TRAVEL | One of the world’s weird places is this ‘tequila island’, but is it a marketing ploy or worthwhile destination?

Photo by Fidel Fernando on Unsplash

Believe it or not, there is a tequila island in the Caribbean, devoted entirely to the consumption of alcohol.

Cuervo Nation is an island “owned by Jose Cuervo tequila” that calls itself “a haven for refugees on the political correctness movement.” It supposedly guarantees visitors of legal drinking age “the right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of a Good Time.”

Dose spoke to the island’s “ambassador” – a woman named Anamaria Cesena – a self-styled (or rather, corporation-styled) “tequila expert and diplomat extraordinaire” about the company’s unusual promotional venture. Here’s what she had to say.

Jen Selk: First off, as an “ambassador” and “diplomat”  of “tequila island” do you have any real governmental responsibilities?

Anamaria Cesena for Cuervo: [Laughs] No. I’m employed by Jose Cuervo. The island is a part of the British Virgin Islands.

Do you live there?

No. It’s very, very small. A caretaker lives there. There’s a bar. And there are bungalows for overnight guests, winners of promotions, that sort of thing. But the island is only eight acres.

Is any tequila produced on the island?

No. Real tequila, like Champagne [which can only be called such if it’s produced in the Champagne region of France], can only be produced in Mexico.

Why come to Canada to promote Cuervo now?

There was a severe tequila shortage a few years ago. The blue agave plant that tequila is made from takes eight to fourteen years to cultivate, and producers underestimated demand. That shortage is now over. Cuervo Nation is small, so we decided to bring the celebration to you.

A version of this idiotic promotional “news” story was published in Dose in the summer of 2005. A clipping is below.

2018: The proper name of this so-called “tequila island” is Marina Cay.

It does exist, and it is part of the British Virgin Islands. In the early 2000s, it was leased by the Jose Cuervo tequila company (according to Wikipedia), which then embarked on this bizarre promotional campaign to brand it “Cuervo Nation”. Guess which company was one of our advertisers at the time? Consequently, I was forced to write this absolutely ridiculous piece.

Though that branding project is no more, Marina Cay remains a tiny tourist destination today, if you are so inclined.

Now I shall elucidate this matter of the shady, undisclosed advertorial, which this piece essentially was.

This was such a bizarre little assignment, but so illustrative of what it was like to be a “journalist” at Dose. I was never really interested in real journalism, but when I was first starting out, I had respect for news reporters, and believed that a majority of them were doing real, respectable, investigative, and necessary work.

Once Dose hired me and began forcing me to write news, despite the fact that I had no news training whatsoever, I slowly became convinced that there was no such thing as real journalism anymore. I lost all faith in the news industry.

If someone like me (your basic twenty-four-year-old moron) could write news – authoritative, supposedly well-researched pieces – that people would accept as expert testimony, then clearly, the entire business was a sham.

Every so-called journalist I met was doing the same thing. We were just slogging through assignments, writing bullshit hooks, and desperately trying to get by, without offending advertisers. Half the time, as with this piece, which was published as news, if you can believe that, we were shilling for advertisers directly. It was so obvious, and so offensive.

Now, as an older and more experienced person and writer, I see that while this kind of bullshit journalism does exist (and in fact, is more prevalent than ever in the age of “click bait”), real journalists do remain. Real journalists, actually doing the tough investigative reporting that I thought had died off, do exist. They’re underpaid and few and far between, and many of them are forced to write trash like this on the side in order to survive, but they’re out there. Journalism isn’t dead. It just seemed that way at Dose.

Published in Dose, summer 2005.