Vieques: Hype, art, and other controversial versions of “Paradise”

Recently a friend sent me yet another article on Vieques from the New York Times (6 March 2011). This piece, a review of the W Spa & Resort, contained a number of the mistakes and distortions typical of travel writing, including a recommendation to venture forth from the walls of the W to visit “the quaint fishing village of Esperanza.” It was meant as a compliment to the barrio, but anyone who would describe it that way is either lying or never actually took her own advice.

On the flight from San Juan I read in the Cape Air inflight magazine (Winter 2011) about our destination as a “jewel of the Caribbean” and a “little paradise.” “The trendy W Hotel understood the lure of this little paradise…” says the writer, suggesting the hotel’s financial interest in promoting that cliched and misleading version of the island.

What’s the harm in a little travel writing hype in the interests of attracting tourists? Not just a rhetorical question. One possible answer would be that although it might help W by luring customers, it might hurt those in whose interest it is to make known the island’s less than paradisal realities, such as violent crime out of proportion to the island’s population; health concerns, the legacy of the decades of bombing; ferry problems; the question of who the island really belongs to–to mention just a few of the more obvious.

My sister, like me a longterm, home-owning part-timer Northamerican, is a painter whose work is currently being exhibited at the Fort. She has been painting the island for several years now, mostly beaches and palm trees. Occasionally people come up to her while she is painting to watch and admire. But this past winter she had a different sort of experience. She was painting in the northwest part of the island when she was approached by a local woman who asked if my sister intended to make money on the painting, implying that in this sense the act of painting could be considered an act of exploitation. This was upsetting to my sister, as she thought of her painting as a compliment to the island’s beauty, a salute to a place she was very fond of. Of course she hoped to sell the painting. But how could an innocent act of appreciation be exploitative?

My own reaction like that of other Northamericans I consulted, was a defense of artistic freedom : the woman was way off base. She just doesn’t understand art. Artists should be free to paint whatever and however they want.

But was the Viequensie woman onto something? Is it possible that the painting of an island’s natural beauty—or is it just a painting by one who lives most of the year elsewhere?–is in some sense not so different from the travel writer hype? (For one thing, is the choice to focus on the island’s natural beauty in some real sense a coverup of other realities?)

In a related art world matter, another painter, exhibiting in the new Gallery Galleon, created a stir with a realistic painting of a dark -skinned woman in a bikini walking in Town. Since women are virtually never seen in Town in skimpy beachwear, the painting was accused by some of being exploitative, an insult to Viequensie womanhood, to the native population in general. Adding to the criticism was the knowledge that the artist, with little experience of the island, had on a short visit taken a bunch of photos and returned to his studio in the north to make the paintings. In the case of the painting in question, he had plucked a figure from a beach photo and installed her in the incongruous setting.

And what about the painting’s title, “Isabel liberada”? A reference in dubious taste to women’s liberation? Or an unintended allusion to the Navy struggles by someone who has no history on the island? At the very least that painting raises the question: what are the rights, artistic or human, of an artist descending on the island from another world?

Some weeks after my sister’s upsetting plein air encounter, her show opened at the Fort. (Did the decision to show her work indicate that the curator, Robert Rabin, did not agree with the woman who had raised the question of exploitation?) The opening reception of the show was well advertised around the island. Not mentioned on the posters was a concert of music by Viequensie students, interspersed with comments by Rabin. Attendance at this concert was more or less compulsory: early goers who had begun to circulate to look at the paintings were asked to move to the room where the music and talking were taking place. Effectively, activities having no relationship to the art itself took up the first 45 minutes of the time advertised for the art opening.

At the end of the concert, my sister gave a short statement in English of welcome and an explanation of how her art had been inspired by her affection for the island, its people, and its natural beauty. At one point she referred to herself as a “gringo.” In translating her comments for those Spanish speaking people in the audience, Rabin chose to say that he would not have used that term “gringo”.

After the opening the artist and her husband joined several others for a drink at a local restaurant. There was talk critical of what was seen as Rabin’s highhandedness in foisting the music and talk on people who had come to see the paintings. But one of the party, a 10 year fulltime resident and one of the relatively few fluent Spanish speakers in the local expat community, commented that she understood and supported Rabin’s decision, implying that the Northamerican art aficionados’ objections were unreasonable. She also agreed with Rabin’s comment that “gringo” was an inappropriate term, meaning more or less the same as “nigger,” and criticized my sister’s use of it.

This assertion kicked off a debate. Was the term “gringo”, used often enough by local Northamerican residents, really so objectionable? It was upsetting to be told that I’ve been using a term that might be offensive to Viequensie ears. I was sure my sister had meant by it nothing more negative than some appropriate humility (given the number of local natives present): I am only a gringo, but I too love the island, as I hope my paintings express.

My point in writing is certainly not to pronounce the final word on any of these issues but to suggest what is no doubt obvious to anyone with more than travel writer motives, that behind “paradise” is a more complex, a more troubled, but also a more interesting, more human place. A fuller, ongoing discussion of these issues and others would illuminate the reality of the island including the relations among its various constituencies and their sometimes contradictory ways of loving the island.

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