Dispatches from Ecuador February 1999
Click on map for larger version.
Peter went to Ecuador in February, 1999 to attend the International Eco-Gathering and
help the local ecologistas organize in the midst of natural disasters that have beset the
Bahia de Caraquez region over the past two years. The following include his reports that
we anxiously awaited over the two week period.
Index of Feb/Mar 1999 Dispatches
[Most recent dispatches at top of list]
<<<<====>>>>
By Peter Berg
Report From Ecuador #1
(February 11, 1999)
It's in the humid summerish 80s Fahrenheit here a few minutes south of the equator,
with curtain-rippling breezes and light gray clouds.
The small city of Bahia de Caraquez (named as though it was a whole bay in the ocean)
is shaped like a thumb (with the part of the hand that holds it) jutting out into the
Pacific on a sandspit. Its clear distinction from the deeply rural surrounding countryside
is immediately evident when driving in because of the sudden appearance of small
restaurants, traffic signs, billboards, and other indications that it is both an urban
center and a seaside resort. Not particularly well-known outside of Ecuador, Bahia has
been a famous retreat for Quito residents for a long time, with a few multi-storey hotels
and a number of summer homes. A miniature San Sebastian, Euskadi (Spain). Unlike the usual
beach pleasure spot, local life is only partially based on outside visitors and there are
several bioregional resources-based industries. The residents have a natural laid-back
style that is outgoing and inviting. Bahia is visited enough to be interested in strangers
but isolated enough to have its own identity without self-consciousness.
A catastrophic series of natural calamities took place here last year that have set
Bahia de Caraquez on an unalterably different course than a typical South American resort
area. Unremitting El Nino storms and rains lasted from December 1997 through May 1998
(that's a solid half-year of heavy rain) causing earth movement that carried away whole
hills as well as many hillsides in mud flows of the severe kind usually associated with
snowmelt from erupting volcanoes. Then a Richter 7+ earthquake at the beginning of August
broke apart many buildings and caused missing pieces and cracks in those that remained.
Sixteen died in one mud flow, another life was taken by the trembler, and the grinding
daily aftermath of dealing with the problems of survival continues to affect everyone
here. At one time there were 3,000 of the town's 20,000 residents living on the streets.
There are still 500 homeless families living in shacks constructed from the ruins or
government-provided flimsy temporary shelters.
Bahia must now reassemble itself after nearly complete ruin. And it is choosing to do
so in a history-making way as an eco-municipality within the context of its bioregion.
(More to follow before the February 27-28 Eco-Gathering to make the eco-municipality
declaration and celebrate the first International Mangrove Day.)
[Top]
<<<<====>>>>
By Peter Berg
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador — Report #2
(February 12,1999)
It's unbelievable that a small city that was already visited last year by an El Nino
about four times as severe as the worst one in previous recent experience could once again
endure a hillside-saturating and road-swamping season, this time by La Nina. But it has
rained almost every day, sometimes extremely heavily, for the last week. Concern about
large-scale washouts and slides is high. Clay-spattered barn boots on most pedestrians is
a common community symbol as the population once again watches mud ominously fill its
streets.
Paradoxically, eco-city activities are growing without interruption and have created an
expectant enthusiasm. Uncertainty about the municipal government's cooperation and
approval of a declaration at the Eco-gathering on Feb 27th was evaporated at a meeting
with the mayor and his assistants earlier this week. The critical question for el alcalde
seemed to be, "What do we have to stop doing if we become an eco-city?" When I
explained that the thrust of bioregional Green City planning was proactive, saying
"yes" to new ideas and efforts that can replace harmful ones, he began smiling
and asked "What do you want from me?" A supporting message and short speech to
open the gathering was an obvious request, and when he seemed to be avidly in agreement I
added a space for a workshop, attendance by various department heads, an in-government
contact person, and cooperation with event planners. Everything was granted, with the
workshop notification and attendance directive going out immediately for 4PM the next day.
Evidence that people are in a curious and excited mood about eco-city and the gathering
shows up unexpectedly. After an interview, a reporter from a local paper offered any help
he could give: "If you want Bahia to know that you have a cold, I'll put it in the
paper!" Just before that, Senora Tamariz suddenly announced that she's going to open
an Eco-City Learning Center. An often asked question when introduced to townspeople is,
"What's the first thing we can do to start eco-city?"
