Looking down at Costa Rica
Here in Vermont we’ve returned to hot and steamy after a few days of dryness and blue skies. Yesterday moisture moved in, dulling the blue and gradually adding weight and wet to the air. Last night the sky released starting with gentle rain and moving to steady drumming.
***
This is the second blog post inspired by the Whole Measures workshop I attended in July. In my last post I reflected on mapping, and specifically the CWC Four Quadrant Whole Communities map. I suggested that people seeking to use this approach may need to develop their own map, one that frames differences in the particular context of their own communities and sets of concerns.
My exercise has been to apply the mapping framework to the place I know best: Monteverde, Costa Rica. As I began to do this, I realized that my own perspective on Monteverde is that of rapid change over time, and that I am accustomed to seeing the relationship between punctuated change (radical shifts in both the social and biophysical landscape). So I worked on three maps. I’ll not try to present all three maps at once, but instead spread my presentation over a number of blog posts.
Monteverde Before 1951
The map below is a quick sketch of Monteverde before 1951 — before it was even named Monteverde. I’ve not immediately filled in the quadrants to highlight the first difference with the CWC Four Quadrant map — my labels for the horizontal (north/south) axis. The CWC Four Quadrant poles are labeled Nature/People. I’ve modified this to Land/People. Before 1951, in Costa Rica the word “nature, ” or la naturaleza, was not a word that has the power it has now, and so did not create the meaningful contrastive difference it does for the CWC Four Quadrant map. However, the relationship between land and people was such a difference. One could argue that a central tension in Latin America has been and continues to be over those who have land to use and those who don’t. This generates the second meaningful difference, the horizontal axis, labeled with “Landed and Landless.”
unicorn
Having created the axes, the next step is to fill in the quadrants they form. I take the northwest quadrant (upper left) to represent the landscape dominated by the landed: large cattle ranches and coffee plantations with some citrus and banana (the big banana plantations are on the coast). I’ve used one visual innovation by increasing the font in the words “cattle” and “coffee” to show the relative importance of these as cash crops for the landed (as opposed to largely subsistence landless and land poor). The northeast quadrant represents the landscape of the squatter farm: small, diverse subsistence farming, including sugar (made in a process not so unlike maple sugaring in New England). The term monte, what I parenthetically name “wild,” is a chamelion-like word. In some translations, it means “mountain,” but in rural Costa Rica is refers to steep, uncultivated land, and sometimes just any uncultivated land. For the homesteading, squatting farmer it is a nemesis: in Costa Rica’s squatter laws land tenure is determined by the ability to “improve” the land, in other words, cut down the forest (monte) for pasture or agriculture.
In the southern two quadrants I more explicitly name kinds of people, and central to difference here is the patrón/campesino divide. The patrón owns large spreads of land and usually has many people working for him. He (and we are speaking of a he) is simultaneously honored and resented: he provides work , but also has what is so desperately wanted by the campesino: land. The campesino is either landless or land poor. If he and his family does have land, it most likely has been obtained by squatting/homesteading.
Here I need to mention a more specific history of Monteverde. What is now called Monteverde sits high on the pacific slope of Costa Rica’s Continental divide. Like most of Costa Rica, it was at one time entirely forest. While there is a high plateau, most of land is steep and not ideal for agriculture. It was settled in the early part of the twentieth century by homesteading campesinos taking advantage of liberal squatting laws. These early settlers were mostly subsistence farmers, growing a little coffee, sugar, beans and what vegetables they could. There was little cash in the economy, and the region is most famous for its bootleg liquor.
While initially most people in the area were in similar subsistence and homesteading circumstances, the pattern of the patrón/campesino relationship tends to recreate itself (coincidentally, in addition to referring to a paternal relationship, patrón means pattern in Spanish). The pattern: land is cleared and homesteaded by campesinos. Some are more successful farmers than others, and this may allow them to have the resources to buy land from their neighbors — once squatted on for a number years, one can gain title and sell land. Also, larger landowners from other parts will often take advantage of the clearing and right to title that is a product of the homesteaders work and buy up land in remote areas. The little cash gained by the campesino in selling land is often quickly spent. So, some farmers accumulate land and then may need workers, while others become landless again. The patrón/campesino relationship is repeated in a new landscape.
This pattern was beginning to occur in the Monteverde region — until a group of Quaker settlers from Fairhope, Alabama arrived in 1951. This created a socioeconomic change that altered the pattern, and therefore the configuration of any conceptual map.
Please note my sketch above is just that, a sketch and likely needs correction and refinement. It is a quick attempt to use a Whole Measures tool flexibly. I hope it is useful.
My next mapping exercise will look at the impact of the Quaker settlement on the Monteverde region. I’ll save that for another blog entry.
