Carlos Preston, Governor of San Corenzo
from 2010 to 2018.
Between the years of 1898 and 2018, San Corenzo was officially a protectorate of the United States. Other than a few abortive efforts to use the island as a staging ground during WWII, US/San Corenzo relations remained fairly non-intrusive until the discovery of Marquessen's Datura in 2008. Up until this point, San Corenzo's congressionally appointed governors had been content to leave the people of the island to their agrarian lifestyle on the one hand, while desperately attempting to cultivate a tourist trade on the other.
One UGC moved in, however, the island's social structure began to collapse. The corporation - and the many copy-cat pharmaceutical companies that followed it - had more than sufficient funds to induce most of the island's residents to give up their land and dwellings. Once their money began to run out, however, residents who had sold their homes were left with little or no source of income with which to sustain themselves. Since over half of the island's lands were now used for the cultivation of Marquessen's Datura, food became increasingly scarce and expensive.
Those San Corenzans who had no other source of income took jobs with UGC and the other firms, or attempted to operate services catering to the foreign corporations' employees. The fact remained, however, that the island's native economy was fundamentally unstable; with land prices at $500K per acre and rising, but wages averaging little over $6 per hour, the island's workers had increasing incentive to "sell themselves into a corner." Emigration was at an all-time high.
The cruelest blow of all, in the eyes of many San Corenzans (especially those of the People's Democratic Party) was the fact that UGC's Torzone patent gave them the exclusive right to manufacture the drug within the U.S. and her territories... that is to say, on San Corenzo. Every San Corenzan's driveway was potentially the source of a small fortune, a guaranteed income per square footage to rival even the oil barons of the twentieth century - but because of legal restrictions, they were forbidden to sell to any source but UGC and the pharmaceutical firms, whose rates were anything but generous.
Of course, a thriving black market arose, as islanders attempted to cash in on the fortune beneath their feet. This effort was quickly squelched by federal officials, on behalf of the UGC. Residents caught trafficking in Marquessen's Datura were arrested and jailed, usually in Federal prisons on the mainland.
It is widely believed that these and other grievances led inevitably to the formation of the People's Democratic Party in 2012.
Carlos Preston, Governor of San Corenzo
from 2010 to 2018.
People's Democratic Republic of San Corenzo
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