The workshop for city staffers (also attended by reporters and some co-planners) was
intended to introduce the idea of a city harmonizing with its bioregion. After they were
shown some representations of bioregions in maps from Shasta Bioregion (northern
California) and Bacino Fluviale del Fiume Po Bioreggione (Italy's Po River Watershed
Bioregion), the municipal bureaucrats begin making personal maps based on the workbook
exercise from "Discovering Your Life-place." At some point the mayor slipped
into a seat and made a joke about going back to school. Most participants were thoroughly
involved because there seems to be a higher level of awareness about natural
characteristics here than in most places, undoubtedly fostered by the recent outsized
local events. When it was time to show their representations, two people were hungrily
eager and reeled off long lists of native plants and animals, local conditions of various
kinds, and well-informed descriptions of urgent environmental issues. We were pressed for
time or else there would have been nearly as many volunteer presenters as there were
participants. The next step was to make a list of city dwellers' basic human needs (food,
water, energy, etc.) and to introduce the possibilities for seeing these in bioregional
terms. Since this was only a beginning session, designed to "take the curse off"
ecological thinking for anyone who was threatened by it and start a process of personal
observation, none of the new topics was pursued in depth. This left some of the
co-planners hungry for more local examples and applications, but the majority audience of
office workers had been exposed to much more participation in the vision of an
eco-municipality (especially its bioregional foundation) than they were prepared for.
Expectations have been even further cranked up now.
Bahia cuisine notes: seafood and fried bananas in many forms and combinations —
all extraordinarily fresh and uniquely spiced; yucca flour rolls with white cheese
fillings; naranjilla (wild jungle, orange-like) fruit and juice — extremely sharp
tang with an aromatic woody aftertaste; fresh maracuya (passion fruit) in pieces, juice,
and mixed with creamed oatmeal as a hot or cold thick drink (a complete surprise from the
flavor of either ingredient).
Other species encounter — a white lizard-like, stagger-stepping, nervous lagarita
on the floor at 2AM puts me through all the stages of wondering about our commonalities,
conflicts, perceived territory, foreign status, and other adrenalin-fueled possibilities
for several minutes before we both forget about it.
[Top]
<<<<====>>>>
By Peter Berg
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador Eco-Gathering Report #3
(February 16, 1999)
Even when you know what it is, the government-provided shack village at Fanca for
people who were made homeless by the mudslides and earthquake here is a powerfully stark
and incomprehensible sight. All of the 50 or so rough-finished wood stilt and bamboo-sided
dwellings are above your head and only reached by steep stair-ladders. They float
peculiarly as a light brown mass without green features over the solid gray-brown mud
ground. There are at least a half-dozen thin stilts per unit, and the houses are packed
extremely close together, so that the view straight through the village is like looking
through the slats of a wooden fruit box at a vertical jumble of sticks. It is a visual
confusion that matches the violently disordered situation that brought the residents here
in the first place.
These shacks could only be offered in good conscience as emergency shelters, but they
will doubtless become permanent into the foreseeable future for many occupants because of
the lack of economic opportunities to change their condition. Only about 15 by 15 feet in
area — one smallish room to serve as bed space, kitchen and storage area — the
shacks are low-ceilinged, without water or plumbing, and possess a strange
ramada-like
interior light due to the flimsy, bamboo-split roll-up walls. It is ironic that these
tropical-style structures would otherwise be appealing situated on a beach for day-time
use or standing alone in a forested area surrounded by banana and mango trees. Jammed so
closely together with only mud and mosquito-breeding standing water below them, the shacks
take on a sinister prison stockade look instead. There is an adequate number of concrete
block outhouse toilets within the compound but it seems unlikely that they keep human
wastes confined since, incredibly, the entire complex is built on top of a mud flow that
filled up a former farm field near a creek bed. The outhouse contents must surely mingle
with sub-surface water and leach out nearby sooner or later as a pestilential menace. As
it is, the mud spaces under and between houses are already littered with pig, chicken,
dog, and cat feces. Finally, this former mud flow could even begin moving again given
continued rains.
