Pre-Columbian history Archaeological evidence suggests that Vieques was first inhabited by ancient Indigenous peoples of the Americas who traveled mostly from South America perhaps between 3000 BCE and 2000 BCE. Estimates of these prehistoric dates of inhabitation vary widely. These tribes had a
Stone Age culture and were probably fishermen and
hunter-gatherers. Excavations at the
Puerto Ferro site by Luis Chanlatte and Yvonne Narganes uncovered a fragmented human skeleton in a large hearth area. Radiocarbon dating of shells found in the hearth indicate a burial date of c. 1900 BCE. This skeleton, popularly known as
El Hombre de Puerto Ferro, was buried at the center of a group of large boulders near Vieques's south-central coast, approximately one kilometer northwest of the
Bioluminescent Bay. Linear arrays of smaller stones radiating from the central boulders are apparent at the site today, but their age and reason for placement are unknown. Further waves of settlement by
Indigeous peoples followed over many centuries. The
Arawakan-speaking
Saladoid (or
Igneri) people, thought to have originated in modern-day
Venezuela, arrived in the region perhaps around 200 BC (estimates vary). These tribes, noted for their pottery, stone carving, and other artifacts, eventually merged with groups from
Hispaniola and
Cuba to form what is now called the
Taíno culture. This culture flourished in the region from around 1000 AD until the arrival of
Europeans in the late 15th century.
Spanish colonial period The European discovery of Vieques is sometimes credited to
Christopher Columbus, who landed in
Puerto Rico in 1493. It does not seem to be certain whether Columbus personally visited Vieques, but in any case the island was soon claimed by the Spanish. During the early 16th century Vieques became a center of Taíno rebellion against the European invaders, prompting the Spanish to send armed forces to the island to quell the resistance. The native Taíno population was decimated, and its people either killed, imprisoned or enslaved by the Spanish. The Spanish did not, however, permanently colonize Vieques at this time, and for the next 300 years it remained a lawless outpost, frequented by
pirates and outlaws. As European powers fought for control in the region, a series of attempts by the
French,
English and
Danish to colonize the island in the 17th and 18th centuries were repulsed by the Spanish. At the beginning of the 19th century, the Spanish took steps to permanently settle and secure the island. In 1811, Don Salvador Meléndez, then governor of Puerto Rico, sent military commander Juan Rosselló to begin what would become the annexation of Vieques by the Puerto Ricans. In 1832, under an agreement with the Spanish Puerto Rican administration, Frenchman
Teófilo José Jaime María Le Guillou became Governor of Vieques, and undertook to impose order on the anarchic province. He was instrumental in the establishment of large plantations, marking a period of social and economic change. Le Guillou is now remembered as the
founder of Vieques (though this title is also sometimes conferred on Francisco Saínz, governor from 1843 to 1852, who founded
Isabel Segunda, the main town in Vieques, named after
Queen Isabel II of Spain). Vieques was formally annexed to Puerto Rico in 1854. In 1816, Vieques was briefly visited by
Simón Bolívar when his ship ran aground there while fleeing defeat in Venezuela. During the second part of the 19th century, thousands of slaves of African descent were brought to Vieques to work the
sugarcane plantations. They arrived from mainland Puerto Rico and nearby islands of
St. Thomas,
Nevis,
Saint Kitts,
Saint Croix, and many other Caribbean islands. Slavery was abolished in Puerto Rico in 1873.
European colonial period The island also received considerable attention as a possible colony from
Scotland, and after numerous attempts to buy the island proved unsuccessful, the Scottish fleet, en route to
Darien in 1698, made landfall and took possession of the island in the name of the
Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and The Indies. Scottish sovereignty of the island proved short-lived, as a Danish ship arrived shortly afterward and claimed the island, as it was previously claimed in 1682 by the
Danish West India Company. From 1689 to 1693, the island was controlled by
Brandenburg-Prussia as
Krabbeninsel (
German crab island), where the English name Crab Island came from. Brandenburg-Prussia had been given a trade outpost on the Danish island of St. Thomas and occupied Krabbeninsel without Spanish consent as a satellite outpost and would return it to Spain due to the impracticability of defending the small outpost.
