Tortuguero. Come see the turtles for they have been saved.
What about the people? Brown and black and beautiful, they belong to this tropical landscape also. Faces like jungle flowers, open and shy all at once. Old faces, wrinkled and quiet as iguanas.
Theres a lot being said about the man who came from a foreign country to save the turtles from being eaten to extinction here. So said the claimant himself. And then he followed up by saying, let the village serve cake! What was once a natural system of turtles, dogs, humans, birds and fish is now open to tourism, to save the turtles. Now the locals subsist on scraps from tourists who come to visit the nesting beaches of the green turtle.
The man was obsessed with turtles, traveling the beaches ringing the Caribbean in search of greens and Ridleys and leatherbacks. How they might coot, where they would nest, then digging up their nests to measure the eggs before burying them again. He was a man on an mission.
It’s off season for turtle nesting now and the people are desperate for touring consumers. Their faces are lined with many seasons having come and gone, in service to strangers. Little girls run around by themselves making me flash on scenes from The Sound of Freedom, and I say an old wiccan prayer for their safety. Wound around and woven tight bonds of love keep them right. And its a small village. Everyone knows everyone and must take care through familiarity. Strangers and predators must stand out, clean and overfed.
The national park closes early and a guard sits outside the gate after two pm. We turn back from that gate and walk along uneven cement slabs that make for a damp and dingy promenade. We are searching for a working espresso machine since the heat and a lengthy bus trip have dampened our fires. We want refuelling for whatever is next. Its so hot here, and with so much greenery, the amount of oxygen produced is sometimes suffocating.
To my eyes, the street is a mess. I imagine upkeep is not easily accessible between the guaro, the ganja and the rain. Everything is covered with a layer of grime or mold or green growth, much like the rainforest where trees, especially ciebos, are covered with many forms of life, supporting vine and orchid and parasitic flora. Up in the canopy, there are bats. Lizards. Monkeys. Sloths. Snakes. Like the rainforest, this unkempt village supports people, families, soccer players, and old folks, but barely it seems.
We entered into a couple dark shelters along the way. The dark entryways open to the canal, so then there is light and water and towering clouds like mushrooms, unusual unless youve seen documentaries about bomb explosions. We find coffee in a clean quiet place, run by an expat who manages her own till. I cant place the accent but some kind of European, still infiltrating these southern latitudes, as has been the way for centuries.
I wonder about the locals, the people sidelined for the sake of turtles and one mans mission to save sea turtles from a destruction he imagined. He went all the way to the president for support, received it and now theres a national park that closes at two, and the grungy market, lined with shitty stalls, the vendors lined up and desperate for rich peoples dollars.
To them we must look rich, but we are pinching pennies to make it through to the end of this adventure. Its a third world country charging first world prices. I would just as soon turn my colones directly over and into their desperate hands, but that could be dangerous. Their products have meaning and better to honour that, especially in these times when products are going extinct.
Along the way of this main street, huts and shops are mangled with corrugated steel, plastic and aluminum, angled in every which way so I give up making any sense of design. There are aged murals painted in a sensitive style, painted with love of animal subjects, the landscapes of the canal, and the flora. Old murals, covered with grime, never cleaned. Water, water everywhere, but none of it for washing. A simple lack of care, or Mr. Clean has come and gone with a boat tour.
A hooker speaks past me to my husband with her best temptress, hello. Her appearance defines her role but that isnt well cared for either. There are more pressing needs here than upkeep. Its the relationships that facilitate exchange that are more valuable.
Tortuguero is an isolated place. The world comes to it for the turtles. The locals rarely travel past the canals that surround them. The crocodiles. Toucans. Little herons and white egrets. Lilies. Orchids. When youre paying attention, you spot iguanas, long and heavy, high overhead. Wildlife lives in trees here which impels looking up more often than Im accustomed to. And it rains a lot. If theres any energy for taking care of whats fallen down, it will surely rain before anything gets done.
I wonder if what Im seeing is the result of assessing animals as more valuable than humans, turtles more important than Hispanic, Miskito, and Afro-Caribbean mixtos? How does that discernment of value affect the understanding of the villagers here? How does a single foreigner garner more power and influence than the locals who depended on an unusual food source, and their own local product, the turtle meat and eggs?