Is there any conceivable up-side to this situation? The people express a sense of
satisfaction at having been saved from horrendous disasters which included some of them
being swept out into the bay clinging to tree branches. Surprisingly, even with the new La
Nina rains turning roads into rivers and causing Fanca residents to sink up to their
ankles in mud, they say that things are getting better. There is a cement slab floored,
solid walled schoolhouse on one side of the compound. The residents own the shacks and the
small pieces of land they occupy, and some of them are requesting assistance to rent
nearby farmland to start gardens for sustenance and income.
After experiencing Fanca and numerous other after-effects from Bahia's calamities
(actually it is one long calamity entering its second year, with a few quick bursts
highlighting many slower ones in between ... and continuing), I've become more respectful
regarding the depth of change that making an eco-municipality in this bioregion requires.
Just as the visual damage which is so ubiquitous — missing floors of
highrises,
absent walls, piles of rubble in roadways along with mud mounds, and splits ranging from
wide crevices to small cracks in streets, sidewalks, walls, and floors — can mask the
structural distress inside a building that may necessitate tearing it down, the surface
need for eco-city hides the requirement for deeper transformations. There are plenty of
obvious things that can be done such as separation of trash in city collection boxes and
picking up the tons of litter on beaches and roads coming into town. The city's famous
three-wheeled bike-truck/taxi "triciclos" could be painted bright green as a
prominent symbol of Bahia's new direction. Youth teams with uniform green t-shirts can
answer calls when new projects need help. Household kitchen scraps can be collected to
make compost for the farm which Fanca residents want to start. The list of these outward
innovations might contain hundreds of similar items.
But to make a truly ecological city there needs to be an overhaul of basic
infrastructures or those superficial, perhaps only cosmetic changes will be like painting
a building that is about to fall down anyway due to cracked internal foundations and
girders. Water, energy, sewage, garbage, and transportation systems have to be reconstrued
in ways that match the bioregional realities here. So does education and media, arts and
architecture, and other aspects of public life. Most importantly, Eco-Bahia must undertake
these short and long term changes in ways that provide economic advantages for the
destitute victims of natural calamities and otherwise impoverished people, and encourage
their participation in creating what can ultimately become a better way of life in all
respects.
A comparatively half-size reality appeared in the form of a new creek across the path
when Patricio Tamariz and I were returning on an already mud-rutted road from a visit to
the coast at Canoa. Ominous sheer clay cliffs rise a hundred feet high at 80 degree angles
alongside the road at several points. Edges of rain-broken clay hang on their faces like
draped theater curtains, waiting for enough additional soaking to ooze down across the
road on the way to the beach. Only a few trucks had stopped for the water crossing the
road when we arrived but the rain suddenly switched its volume upwards almost as though a
faucet had been opened to full. By the time it was our turn the creek was beginning to
flow at the level of the door bottoms. Fast-moving, brown, gravel-spitting water was
verging on impassable when Patricio began to charge through and it became untraversable
just as we entered the lowest point. Stuck with water rising quickly, Patricio asked me to
take the wheel while he jumped out to slog in the current examining the situation with
searching eyes and half-started gestures. If the water continued to rise, the truck would
be carried across the embankment on the other side of the road. He threw a fairly wide log
across the creek where it bordered the road, causing water to gush in both directions
around the truck and fill underneath with gravel. Several local people and other drivers
frantically dug out the front and rear wheels but the truck couldn't budge forward.
Everyone came to the front and pushed to get some movement in reverse, then they rushed
like a team to the rear yelling and gesturing to heave the truck forward. It rose up onto
the underwater gravel with uncertain slowness until a final heave carried it forward like
a boat dragging bottom. I yelled to Patricio that I wouldn't stop until the truck was down
the road well beyond the point where it became dry. We had already seen the water rise by
a foot while we were in it. The storm continued on the way back to Bahia and through the
night. The road in that section might easily be a river canyon by now.
To comply with the wishes of proud Bahia residents, the next report will feature some
of the intrinsically convivial and beautiful aspects of reality here.
[Top]
<<<<====>>>>
By Peter Berg
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador Letter #1
(February 17, 1999)
Dear Friends,
Nicola & Dario spent several hours with Patricio, Flor-Maria & myself last
night planning an Eco-Bahia Support Group meeting for later this week. A group of 50 or so
including both officials and barrio leaders, youth and worker sectors will divide into
committees to support aspects of eco-city such as transportation, water, etc.
