Inhabitating Isla Nena, 1514-2003: Island Narrations, Imperial Dramas and Vieques, Puerto Rico.

Abstract

The dissertation follows the five-century struggle of peoples to inhabit the Caribbean island of Vieques and of empires to control it. This is a history of displacement and militarized imperialism, and an examination of the power of historical narrations in the struggle of colonized peoples to claim a place of their own. It is therefore also a study of memory, and of the symbolic and material practices that inscribe with local meaning spaces from where to negotiate collective identities. As a history of longue durée, this dissertation is structured through foundational conjunctures central to the late 20th century Viequense collective memory of themselves as an island-community. I trace this history through the imagining of Vieques as Isla Nena (Girl Island), the gendered and infantile representation of the island-community. The dissertation, in turn, delves into colonial-imperial negotiations surrounding Vieques through an organic account of Isla Nena’s life starting with the conception of an island-community worth dying for in 1514 with the Spanish massacre of the indigenous population, going through its birth and baptism as Isla Nena at the turn to the 20th century when the prosperous sugar colony was incorporated to Puerto Rico, and culminating with the Nena’s near extinction brought about by the U.S. Navy’s activities in the island since the mid 20th century.

Historicizing Isla Nena, as an island-community inseparable from the multiple representations of its history, exposes intersections of gender and empires, of colonial fringes and imperial centers, of memories and histories, and of the historical making of Vieques and the inner contradictions of Puerto Rico’s colonial history. I explore these intersections through an interdisciplinary lens merging historical and autobiographical genres meshed through the lives of four Viequense women, of which I am the last generation. The tracing of my own Viequense genealogy allows an approach to Vieques through multiple narratives, including personal memories and postmemories. This interlacing of narratives also acknowledges my role as a weaver of historical narratives that bridge the abstract character of a long history with the intimacy of its ongoing significance for those, like me, who are part of this history.