There is a large expanse of rainforest surrounding these lowlands. According to the conservation committees website, in the sixties nearly every female turtle arriving to nest in Tortugeuro was taken for the export market for turtle soup. Twenty two miles of nesting beach is now protected by the government. Green sea turtles, and leatherback sea turtles nest here each year. The committee began working with villagers in the area, to promote ecotourism as a more sustainable use of the sea turtles.
Dr. David Ehrenfeld introduces the foreigner who single handedly, with the help of the ex-president here, the US government, and the US military, closed down local trade for the sake of conservation:
Archie Carr, worlds leading authority on sea turtles, was a conservation biologist long before the field was recognized. His writings describe with the full intimacy of love and genius, a landscape or a part of wild nature or human culture that has vanished beyond recovery… Carr envisioned that tourism would offer the villagers a sustainable alternative to hunting the turtles. Tourists would visit from all over the world, creating jobs and prosperity for the whole village.
Prosperity is not what I see here. The guides are lackadaisical. The aroma of ganja hangs close in the thick oxygen. Markets boast multiple shelves of liquor. Unless they are engaging a tourist, faces are cast downward and look grim. One hundred thousand visitors per year watch sea turtles nest. Over thirty five thousand sea turtles have been tagged, and sea turtle population has increased by more the 500 per cent. The residents work in tourism as boat drivers, naturalist guides, hotel and restaurant owners and employees.
The manager at our hotel moans that his employees are unpredictable and careless. They work for a month and then stop coming. They have all they need without needing to work. They are true minimalists, says the manager, theyre happy to have nothing but a shirt, shoes and shorts.
Everything is falling apart here, perhaps under the weight of all the tourism, those hundred thousands that the conservation company claims come to visit this desperate place, hidden in a rainforest, only accessible by boat. Park fees go to the turtles and the committee of conservation. Visiting students tag the turtles.
A neuroscience researcher in our tour group describes the environment of scientific research nowadays. A researcher must pay as much as ten thousand USD to publish their own research, and publishing is a requisite for staying in the game. Their research and livelihood depends on receiving grant monies for sustenance. The temptation for capture burgeons in that kind of environment. In Archie Carrs day, sustenance was more direct. Societies and associations of the privileged bankrolled his adventures. The US military flew him at his whim to whatever Caribbean sea turtle summoned. When he wanted to save sea turtles in Costa Rica, the ex-president came to his aid.
The turtles are saved but the villagers look unhealthy, unkept as their village. Who used to be farmers and herbalists, fisherman and hunters are lost to Archie Carrs environmentalists love affair with cooting, nesting sea turtles. The cost of conservation should not force villagers into service of privileged naturalists and tourists. The place is a wreck. Its heart is broken. The kids are bored. The servers are despairing. Theres no money to fix the dying equipment of the tourist trade, another level of broken machinery on top of the lumber mill equipment, what preceded Archie Carrs conservation efforts. Corporate interests and conservation agendas have subjugated the villagers for a few generations now.
Nobody remembers the lumber company anymore, but they still talk about the trees that were clear cut in their grandparents day, and floated down the canals to an unseen market. If not for one species of tree that would not float, trees the macaw lived in, absolutely everything would be secondary growth now.
When I ask about the village life, the hotel manager is quick to tell me about a man named Archie Carr who came here and got the government to save the sea turtles and thousands are tagged every year and during nesting season their are patrols on the beach to protect the turtles. He said nothing about the villagers at all but that they once believed there was no end to the turtles. The turtles came in great numbers, again and again every year. Once the market got wind of it, things changed and the turtle population went down.
Ever read James Baldwin ranting about Mr. Clean? Its priceless. Foreign aid, like all the Great Society programs means only that Mr. Clean [a progeny of Cecil Rhodes] has got to dump on somebody, for money, somewhere, all those abominations he is forced to create. And why? For money. And, when we stop buying, baby, not we, but he, goes under.
