Tourism and Language in Vieques documents the unfolding interplay between development and language on a small island easily engulfed by the hegemonic service economy of tourism. The voice of the Viequenses is combative, yet strangely mock heroic and bound to remain misunderstood, and therefore not listened to. In his very readable book, anthropologist Luis Galanes Valldejuli ably portrays, through in-depth ethnographic research and ‘thick’ descriptions, how ‘the complex, the messy, the “lived”’ experiences of the Viequense defy essentialist representations. He does so in ways that acknowledge and remind us of the inherent, cultural, and dynamic complexity and diversity that shuns dualist categories.

Godfrey Baldacchino, University of Malta; president of International Small Islands Studies Association (ISISA).

Tourism and Language in Vieques is a very sensitively and deliberately written ethnography on tourism, power, and language. Valldejuli has collected the utterances of Viequense subalterns who have been silenced in the face of tourism development not to 'give them voice,' but to reveal the mechanics of 'epistemic violence.'

L. Kaifa Roland, University of Colorado-Boulder

The book tackles the difficult question of power relationships in a tourist economy and describes the ways in which viequense language and discourse is silenced within discussions on the island’s political economy. This case is illustrative of the continuing contradictions at the heart of the US-Puerto Rico colonial relationship. Valldejuli offers provocative parallelisms between Vieques’ current predicament and the Caribbean’s historical struggle with imperialism, which result in a situation where the viequenses are left with limited resources to develop their agency.

Islamic Studies