The Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority advises customers that on Saturday, Nov. 8, there will be a scheduled electrical service interruption between 7 a.m. and 2 p.m. affecting Feeders 6B, 8B, 9B, and 10B.
The impacted feeders will be de-energized in increments not exceeding three hours until work is completed. This planned interruption is necessary to allow WAPA’s contractor, J. Benton Construction, to safely enter an underground manhole and install conduits as part of the ongoing Queen Mary Highway Underground Electrical Project along Centerline Road.
Customers in the following areas will be temporarily impacted for no more than three hours:
Feeder 6B: Concordia, Glynn, La Grande Princess, Mary’s Fancy, Mon Bijou, Morning Star, St. John, and Vista Mar.
Feeder 8B: Annaberg, Breezewood Villas, Brook’s Hill, Butler Bay, Campo Rico, Cane, Cane Carlton, Canebrake Apartments, Carlton, Concordia (West), Diamond, Enfield Green, Downtown Frederiksted, Frederikhaab, Goodhope, Ham’s Bay, Hannah’s Rest, Henry Rohlsen Airport, Hogensborg, Hope, La Grange, Little La Grange, Manning Bay, Marley Additions, Mar’s Hill, Mountain, Mt. Washington, Northside, Prospect Hill, Prosperity, Smithfield, Sprat Hall, St. Georges, Stoney Ground, Two Brothers, Two Williams, Waldberggard, Walter I.M. Hodge, Wheel of Fortune, Whim, White Bay, White Lady, and Williams Delight.
Feeder 9B: Adventure, Aureo Diaz, Bethlehem, Castle Burke, Clifton Hill, Diamond, Fredenborg, Golden Grove, Industrial Park, Kingshill, Louis E. Brown Villas, Lower Love, Mt. Pleasant, Negro Bay, New Works, Paradise, Plessen/Croixville, Profit, Profit Hills, St. Croix Central High School, St. Georges, V.I. Corp Land, and Yellow Cedar.
Feeder 10B: Annaly, Bethlehem, Calqouhoun, Carambola, Coble, Grove Place, Hard Labor, Hibiscus Point, Jealousy, Joly Hill, La Grange, Little La Grange, Lorraine Village, Lower Love, Montpellier, Mt. Victory, Mt. Pellier, Mutual Home, Nicholas, North Hall, Orange Grove, Frederiksted Oxford, Pleasant Vale, Plessen, Prosperity, River, Springfield, Two Friends, Upper Love, and V.I. Corp Land.
This work represents an important step toward improving the territory’s power infrastructure and strengthening the electrical grid against future storms. WAPA appreciates the community’s patience, support and understanding as crews continue efforts to enhance and modernize the electrical system.
The Virgin Islands Police Department wishes to inform the public of the roadblock and rerouting of traffic that will be implemented from Thursday, Nov. 6 until Nov. 10 on Strand Street, Frederiksted while the Navy ship Iwo Jima is docked at the Ann E. Abramson Marine Facility.
There will be a roadblock from the corner of Market Street and Strand Street towards the corner of Custom House Street and Strand Street (Tourism Welcome Center).
Additionally, NO thru traffic will be allowed Northbound on Strand Street from Firstbank toward the McBean Clock Tower. Only taxis and contracted tour buses will be allowed inside of the barricaded area. Traffic traveling from Custom House Street towards the dock will only be allowed to make the right turn towards Buddhoe Park and onto King Street. NO traffic will be allowed to make the left turn towards Strand Street
CARICOM’s secretariat headquarters in Georgetown, Guyana. (Photo courtesy CARICOM.org)
The recent eruption of tensions between Venezuela and Guyana, marked by territorial claims, border incursions, and a chilling trail of criminal violence possibly tied to Venezuelan military elements, has brought the Caribbean to a moment of reckoning. When Guyana’s soldiers come under fire and its capital suffers a bombing traced to regional criminal networks, the crisis cannot be confined to a border dispute. It exposes something far deeper: the fragility of the Caribbean’s self-conception as a coherent political and moral community.
