Opposing powers at the helm and the immobilities of passenger‐ferry governance in Vieques, Puerto Rico

Abstract

Almost 20 years have passed since Viequenses succeeded in their struggle to kick out the US Navy from their island, yet residents have been left stranded facing issues of the dispossession of the island's most poor, alongside slow clean‐up efforts and deteriorating health outcomes. Drawing upon approaches from recent critical transportation geographies, this article uses a mobility justice framework to understand how the afterlives of over 60 years of direct militarised colonial violence continue to repeat through Viequense mobile life. I particularly focus on how Vieques' environmental injustices become mobility injustices through the poor ferry service. The article explores the governance of the maritime transportation service by disentangling its mobile politics, revealing the deeper impacts of coloniality on infrastructures of mobility. I do so through a critical policy analysis of legislative measures, plans, reports and grant proposals prepared by Puerto Rican state authorities from 1999 to 2021. Recognising the close relationship between debt and infrastructural landscapes in Puerto Rico, I use debt as an analytical tool to explain how it is constitutive of mobility regimes on the island. Through this analysis, the article centres on the creation of the Maritime Transportation Authority (ATM) as an institutional actor in charge of Viequense mobilities, detailing how it was enmeshed in fiscal and political tensions that resulted in extreme im/mobilities to its passengers. I find that the struggle for ownership over mobilities is a characteristic of the mobile politics of the ferry service, defined by an unequal power distribution between institutional actors and users, codified by public policies. This demonstrates how multiple dimensions of justice intertwine within mobility politics, aggravating existing environmental injustices into mobility injustices.

The contours of environmental justice in the Caribbean

“…Organisations such as Chemonics, a consulting firm, and the United States Agency for International Development also played a role in forcing policy changes that led to the fall of rice prices in Haiti, which induced economic and environmental disasters there that further benefited US rice enterprises. For Pimentel Rivera (2023), debt has been influenced by coloniality, and has led to immobility in terms of transportation both to and from Vieques in Puerto Rico, further marginalising that sub‐population.…”

“…This continues to occur because, as Pellow (2018) argues, marginalised communities are often seen as expendable. Pimentel Rivera (2023), in the special issue, references land contamination in Vieques that was the result of ongoing US military action and where local elites consented to violent resource extraction. Environmental and demographic changes resulted in the island's main health clinic being closed, requiring residents to travel to mainland Puerto Rico to get medical attention.…”

“…This increased the importance of and residents’ reliance on passenger ferries. With this, Pimentel Rivera (2023, p. 2) shows that everyday but inadequate transportation systems leave people, especially the poor, ‘stranded to face issues such as the increase in real‐estate speculation driving dispossession […] and deteriorating health outcomes since the US Navy's departure’. The contributions from Robinson et al (2023) and Thomas and Benjamin (2023) highlight the role of disasters in reinforcing the ‘othering’ of certain Caribbean nationals.…”

“…While we acknowledge that coloniality is different from colonialism and imperialism, with the latter two being more about economic and political structures and expansionism, respectively, the three were sometimes difficult to discreetly distinguish across the articles in the special issue. For example, for Pimentel Rivera (2023, p. 2), Vieques is a ‘colony within a colony’ where there are everyday examples of the ‘colonial state's continuous failure to deliver an essential service’ – the ferry. This affects the ability of people to move, and demonstrates the economic and political power that mainland Puerto Rico has over Vieques.…”

“…Kirby‐Straker et al (2023) and Perry (2023) use examples from Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, and St Vincent and the Grenadines, with Kirby‐Straker et al (2023) focusing on knowledge repatriation and Perry (2023) discussing debt and disasters. Pimentel Rivera (2023) and Robinson et al (2023) centre Puerto Rico, with the former studying passenger ferry governance and the latter Hurricane Maria's impact. Thomas and Benjamin (2023) spotlight The Bahamas in their analysis of the impacts of Hurricane Dorian.…”