Navaza island
The Navaza Island or Navassa (in English Navassa Island, in French Île de la Navasse or La Navase, and in Haitian Creole Lanavaz o Lavash) is one of the fourteen unincorporated territories of the United States of America.
It consists of an uninhabited island in the Caribbean Sea. The island is under the control of the United States and administered by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. Haiti claims Navaza Island and includes it as part of the department of Grand'Anse, claiming that it has held sovereign titles over it since 1801. Fishermen, mostly from Haiti, work in the waters around Navaza. There are also territorial claims by private institutions.
History
In 1504 Christopher Columbus, who had stranded in Jamaica during his fourth voyage, sent Diego Méndez de Segura and Bartolomeo Fieschi in canoes along with indigenous people to the island of Hispaniola in search of help. They passed by an island that had no water and which they called Navaza, a name that they gave in reference to the navas of Spain. The description of his discovery is found in the book Historia del Admiral , written by his son Fernando Colón:
As to cross from one island to another it was necessary to sail 250 leagues without having on the way, but an islet or stumbling block that discards eight leagues of the Spanish (...) with two drops to the Indians, they held them until the cool of the afternoon, encouraging them and reassuring them that they would arrive to an islet called Navaza, which was on their journey to eight distant Spanish (...)But as they were sent by whom God wanted to save, He made them so distressing, that Diego Méndez saw that the moon was on the earth, for he covered it as an islet, as an eclipse; otherwise they could not see it, because it was very small, and in the hour. Conforting them Mendez with this joy, and showing them the land, gave them a lot of encouragement, and having distributed them, to mitigate the thirst, a little water of the barrel, they bogaron so that the next morning they found themselves on the island that we said, distaba eight leagues of the Spanish, and was called Navaza.
They found that this was all of living stone, half a league of circuit. They disembarked where they could best, thanked God for such help, and because there was no living fresh water in it, no tree, but rocks, they walked from peña to peña, collecting with pumpkins the rainy water they found, from which God gave them so much abundance, that it was enough to fill the belly and the vessels there; although the most prudent they warned the others who drank it,
That island was avoided by sailors for the next 350 years, except for occasional buccaneers. By the Treaty of Basel (July 22, 1795), the entire island of Hispaniola (and its adjacent islands) were ceded by Spain to France, without specifying whether the ceding included Navaza. It later acquired relevant mention during the journey advanced by Simón Bolívar through Haiti, in search of help for the emancipatory cause, moving from Jamaica on December 24, 1815, where he wrote: "The Letter from Jamaica", crossed in front of Navaza, being impressed for its natural beauty, a circumstance of which there is also a historical record.
In 1857 sovereignty over the island was claimed by Peter Duncan, an American sea captain, invoking the Guano Islands Act of 1856, due to its guano deposits. He claimed the discovery of the island on July 1, 1857, and his taking possession on September 19 of that year, the third island claimed under that US law. Haiti protested the US annexation of the island in 1858 and claimed sovereignty over it. However, the United States rejected that claim.
Guano deposits were actively mined between 1865 and 1898. Phosphate from guano is an organic fertilizer that became important to United States agriculture in the mid-century XIX. Duncan transferred discoverer's rights to the island to his employer, a Jamaican guano dealer, who in turn sold the rights to the newly created Navassa Phosphate Company of Baltimore. After an interruption due to the Civil War in the United States, the company built better infrastructure for guano extraction, as well as housing for 140 African-American workers from Maryland, houses for white supervisors, stores and a church. Extraction began in 1865. Workers extracted the guano with dynamite and axes, and brought it to Lulu Bay (via railways), where it was stored in sacks and loaded onto boats for transfer to the company ship, the S. S.Romance. The accommodation in Lulu Bay was called Lulu Town, a name that appears on maps of the time.
Loading guano in the sweltering tropical heat, under strict work rules enforced by abusive white overseers, sparked a rebellion on the island in 1889. Five overseers were killed in the confrontation. An American warship returned 18 workers to Baltimore, Maryland, to stand trial for murder. The Order of Galilean Fisherman, an African-American fraternal society, raised money to defend the workers in federal court, alleging that the workers attacked in self-defense and that the United States did not they had full jurisdiction over the island. The case went to the Supreme Court of the United States in October 1890, which decided that the Guano Islands Act was constitutional, for which reason the execution of three of the workers was foreseen in the spring of 1891. A petition made by African-American Churches reached President Benjamin Harrison, who decided to commute the workers' sentences to prison.
Guano mining continued in Navaza, but at a much reduced level. The Spanish-American War of 1898 forced the Phosphate Company to abandon the island and declare bankruptcy, and the new owners left the island in 1901.
Navaza became important again with the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914. Shipping between the east coast of the United States and the canal passes between Cuba and Haiti and Navaza, which had always been a danger to navigation, So I needed a lighthouse. In 1917, a lighthouse was built, which measured 46 m and was 120 meters above sea level. Three people were assigned to live there until the lighthouse was automated in 1929. During World War II, the United States Navy created an observation post on the island. But then, the island has remained uninhabited.