The disunity within CARICOM over how to respond to this crisis reveals that fragility in real time. While Barbados’ Prime Minister Mia Mottley has asserted that the Caribbean Sea is a zone of peace — and that the U.S. military’s expanding presence is unwelcome — Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister has dissented, refusing to join the regional call for withdrawal and even questioning whether CARICOM retains any strategic purpose. This disagreement is not merely tactical or diplomatic; it dramatizes the historical condition Franklin W. Knight once described — or, perhaps more accurately, produced — in his influential text “The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism.”
Knight’s book title is, in itself, a conceptual drama. It proposes two claims that cannot coexist without contradiction. The first, “The Caribbean”, posits a coherent, nameable entity, a singular geography or civilization capable of being narrated as a whole. The second, “The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism”, immediately withdraws that coherence by describing the very nationalism of this entity as fractured at its birth. Knight’s title therefore stages what Derrida might call a dangerous supplement: it adds to the claim of regional unity precisely by undoing it. The subtitle does not elaborate the title; it undermines it, revealing that the “Caribbean” may be a discursive fiction: a word searching for a referent.
In this sense, Knight was not writing the history of a region; he was writing the region into history. “The Caribbean”emerges less as a geographical reality than as an academic and political construct, a name retroactively imposed on a field of islands, languages, and colonial trajectories that never coalesced into a single consciousness. His work performs what it describes: it institutionalizes the very thing whose fragmentation it laments. That paradox is now mirrored in the present CARICOM moment, where states speak of unity while acting in self-differentiation, invoking regional solidarity even as they retreat into national calculation.
The tragedy is that this intellectual fiction has long governed our political imagination. We have mistaken linguistic convenience for historical community, treating “the Caribbean” as an organic collective rather than as the inherited residue of European mapping and imperial administration. Our so-called regionalism is, at best, administrative solidarity, cooperation by necessity, not conviction. Thus, when crises arise, whether over Guyana’s territorial integrity, Haiti’s implosion, or U.S. military encirclement, we discover not a house divided, but a house never built. The “fragmented nationalism” is not a wound upon Caribbean unity; it is the evidence that such unity never existed.
And yet, Knight’s ghost lingers. The persistence of the Caribbean idea, invoked in every summit, communiqué, and diplomatic ritual, shows the power of intellectual constructs to outlive their contradictions. The Caribbean continues to be spoken into being because it serves a function: it provides the language of moral legitimacy to an otherwise uncoordinated ensemble of postcolonial states. To say “the Caribbean” is to perform belonging; to say “CARICOM” is to enact coherence. But neither name guarantees the substance it implies.
What today’s geopolitical crisis reveals is that the Caribbean remains a space of rhetorical unity and material disaggregation. The United States speaks of the region as a sphere; Venezuela treats it as extension; CARICOM members experience it as aspiration. And beneath all this, Guyana stands as both the frontier and the test, the point where the Caribbean’s imagined geography collides with the hard facts of land, oil, and sovereignty.
If there is to be renewal, it must begin with intellectual courage. We must confront the fact that “the Caribbean” is not a natural community but a historical proposition, and that its fragmentation is not accidental but structural. The future of regionalism depends not on reviving the myth of unity, but on reimagining solidarity as a conscious, ethical choice, one that accepts diversity, asymmetry, and contradiction as the very conditions of political belonging.
Until that reckoning occurs, Knight’s title will remain prophetic: not the history of a region, but the epitaph of one that never was.
— Walter H. Persaud, Ph.D., is a retired Guyanese-Canadian professor of political and cultural studies. He has worked in national broadcasting media in Canada and taught in Thailand for a quarter century. He currently resides in Guyana where he publishs regularly on a variety of national and regional issues. Dr. Persaud holds a Bachelor’s in History and a Ph.D. in Social and Political Thought from York University, Toronto.
Editor’s Note: Opinion articles do not represent the views of the Virgin Islands Source newsroom and are the sole expressed opinion of the writer. Submissions can be made to visource@gmail.com.
