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Charlotte Amalie
Friday, March 29, 2024
HomeNewsArchivesScreening of 'Sugar Pathways' Explores Heart of VI-PR Friendship

Screening of 'Sugar Pathways' Explores Heart of VI-PR Friendship




Johnanna Bermudez-Ruiz takes questions after a screening Sunday, with Glenn "Kwabena" Davis, director of cultural education for the Department of Education, and Carmen Dennis, who chaired the VI-PR Friendship Day Committee. "Sugar Pathways," a documentary about the diaspora of Viequenses to St. Croix, screened Sunday night before an audience of about 300 at the Reichhold Center for the Arts.

Many attending the screening were themselves migrants to St. Croix after removal from and of their homes on Vieques by the U.S. Navy. Others recognized their abuelas and abuelos and tios and tias in interviews in the film.

In the mid-20th century, the U.S. Navy took land on Vieques from its residents to create a military base, later using the island for bombing practice. Occupying the east and west ends of the island, the Navy removed residents to the middle with only 10 days’ notice.

The Navy planned to expropriate the entire island, and contrary to the wishes of then-President John F. Kennedy, whose feelings about the project were influenced by then-Puerto Rican Gov. Luis Munoz Marin, the undersecretary of the Navy lobbied Congress for the funds for the project without Kennedy’s approval, according to the film.

After bulldozing their houses, the Navy vehicles deposited the debris that had been the Viequnses’ homes at a new location on the island and left the displaced families with nothing but piles of wood.

"I had never heard this [story] before," said Avril Davis, who watched the film with the Rojas and Rivera families. "How cold and forceful it was — with hardly an ounce of humanity. [They were] just left with the wood from their homes."

In addition to demolition of their homes, the Navy also accelerated the demise of the remaining sugar-cane plantations on Vieques, all but ensuring an economic vacuum for the island’s long-term residents.

However, the sugar plantations on St. Croix were happy to take the displaced sugar workers. The Crucian sugar industry had been confronted with a decline in the number of workers since the abolition of slavery, when many Crucians left to seek a better life.

Viequenses who came to the Virgin Islands became a vital and welcome part of the community, according to the documentary, working the sugar plantations and starting many of St. Croix’s groceries and other commercial enterprises. They were willing contributors in the Crucian community.

The migration brought 50-year newlyweds Terecita and Angel Rivera together at a young age.

"Vieques, that’s my hometown," said Angel, now in his late 60s, after the film. "I was just 18 years old [when I left]. That’s when she grabbed me."

The couple and their family and friends laughed together.

Terecita Rivera also claims Puerto Rican descent; her father came to the Virgin Islands from Culebra.

Part of making the film was to bring people together, to show the relationship between the Puerto Rican community in the Virgin Islands as an example of people living together, explained writer, director and producer Johanna Bermudez-Ruiz in remarks after the screening.

"[The film] sends a message that you can come into our society," Glenn "Kwabena" Davis said.

Davis is director of the Division of Cultural Education for the V.I. Department of Education.

"[Puerto Ricans] did not come with attitudes and criticisms," Davis said. "This sets an example for other ethnic groups."

Speakers in the film discussed the relationship between the Puerto Ricans’ migration and other geographic groups that have come to the Virgin Islands.

"The Puerto Ricans came here to live with people from here," Sen. Wayne James said in an interview in the film. "They came to live together. Others came to live next [to] but not with you."

The film took up eight years of the life of Bermudez-Ruiz, who is a Crucian of Puerto Rican descent.

"Funding was tough because most people don’t know the story," she said. "It was just a very difficult time. Funding for the arts had been cut, but strands of funding would come in. I invested eight years of my life, because I had a passion to tell it so that we could know. It was an absolute must."

Funding to finish the project came from the V.I. Department of Tourism, Bermdez-Ruiz said.

Bermudez-Ruiz has gathered so much information for the project that she has set a goal to have a publicly accessible archival collection so people can have it to enjoy and look at.

Sponsored by the V.I. Council on the Arts and the V.I. Humanities Council, "Sugar Pathways" has been seen at the U.S. Capitol, the Tribeca Theatre and at film festivals in Peru, Puerto Rico and St. Croix.

A DVD will be available next year, according to Bermudez-Ruiz, who said that she could not elaborate on details of ongoing marketing discussions for the film’s future screenings.

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