They will also bring enthusiasm to the Eco-Gathering events.
It's an idea that will probably work here because of the local support mentioned above.
Flor-Maria sent out the invitations. Nicola discussed the program which we had consulted
about, but we don't know what the current schedule is.
As much as I want to see Cotacachi, I can't take the weekend off because things are
increasing exponentially in Bahia as you can gather from the formation of the Committee
and other aspects of community involvement. We've done the media (radio, newspapers) here
but are going to do it again. When we're not telling everybody within earshot about
eco-city, Patricio and others fill in time showing me different aspects of the bioregion
and city or making plans for next week, the Eco-Gathering, and a month afterwards (so
far).
Who says there aren't any good causes anymore?
In diversity, Peter
[Top]
<<<<====>>>>
By Peter Berg
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador Eco-gathering Report #4
(February 18, 1999)
Finding enjoyable aspects of Bahia is as easy for a stranger as anywhere I've been. All
of the most populous areas of the city — market, ferry landing, municipal building
and downtown businesses — are within a few blocks of each other. Walking to them is
so full of contact with residents and visitors that it can't be accomplished without
numerous stops to converse or pay attention to whatever immediate situation or attraction
is happening at the time. Local people are equally unaffected doing necessary business
such as shopping or simply lounging against a covered sidewalk post and taking in the
scene. There are usually dozens of mostly pedestrians (I'm deliberately underestimating
because Carnival just concluded with thousands crowding onto the streets and beaches to
distort normal expectations of numbers) mingling all classes, ages, types, and occupations
that exist here. Bahians are to a pleasantly great degree casual, convivial, upbeat, and
inviting people in a tropical setting that breeds easy-going, energy-conserving activity.
Carnival was less exhibitionistic than usual this year, I was assured, because of the
hard-hit region's economic losses in resources-based and tourist trades. About half or
more of the personal vehicles bringing people here from the interior were mud-spattered
trucks of all sizes owing to the nearly impassable roads. Nevertheless, there was a
wonderful display in town and especially on the Malicon walkway along the bayshore of
un-self-conscious people on a beach-going holiday, wearing an unlimited range of different
but generally spare-clothed swimming outfits clinging to every imaginable size, shape,
color, and condition of human body. If it wasn't Rio it was as authentic and well-enjoyed
a Carnival as anyone might wish. In fact, "authentic" is the descriptive for
Bahia in general that arches over all of my impressions here. May it remain that way even
after its recovery and transformation into a eco-municipality!
The Chone River is especially wide by the time it reaches Bahia. In this expanse of
water remarkably close to town exists what must be one of the densest and most easily
accessible populations of birds in the world. "Bird Island" is actually three
small stands of mangrove standing alone on a shallow sand bar between two deeper channels
of the river. It is easily visible from the hill behind the city and a small motor boat
can reach the spot within twenty minutes. Because of this ease of approach, I frankly
didn't expect the remote game preserve, herd-size type of populations that can be seen
while anchored only a few feet away. Frigate birds, pelicans, egrets, and herons are some
of the 30 species nesting here in such great numbers in the dense bushes that they are
literally branch-to-branch and foothold-to-foothold apart from each. Even though clouds of
birds flew up when we approached there were still so many when we arrived that more
individuals filled my line of vision than I have seen short of a chicken farm. Close up to
so many birds you can simultaneously see specific behaviors that would take weeks of
peering to observe. Young begging for food, adults disgorging it for them, carrying
branches for nests (pelicans were building them just then), females scouting us for
protection of their young, bellicose males, bringing in food, flying out for it, fishing,
testing territory — all at the same time in the same spot! When I couldn't control my
enthusiasm and spouted out exclamations (with no effect on the birds who had more or less
accepted us within a few minutes), I was informed that Chino, the boat operator, had
gained vastly more respect for "Bird Island" after hearing so many first-timers
cry out this way. He now describes himself as an "ecologista" and subscribes
completely to the Eco-Bahia vision. (Chino should also be honored for taking the company
boat out into the river during the heaviest mudslides in anticipation of people being
carried into it and thereby saving a number of people, grabbing some of them by the hair.
