San Corenzo, Island of

Located in the central Pacific, approximately 193 miles west of Costa Rica, the tiny island of San Corenzo has played a role nearly unprecedented in shaping the events of the twenty-first century.

Up until 2008, San Corenzo was a relatively unknown, even to scholars of the Pacific islands. With no natural resources or exports to speak of, its only value seemed to be as a staging ground for military operations in the Pacific, but even in this regard, it fell short of expectations; due to the island's mountainous terrain, large-scale staging proved infeasible. After the end of WWII, the US armed forces wrote San Corenzo off as unusable.

Throughout this time, San Corenzo remained a protectorate of the United States, with little complaint from the population. With no tourism to speak of, the island's agricultural economy kept the residents fed, if not prosperous.

With the discovery of Marquessen's Datura Corenzo changed overnight into a veritable goldmine of pharmacological lucre. Though U.G.C.'s patent gave them exclusive license to produce Torzone in the United States, competing pharmaceutical companies swooped down on the island, their teams of researchers in tow, striving to discover a way to cultivate the precious shrub.

During the six months following the discovery of Marquessen's Datura, real estate prices in San Corenzo grew by more than a factor of 80.

To say that these changes were significant to the political development of San Corenzo would be to engage in understatement of the severest kind.

San Corenzo, Island of

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