The former Limetree Bay refinery manager must answer questions about 2020 and 2021 pollution releases or face possible contempt penalties, a federal judge ordered. (Source file photo by Linda Morland)
Scheduling the deposition of an oil refinery executive has proved slippery business, according to attorneys for Crucians claiming damages for homes sprayed with pollutants more than four years ago. Attorneys for the executive and the refinery’s current owner claim otherwise.
Oil refinery manager Fermin Rodriguez did not appear for a scheduled deposition Tuesday morning despite a federal judge’s order. After nearly a year of fruitless requests for Rodriguez to sit for legally-binding questions about the 2021 petroleum spray — following an attempted restart of the long-shuttered refinery — he has one more chance before possibly being found in contempt.
Rodriguez, a Port Hamilton Refining and Transportation employee, worked for former refinery owners, Limetree Bay, during the attempted restart.
Attorneys for the people with fouled cisterns told the court that, in January, Rodriguez’s attorney in Florida said the vice president and refinery manager was not available to speak until February, then May, then July — despite working a 15-minute drive from the proposed deposition site, the office of attorney Lee Rohn.
Matthew Ceradini, a North Carolina-based attorney representing Rodriguez as of Tuesday, said he thought the deposition date was Nov. 12. The Nov. 4 date was an attempt by Rohn to rush the process, he said.
“It depends on who you talk to,” Ceradini said. “The court has already issued an order saying that if he doesn’t show up today, then show up on the twelfth, which was the original plan.”
Magistrate Judge G. Alan Teague’s order, issued Monday, gave both dates, but was clear on what missing the next deposition date in Rohn’s office would mean.
“Failure to do so, may result in Rodriguez being held in contempt,” Teague ordered.
Ceradini would not confirm that Rodriguez would appear in Rohn’s office Nov. 12 but said the refinery manager was preparing for a deposition.
Christiansted attorney Andrew C. Simpson, who represents current refinery owner and Rodriguez’s current employer, Port Hamilton, told the Source he rejected any insinuation that Rodriguez had been avoiding the deposition. Although Port Hamilton did not exist as a company when the petroleum flare damaged homes, Simpson said he’d offered to assist Rodriguez with the deposition.
“ … I personally offered to facilitate the scheduling of Mr. Rodriguez’s deposition since he is Port Hamilton’s vice president of operations and refinery manager. I was told in no uncertain terms by the attorneys representing the plaintiffs that my assistance was not needed. I note that they did not inform the magistrate-judge of this offer. It appears that they seek chaos for some ulterior motive rather than the efficient scheduling of Mr. Rodriguez’s deposition,” Simpson said in a written statement. “Mr. Rodriguez has never refused to appear for his deposition and has always acted based upon the advice he has received from counsel.”
Simpson said Rodriguez had not been notified of a Nov. 4 deposition date. The order from Judge Teague was dated Nov. 3 and did allow for a secondary Nov. 12 deposition.
Simpson also said Rodriguez was not an actual Limetree Bay employee but a consultant with no decision-making responsibilities at the time of the oil spray.
Rodriguez had difficulty finding legal representation for the deposition because so many people allowed to practice law in the Virgin Islands had potential conflicts of interest with current or former refinery owners, plaintiffs, or associated parties, he said.
In early September, attorneys attempted to serve Rodriguez with a subpoena for a Sept. 18 deposition. This time, an assistant for Rodriguez’s attorney in Florida said the refinery manager was actually represented by Limetree Bay Refining attorneys. Limetree attorneys denied this in October, according to court records.
Rodriguez or his attorneys also asserted that he did not need to attend a deposition because he planned to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.
Judge Teague denied this claim, writing that Rodriguez could only invoke such rights on a question-by-question basis. Rodriguez may also have to explain why he believed his answers could be self-incriminating.
Rodriguez did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
The refinery, formerly known as Limetree Bay, has faced significant environmental and regulatory challenges in recent years, including an Environmental Protection Agency-mandated shutdown in 2021 after pollution incidents impacted surrounding communities. Port Hamilton acquired the facility later that year for $62 million at a bankruptcy auction. Since then, the company has been under EPA oversight to address safety and environmental concerns.
