Luis Galanes Valldejuli: Well, that’s a complicated question. The answer is they want tourism but then they also dislike some of the changes that come to the little island because of tourism. They’ve been—it’s a very small island, and they’ve been used to having tourism for a long time, but it was particularly after the navy left. Of course, if you’re a tourist, you don’t want to go where the US Navy is bombing while you’re on the beach drinking a piña colada. Tourism was mostly restricted to local, local meaning Puerto Rican main island people going there. Whereas after—after the navy left, the tourists—the tourism industry grew rapidly. So of course, they want—and they actually enjoy having foreigners come and talking to them and that kind of stuff. In that sense—and they also like the economic benefits from tourism. It creates jobs, it gives opportunity to a lot of people to do different things. But on the other side they’re seeing some side effects and particularly a type of tourist that they don’t like. They always—I don’t know if you had a chance of reading my book but I do a typology of tourists, it comes from locals where they distinguish between the tourists from the past and the tourists that are coming now to the island. So “Los de antes” y “Los de ahora.” Los de antes would be like people who respect local customs and not interfere with them so much, whereas Los de Ahora are people who come and think that they own the island. They distrust many of them. When they are employers, they aren’t very good employers with them or whatever. And what they dislike is that they are the ones doing the big business whereas the locals are not benefitting from anything. There used to be a time where they would do gardening or stuff like that and those were the jobs that were reserved for locals. And now you also have gringos coming, who are gardeners also, and they are even taking those jobs. And bus drivers, for example, the way of moving around the island was these little vans that were all local people driving those vans. It was not a good system of transportation, but it was there. So now you also have gringos driving minivans and driving people around. So in a sense, they lost the island. Or that’s what they feel sometimes. So it’s a mixed feeling for many Viequenses. But of course, the economic benefit is good for them and some of them are making good money out of tourism.
NK: Yeah, that gave me a lot of insight. And I do actually have a question asking about how the economic situation is in Vieques—how is the economy there? Does tourism—will tourism help the economy? You said a lot of people are infiltrating the local communities so I mean overall do you think that tourism would help the economy or not really?
LGV:: Yeah, I think it will, with a consequence of course, you know, but the consequences are social not so much economic, but it will. There’s money coming in and the prices—I mean particularly in the price of land, being a small island, this is what happens in small islands, a lot of tourists come, there’s a big demand for buying property and so the price of the property goes up and many Viequenses—the property the live-- they were squatters originally. It was their parents or grandparents who squatted and got that land so they paid nothing for it and now they can sell it for hundreds of thousands of dollars. The prices are ridiculous. I mean when you look at the price of property, they are ridiculous and you say why are people paying this much, you know? So you can sell your land and then make a lot of money but then the problem is that your probably—if you want to reinvest that money somewhere else, the next property is going to cost you that or even more so you’re going to end up having to leave the island, with a lot of money in your pocket but then leave the island cause you will not afford it.
NK: Yeah so, I’m sure that affects the locals quite a bit because you could sell your land but probably never get it back, is that--?
LGV: Correct, correct
NK: Yeah, that’s kind of sad in a way, having people take over the island even though you were the first one there. But yeah, on that note, I know you already talked about it a little but how has tourism affected the culture of Vieques? Do you think there’s more gentrification? Do you think people are losing the culture? How is that situation?
LGV: Well, I think the threat to the culture is related to the amount of people that go there—the amount of tourists that go there. And we’re talking about residential tourism, so one of the key things about Vieques is that these are not tourists that go for—well there are those too, of course, but those are not really a problem, the ones that come stay for a week and then leave, or stay for a few days, they don’t have a problem with that. They have a problem with the residential tourists. The tourists who come buy a property and stay and live there and try to change the way things have been done in Vieques forever, the new rules that they bring in. To the extent that with time Viequenses will—Vieques will be an island without Viequenses. To the extent that the foreign population keeps growing, then you’re going to have some loss of culture and traditions. But that has not happened yet, they are very influential, the tourists are very influential, many of them are business people and they bring money and resources and education or whatever. They have a commerce council made up exclusively of gringos and so on so. But the population is way too big. The same thing happens in Puerto Rico, when you compare Puerto Rico to Hawaii, and you say well did Hawaiians lose their culture? And well you say the situation there was that there came a point where there were more Americans than Hawaiians living there on the island and that’s when they became a state actually. In Puerto Rico, if they tried to do that, I mean there’s too many Puerto Ricans, that you’re going to have to—and that has not happened in over 120 years of colonialism. The population of Puerto Rico is—Puerto Ricans are still having babies and that’s the problem. There’s no way to Americanize or whatever change the culture of Puerto Ricans because there are too many.
