On the island of Vieques, our neighbor to the west, there is a pier that extends one mile out into the sea. Following is the story behind this massive construction project.

Rompeolas

Excerpted from “Vieques, A Photographically Illustrated Guide to the Island, Its History and Its Culture

Building the Great Seawall
In the late 1930s, the threat of war in Europe loomed over the United States of America. Military interests focused on Puerto Rico as a mainstay in the defense of the Caribbean and especially of the Panama Canal.

The plan was to construct a seawall that would extend from Vieques to the Roosevelt Roads Naval Base in Ceiba on the Big Island and to create a naval facility in the Atlantic surpassing even the Pearl Harbor Naval Base in Hawaii.

The base was to be fully equipped and large enough to contain most of the US Atlantic Fleet as well as the entire British Fleet, if and when Great Britain fell to the Germans.

When the Navy arrived to begin this massive project, Vieques was in serious trouble economically. The decline of the sugar industry in conjunction with food shortages caused by the war created a condition of massive poverty and rampant unemployment. Thus, despite the social, economic and emotional devastation of the expropriation and the forced relocation of the people living on these lands, the promise of employment on the Navy project left the Viequenses with some hope.

In fact, the Navy hired 1,700 Viequenses along with 1,000 laborers from the Big Island to build the giant sea wall and to construct concrete weapons storage warehouses called magazines, which were to be cut into the hills of western Vieques and camouflaged by a covering of grasslands.

The workers were paid $2.25 per day. Laborers, working three shifts a day, dug out a mountain and used the dirt and rocks to fill in the sea.

“They worked 24 hours a day. There was no rest. There were no objections to allowing this flow of North American money. This money, for the most part was collected by contractors from the United States and San Juan. Employees came every week from different sections of Puerto Rico.
But a good part of the profits remained in Vieques.

“For two years the town swam in gold. Rents went up three to four times that which was normally paid.

“People bought fine clothing and treated it without due consideration. Alcoholic beverages were consumed without measure.

“There were those who would wash their floors with beer and those who would buy a $35 dollar suit on Saturday and wear it on Monday to mix concrete and it would be ruined after two hours. ‘The Base is here, and it will bring more,’ they would say.” (Translated from Vieques Antiguo y Moderno by J. Pastor Ruiz)

The project was stopped in midstream due to two historical events. The German Army had become bogged down in Russia and the tide of the war appeared to have changed in favor of the Allies, while the attack on Pearl Harbor challenged the military wisdom of concentrating an entire fleet in one area.

In 1943, the construction of the pier, which was at that time about one mile long, was discontinued. The Viequenses were left worse off than ever. With the massive land expropriations, there was no more sugar industry at all and the ability of the people to at least continue subsistence activities such as having small gardens, raising animals, hunting crabs, fishing, charcoal making and the gathering of coconuts and wild fruits was severely curtailed.

“This boom of ready cash never compensated for many of the setbacks caused by the naval base. The richest and most fertile lands were expropriated by the Navy. The neighborhoods of Tapón, Mosquito and La Llave all disappeared. All the neighbors and small landowners left to the new neighborhoods of Moscú and Montesanto. Families that had their little house, cows, a horse and some farmland went on to have nothing more than a makeshift shack, a fistful of coins and the night and the day.

Vieques, A Photographically Illustrated Guide to the Island, Its History and Its Culture

“Those that had a garden plot and who lived happily as tenants surrounded by farmlands and fruit trees now live crowded together lacking even air with which to breathe.”
Translated from Vieques Antiguo y Moderno by J. Pastor Ruiz, 1947

In 2000, the Mosquito Pier was included in the 4,000 acre transfer of land from the US Navy to the Municipality of Vieques.

Excerpted from “Vieques, A Photographically Illustrated Guide to the Island, Its History and Its Culture”
On April 19, 1999, Viequense security guard, David Sanes, was killed by a 500 pound bomb that missed its target and exploded near the observation post where he was working. The incident led to the establishment of civil disobedience camps in the bombing range. The occupants of one of these camps built a chapel on the beach called Playa Icacos.

La Capilla Ecuménica

The chapel became the spiritual center of the movement. Priests gave mass there, holy water was sprinkled on bomb craters and unexploded ordnance in the target zone. The Archbishop of San Juan, Roberto Gonzalez gave a sermon at the chapel about civil disobedience. The Bishop of Caguas, Puerto Rico, Monsignor Alvaro Corrada del Rio, brought a statue of the Virgin del Carmen, the patron saint of fishermen and blessed it.

The chapel was damaged by Hurricane Lenny, but was rebuilt as soon as the storm had passed.

