The beaches of island of Vieques, whose terrain was used as a bombing field by the United States Marines, were, ironically, the place where his life began. There, among dark sands and crystalline waters, he lived the best years of his childhood. He remembers the sensation of the waves as they charged his body, he remembers the regal horses and the particular freshness of the coastal air. Today they are only distant memories of that special connection that can only be reached in places that seem condemned, places where there is no other option but to embrace and assume otherness to the point of defending it with one’s own life. But, while growing up in the fields and beaches of Vieques, José Meléndez could never have imagined that his destiny would be revealed to him out of the blue in the confines of a kitchen.