Restless Me - Alternative Travel

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Autumn 2005

Restless Me Base Camp for the Global Traveler

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Refuge Among the Exes
In Culebra, Puerto Rico, the author found a tropical paradise that is a magnet for society's square pegs.

by Karolyn Stuver

“See him?” Flag-hat lady grabbed at the beefy man’s striped polo, but he skinnied behind two roly-poly patrons blocking the entrance to the Culebra Deli, and all flag-hat lady got was a hand-full of air. She was, as she was yesterday and the day before, wearing a white sun hat with the American and the Culebran flags sprouting from two opposing air vents. “He’s an undercover cop,” she announced. He shot me an eye roll and a half grimace, shrugged, threw open the screen door and disappeared into the tiny, but crowded, concrete space.

Lacking undercover cop’s evasive skills, I didn’t manage a clean get away and she snagged my wrist.

“I’m ex-FBI, CIA. Rich, too,” she confided. “Like everybody else here. Everybody here is ex-something.”

I bet. Culebra, Puerto Rico is that kind of place—a refuge for people looking to shed their past like a snake sheds its skin. In fact, “Culebra” is the Spanish word for snake. It has the pace and attitude of a place where people come to—if not hide—at least start over.

Culebra’s been that way since at least the 1500s. That’s when Taíno Indians from the Big Island of Puerto Rico fled to the tiny spit of sand 17 miles east out of desperation, on the run from Spanish colonizers. Christopher Columbus claimed Puerto Rico and its surrounding cays for the Spanish Crown in 1493, but it was Ponce de Leon’s cruelty that finally drove an unknown number of the locals to seek autonomy elsewhere.

Later, pirates boosting loot from Spanish merchant ships sought shelter there, too, along Culebra’s nooked coast. By the time undercover cop and flag-hat lady found it, the island’s tradition for accommodating those refusing to live under someone else’s thumb had become an embedded part of the culture.

“I just came to get a café con leche,” I said, hoping flag-hat lady would let me go and get on to breakfast.

“We’re having a protest at 1:00 at the Catholic Church. Be there.”

“A protest?”

“You know the doctor from the hospital? The little short one? Well he…”

“I don’t live here. Don’t you remember me? We talked yesterday? I’m here on vacation.”

I clearly made no impression on this woman. She, however, was unforgettable. We met the day before at the Dinghy Dock bar and restaurant, where I was doing exactly what I was this day: trying to get some freakin’ coffee. She pigeonholed me there, too, a cruel few steps from the push-button machine that dispensed salvation four ways: plain, con leche, cappuccino and espresso.

She stopped me to say my 12-year-old son was adorable. She had a son, too. “He’s so smart,” she said. “This tall.” She waved her hand above her head and looked up to indicate his head might touch the sky. “Everyone always told me what a lovely boy he was. How smart. When he was five, he looked at me, lying in a hospital bed after my husband nearly beat me to death and said, ‘Mom, it should be hard to get married and easy to get a divorce.’ So smart even then.”

Grown now, the son, she explained, is shooting kangaroos in the Australian Outback because there are too many and the animals are starving to death. “They make purses out of the joeys. Take them right out of the mothers’ pouches. Awful business. But it has to be done.” She shook her head, then raised a fist and nearly spat: “I’ve been here 21 years, but if I ever get off this fucking island, that’s where I’m going—to Australia.”

That was yesterday.

“Well, never mind then.” Flag-hat lady let go of my wrist and started to turn away, but the deli line was stalled and I wanted to get to the bottom of this protest business.

“Tell me why you’re protesting.”

“Dome houses.”

“Dome houses?”

“Dome houses. All the Americans are going to Vieques and building dome houses. Hurricane proof. Beautiful.”

“Okay. And the protest?”

“Do you know you can still get land here? Free! Waterfront. You just have to go talk to the mayor. I got two parcels. Gave one away. To a woman who told me some story about her house getting burned down. It wasn’t her house. Was her brother’s. Ha! In Puerto Rico, if they don’t like you, they sink your boat. Then they burn down your house. I’m going to get that land back. It’s worth $5 million!”

“So the protest is about land?”

Before she could respond, a woman skittered past us, distracting flag-hat lady.

“Johanna! Johanna!” she called. “I’m going to go to Switzerland with you!” Flag-hat lady was craning her neck and hollering at a tanned, blond woman with a backpack who was doing her best to avoid us and the giant mud puddles that pocked the road. This stretch used to be paved, but a construction project had the two main streets in Dewey, Culebra’s only town, torn up, sending people and cars every which way.

“We’ll go to Bali!” Flag-hat lady offered.

“Bali isn’t in Switzerland,” Johanna called back. She gave a backhanded wave and darted out of sight.

I figured the dots between the protest, the short doctor, the dome houses and the land chicanery would never get connected, mumbled “Good luck,” and slipped inside the deli to join the wait for pastelillos and the whole reason God made morning: smooth Puerto Rican coffee with steamed milk. NEXT

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