On May 4, 2000, the day when all those present at the camps were arrested and removed from the bombing range, the chapel was occupied by nuns and religious leaders who were inside praying. Heavily armed agents of the Navy, the FBI, Federal Marshals and the Puerto Rico Police Department, many wearing helmets with plastic shields or gas masks and jackboots and bulletproof vests, stormed the church, handcuffed the priests and nuns and threw them into military vehicles. The chapel was torn down by navy bulldozers.

The chapel bell, however, was preserved.

In 2002, with the support of the government in Puerto Rico, a replica of the chapel was reconstructed on the hillside directly across the street from the Capitol building in San Juan. The original church bell was recovered and placed in the new chapel.

The chapel became the scene of confrontations between pro navy supporters and those who wanted the navy to leave Vieques as well as between statehood advocates and separatists.

In 2003, the governor of Puerto Rico decided to send the chapel back to Vieques where it was to be relocated across the road from the Camp Garcia gate and serve as part of the transfer ceremonies on May 1, when the navy was to leave Vieques.

Unfortunately, Big Island officials did not include Viequenses in the church relocation plan, which resulted in logistical complications. The Ecumenical Chapel arrived at Isabel Segunda on a barge leased by the Puerto Rican government.

Meanwhile, as anyone who has spent time in Vieques could tell you, it is impossible to move something as wide as the chapel through the narrow streets of the town. This problem soon became apparent to those in charge of the relocation who now realized that the chapel would have to leave Isabel Segunda by sea and be offloaded somewhere else on the island. (A better alternative, for example, might have been Playa Caracas inside the camp)

But it was too late. The government leased barge was long gone.

Many times things on Caribbean Islands move at a slower pace than they do elsewhere. A slower pace can also be expected for government related activities, not only in the Caribbean, but just about anywhere in the world. Such was the case with the chapel relocation.

A second barge was eventually sent from the Big Island to Vieques. The barge turned out to be too small to safely carry the chapel, so back it went to the Big Island.

Vieques, A Photographically Illustrated Guide to the Island, Its History and Its Culture

By the time a third, and this time more suitable barge arrived in Vieques, it was too late to follow the original plan of locating it across from the camp gate. Alternatively, the Ecumenical Chapel was taken to the Rompeolas, offloaded, and trucked to the former Navy lands on western Vieques, where it stands today, overlooking the beautiful Vieques Sound, a symbol of peace standing on a site where war was once the order of the day.

A Hard Day at the Beach, St. John USVI

A St. John USVI Book Business
As many of you already know, Habiba and I own, operate and manage our own St. John publishing business called Sombrero Publishing Company.

I’m sure that having a publishing business on St. John is quite a bit different than doing the same thing anywhere else, and I’d venture to guess that the St. John experience is quite a bit more enjoyable although quite a bit less profitable. I imagine the same could be said for most other St. John, Virgin Islands, or Caribbean island endeavors.

Categories
I’ve broken down the business into the following categories: (1) research, (2)writing, editing and design, (3) printing and shipping and (4) distribution and sales.

Research
Today, I’d like to talk about the first category, which is research for the book. Each book we write demands a different strategy. For now I’ll use the example of our best seller, “St. John Off The Beaten Track.” Guide books need to be updated from time and this book is no exception.

The first edition of “St. John Off The Beaten Track” hit the St. John scene in 1996. Since then there have been two subsequent editions and four printings. I imagine that in 2010 we’ll be ready to present edition four, the preparations for which will begin shortly.

Here’s how we do it. Let’s say we’re doing beaches. First step is to go to the beach, not bad for a day a at work, wouldn’t you say. We’ll try to bring everything we’ll need, which will probably be little different than what any tourist on St. John brings to the beach, picnic stuff, beach blanket or beach chairs, snorkel gear, picnic stuff, sun block and for recording the experience, a land and an underwater camera, a tape recorder and a pad and pencil.

Next we spend some time on the beach and lying there on the sand think of everything about that beach. To help us think, we stroll along the sand, take a swim, go snorkeling, sit back and contemplate our surrounding – things like that. I know you’re thinking: “wow, that sounds tough, I had no idea that book writing on St. John would entail such arduous work.”

We’ll very likely return another day to try to make sure we didn’t miss anything and we’ll also make other trips by boat or kayak for more photos and another angle on the beach experience.

At home we’ll arrange our notes listing what we experienced, and what we thought about. We’ll do the same for all the beaches that we want to write about, as well as the hiking trails, and cool places to visit on St. John and eventually will sit down to put it all together for the book. That’s it. And believe me it’s the best part.

Next: writing, editing and design