A scientific expedition from Harvard University studied the island's terrain and marine life in 1930. Since World War II, radio operators have frequently landed on the island to broadcast programs from this territory, which has been assigned Granted country status by the American Radio Relay League, assigning it the callsign prefix KP1.
From 1903 to 1917 Navaza was a unit of the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, and from 1917 to 1996 it was under the administration of the United States Coast Guard. On August 29, 1996, the United States Coast Guard dismantled the Navaza lighthouse. Since January 16, 1997, the island came under the administration of the United States Department of the Interior (U.S. Department of the Interior), which placed it under the control of its Office of Insular Affairs (Office of Insular Affairs). Navaza was grouped, for statistical purposes, with other Caribbean guano islands under US possession under the group name United States Miscellaneous Caribbean Islands.
A 1998 scientific expedition led by the Center for Marine Conservation in Washington, D.C., described Navaza as "the only reserve of biodiversity in the Caribbean".
On December 3, 1999, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (United States Fish and Wildlife Service) assumed administrative responsibility for Navaza, which became a Wildlife Refuge known as Navassa Island National Wildlife Refuge. The Office of Insular Affairs retained authority over the island in political matters, while judicially it falls under the jurisdiction of the nearest US Circuit Court.
Access to Navaza is dangerous, and visitors need permission from the Boquerón, Puerto Rico Fish and Wildlife Office to enter its territorial waters or disembark. Since its transformation into reserve, amateur radio operators have been denied entry.
Geography
The island of Navaza covers an area of 5.4 km² and is located in a strategic location 160 km south of the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base that the United States has on the island of Cuba, and in the road between Haiti and Jamaica, in the Jamaica channel.
Most of the territory consists of rocks, although grass also grows; there are also trees and cacti scattered around the island.
Navassa Island's terrain consists primarily of exposed coral and limestone, the island is surrounded by vertical white cliffs 30 to 50 feet (9.1 to 15.2 m) high, but with sufficient grassland to support herds of goats. The island is covered by a forest of four tree species: shortleaf fig (Ficus populnea var. brevifolia), pigeon plum (Coccoloba diversifolia), mastic (Sideroxylon foetidissimum) and poisonwood (Metopium brownei).
Ecology
The topography, ecology, and modern history of Navassa Island are similar to those of Mona Island, a small limestone island located in the Mona Passage between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, which were once guano extraction centers and are natural reserves for the United States.
Transient Haitian fishermen and others camp on Navassa Island, but it is otherwise uninhabited. It has no harbors or harbours, just offshore anchorages, and its only natural resource is guano. The economic activity consists of subsistence fishing and commercial trawling activities.
There were eight species of native reptiles, all of which are believed to be, or have been, endemic to Navassa Island: Celestus badius (an anguid lizard), Aristelliger cochranae (a gecko), Sphaerodactylus becki (a gecko), Anolis longiceps (an anole), Cyclura (cornuta) onchiopsis (a rock iguana), Leiocephalus eremitus (a curly-tailed lizard), Tropidophis bucculentus (a dwarf boa) and Typhlops sulcatus (a tiny snake). Of these, the first four are still common, and the last four are probably extinct. Feral cats, dogs and pigs currently inhabit the island.
In 2012, a rare species of coral, Acropora palmata (elkhorn coral), was found underwater near the island. The remaining coral was found to be in good condition.
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Haitian claim
The Constitution of Haiti (Chapter II: Du Territoire de la République D'Haïti) makes an explicit claim to the island of Navaza, considering it part of its territory:
ARTICLE 8:Le territoire de la République d'Haïti comprend:
(a) La partie Occidentale de l'Ile d'Haïti ainsi que les Iles adjacentes: la Gonâve, La Tortue, l'Ile à Vache, les Cayemites, The Navase, La Grande Caye et les autres iles de la Mer Territoriale;
The island is located 60 km off the coast of Cape Tiburon in the South department, to which it has been assigned by the Haitian government.
The Haitian claim is supported by Cuba. Both countries signed a maritime delimitation treaty on October 27, 1977 establishing the limits so that the island was considered part of Haiti. Various informal sources indicate that Cuba and Jamaica would have dormant claims over Navaza. However, neither in the aforementioned treaty, nor in the one that Cuba signed with Jamaica on February 18, 1994, has any claim to the island been made by those countries, and the limit between them has been established in such a way that it begins in a tripartite point Navaza-Cuba-Jamaica as a continuation of the limit agreed by Cuba and Haiti.
Pending a solution to the dispute over the island between Haiti and the United States, Cuba and Jamaica have rejected the second country's suggestions to establish maritime boundaries with them around Navaza.
Other unofficial sources point to an alleged dormant claim by Colombia. However, the maritime boundaries between this country and Haiti were fully established by the treaty of February 17, 1978, with no reservation being made by Colombia. Nor was any reservation made on November 12, 1993, when a treaty was signed maritime boundary treaty between Colombia and Jamaica.