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side street, grabbed our snorkeling gear, and made for the far end of the beach on foot, knowing there’d be better snorkeling by the reef. Since it was a weekday, there were just a few folks walking the shoreline. We would have the water to ourselves.
    In the distance, waves were breaking over the barrier reef. We jumped in and swam out to where the action was. We spent a good hour snorkeling through the intricate paths of coral mapped out on the sea floor, using the gentle surges and currents to propel ourselves through the valleys of undersea architecture. Every few minutes, we surfaced to compare notes.
    â€œDude! Did you see the sea turtles back there?”
    â€œAmazing, man! Or the big manta ray?”
    â€œI know, so awesome!”
    â€œLet’s keep swimming, man!”
    We seemed to be seeing and thinking the same things. It was fantastic.
    Then we noticed some men spearfishing on the reef closer to shore. We weren’t anywhere near them, so we didn’t give them another thought, focusing instead on the incredible theater below.
    The next time we surfaced, the men were standing on the reef right over us, homemade tridents and spearguns in their hands.
    â€œHey, how’s it going, man?” we said, and gave them a friendly wave. The men said nothing; they just stared at us coldly. They didn’t seem to be fishing anymore. I had that foreboding feeling I’d had many times in the past, right before things went south. Something wasn’t right.
    During my short time on the island, it had already become apparent that Puerto Rico was struggling between two worlds. Since it’s an unincorporated territory of the United States, the residents are American citizens, but they don’t have all the same rights that Americans living in the States do. They can’t vote for the president and aren’t even represented in Congress, but they can be drafted into the military. Approximately half the islanders want to be independent from the United States, and the other half want to be the fifty-first state. The former group tends to be pretty hostile to non-Puerto Ricans living on the island. Anti-American demonstrations weren’t uncommon during our time there. The international school in Palmas del Mar, where we lived, and another in San Juan were shut down due to bomb threats more than once.
    Living in this strange limbo has taken its toll on the Puerto Rican people. The crime rate was already high, but got worse when the military shut down its bases on the island. During the twentieth century, there were as many as twenty-five different installations, but the Air Force and Navy left, leaving just the U.S. Coast Guard and Puerto Rico National Guard facilities. Those bases had been a boon to the local economy, as were big companies like the one my wife was working for, but they were starting to shut down their local facilities too. For all the protests about the weapons training facility that had been located on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, when the military pulled up stakes there and elsewhere in the early years of the millennium, a lot of residents felt it in their pocketbooks. The median income in Puerto Rico is about half what it is in Mississippi, the poorest of the fifty states.
    But the vast majority of people don’t react by threatening visitors. The spearfishermen might have been pissed off that we invaded their locals-only space, but I had a feeling there was more to it than that.
    â€œC’mon, man, let’s get outta here!” I said to Brandon.
    â€œNaw, let’s keep swimming, dude!” He clearly wasn’t getting the bad vibe I was from our new neighbors.
    â€œBrandon,” I said a little more urgently, “we need to get back to our stuff.” We’d left some gear and our towels on the beach.
    He quit arguing, and we started making our way back to shore through the maze of coral. But after just a few minutes, we looked up and saw