are apparent at the site today, but their age and reason for placement are unknown.

Further waves of settlement by Native Americans followed over many centuries. The Arawak-speaking Saladoid (or Igneri) people, thought to have originated in modern-day Venezuela, arrived in the region perhaps around 200 BC (estimates vary). These tribes, noted for their pottery, stone carving, and other artifacts, eventually merged with groups from Hispaniola and Cuba to form what is now called the Taíno culture. This culture flourished in the region from around 1000 AD until the arrival of Europeans in the late 15th century.

The European discovery of Vieques is sometimes credited to Christopher Columbus, who landed in Puerto Rico in 1493. It does not seem to be certain whether Columbus personally visited Vieques, but in any case the island was soon claimed by the Spanish. During the early 16th century Vieques became a center of Taíno rebellion against the European invaders, prompting the Spanish to send armed forces to the island to quell the resistance. The native Taíno population was decimated, and its people either killed, imprisoned or enslaved by the Spanish.[8]

The Spanish did not, however, permanently colonize Vieques at this time, and for the next 300 years it remained a lawless outpost, frequented by pirates and outlaws. As European powers fought for control in the region, a series of attempts by the French, English and Danish to colonize the island in the 17th and 18th centuries were repulsed by the Spanish.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the Spanish took steps to permanently settle and secure the island. In 1811, Don Salvador Meléndez, then governor of Puerto Rico, sent military commander Juan Rosselló to begin what would become the annexation of Vieques by the Puerto Ricans.[9] In 1832, under an agreement with the Spanish Puerto Rican administration, Frenchman Teófilo José Jaime María Le Guillou became Governor of Vieques, and undertook to impose order on the anarchic province. He was instrumental in the establishment of large plantations, marking a period of social and economic change. Le Guillou is now remembered as the founder of Vieques (though this title is also sometimes conferred on Francisco Saínz, governor from 1843 to 1852, who founded Isabel Segunda, the main town in Vieques, named after Queen Isabel II of Spain). Vieques was formally annexed to Puerto Rico in 1854.

In 1816, Vieques was briefly visited by Simón Bolívar when his ship ran aground there while fleeing defeat in Venezuela.[10]

During the second part of the 19th century, thousands of slaves of African descent were brought to Vieques to work the sugarcane plantations. They arrived from mainland Puerto Rico and nearby islands of St. Thomas, Nevis, Saint Kitts, Saint Croix, and many other Caribbean islands. Slavery was abolished in Puerto Rico in 1873.[11]

The island also received considerable attention as a possible colony from Scotland, and after numerous attempts to buy the island proved unsuccessful, the Scottish fleet, en route to Darien in 1698, made landfall and took possession of the island in the name of the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and The Indies. Scottish sovereignty of the island proved short-lived, as a Danish ship arrived shortly afterward and claimed the island. From 1689 to 1693 the island was controlled by Brandenburg-Prussia as Krabbeninsel (German crab island) where the English name Crab Island came from.

Municipio de Vieques plaque

Puerto Rico was ceded by Spain in the aftermath of the Spanish–American War under the terms of the Treaty of Paris of 1898 and became a territory of the United States. In 1899, the United States conducted its first census of Puerto Rico finding that the population of Vieques was 6,642 (but this included 704 residents from a nearby island, Culebra).[12]

In the 1920s and 1930s, the sugar industry, on which Vieques was dependent, went into decline due to falling prices and industrial unrest. Many locals were forced to move to mainland Puerto Rico or Saint Croix to look for work.

In 1941, while Europe was in the midst of World War II, the United States Navy purchased or seized almost eighty percent[13] of Vieques as an extension to the Roosevelt Roads Naval Station nearby on the Puerto Rican mainland. It is said that the original purpose of the base (never implemented) was to provide a safe haven for the British fleet and the British royal family should Great Britain fall to Nazi Germany.[14] This assertion does not match U.S. Navy documents and the obvious fact that Canada's Halifax harbor would have been a more likely fallback position for the British fleet, with British King George VI already reigning as King of Canada. The base was however seen as the Atlantic's counterpart of Pearl Harbor in the Pacific due to its strategic location. The Naval Station at Roosevelt Roads was a perfect location to defend the strategic approaches to the Panama Canal.