NK: That’s kind of funny to think about, but on that point, do you have an idea of where Vieques will be or even Puerto Rico in general will be in 10 years from now when thinking about tourism? Do you think that the culture will still be there and will still be an established part of the island or do you think that more residential tourists will come and kind of invade the island? I don’t know if you can kind of predict ten years from now but if you have some sort of idea.
LGV: Well ten years from now, I think in Puerto Rico in the big island it’s not gonna happen. It’s too big and there’s too many Puerto Ricans but in small islands like Vieques you could have a situation where—and things can change very rapidly and in ten years you can still have more gringos buying property and buying property and then you know at the end they’re going to own the island and control everything there. So I think yes in ten years I think it could change. I think I mean this is like destiny but everything that has happened from the 2008 great recession what they call it today and the pandemic and the hurricanes, they have actually helped to stop a process or to slow a process that was taking place–had those things-- as bad as they are, they’re disastrous— had those things not happened, the situation in Vieques would probably be very different now in terms of residential tourism. To the extent that—and then people might think-- in Vieques for example, they were without electric power for I think two years after the hurricane. So, you don’t want to go to a place where you don’t have electric power. So, to the extent that those things change, and that people start seeing Vieques as a place where there is more stability, they will continue coming I think yes. And we have examples of many other islands very close, St. John for example in the Virgin Islands or parts of St. Croix also that have been taken over. They know what’s going to happen and they know these islands because they have relatives there, they fly often from Vieques to St. Croix particularly where there are a lot of Viequenses living so they’ve seen this first hand and they know what’s going to happen to Vieques in the future.
NK: In one way, it’s kind of sad. I don’t want an important culture to disappear, for people to take over, especially those large hotels. It’d kind of be sad to just see all these big hotels everywhere on such a beautiful island. But on that note, I know—I’ve been looking at other interviews from the past and some people have kind of said that they would like tourism but only in a sustainable and controlled way. So, I was wondering if you had any ideas on how to have a sustainable tourism industry? Have there been plans in the past, or ideas to kind of make this more controlled or sustained—more sustainable?
LGV: Yes, if you look at the plans, what some people are planning on in terms of construction of new tourist hotels and stuff, I mean what some of them are really crazy what they’re planning is bringing—this big huge hotels like in the Dominican Republic, all inclusive, thousands and thousands of people, of rooms and some of this projects and you say where are they going to go? The island is so small if you put that kind of population, even though it’s a moving population, you know some go and new people come in, but if you put that kind of population in Vieques it will be totally unsustainable. So, what they are trying to do is to control the number of hotel rooms and so on that the island is capable of acquiring but that doesn’t mean that people are going to stop coming and how do you do that? If you buy a property and you wanna open a hotel and you have the permits, how can you stop them? The key here is water. Vieques has no water of its own. They have a pipe bringing water from the mainland under water.
NK: Oh wow, I didn’t know that.
LGV: Yes. And there have been projects that have not been given a permit to build more already. Because when you go and request a permit for construction of a property, one of the people have to certify that you can do that, since it’s a Puerto Rican water system. I don’t know what it’s called in Puerto Rico—I’m not sure what’s the name of the government agency that controls the water. In Spanish its “acueductos.” We call it “aqueductos y alcantarillado.” They have already rejected some projects saying, we do not approve of the construction of this project simply because we cannot supply more water to Vieques than what we’re sending already. So there will come a point where it’s either water for the locals or water for the tourists. And of course, it’s an irony but with so many beaches, beautiful beaches in this island, people are obsessed with building up swimming pools and there are no golf courses yet in Vieques, but there are plans also in building golf courses, and golf courses, you need a lot of water to water the grass of courses. When that happens, you have to decide what you are going to do with your water. So either they get a new source of water, or they do something different because water is placing a limit on the amount of new construction that Vieques can allow.
