April 1970. Covering Culebra for the NY Times. Another fond memory is the time I traveled to the tiny island offshore municipality of Culebra, 22 miles from Puerto Rico’s east coast, which at the time had about 900 inhabitants. For decades, Culebra had been partly occupied by the US Navy, which owned one third of the island’s 10 square miles, carried out Naval-Marine maneuvers, including aerial bombardments, and maintained a small base. When the Navy sought to evict the islanders and expand its operation, the locals refused, and mounted a protest, led by Mayor Ramón Feliciano, who said Culebra had a promising future as a tourism destination if the Navy was gone. On March 15, the people of Culebra voted for the Navy to leave. This seemed like a natural for The N.Y. Times, so I went to the Isla Grande airport, reserved a seat on a small plane and was flown to Culebra, just a short flight away. Other than the pilot, my only companion was a fellow passenger, who held next to him a cage of pigeons! When we reached the Culebra airport, my fellow passenger got out, placed the cage on the ground, opened it, and to my astonishment the pigeons flew away. The man then explained to me that these were carrier pigeons, and he was conducting an experiment to see if they returned home safely to the main island of Puerto Rico! Not long afterwards, I booked a room in a tiny guest house and began to wander about Dewey, the island’s town. While there, I met a young American couple who told me they swam in the local waters, trapped occasional tropical fish, and shipped them north to a store in the USA that paid them enough to continue their idyllic life. The island’s only factory breeded bacteria-free rats for scientific laboratories and employed 40 persons. During a protest rally that I attended, a handful of folks seemed to be on the verge of violence. The Mayor calmed them down, saying: “We want the Navy to leave, but let us remember, a daughter of Culebra is married to one of the young Navy sailors.” Note: The people of Culebra continued to press the issue and finally, by 1975, the US Navy had transferred its operations to neighboring Vieques island, where it had a much large presence, and later became a target for more protests. Today, Culebra has about 1,800 residents, and there is a small, thriving tourism industry
Posted on: Sat, 20 Jul 2013 23:11:20 +0000
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