He and fellow skippers who reacted similarly managed to keep from losing a single
sweptaway's life.)
I asked to talk to some heads of city departments and was able to meet with them within
a few hours. The chief planner is an architect who possesses a personal dream about
building an eco-municipality. He developed a full-scale plan for reforesting the collapsed
hillface behind the city with native trees and shrubs as a kind of wild garden. It needs
$210,000 for completion and he hopes to get that amount from an inter-Andes funding source
for implementation within this year. (Buena suerte!) Since most city projects go through
him and the mayor for approval, I asked about a variety of ecological approaches for
rebuilding infrastructures including power, water, sewage, roads, and transportation. He
is open to biological sewage treatment of the New Alchemy Institute type, developing local
alternative energy for electric vehicles, household water re-use systems, and kitchen
scraps collection. He welcomes visits by consultants in these and other areas. He sent me
on to the Department of Public Works chief, a seeming hard-work-in-the-outdoors type and
direct-speaker who I imagined wouldn't ask anyone to do something he couldn't do himself.
Traffic-calming devices and other ideas to reconceive city streets didn't seem necessary
to him although he's open to reviewing possibilities. On the other hand, he is irate about
the narrowed drain system for runoff water down a main street that probably augmented
flooding during El Nino and wants it widened regardless of the loss of pavement for cars
that would result. I was next directed to the sewage department head who complained about
heavily engineered features in a new sewage re-building plan that involved tearing up city
streets and would cost $5.5 million, so he is also open to an alternative direction. When
I criticized the present system that puts last-stage effluent directly into the bay, he
concurred and stated his preference for treating last-stage material so that it could be
used for fertilizer. Suggesting organic rather than chemical means for this also won his
approval. During the inevitable machinations of public policy and hard-biting realities of
funding, the best intentions of these civil servants may not be realized. But I am hugely
encouraged by their responses and will begin contacting ecologically inclined experts in
related fields to consult about methods and systems that can fulfill the potential for a
green city.
About that pesky funding demon, does anyone have a suggestion for financial
assistance to a city so short of means that it can barely pay employees and meet expenses
at the present time, and definitely can't afford through internal means to meet its
sincere and historic commitment to become a full-scale, deeply transformed
eco-municipality on its own?
Which brings me to the title section of this report, the subject of Third
Worldness. At
the first encounter with townspeople concerned with rebuilding Bahia (Stuarium
Foundation), I was asked, "Have you ever worked to achieve your eco-municipality
goals in a Third World country before?" I cited Mexico. "If you exclude Acapulco
and Cancun from the sense of Mexico," I said as a joke at that moment, but afterwards
the existence of expensive tourist destinations that are out-scaled for the countries
where they exist, and the notion of the Third World itself, became a fixture in
thinking about this place. Since I never hear the term "First World" except
awkwardly in academic contexts, and have never actually heard the term "Second
World" in conversation anywhere, "Third World" must mainly continue to
exist only as a pejorative substituting for "poor" or "bottom-rate"
rather than as a genuine classification for equivalent comparisons. There are plenty of
places in the never-called "First World" that equal the latter descriptions. In
many U.S. inner cities, there is at least one large section that fits so thoroughly it
could be interchangeable with any other totally undesirable spot in the world. With this
exception: it wouldn't have anything like the level of humanity, concern or sharing that
exists in most of the "undeveloped" world.
At this point in human history, what is any place on the third planet in the solar
system anyway? It is inevitably part of the planet's skin, the biospheric web of life. New
York City, Ecuador and the Kalahari Desert are all the same in this. Any of them are
redolent and ambient, paradisical and miserable, known and mysterious, rainy and dry,
inhabitable and visitable, tedious and exciting, revelatory and monotonous. Anyplace is
any place. (Isn't it astounding that so many different ones exist and that they co-occur
at the same time?)
It is possible to wake up and feel revived anywhere. Then to be propelled like an
avalanche boulder into smell, foothold, blinking color, levelling wind, stinging
heat, steadying necessity of standing at a cliff-edge — too many variations to
describe. It is one's own body that seems to always know best where it is. (I'm leaving
out the strange lost-limb experiences of technological surroundings but it's always the
body that loses the limbs.)