Seriously, we need to stop buying, whether its turtle soup or Cheetos, anything that supports what we dont want to support needs to be scratched from our shopping lists. How long will it take for us to forsake glamour and excess for a world we can truly love and lovingly care for?
Its an isolated place, Tortuguero. Before capitalism and conservation came here, there was plenty of everything for everyone living on this narrow strip of land between a canal and the Pacific. It may be a sense of abundance that lingers in the blood of this place. The past might still be whispering to the current generation saying, nature provides all we need here, work less, love more, Pura vida. In their experience, its everything they need. By our standards, what they have is almost nothing.
Archie once asked a banana grower, how do you compete with the Bananera? The Bananera was the United Fruit Company in Costa Rica at the time. We dont compete with anybody, said the grower. We just make a little profit on every stem of fruit we unload in Tampa. Archie found that a strange thing to say, admitting he couldnt understand the farmers meaning at all, or so he said. The fellow was a bit of a comedian. He also had a love and skill with language, making his writing often sublime. From The Windward Road:
The far blue shadow of Tobago was piled over with towering pearly land clouds, and over the sea the little round wind clouds swept like close-set burst boles of cotton floating in on the steady air stream against the blue above. Into the land they came, not pausing, not crowding, and on the sea below, the ordered ranks of their shadows moved in with them.
When the rains come, the villagers put their beds and refrigerators up on blocks until the water levels fall down again. They dont bother building higher. They are so simply a moving part of this cobbled village, the mud stained hovels, and crumbling walkways. They move with the waters governance. Theyre isolated, says the neuroscientist, meaning they dont know, cant imagine, the world beyond their lives here. They live on the land and on the sea, with the rise and fall of the waters. They dont know the world we come from.
It looks like there could be damaging consequences to valuing one part of an ecosystem at the expense of the overarching value of the whole system. Why didnt Archie make a bid for the conservation of all life in this forest, instead of balancing everything against the life of a single species? Maybe the answer is found in his own words. He wrote this: …the thing that makes me nervous is, there are just getting to be too many people, and it is obviously going to get worse before anybody finds a solution. The minute you give that strong new hybrid stock medical care and a decent diet, you had better stand aside, or be ready with a brand new and very handy contraceptive…somebody has got to figure out a way to keep the world from filling up so fast.
Archie was sustained by wealthy financiers and the American Philosophical Society. He doesnt sound like a man captured by the powers that be, but perhaps in his day it was easier to believe in ones independence and freedoms, while satisfying the wants and needs of ones benefactor. In his time, idealism and righteousness masked the movements of evil. A man, or less likely a woman back then, could adventure and explore at someone elses expense and feel the wild brilliance of their mission, as if it was indeed their own and not the whisperings of the corporate philanthropist paying their tabs.
Other adventurers in thought and invention have imagined greater ideas than the world is filling up so fast. Consider the words of Buckminster Fuller who wrote, It is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a higher standard of living than any have ever known. It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary. War is obsolete. It is a matter of converting the high technology from weaponry to livingry.
Well said.
Everyone loved Archie. He was smart and funny and a good writer. But he was obsessed with turtles and took up saving one part of an ecosystem for what appears to be deleterious effect on the whole. This goes against any real cure. Treating a single part only drives the sickness deeper into the human economy.
My comrades on this ulendo here are keen to search out wildlife. Im blissed in the gardens where lily and orchid vie for my attentions. A large orange and black iguana languishes in the tree branches high above. Toucans eat seeds hanging like black pearls from a palm tree. Now and again the smell of an outboard fuel engine blows in on the warm breeze. Reggae and Caribbean music beats around the veranda. It could rain any moment now. All in the balance of nature, a balance that includes priceless humans.
Beautifully written, Jessica!
Your observations and discernments are spot on.
It seems you paint a different picture of what we ( western countries) know and get to believe in about Costa Rica as a tourist destination.
So sad, it looks like corruption does not stop at the door of Costa Rica also, like the rest of the world.
I am not sure, I believe most people don’t want to have a closer look on the reality of things in order not to have their dreams disturbed. That applies to a beautiful tourist destination like Costa Rica as well.
Thank you for your insights.