In 2022, Rodriguez said new refinery owner Port Hamilton was preparing for a safe restart. In 2024, however, after the EPA removed ammonia and toxic liquids from potentially unsafe containers, Port Hamilton representatives said there were no immediate plans for a restart.
In August, a federal judge ordered Limetree to release findings about the pollution incident gathered by Sedgwick Claims Management Services. Sedgwick was to assess complaints from St. Croix residents claiming their property, including cisterns, had been fouled by toxins, according to court records. That report was hidden away while Sedgwick attempted to collect a $1.1 million outstanding invoice from Limetree. The more than four-year-long argument included disagreement about which Limetree-associated entity even hired Sedgwick, according to court records.
The documents were not immediately released.
The records release was one of many contentious recent episodes for the long-troubled refinery. Even questions about who exactly owned the refinery caused consternation.
After the oil spray, Limetree officials agreed to distribute water to people who relied on cisterns fouled by the pollutants. The company later decided to fight water distribution in court for more than a year.
Head coach Michael Bute poses with undefeated Explorers 12U baseball team, who bested teams from across the globe to win the championship at the World Comes to the Palm Beaches international tournament. (Source photo by Amara Stokes Gilbert)
The USVI Explorers 12U baseball team went undefeated at the World Comes to the Palm Beaches international tournament Oct. 22-26, winning five games to claim the championship in West Palm Beach, Florida.
The 13-player roster, drawn from the territory’s Elrod Hendricks league for 9-12 year olds, defeated teams from Venezuela, Australia and three U.S. squads to finish 5-0.
“In the past, the team would travel, compete, and come up short,” head coach Michael Bute said. “This tournament was big for them because they finally got over the hump. Now they have more confidence in themselves for upcoming tournaments.”
The tournament featured teams representing 32 countries and territories across five age divisions.
Eight of the 13 USVI players batted .500 or higher during the tournament. Kamahli Lewis and Ari Frazer led the team with .700 averages.
The Explorers opened tournament play with a 10-6 victory over USA Elevates from northern Florida, then defeated Australia 13-0 and USA Coral Springs 11-3 before advancing to the playoff rounds. They edged Team Florida 7-6 in the semifinals before beating Venezuela 9-2 in the championship game.
“Venezuela was my favorite opponent,” said Tomas Alejandro. “They were pitching a lot faster than the other teams, and I liked hitting the fast pitches.”
For Jayce Hodge, the championship held personal significance.”I wanted to play baseball because my father played baseball,” Hodge said.
Ajhourni Dore credited the team’s preparation for their championship victory. “Explorers is so special because of how hard we work,” Dore said. “Every weekend we’re out here practicing.”
JaDen Hanley added, “We worked hard to win this championship, so it felt really good when we did.”
The roster included JaDen Hanley, Jamari Hanley Jr., J’Kaii Henry, Alexus Gumbs, Kamahli Lewis, Ari Frazer, Ajhourni Dore, Tomas Alejandro, Jayce Hodge, Shamarr Fahie, Jamoi Christopher Jr., Jayco Ramirez, Roniel Garcia and Grabriel Santana.
“This tournament was special for me because we have lots of great players and great coaches,” Jamari Hanley Jr. said.
“I’d like to thank the public most of all because when you see these guys selling water in Mandela Circle you always support them, and that’s how we raise the money to take these trips,” Bute added.
The team regularly sells water in Mandela Circle to fund tournament travel. They are raising money for their next competition, the President’s Day Challenge, Feb. 14-16 at the Jackie Robinson Training Complex in Vero Beach, Florida. The team needs $1,300 for tournament entry plus additional funds for travel and lodging. They look forward to winning big in the 13U bracket against dozens of teams from across the US and Central America.
The Royal Caribbean International and Celebrity Cruises Community Aquatic Center came alive last weekend as it welcomed 87 athletes participating in 164 events at the 2025 Virgin Islands Swim Federation Short Course Swimming Championships on St. Thomas.
