The Second Invasion of Vieques

By Carmelo Ruiz Marrero

The boom of bombs has been replaced by the real estate "boom." With the official closure of the firing range, Vieques is now the target of a runaway race of speculators, businessmen and dealers in real estate who are fishing in muddy waters.

The people of Vieques already know this phenomenon. Residents from the United States and other countries and Puerto Ricans from the big island have been for years the owners of most of the businesses on the island, especially those related to tourism, and so they gain the most from economic activities in the island-town.

The arrival of wealthy residents and businesspeople in an area that they find attractive inflates the prices of property, making life impossible for the original residents and forcing them to move. In 1998, Roberto Rabin of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques (CPDV) told me how the viequenses were losing their island not only to the Navy but also to gentrification.

"Investors and economic interests, mostly from the United States but also Germans and Japanese, have been buying properties in Vieques for many years," Rabin said. "With the Navy’s departure there are new possibilities and greater motivation for speculators." He added that on the boardwalk of Esperanza, on Vieques’s south side, 95% of the businesses are owned by people from the U.S., including hotels, restaurants, kayak and car rental businesses, and apartments.

Do these foreign businesspeople bring jobs? Rabin explained that the viequenses who work in these businesses are given the lowest-paying jobs, such as cleaning rooms or washing dishes in the kitchen. The better-paying work is generally reserved for North Americans, who often are friends of the owners.

Spanish Virgin Islands?

A good indicator of the tidal wave of speculation that is washing over Vieques is an article by the Puerto Rican journalist Iván Román published in the Hartford Courant on June 10. Román reveals that the day after the closure of the bombing range there were already North Americans running toward Vieques, and mentions Cape Cod restaurant owners buying houses with spectacular views of the island.

In the U.S. tourism and real estate industries, Vieques is known as "the best kept secret of the Caribbean." That is obviously about to change. But something that will not change, it seems, is the way both industries refer to Vieques and Culebra: "Spanish Virgin Islands." These islands are not even recognized as belonging to the Puerto Rican archipelago.

Román says that in recent months the prices of Vieques properties have begun to rise dizzyingly after years of staying relatively static. A small apartment complex went up from $435,000 last year to $635,000 in January. A luxurious house with four bedrooms and three baths rose from $229,000 to $270,000, and a two-acre parcel that was selling for $225,000 is now worth $270,000.

Román also says that a property owner in Vieques now can add $20,000 to $100,000 to the value of what she or he had just a few months ago, depending on the ocean view. "The value of this will double in 3 to 5 months," Lin Weatherby said euphorically. Weatherby is a real estate agent on the island who recently had to hire another agent to be able to keep up with the growing demand. "I am also investing here," she said to the reporter. "I am buying land. I see that Vieques is an incredible investment opportunity."

One of the main demands of CPDV in this new situation is for mechanisms to ensure that most of the benefits of tourism development are for viequenses, Rabin said. "For example, the Municipal Assembly could require property owners to reserve a certain percentage of their jobs for viequenses, and that they aren’t just the lowest-paying jobs."

"We all know how conservative the Puerto Rican government is on the issue of private property. So we need to work hard in the community to demand a type of socioeconomic development with social justice, equitable development controlled by the community. We need the same militancy that we used to stop the bombing, so that Vieques without the Navy is also of and for viequenses."

The Technical and Professional Support Group for Vieques (GATP, by its Spanish initials), which has produced a guide for the sustainable development of Vieques, had already anticipated this situation. According to planner and GATP member José Rivera Santana, viequenses know what is coming if they don’t take action because they see what is happening in Culebra. The heroic and successful struggle of thirty years ago to stop the Navy’s bombing practice there converted Culebra into a paradise. As we reported before [see Puerto Rico Update, Feb. 2002], it is now a paradise of gentrification and of uncontrolled tourism and residential development.

Rivera Santana expressed particular concern for contamination and pointed out that just like the military, speculators tend to dismiss or minimize that problem. "The restoration of ecological systems is vital," he explained. "There is a lot of talk of cleanup, but restoration is equally important. In the bombing area there are lakes that disappeared and hydraulic [water] connections that were interrupted, and to undo that damage much restoration is needed."

But he warned that the pressure of economic interests could prompt the municipal and state governments into mistaken decisions to allow activities that are risky and dangerous to health. "What those interests want is to get the biggest profit margin from their investment as quickly as possible. Everything else is secondary to them."

The GATP recommends eco-tourism and cultural tourism as a counterweight to gentrification. Specifically, Rivera Santana recommends first the creation of a coalition for sustainable development in Vieques that brings together the community’s different sectors. Second, a community land trust that assumes responsibility for the development of former Navy lands.

"Those two things would prevent interests linked to developers from closing the development possibilities to the Vieques community."

Carmelo Ruiz Marreros is a Research Associate at the Institute for Social Ecology, a Fellow of the Environmental Leadership Program and a Senior Fellow of the Society of Environmental Journalists. This article originally appeared in Claridad, 10 July 2003.