Vieques, Puerto Rico : from devastation to conservation, and back again

The donning of camouflage gear by military forces is uniformly understood to be an attempt to dissolve into a background matrix in order to deceive an enemy in combat, or in a combat simulation. This thesis examines the landscape of Vieques, Puerto Rico, to disprove such notion and move towards proving the opposite: that the military assembled the background matrix according to its own set of interests. Through different communication channels and agents, the military arranges the retrospective gaze into the landscape, recasting the past in the service of its future stratagems. The military communicates to visitors that they gaze at original, primeval nature, when in fact it is a successional vegetation misrepresented as primordial. This scenography proves nearly unquestionable when it is adopted by corporate tourism marketing at the end of the 20th century, but does not appeal to the leisure audience only. It also seduces all those that opposed the military, perpetuating an idea of Vieques without people in the process.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2004

Author dc:creator

• Arbona, Javier, 1976-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Anne Whiston Spirn.

• Architecture.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/17918

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/17918