Young girls on the starting block of their 50 Meter Backstroke race. (Source photo by Mark J. Daniel)
The event started on Friday, Oct. 31, with three teams: the St. Croix Dolphins, British Virgin Islands Barracudas Swim Team, and the host St. Thomas Swimming Association’s Stingrays. Each club had strong showings in various age categories of the three-day event.
Natalia Rivera, of the Stingrays, made a strong argument for the most valuable swimmer of this competition. Swimming in the 8 and under girls division, Rivera won the 50 Meter Freestyle, 25 Meter Freestyle, 200 Meter Freestyle, 100 Meter Freestyle, 25 Meter Butterfly, and 25 Meter Backstroke. She also displayed her talent in team competition, driving her team to wins in the 100 Meter Medley Relay, Mixed 100 Meter Freestyle Relay, and the 100 Meter Medley Relay.
15 and over Girls Division on the starting block of their freestyle race. (Source photo by Mark J. Daniel)
Finnley Boulger was the top male swimmer in the under-8 Boys Division. Boulger, a St. Croix Dolphin, took home four individual honors, capturing gold in the 50 Meter Freestyle, 50 Meter Breaststroke, 25 Meter Butterfly, and 50 Meter Backstroke. Boulger also led his team to two relay gold medals, the 100 Meter Freestyle Relay and the 100 Meter Medley Relay.
The St. Thomas Stingrays 9-10-year-olds swam well all weekend. Milana Sayan touched the wall first in the 200 Meter Breaststroke, 50 Meter Breaststroke, 100 Meter Breaststroke, and 400 Meter Freestyle. Her teammate Bennett Auchincloss was equally impressive, winning the 50 Meter Freestyle, 100 Meter Backstroke, 200 Meter Freestyle, 50 Meter Butterfly, and 400 Meter Freestyle in the Boys 9-10 category. The duo teamed up to win the Mixed 200 Meter Medley Relay.
Young boys on the starting block of their 25 Meter Backstroke race. (Source photo by Mark J. Daniel)
The St Croix Dolphins and Barracudas of the BVI dominated the 11-12 age group. Dolphin, Emma Whitworth won the Girls 11-12 100 Meter IM, 200 Meter Breaststroke, 50 Meter Breaststroke, 100 Meter Freestyle, 100 Meter Breaststroke, and 200 Meter IM. Her teammate Hannah Stewart finished first in the 100 Meter Backstroke, 50 Meter Butterfly, 50 Meter Backstroke, and 50 Meter Freestyle. Barracuda Harry Payne won seven individual races. They were Boys 11-12 in 50 Meter Freestyle, 200 Meter Breaststroke, 50 Meter Breaststroke, 100 Meter Freestyle, 50 Meter Butterfly, 400 Meter Freestyle, and 800 Meter Freestyle.
Reagan Uszenski also had impressive performances at the pool. She won the girls’ 13-14 50 Meter Freestyle, 100 Meter IM, 100 Meter Backstroke, 50 Meter Butterfly, 200 Meter IM, and 50 Meter Backstroke events. Cole Cullinan was the star in the boys’ 13-14 division, earning gold in the 200 Meter Butterfly, 200 Meter Freestyle, 1500 Meter Freestyle, 100 Meter Butterfly, and 400 Meter Freestyle.
Reagan Uszenski executes a breaststroke in one of her many races at the 2025 VI Swim Federation Championships. (Source photo by Mark J. Daniel)
The Dolphins from St. Croix outswam everyone in the 15-and-over Division in both the female and male categories. Lu Joseph was golden in the 800 Meter Freestyle, 50 Meter Freestyle, 100 Meter Backstroke, 200 Meter Freestyle, 100 Meter Freestyle, and the 400 Meter Freestyle. Daryan Maynard was the top male swimmer, finishing first in the 200 Meter Butterfly, 100 Meter Backstroke, 400 Meter IM, 200 Meter Backstroke, and the 100 Meter Butterfly. Maynard’s teammates Scott Roth and Cameron Cullinan earned seven more gold medals in the boys 15 and over division.
