VIEQUES IN DETAIL

-credited to Lonely Planet

When Columbus ‘discovered’ Puerto Rico on his second voyage in 1493, Taíno people were living peacefully on Vieques, except for the occasional skirmish with Carib neighbors. With the expansion of Puerto Rico under Ponce de León, more Taíno fled to the island; Caribs joined them and the two groups mounted a fierce resistance to Spanish occupation. It failed. Spanish soldiers eventually overran the island, killing or enslaving the natives who remained.

Even so, Spanish control over the island remained tentative at best. In succeeding years, both the British and French tried to claim the island as their own. Vieques, however, remained something of a free port, thriving as a smuggling center.

Sugarcane plantations covered much of Vieques when the island fell to the Americans in 1898 as part of the spoils from the Spanish–American War, but during the first half of the 20th century the cane plantations failed. Vieques lost more than half its population and settled into near dormancy; the remaining locals survived as they always had, by subsistence farming, fishing and smuggling.

First requisitioned by the US military in 1941, Vieques was originally intended to act as a safe haven for the British Navy during WWII, should the UK fall to the Nazis. But after 1945 the US decided to keep hold of the territory to use as a base for weapons testing during the Cold War. Taking control of more than 70% of the island’s 33,000 acres in the east and west, the military left the local population to live in a small strip down the middle while they shelled beaches and dropped live bombs on offshore atolls. On average the military bombed Vieques 180 days a year and in 1998 alone dropped a total of 23,000 explosive devices on the island.

The US military held onto it until May 2003 when, after four years of international protests, the land was ceded to the US Fish & Wildlife Refuge. In the years since, Puerto Rican, US and international developers have been salivating at the prospect of building mega hotels and more. For the time being, tourism, construction, cattle raising, fishing, ordinance clearing and some light manufacturing bring money and jobs to the island.

You can track the status of the navy’s clean-up of the island at www.navfac.navy.mil/vieques