So again, it’s always external factors that are saving Viequenses, if you wanna put it that way, but its saving Viequenses--
NK: So, I think you froze a little bit…
LGV: …from this nonsustainable tourism… You’re frozen also.
NK: Oh sorry, can you hear me?
LGV: There you go. Yes, I could hear you all along, it’s just that the image was frozen
NK: Okay, I think we’re good now. No that’s interesting to think—because I didn’t know that there was a pipe from Puerto Rico to Vieques and that that was the main source of water and I had no idea about that, and on that note, I was looking into other plans and I know some people have proposed a bridge, like an actual bridge from Puerto Rico to Vieques and I’m sure you’ve probably heard about it but I don’t know—what are your thoughts about building a bridge between the two islands? Because I know it would be a lot because you’d be opening a lot of doors for more people to come in and out, so I was curious about what you were thinking about this bridge.
LGV: I think it’s a difficult thing. That idea came-- It’s a very old idea, the building the bridge. It was actually not a bridge in the literal sense, the navy started building a wall, an underwater wall. And that under waterwall would start in Vieques, it actually started-- now it’s called “El Puerto de David Sanes”. David Sanes, I don’t know if the name sounds familiar to you, but that was the Viequense guy that was killed in 1999. So they started building this wall, and they only got up to a point where they stopped because-- And they started tin Vieques and the wall was supposed to go all the way up to Puerto Rico. And the wall was to make a space, like an enclosed space, like a lagoon, where the whole navy of the United States and the British navy also, could harbor all of their boats. This was before Pearl Harbor, so when Pearl Harbor occurred, they said no, it’s not a good idea to build a place where you can have all of your warships stationed at the same time. So that’s why they stopped building that wall. And I mean we are talking about a wall where you can put a road on top of it and drive. So the idea of the bridge started with the idea of that wall, after the navy stopped doing it, some people said well why don’t we continue and finish up the thing and just use it as a bridge instead of a-- but the ecological damage would be huge, it would be absurd, I don’t think they’re doing it. But you know, politicians would say, ‘ah let’s build a bridge, it’s just a game.’ And what they do is hire people to do stuff to do studies about the feasibility and they end up concluding that it’s not possible and it’s gonna cost too much, but they get paid some millions dollars just for doing the study. And that’s how politicians pass on money to friends and so on. So the same thing with water. They have no water for Vieques and then politicians propose that they want it… because the underwater tube that brings water to Vieques go from Rio Grande, which is in the main island, to Vieques. From the Vieques, the tube continues to Culebra. You know Culebra, the other small island. So what they were proposing was that, the same administration that were proposing doing the bridge by the way, to continue that tube all the way to St. Thomas and then sell water from Puerto Rico to St. Thomas. What water are you going to sell to St. Thomas? You don’t have water to feed Vieques and Culebra, you have nothing left. How are you going to sell water to St. Thomas? But then again, it’s the same thing, these bizarre ideas out in the air. And the sad thing is that they create expectations of people, because some Viequenses actually were in favor and there was a conflict of-- a situation in Vieques where about 50% wanted the bridge and 50% did not want the bridge. But I think the moment you build a bridge, if that’s going to happen, I don’t think its going to happen ever, I think if you were going to build a bridge, the beauty of Vieques will be lost. It would just be like any other beach in Puerto Rico where you can drive directly and that’s it.
NK: Yeah, that’s interesting to think about because I think, tell me if I’m wrong, but is the only way to get to Vieques through the ferry? The ferry boat?
Or by plane. They have an airport and there are many planes flying daily, I mean you’re going to have probably 5 or 6 flights a day, coming in and out. But of course, it’s very expensive to travel between the islands, it’s very expensive. It’s like $200 per person to go to Vieques. But it’s like $400 to go to Tortola which is a British virgin island which is also very close, so prices are absurd. And because the ferry is subsidized by the federal government, the price of the ferry is $3. So the difference is huge. I often get on the ferry, first of all because I save a lot of money, of course, and second because you encounter all the Viequenses in the ferry and you can talk to them. They’re traveling all the time back and forth. You’re doing research while you’re traveling.
