We Fed an Island by Jose Andres

Author:Jose Andres
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-08-02T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Seeing Red

SOME PEOPLE SPEND THEIR EARLY MORNINGS PLANNING HOW THEY ARE going to help the world. Others are just trying to get ready for another day at the office. Then there are the people who start their day watching cable TV news and tweeting in response.

That seemed to be the way Donald Trump woke up, on the day I was heading to a distant corner of Puerto Rico: the island of Vieques. As I was figuring out how to feed the people, with or without FEMA, the president of the United States was threatening to pull out of Puerto Rico altogether. First he blamed the islanders for “a financial disaster . . . largely of their own making,” then he said their infrastructure was a disaster. Finally, he threatened to abandon the island, saying, “We cannot keep FEMA, the Military & the First Responders, who have been amazing (under the most difficult circumstances) in P.R. forever!”

It was not clear how or even why he would withdraw the U.S. military and first responders from American territory. Perhaps he still thought that Puerto Rico was a foreign country. Whatever he was thinking, it was heard loud and clear on the island: the Trump administration had barely made a dent in the recovery operations after three weeks, and now Trump himself was ready to quit.

I set out on my travels determined to make up for the lack of leadership in my hometown of Washington, D.C.

It’s hard enough living on an island that has been devastated by two hurricanes and is struggling to get back to normal life three weeks later. But it’s even harder if you live on an island off an island: a forgotten outpost of a limping colony. That was the fate of Vieques, east of Puerto Rico, where the full force of Maria first ripped through, before striking the big island. I had heard horror stories of lawlessness and despair there, in the initial days after the hurricane passed, but I wanted to see for myself what the situation was like. José Enrique had family in Vieques and Culebra, and we tried earlier to organize a boat trip, but the seas were too rough. It had taken some time, but we’d finally been able to rent two old single-propeller planes to take me and my team to the island, where we would set up our own World Central Kitchen food operation. “This is so important,” said Karla. “The volunteers were tearing up about this trip.”

Vieques is a beautiful Caribbean island with crystal-blue waters and soft sandy beaches. But it’s better known for its colonial history than its tourism. The U.S. Navy seized two-thirds of the island in World War Two as a home for the British Navy in case the U.K. fell under Nazi control. For decades after the war, the navy used Vieques as a giant firing range and storage depot, even lending it out to allies for target practice. After years of protests, the navy withdrew in 2003 and the former bombing range became a wildlife refuge.

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