United States control Puerto Rico was ceded by Spain in the aftermath of the
Spanish–American War under the terms of the
Treaty of Paris of 1898 and became a territory of the United States. In 1899, the United States conducted its first census of Puerto Rico finding that the population of Vieques was 6,642 (but this included 704 residents from a nearby island,
Culebra). In the 1920s and 1930s, the
sugar industry, on which Vieques was dependent, went into decline due to falling prices and industrial unrest. Many locals were forced to move to mainland Puerto Rico or
Saint Croix to look for work. In 1941, while Europe was in the midst of
World War II, the
United States Navy purchased or seized almost eighty percent of Vieques as an extension to the
Roosevelt Roads Naval Station nearby on the Puerto Rican mainland. It is said that the original purpose of the base (never implemented) was to provide a safe haven for the
British fleet and the
British royal family should Great Britain fall to
Nazi Germany. This assertion does not match U.S. Navy documents and the obvious fact that Canada's
Halifax harbor would have been a more likely fallback position for the British fleet, with British King
George VI already reigning as King of Canada. The base was however seen as the Atlantic's counterpart of
Pearl Harbor in the
Pacific due to its strategic location. The Naval Station at Roosevelt Roads was a perfect location to defend the strategic approaches to the
Panama Canal. Much of the land was bought from the owners of large farms and sugar cane plantations, and the expropriations triggered the final demise of the sugar industry. Without consulting the local population who had lived and worked there for centuries and protested the expropriations, the decision to turn it into a bombing range was made in Washington. In a similar way as the
former population of the
Chagos Islands, who were displaced to make way for an Air Force Base in the Indian Ocean in the 1960s, many agricultural workers, who had no formal title to the land they occupied, were evicted and forced to migrate. For over sixty years, the US military used the island (with a population of over 9000 inhabitants in 1950) as a live munitions target practice. According to internal Navy documents, bombardments occurred on 180 days out of a year on average. The US military used the highest possible contaminant
depleted uranium (DU) munitions since 1972 on the populated (and full of exotic wildlife) island, at a rate of over 80 live bombs daily for decades. The locals took to the ocean in their small fishing boats and successfully stopped the US Navy's military exercises for a short period, until the US Navy and two
US Coast Guard cutters began controlling access to the island and escorting boaters away from Vieques. On April 27, 2001, the Navy resumed operations and protesting resumed. At this point over 600 protesters had already been detained. The Vieques issue became something of a
cause célèbre, and local protesters were joined by sympathetic groups and prominent individuals from the mainland United States and abroad, including political leaders
Rubén Berríos,
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,
Al Sharpton and
Jesse Jackson, singers
Danny Rivera,
Willie Colón and
Ricky Martin, actors
Edward James Olmos and
Jimmy Smits, boxer
Félix 'Tito' Trinidad, baseball superstar
Carlos Delgado, writers
Ana Lydia Vega and
Giannina Braschi, and Guatemala's Nobel Prize winner
Rigoberta Menchú. Kennedy's son, Aidan Caohman "Vieques" Kennedy, was born while his father served jail time in Puerto Rico for his role in the protests. The problems arising from the US Navy base have also featured in songs by various musicians, including Puerto Rican rock band
Puya, rapper
Immortal Technique and
reggaeton artist
Tego Calderón. In popular culture, one
subplot of "
The Two Bartlets" episode of
The West Wing dealt with a protest on the bombing range led by a friend of
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman; the character was modeled on future West Wing star
Jimmy Smits, a native of Puerto Rico who was repeatedly arrested for leading protests there. As a result of this pressure, in May 2003 the Navy withdrew from Vieques, and much of the island was designated a
National Wildlife Refuge under the control of the
United States Fish and Wildlife Service.
Hurricane Maria and rebuilding efforts Puerto Rico was struck by
Hurricane Maria on September 20, 2017, and the storm caused widespread devastation and a near-total shutdown of the island's tourism-based economy. The largest hotel on the island,
The W, has not reopened since the storm, but most smaller hotels, bed and breakfasts, and Airbnb operators have resumed operations. As of December 2019, the
Susana Centeno Hospital in Vieques had not been repaired and remained shuttered. Expectant mothers had to travel to the main island of Puerto Rico to give birth. People needing dialysis had to travel to the main island. In November 2018, a mobile dialysis machine was delivered to a temporary clinic. On January 21, 2020, the
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) approved $39.5 million to help rebuild its only hospital after damage caused by Hurricane Maria. FEMA approved the funding after the
Office of Management and Budget agreed to provide money to rebuild the Susan Centeno community health center based on its "replacement value." The family of Jaideliz Moreno Ventura, 13, whose 2020 death was blamed on the lack of a functioning hospital and lifesaving medical equipment in Vieques, is suing the government for violation of human and civil rights. Funds for rebuilding the hospital were approved two weeks after Jaideliz's death. While
Governor Pedro Pierluisi expected construction to begin on the hospital rebuild in 2022, it was delayed until 2023 with the holdup blamed on both construction complications on the island and further bureaucratic procedures by
FEMA. As of November 2024, construction was not yet complete. ==Government==