NK: Which is nice because you get to learn the culture and stuff like that. For me with building the bridge, I just feel like it would open up too many doors, and I don’t know, you kind of discussed a little bit of how it would impact the environment, too, so I feel like that would also just be a big impact, especially since Vieques already struggles to have just water.
LGV: I wanted to add before we continue that Vieques has its own water sources, but they’re contaminated. Both by activity from the navy and by agriculture before that. Agricultural production and use of fertilizers also have an impact on their water resources that have contaminated—and then with the navy, they became worse. So right now, they’re shut up, all the water sources are shut up. And what they do is they in times of emergency they open them up but just for—not for drinking, only for cleaning and other uses of water, but not for drinking.
NK: On that note, I’ve heard that many people on Vieques have gotten cancer from these polluted waters and stuff like that – do you think that can also affect tourism in a way? I mean, I’m sure you’d have to be on the island for a while to experience those effects, but do you think that could impact it in a negative way?
LGV: Well it’s a very strange situation, nobody knows what happened but the thing with the water was that it would go through the pipe and then once it got to Vieques it would be stored in a big tank. When the rate of cancer started growing, which was towards the end of the century, close to the—around 1995, you started to see the statistics were—cancer in Vieques was growing, growing rapidly, and everybody was like, ‘what’s happening here?’ And when they went and they did testing on the water in the tank, they discovered that it was—it had heavy concentrations of metals. So that’s when they emptied the tank and cleaned it up, and they put new water in it and now there are no metals there. But then they went to the source where the water was from and they did some testing and there were no metals in that water either, so it was very strange, how did that water left Puerto Rico without metals and when it arrived to Vieques it already had metals? So there was this—I’m not a scientist—but there was this theory that makes no sense to me—that the tanks would have some open holes on the top to allow the levels of the water in the tank to go down without creating like a vacuum or whatever. And because it would create—when the water levels in the tank would go down, it would create like a suction, it would suck air from the outside and when that air was contaminated that’s how metals got into the tank. I don’t know, but actually after they cleaned the tanks and after they put actually new tanks in different parts of the area, the incidences of cancer has started coming down again. So, it was definitely from the water that they were being contaminated and it doesn’t make sense how that water got—they come up with these weird ideas about the tanks sucking air from the outside and bringing the metals in or whatever. I mean it’s not convincing to me but then what other explanations do you have? Why did that—unless somebody went intentionally and contaminated the water in the tank—it doesn’t make sense, you know.
NK: Yeah, that’s definitely very--
LGV: But actually, the cancer has been coming down. So, I don’t think that will affect tourism. The problem is that they will not have water period. Neither with metals nor without.
NK: Just water in general.
LGV: Yes
NK: So I think my last question for you is—I don’t know, this might be too much, hopefully it’s not too in general, but it’s like, if you had to make any recommendations for how to make tourism sustainable, what would you do personally? Would there be more regulations on tourism? Do you think there is a way to make it more sustainable? Just based off of your personal opinion.
LGV: Well, the problem with—I mean, we have other examples from other islands, the British Virgin Islands for example. They are very strict with what they do, so for example, they have a huge control over the population. Of course, they are not an independent nation, they are part of the United Kingdom, but they have so much autonomy that they can make up their own rules. They actually have their own kind of British citizenship, which is different from the British citizenship in general. To become a citizen of this Virgin Islands, you have to live in the island for ten years only to be able to apply. So, what they did is they devised many ideas about ‘how can we stop rich people from coming here and buying all of the property and getting everything.’ So, they have a lot of strict rules. And other small islands, if you go to, in Spain also for example, like Majorca and Ibiza, they have the mechanisms to do it, the problem with Vieques, is that Vieques is not an independent country, it’s part of the United States. And the control of who goes in and out of Vieques is a part of U.S immigration and not Viequenses.