Next up for the United States Virgin Islands swimmers are the 2025 Puerto Rico Championships, Dec. 4-7.
A 32-year-old man was arrested Tuesday morning on St. Croix after a domestic altercation that left a 14-year-old boy injured, the Virgin Islands Police Department reported.
The 911 Emergency Call Center received a report around 9:44 a.m. from a man who said his teenage son had called about a fight between the boy’s mother and her boyfriend, identified as Erron Wallace. Officers were dispatched to Harborview Apartments, where they met the caller, who told police his son said Wallace had strangled him, police said.
Detectives from the Criminal Investigation Bureau were assigned to the case. The investigation revealed that the 14-year-old attempted to intervene during the fight between his mother and Wallace. Police said Wallace then grabbed the boy and held him down by his neck, leaving visible injuries.
Wallace was taken into custody and transported to the Wilbur H. Francis Command Police Station, where he provided a statement. He admitted that the teen tried to intervene during the altercation but denied strangling him, according to police.
Wallace was charged with assault in the second degree (domestic violence) and child abuse. No bail was set, and he was transported to the John Bell Correctional Facility pending his advice of rights hearing in Superior Court, police said.
Police arrested a 39-year-old man Tuesday night on St. Thomas following a domestic violence incident that left a woman with facial injuries and a minor child hurt, the Virgin Islands Police Department reported.
Officers responded around 10:40 p.m. to a report of an assault. When they arrived, the victim told police she had been sitting in her vehicle outside her home when Mark Turbe drove up and caused a disturbance. She said Turbe tried to pull her out of the vehicle, scratching her face during the struggle. He then damaged her windshield and wipers, and kicked the driver’s side door shut, striking their minor child’s arm, police said.
Officers confirmed the damage to the vehicle and saw the scratches on the victim’s face. An ambulance was called for the child, who complained of pain in the right arm.
Turbe was advised of his constitutional rights and charged with simple assault (domestic violence), destruction of property (domestic violence), and disturbance of the peace (domestic violence), according to the VIPD.
He was booked and processed at the Richard Callwood Command. No bail was set under the Virgin Islands’ domestic violence laws, and Turbe was turned over to the Bureau of Corrections pending his advice of rights hearing.
Police arrested a 37-year-old man Tuesday evening on St. Thomas after a stabbing near the former Fat Man’s Bar left one person injured, the Virgin Islands Police Department reported.
Officers were dispatched around 6:26 p.m. to the roadway across from the former bar, where they found a man suffering from a stab wound to the left side of his chest. The victim’s shirt was saturated with blood, police said.
The man was able to identify his attacker before being transported by ambulance to the Roy Lester Schneider Hospital for treatment by Emergency Medical Technicians.
Officers said they later located and arrested Damas Gallant, who was positively identified as the assailant. Gallant was charged with assault in the first degree, attempted murder in the first degree, and carrying or using dangerous weapons.
Christian O. Christensen, aka “Oley”, of Christiansted, St. Croix, passed away on Monday, Oct. 27, 2025. He was 86 years old.
Christian O. Christensen
He was preceded in death by his father, Christian U. Christensen and his mother, Ina M. Armstrong.
He is survived by his daughters, Lisa & Esther; sons, David & Bryan; grandchildren, Rita, Amanda, Jaye, Sonja, D’aetanagan, Sebastian, David, Miah, Tara, Christian & Immanuel; great-grandchildren, Delaney & Errington; daughters-in-law, Bobbie & Tish; son-in-law, William; brothers, Michael, Peter, Frank, David, and other relatives and friends too numerous to mention.
Visitation will be held on Friday, Nov. 7 from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m., at Schuster’s Crematorium, LLC, located at 139 Castle Coakley, Christiansted, St. Croix, USVI.
A memorial service will be held at the Cane Bay Beach on Nov. 15 from 11 a.m.
Cremation arrangements are entrusted to Schuster’s Crematorium.
