Drug smuggling, tourist transport replace fishing trade

–Editor’s note: Michael Mastroianni visited Vieques last spring. This is the second part of a… –Editor’s note: Michael Mastroianni visited Vieques last spring. This is the second part of a two-part series.

Vieques, off the coast of Puerto Rico, has one trade that does not appear on employment studies or customs documents: The import and transit of illegal drugs, mostly cocaine, has flourished since naval evacuation.

Within days of naval evacuation, free use of the land that once made up Camp Garcia prompted many former fishermen, with plenty of equipment but no legal use for it, to begin transporting cocaine shipments across a large part of the Caribbean Sea. There are no obstructions between Vieques and Colombia, a leading supplier of cocaine to American distributors, and all waters are international and no longer occupied.

Once the drugs arrive in Vieques, which is technically American soil, they can be easily and rapidly transported to Puerto Rico, and then to Miami, New York and Philadelphia, without going through customs.

Juan Franco, captain of “18 North,” used to transport tourists on excursions around the island and as far south as the 18th parallel, for which his boat is named. Now, he travels to the fifth parallel of the Colombian coasts, a journey of less than a thousand miles. In the few short months since naval evacuation, he has made the trip more than a dozen times, to a large profit on each journey.

“Many fishermen were ready to sell their boats at the lowest prices,” Franco said, “and it was difficult to find buyers.” Franco, 41, introduced himself as the “deposed king of the fishers.”

“I allow myself that title now that I can finally live like a king,” Franco said. “I only wonder what happens when the police notice a bunch of out-of-work fishermen living like emperors in the middle of the sea.”

So far, that has not become an issue. The only federal authorities are now the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Puerto Rican provincial police, who patrol part of the old Camp Garcia, and are not considered a threat to the drug trafficking trade.

Despite claims that drug use is a victimless crime, this part of the drug smuggling process is very dangerous. Small rivalries have already begun among former fishers who are trying to bring cocaine to the same “safe havens” on Vieques’ southern coast. Many believe that even with the interference of law enforcement, the problem will only worsen.

The employment crisis on Vieques dates back to the Great Depression, when Vieques was an exception to the global economic crisis. Playa Grande, a sugar cane plantation, grew out of the ruins of the failed plantations around it. In the 1930s, Playa Grande employed more than 12,000 people, the peak population of the island.

In 1941, with the start of World War II, the U.S. and Puerto Rican governments allowed the U.S. Navy to take over the eastern and western sections of Vieques for a naval base. “Viequenses” — as the island’s inhabitants are called — were given bottom dollar for their condemned lands and houses, and forced to leave the area in one or two days. According to a Vieques newspaper, in 1947, expropriations of agricultural land by the Navy resulted in a 40 percent decrease in municipal income. The population, now forced into the central section of the island, dropped.

Little changed for Vieques until 1964, when appeals to Washington, D.C., by Puerto Ricans and Viequenses stopped the expropriation of the southern coast of the island. In 1978, Viequenses fishermen were able to stop a North Atlantic Treaty Organization naval exercise by blocking vessels with fishing boats. That same year, Viequenses reported explosive combustion of drinking water out of wells on the southern coast, although a 2001 study of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services stated that the validity of these claims was uncertain. This same study concluded that in 2001, public water from a pipeline from Puerto Rico was safe for human consumption, along with groundwater from six wells on Vieques.

Viequenses protested several errors by naval aviators, who dropped ordnance on the civilian section of Vieques, until David Sanes Rodriguez, a civilian guard, was killed by a stray bomb in 1999. For the next four years, civil disobedience rocked the island, until U.S. President George W. Bush announced the closing of the base in 2003.

Miguel Melendez works at the grocery in Isabel Segunda, the main town on the Atlantic side of Vieques. A native of Puerto Rico proper, he arrived in Vieques as a child when his family came to help the Viequenses protest naval occupation in 1974.

“We were a culture of protesters,” Melendez said two weeks after the Navy evacuated Vieques on May 1, 2003. “We still are. It’s our only major industry.”

With agricultural lands expropriated by the Navy still unavailable to their former owners and their families, the only profitable legal industry on the island is tourism. Americans occasionally come to the island for holidays. David and Lisa Brent, newlyweds from Minnesota, arrived on Vieques days after the navy left.

“We heard it was beautiful and not very crowded,” David Brent said. “Since the Navy [took over], it’s the last undeveloped real estate in the Caribbean.”

The dirt roads through the hills of the old Camp Garcia reveal the raw beauty of a jungle, with several birds and animals appearing occasionally. The only distractions are some misplaced garbage and several naval vehicles, now beat beyond use by Viequenses celebrating naval evacuation. Brian Robertson, a former Floridian who lives on Vieques, is doubtful about the future of this land.

“Only a few hours after [the Viequenses] got in, the place is covered with trash,” Robertson said on May 3, 2003. “If [the Viequenses] own this land anytime soon, I’d bet they’ll sell it to hotels and get rich. All this would be gone.”

Angel Sanes, a former naval security guard, believes that outside politics is the cause of the island’s woes.

“Politicians got us into the navy mess, and now they have us in a new mess,” Sanes said. “It seems that all the politicians come from somewhere else.”

Unfortunately for Sanes and the many others who have similar beliefs, outside influences will most likely remain in control of more than 75 percent of Vieques’ lands. The U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife now controls Camp Garcia and the western section of the island. The leading proposal for use of the land is a wildlife reserve.

“I am glad the navy is gone,” Sanes said, “and that there are no more bombs. But my father farmed [the land] as a boy, and his father died for it. Will my child farm it?”