Ah, the Sweet Sound-Boom!-of Paradise!
By Barbara Boydston
Vieques, Puerto Rico
GEORGE HIRSCHBORN LOUNGES by the pool, facing a green lawn that slopes to the blue Caribbean Sea. Suddenly, a thunder-like explosion erupts. Is it war? No, just another day on the only Caribbean resort occupied for training by the U.S. Navy. "You could be in Sarajevo," says Mr. Hirschborn, a tax attorney in Philadelphia. "But I wouldn't call that a negative."
Neither bombs, nor helicopters, nor amphibious maneuvers deter the devotees of this tiny island eight miles from San Juan. Physically speaking, Vieques is picture post-card perfect, with palm trees sprouting out of pearl-white sand and 10 odd beaches to choose from. And, unlike its neighbor St.Thomas, Virgin Islands, where fast-food restaurants and high-rise hotels are increasingly common, Vieques is utterly undeveloped. No buildings are taller than three stories, and the island's finest hotel, the Inn on the Blue Horizon, has just nine rooms. But to get the most out of Vieques, tourists say, it doesn't hurt to be a little hard of hearing.
"You'll hear a distant explosion," says Stewart Rahtz, director of promotion at a New York modeling agency, who has been to Vieques every Christmas for eight years. "But it never gets in the way of the vacation."
lndeed, tourists go so far as to insist the Navy and its loud noises protects their island from the corrupting influence of developers, and they worry about a day when the military packs it in. Recent scuffles between the Navy and inhabitants of the island, as well as a raft of U.S. base closings since 1991, give these purists new cause for concern. "If the Navy left, it would turn into St. Thomas," says Jane Sabin, owner of Connections, a real-estate company here.
The two bases here cover two-thirds, or 24 acres, of the island. Military exercises are conducted 280 days a year. They include bombing practice on land and at sea, target practice and flying exercises. Vieques also hosts massive training drills involving hundreds of troops from all branches of the U.S. military. During these maneuvers, the white-sand beaches "look like D-Day," says Robert Rabin, a director of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques. The island served as a training site for the U.S. operation in Grenada in 1983 and for the Gulf War.
While tourists are physically separated from the exercises-fences surround the bases and the bombing takes place in the far corners of the island occasional intersections are inevitable. From a ferry between Vieques and the mainland, Nancy Armour can sometimes watch bombing practice. The explosions "look like big mushroom clouds," says Ms. Armour, a Vieques homeowner who snapped pictures of them.
Most travelers to Vieques know about the Navy's presence ahead of time. But when Agnes Warburton books a client to Vieques, she always mentions it anyway. "1 have to give them an idea," says Ms. Warburton, owner of a travel agency in Marhattan. "And most of them don't care." But others get caught entirely by surprise. "One woman stayed one day," says Donald Campbell, head waiter at the Inn on the Blue Horizon. "She said she had come to relax, not be in the middle of a war zone, so she left."
Indeed, a Vieques vacation is full of inconveniences. Some tourists describe getting stuck behind a convoy of jeeps while rushing to the airport to catch a flight home. Others say low-flying helicopters and fighter planes buzz the beach and irritate sunbathers. And the tension between the local people and the military sometimes erupts in unpleasant ways. While Alan Stone did a little shopping at the supermarket, his wife, Leslie Hill, waited for him in the car. As she sat there, a local resident smashed the window of a military vehicle parked nearby, and Ms. Hill was covered in glass. Still, Mr. Stone says he likes Vieques the way it is. "You have to have a military," says Mr. Stone, an art dealer in Manhattan.
Not surprisingly, the number of faithful is fairly small. No more than 7,000 people visit Vieques every year. On Vieques, there is no golf, no shopping, no parasailing or jet skiing. The only night-time activity: a trip in a pick-up truck over rutted dirt roads to a bioluminescent bay, where swimmers' flutter kicks leave a glowing, white wake.
By day, most visitors simply hang out, striving for the perfect tan and snorkeling on one of the 50-odd beaches. On the civilian part of the shoreline, the beaches are poetically named Sun Bay, Media Luna and Navio But connoisseurs know that the beaches with the best snorkeling and fishing are those located within Navy property and prosaically named Blue, Red and Green. If the military isn't conducting maneuvers, beach goers are admitted to these beaches by showing a picture identification to armed guards at the gates to the bases But closures are frequent, and without warning.
Evan Ferguson saved the Navy base beaches as a treat at the end of his five day stay at Vieques. When he and his family arrived there, a guard forbade entry. "It was a bummer", says Mr. Ferguson who is from Houston. "You can't talk your way through", he adds, "when it's closed it's closed"
The residents of the island have been fighting against the U S military presence since Vieques was first occupied in 1941. But in recent years, the battles have grown more heated A flurry of U S base closings since 1991 has encouraged people to speak out more aggressively, and in 1993, Mr. Rabin and 14 others formed the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques, a group whose goal is to remove the Navy from the island.
The group organizes meetings and protests. Last winter, several demonstrations by Viequenses - each 500 strong - were organized at one of the bases to express residents' dissatisfaction. Several recent incidents have provoked the Viequenses further. In October 1992, the Navy dropped thousands of pounds of explosives within a two-week period, including canisters of napalm.. The next year, an FA18 fighter jet unloaded its bombs just one mile from the civilian sector. And on Mother's Day this year, Dutch and Belgian ships glided into civilian fishing waters and dropped anchor close to shore, tearing apart the locals' fish traps. A shouting match ensued, which degenerated when both sides started throwing garbage and other detritus at the other.
Regular visitors may decry commercial development; but for the 8,000 people who live on the island, a real tourist industry could be a boon. Seventy-two percent of the population here lives below the poverty line and receives public assistance from the U.S., mostly in the form of food stamps. The biggest employers on the island are the Navy and a General Electric Co. factory, which together employ about 200 people. Fishing is another full-time occupation. One 1980 study put the loss of tourist income at more than $100 million a year.
For the foreseeable future, though, the Navy is here to stay. "That installation will remain where it's at," says Tom Schultz, a Defense Department spokesman.
And that's good news for tourists like Tom Veers, who says he'll remember his trip to Vieques -the starry night, the herds of wild horses- "the rest of my life." Never mind that when he went snorkeling, he barely saw any fish at all. "It's the bombing," says Mr. Veers, a high schoolteacher in Peoria, Ill. "We were lucky to see five fish at once. It's too late to consult Jacques Cousteau, but I'm sure he'd say the same thing."
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