Much of the land was bought from the owners of large farms and sugar cane plantations, and the expropriations triggered the final demise of the sugar industry. Without consulting the local population who had lived and worked there for centuries and protested the expropriations, [15] the decision to turn it into a bombing range was made in Washington. In a similar way as the population of the Chagos Islands, who were displaced to make way for an Air Force Base in the Indian Ocean in the 1960s, many agricultural workers, who had no formal title to the land they occupied, were evicted and forced to migrate.[16][17]

For over sixty years, the US military used the island (with a population of over 9000 inhabitants in 1950[18]) as a live munitions target practice. According to internal Navy documents, bombardments occurred on 180 days out of a year on average. The US military used the highest possible contaminant depleted uranium (DU) munitions since 1972 on the populated (and full of exotic wildlife) island, at a rate of over 80 live bombs daily for decades.[19][17] The health consequences are felt to this day as the cancer rates are ostensibly higher for the population of Vieques, especially children, than for those on the main island.[19]

After the war, the US Navy continued to use the island for military exercises, and as a firing range and testing ground for munitions.

Radar in Vieques, Puerto Rico

The continuing postwar presence in Vieques of the United States Navy drew protests from the local community, angry at the expropriation of their land and the environmental impact of weapons testing. The locals' discontent was exacerbated by the island's perilous economic condition.

Fuera la Marina de Vieques Ya (translation: Navy out of Vieques now) sign on structure

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.[20] The locals took to the ocean in their small fishing boats and successfully stopped the US Navy's military exercises for a short period, until the US Navy and two US Coast Guard cutters began controlling access to the island and escorting boaters away from Vieques.

On April 27, 2001, the Navy resumed operations and protesting resumed.[21] At this point over 600 protesters had already been detained.[22]

The Vieques issue became something of a cause célèbre, and local protesters were joined by sympathetic groups and prominent individuals from the mainland United States and abroad, including political leaders Rubén Berríos, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, singers Danny Rivera, Willie Colón[23] and Ricky Martin, actors Edward James Olmos and Jimmy Smits, boxer Félix 'Tito' Trinidad, baseball superstar Carlos Delgado, writers Ana Lydia Vega and Giannina Braschi, and Guatemala's Nobel Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú. Kennedy's son, Aidan Caohman "Vieques" Kennedy,[24] was born while his father served jail time in Puerto Rico for his role in the protests. 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 Calderón. In popular culture, one subplot of "The Two Bartlets" episode of The West Wing dealt with a protest on the bombing range led by a friend of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman; the character was modeled on future West Wing star Jimmy Smits, a native of Puerto Rico who was repeatedly arrested for leading protests there.

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.[11] The island was also placed on the National Priorities List (NPL), the list of hazardous waste sites in the United States eligible for long-term remedial action (cleanup) financed by the federal Superfund program. Closure of Roosevelt Roads Naval Station followed in 2004, and prior to Hurricane Maria the Roosevelt Roads Naval Station was reopened.

Mangroves in Vieques, where electrical power lines were destroyed by Hurricane Maria in 2017

Puerto Rico was struck by Hurricane Maria on September 20, 2017, and the storm caused widespread devastation and a near-total shutdown of the island's tourism-based economy. The largest hotel on the island, The W, has not reopened since the storm, but most smaller hotels, bed and breakfasts, and Airbnb operators have resumed operations.[25]

As of December 2019, the Susana Centeno Hospital in Vieques had not been repaired and remained shuttered. Expectant mothers had to travel to the main island of Puerto Rico to give birth. People needing dialysis had to travel to the main island. In November 2018, a mobile dialysis machine was delivered to a temporary clinic.[26]

On January 21, 2020, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) approved $39.5 million to help rebuild its only hospital after damage caused by Hurricane Maria. FEMA approved the funding after the Office of Management and Budget agreed to provide money to rebuild the Susan Centeno community health center based on its "replacement value."[27]

The family of Jaideliz Moreno Ventura, 13, whose 2020 death was blamed on the lack of a functioning hospital and lifesaving medical equipment in Vieques, is suing the government for violation of human and civil rights. Funds for rebuilding the hospital were approved two weeks after Jaideliz's death, but as of January 31, 2021, it has not been rebuilt.[28]

While Governor Pedro Pierluisi expected construction to begin on the hospital rebuild in 2022,[29] it was delayed until 2023 with the holdup blamed on both construction complications on the island and further bureaucratic proceduress by FEMA.[30]

Topographic Map of Vieques, 1951
with barrios

Vieques is divided into eight barrios, including the downtown barrio called Isabel Segunda.[32][33]

Barrios (which are like minor civil divisions)[35] in turn are further subdivided into smaller local populated place areas/units called sectores (sectors in English). The types of sectores may vary, from normally sector to urbanización to reparto to barriada to residencial, among others.[36][37][38]

Comunidades Especiales de Puerto Rico (Special Communities of Puerto Rico) are marginalized communities whose citizens are experiencing a certain amount of social exclusion. A map shows these communities occur in nearly every municipality of the commonwealth. Of the 742 places that were on the list in 2014, the following barrios, communities, sectors, or neighborhoods were in Vieques: Sector Gobeo in Barrio Florida, Bravos de Boston, Jagüeyes, Monte Carmelo, Pozo Prieto (Monte Santo) and Villa Borinquén.[39]

Bioluminescent Bay at night

The Vieques Bioluminescent Bay (also known as Puerto Mosquito, Mosquito Bay, or "The Bio Bay"), was declared the "Brightest bioluminescent bay" in the world by Guinness World Records in 2006,[42] and is listed as a national natural landmark, one of five in Puerto Rico. The luminescence in the bay is caused by a microorganism, the dinoflagellate Pyrodinium bahamense, which glows whenever the water is disturbed, leaving a trail of neon blue.