Finally, we all affect each other now. It's only a matter of intention, whether
visiting by Greenhouse gas emissions or arriving on an ocean liner. We can't avoid touring
each other anymore. The real question is whether we can learn to inhabit our own
life-places with interdependent grace and move through others with the sensibility of
respectful bioregional guests.
(In the next report, the outcome of the first meeting of the Eco-Bahia support group
composed of city residents, and a little on the remarkable but largely unrecognized
previous cultures that dwelt on this part of the Ecuadoran coast over the last 14,000
years.)
[Top]
<<<<====>>>>
By Peter Berg
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador Letter #2
(February 20, 1999)
Dear Friends,
If you are part of an informal group or belong to an organization that is associated
with bioregional activities or sustainability in any form, please write an e-letter of
congratulations and support to Patricio Tamariz and the Ecuador Eco-Gathering in Bahia de
Caraquez at archtour@srv1.telconet.net so
that it can make an impression on the national and other officials who will attend. It's a
matter of helping dislodge needed funds, visibility and gaining supporters here.
Include your name and the name of the group, OK? (As an example, this means the Italian
Bioregional Network, Giuseppe.)
If you can do this before Feb. 25, it will have the greatest impact on this
extraordinary situation and opportunity.
In diversity,
Peter Berg, Director
Planet Drum Foundation
[Top]
<<<<====>>>>
By Peter Berg
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador Eco-gathering Report #5
(February 21, 1999)
Our species has probably been as intelligent, creative and physically similar for at
least the last 100,000 years. Agriculture has been practiced for only about the last
10,000 years, or one-tenth of that time. The Industrial Era probably began in the middle
of the 17th Century, but has been prominent for only the last 200 years, or just 0.2% of
our whole history.
There were people in the present location of Bahia de Caraquez in 14,000 BP who left
arrow points behind. A culture that is now termed Las Vegas left a collective cemetery six
centuries later, and they were followed by the Valdivians whose pottery remains date from
5,000 BP. There's a sharp break in the archeological record after that, with a suspicious
layer of volcanic ash before the next entry. The following Bahia culture from roughly
2,500-1,500 BP had a successful, full-scale society that isn't sufficiently recognized for
its achievements as the "Phoenicians of the Americas." They not only traded
items such as beautiful spondylos (thorny oyster) shells which are found in burial sites
up and down the Pacific coast and inland, but also exported technology that was used to
build the civilizations of Mexico and Peru. They were supplanted in the area by the
Chirije, Manta, Jama and Coaque "cholos" people who the Spanish encountered a
thousand years later. (A reproduction of a traditional village named "Chirije"
has been built on the coast near Bahia and is the outstanding local monument that
recognizes pre-European forebearers.)
A public presentation about Eco-Bahia in the Cultural Center at 5PM Friday (2/19)
attracted over 50 people from many sectors including barrio representatives,
students, some mothers with small children, the city's priest, the vice-mayor, tour
company operators, hotel and restaurant owners, a uniformed officer of the Ecuadoran navy,
and others for whom I regretfully didn't possess enough local exposure to recognize.
