The last line of Bandidaje's featured quote says it all. He makes the point about his children being able to have all they need in Vieques, their homeland, the place where they were born. BUT, they were not born there. As the featured quote points out, the United States Navy controlled the number of people born in Vieques. With a limited population they could continue to subject the island to bombings. The Navy did not permit maternity facilities on the island. Laboring women had to board a plane or ferry to Fajardo on the main island of Puerto Rico. Stories exist of women giving birth on the plane or in the bathroom of the airport, unable to hold out for their arrival at the hospital in Fajardo. Consequently the majority of young people who call Vieques their homeland, did not have the privilege of being born there.

Much like removing this birth right, so many other necessities have been robbed from Viequenses. Cancer patients, of which there are disproportionate numbers of them in Vieques, have no real treatment facilities on the island. They too must board a plane or ferry to the main island of Puerto Rico. You can shop on Vieques, but groceries are much more expensive. Vieques residents prefer to catch a ferry to the main island, shop there and bring the groceries back by boat. These things stir up rage and sadness in Bandidaje. He, like many other Viequenses respond by spending much of their time in St. Croix. When the US Navy took lands away from thousands of families to build the base, many of these people were displaced to the main island of Puerto Rico, but others were forced out to St. Croix. To this day a large community of Viequenses still lives in St. Croix. Nearly everyone in Vieques has either spent time living or working there or has a close relative who has had this experience. For Bandidaje, he finds solace escaping there half of the year. It is where he has access to "development," to some of the simple pleasures he enjoyed in his Vieques childhood, such as a movie theater for example (not one exists on the island today).

Bandidaje, though bitter about the situation in his island, has an unforgettable sense of humor. Many other Viequenses that I interviewed recounted his many jokes from the days tearing down the Navy fence and protesting. No one calls him by his given name. In fact few people even know what his real name is. He is greeted with "Que bandidaje!" (What banditry). It is all a reference to the first quote featured on the painting, something he said to the judge after his arrest in protesting the Navy. In a trip where he took my husband and I to the gorgeous Punta Arenas, the Western tip of the island, he crafted a subtle, developing joke, to illustrate the deficiencies suffered by his community. Mind you, I write all this in English, robbing you of the poetry of his words. In any trip to the Western tip of Vieques one passes the almacigo trees on route to the airport, the horses running wild on pastures around la Capilla Ecunemica, Rompeolas, the old Navy magazines and bunkers, the entanglement of tropical trees, the scrurrying jueyes (land crabs), the enormous puddles in the dirt roads, and finally where the serene southern waters ripple towards the turbelent northern waters at the tip of the island, with the Yunque rainforest clouds hovering over the hills of the main island of Boriken. Along the way, at various stops, as my husband and I commented on Vieques' beauty, Bandidaje would say, "Vieques is beautiful, Vieques is great. The only thing is that you need a horse to get around." Then, "Vieques is great, the only thing you need is a horse and a jeep to get you through all the unpaved roads." Later, “Vieques is great, the only thing you need is a horse, a jeep and maybe a jet ski for entertainment and to get around the beaches." That graduated to "Vieques is great. The only thing you need is a horse, a jeep, a jet ski, and a lancha (small boat) so that you're not land locked once the ferries stop running." Eventually he tacked on a plane to get you off the island during emergencies and to enable to you to get back and forth when needing supplies, medical attention, etc, among other amenities.

Bandidaje was not at the opening reception of the exhibition in October of 2009. He had escaped once again to St. Croix, what he calls Vieques’ sister island.

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