A combination of factors creates the necessary conditions for bioluminescence: red mangrove trees surround the water (the organisms have been related to mangrove forests[43] although mangrove is not necessarily associated with this species[44]); a complete lack of modern development around the bay; the water is warm enough and deep enough; and a small channel to the ocean keeps the dinoflagellates in the bay. This small channel was created artificially, the result of attempts by the occupants of Spanish ships to choke off the bay from the ocean. The Spanish believed that the bioluminescence they encountered there while first exploring the area was the work of the devil and tried to block ocean water from entering the bay by dropping huge boulders in the channel. The Spanish only succeeded in preserving and increasing the luminescence in the now isolated bay.

Kayaking is permitted in the bay and may be arranged through local vendors.

Vieques has a warm, relatively dry, tropical climate. Temperatures vary little throughout the year, with average daily maxima ranging from 84.7 °F (29.3 °C) in January to 89.9 °F (32.2 °C) in September. Average daily minima are about 18 °F or 6 °C lower. Rainfall averages around 40 to 45 inches (1,000 to 1,100 millimetres) per year, with the month of September being the wettest. The west of the island receives significantly more rainfall than the east. Prevailing winds are easterly.

Vieques is prone to tropical storms and at risk from hurricanes from June to November. In 1989, Hurricane Hugo caused considerable damage to the island,[45] and in 2017, Hurricane Maria also caused major damage.[46]

According to the 2020 Census, Vieques is the third-least populous municipality (after Maricao and Culebra) with a population of 8,249.[54]

8.0% of the population is of non-Hispanic origin, making it the second-least Hispanic municipality in Puerto Rico after Culebra. This represents an increase from 2010, when only 5.7% of the population was non-Hispanic.[55]

The 2010 US census,[56] showed the total population of Vieques was 9,301. 94.3% of the population are Hispanic or Latino (of any race). Natives of Vieques are known as Viequenses.

Both Spanish and English are recognized as official languages. Spanish is the primary language of most inhabitants.

Very old Ceiba tree in Vieques Island, Puerto Rico

• Fortín Conde de Mirasol (Count Mirasol Fort), a fort built by the Spanish in the mid 19th century, now a museum
• Playa Esperanza (Esperanza Beach)
• The tomb of Le Guillou, the town founder, in Isabel Segunda
• La Casa Alcaldía (City Hall)
• Faro Punta Mulas, built in 1896
• Faro de Puerto Ferro
• Sun Bay Beach[62]
• The Bioluminescent Bay
• The 300-year-old ceiba tree
• Rompeolas (Mosquito Pier), renamed Puerto de la Libertad David Sanes Rodríguez in 2003
• Puerto Ferro Archaeological Site
• Black Sand Beach (Playa Negra)
• Hacienda Playa Grande (Old Sugarcane Plantation Building)
• Underground U.S. Navy Bunkers[63]
• Wreckage of the World War II Navy Destroyer USS Killen (DD-593)

Fiestas Patronales, Isabel Segunda, 2008

Vieques celebrates its patron saint festival in July. The Fiestas Patronales de Nuestra Señora del Carmen is a religious and cultural celebration that generally features parades, games, artisans, amusement rides, regional food, and live entertainment.[40][64]

Other festivals and events celebrated in Vieques include:

• Three Kings Festival – (or Epiphany Festival) – January 6
• Festival Cultural Viequense (Vieques Cultural Festival) – June
• Festival de la Arepa – August/September

The Vieques flag, approved in 1975, contains a representation of the municipal coat of arms and maintains its same symbolism. It consists of seven horizontal straight stripes, of equal width, four white and three blue, alternated. In its center is a green rhombus where a simplified design of the castle appears in yellow. The naval crown seen on the coat of arms is omitted from the flag.[66]

On a barry shield with silver and blue waves is a green rhombus with a gold castle and on top is a golden crown with silver sails. The silver and blue waves symbolize the sea around Vieques. In the green rhombus is a historic Vieques fort represented by the traditional Spanish heraldic castle.[66]