And you can also not put like a rule that says “special taxes for Vieques” or for “people who wanna buy in Vieques.” It’s impossible because you have to abide by US rules and US rules are free market, the free-market rules there. Well, one of the things is to control the transportation but of course if you have planes costing $200 per person, you’re not going to have a lot of people traveling to Vieques unless they have a lot of money. But of course, that leaves a lot of people out. If you have the ferry at $3, then you’re probably going to have a lot of people go, more people going, but the ferry system is a disaster. Many people don’t go to Vieques, because they don’t wanna go through the waiting and the long lines and the ferry saying, “well, you got all the way here and now we’re saying that the boat will not travel today,” and you’re stuck there. But many people have suggested that if you raise the price of the ferry boat significantly, people also will stop going to this island. But to the extent that you control the entrance of how people can travel back and forth, that will be a way to prevent it. There’s a plan-- there’s a part of the island, it’s called Mosquito, there’s a plan to build—it was developed by the Puerto Rican government with the people of Vieques. And there was a plan of building a huge, new kind of urban center in that area and that would house like 10,000 people, no, it would house like 20,000 people. The population of Vieques now is close to ten, it would be multiplied by three. But at least, they would be kept in that part of the island, they could not buy property. So, the owner of property would always be the municipality, but they would rent to you for 30 years. People in Mexico, for example in Cancun, they do the same thing. When you buy a timeshare in Cancun, for example, what happens is that the Mexican government has ruled that land cannot be bought by foreigners. Period. So you cannot—Americans or French or whatever cannot own land in Mexico. But they can own land if they partner with a Mexican and then they buy a property. But the property is co-owned by a Mexican and what they do is they tell this to people, ‘okay you’ll buy it, but in 30 years, you’ll have to sell it, you cannot keep it forever, you have to sell it in 30 years.’ So that’s how people own timeshares—that’s how foreigners own timeshares. But as a rule you cannot say, ‘no it’s forbidden for foreigners to own land in Vieques’ because it’s American rules. They’re the ones who decide that. But to the extent that you control the amount of tourism that goes in, you can control it with transportation, and you can also control the number of hotel rooms that are allowed to open in Vieques, you can control it by claiming that there is not enough water to build swimming pools or to give to a big population. To that extent, tourism will remain low. And the beauty of Vieques is that, at least for me, is that you go to those beaches and many times I’ve been to a beach the whole day and I’ve seen no one, no one else, it’s me, it’s my beach. You can bring some people, it’s not that I mind having people on the beach with me of course but to the extent that you control the amount of people that are able to come in and how to feed them, how to give them water, how to give them a room, how to give them transportation, you control the island, I guess. You make is sustainable.
NK: That’s a great answer, that gave me a lot of information and things to think about. That’s all the questions I have for you today and thank you so much, I think you gave me so much more information than I would have been able to get just through, you know going through google or something. I really, really appreciate it.
LGV: Sure, my pleasure, and if you—so you’re going to be writing a paper for a class for this material?
NK: So, this is actually a very interesting class because it’s about documentaries, so we’re taking interviews and we’re using them as our documentary and then we’re going to analyze the interviews and the whole topic or theme of the project for the whole class was Vieques. So each student is choosing their own topic, so my topic was tourism. Some students are doing the environment but at the end of the day I think the end goal is for the class to work together to create a sort of website where there is an interview and then you would summarize some of the interview and some of the quotes. It’s an interesting project because there are multiple elements to it, there is a written piece and also a video element, too. But yeah, we’ve been working on this for about a month now, it’s definitely a big project and definitely a class effort.
LGV: Yes, and the professor of the class is Juan-Carlos?
NK: Yeah, yeah--
LGV: Great guy
NK: Yeah, he teaches a lot of classes at Georgia Tech, and this is my third class that I’ve taken from him because I enjoy him as a professor. I think he makes the classes really interesting.
LGV: That’s good that’s good. But yeah, my pleasure, and if later on you think about something you want to know just ask, sure.
NK: Awesome! Thank you so much, yeah, I don’t think I can thank you enough for all the help and information you’ve given me.
LGV: You’re more than welcome
NK: Alright, thank you, have a good day
LGV: You too, bye