Calling this meeting was necessary to build community support for the Eco-Gathering
with the Eco-city Declaration and first International Mangrove Day next weekend as well as
the subsequent eco-municipality-building process. Credit for such wide and interested
attendance goes to Flor-Maria Tamariz who personally wrote, telephoned and talked to most
of the attendees. The program was assembled in an informal, organic way that unfolded
right up to the presentation. An audience member shouted, "Put some air into our
lungs! Give us a reason to live!" Dario introduced the eco-city vision and explained
what pieces of it were represented by the panel of speakers. Nicola explained the new
recycling program while Dario handed out brochures about it. My role was to put
Eco-Bahia
into a worldwide (or in this case, biospheric) context starting with the probable
contributing effect of global warming on the severity of last year's El Nino rains. The
mammoth mudflows they created are an immediately tangible example of the necessity to live
more ecologically everywhere. Bahia's ruin can now be viewed as an opportunity to rebuild
as a recognizable model for other places. Eco-Bahia is a community process rather than an
outside or top-down operation, and it requires everyone in the community in order to
succeed. It can bring better living conditions, create employment, attract visitors, and
become a continuous source of participation and pride. Practical accomplishments within
this year could include municipal bins for different recyclable materials on the streets
(colored green with depictions of native flowers), forming Green Teams, collecting kitchen
scraps for composting, and what has become a standard suggestion because of its appeal,
painting the traditional Bahia triciclos green and attaching signs that say,
"Bienvenidos a Bahia, La Ciudad Verde" (explosive applause). There are
longer-term infrastructure changes that need to be researched, selected, funded, and
finally built. A barrio leader nicknamed "Abeja" (The Bee) who is known for his
hard-working nature had previously told me that the catastrophic mudslide just across the
road from where he lives which killed 16 people and caused survivors to surround his
still-standing house with shacks afterwards had made "All of us brothers and
sisters." I reminded the audience of that generous sense of mutuality and asked them
to use it as a foundation for cooperation in making the future Eco-Bahia. There were
questions and then Patricio described the Eco-Gathering program, asked everyone to take
part, suggested continuing self-selected support committees for different sustainability
activities after the gathering, and requested that each person in attendance bring at
least one other friend into the eco-municipality process. We closed with everyone taking
home a seedling neen tree (once again the donor was Flor-Maria) to plant as a
commemoration of the meeting and to initiate green city as a visible growing entity.
People mingled and eventually left carrying a foot-high plant, regardless of their
position or condition, and it was like watching a community-created performance piece to
redefine the city.
(Meetings in barrios yesterday and today will be in the next report, and more details
of life in the center of the city where I'm making a base of operations tomorrow until the
gathering is over.)
[Top]
<<<<====>>>>
By Peter Berg
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador Eco-gathering Report #6
(February 25, 1999)
(This is probably the last account of events here until after the Eco-Gathering
February 27-28. In fact, there may not be a chance to send another before leaving Ecuador
March 6 because of uncertainty about travel and e-capability.)
The barrio of Santa Martinita is a workers' district of cement block houses near the
center of town that rises on a hill to overlook the ocean. It was completely transformed
when the hill top and sides slid down carrying along houses and burying them like toys
left behind at the beach sticking out of the sand. Now the main road there is lined on
both sides by a dense gauntlet of shacks thrown together with every imaginable piece of
salvaged rubble.
Some of the gathering organizers went to a neighborhood meeting in Santa Martinita's
church to invite participation in the ecologically-based restoration process and
attendance at the Bahia Ecociudad event. At the beginning there were mainly women and
children, and with only ideas to offer people in such a desperate situation, we felt in an
awkward position. It is a tribute to the warmth of people in this community that although
there were just ideas to share and new-sounding ones like recycling and alternative energy
at that, the gradually increasing crowd (it eventually included "The Bee" and
his sons) were receptive and asked about getting jobs in those fields.
Joined by a nun from the convent school and Taka, coordinator of the Japanese-based
mangrove restoration group Actmang who had just arrived, we went the next day to a similar
meeting in the barrio of Astillero. It was held outside in the street sitting in a square
made of chairs where second floor apartments with missing walls faced us like a silent
jury. There were nearly as many men as women, separated from each other by an invisible
line that ran diagonally through the square. After brief introductions by us, the men
began asking questions about the eco-municipality process such as what were the specific
projects, how long would it all take, and exactly what jobs might be involved. Women began
speaking up in response to our question about whether there was sufficient child care so
that mothers could attend the gathering panels, discussion groups and celebration for
International Mangrove Day. The inter-barrio representatives who arranged the meeting in
Santa Martinita had also helped get this one together, and along with Astillero's leader
they suggested a large workers meeting tomorrow night before the coming weekend program.
It's a remarkable opportunity to help persuade more townspeople to participate.
There are prominent natural features in this coastal bioregion. The ocean influence, of
course, but starting immediately inland it becomes a uniquely dry tropical forest. Rio
Chone is the main artery up the valley surrounded by hills east of Bahia. It has a
salt-fresh water quality that varies considerably in response to heavy rain or high tides.
On a trip up the river, I saw aquatic birds in huge numbers, sometimes outlining every
branchtip of high trees. It isn't easy for me to absorb such a multiplicity of new species
or the differences between some of them and their relatives in temperate areas. A
sandpiper that is about two feet long, for instance. Or tiny owls. While we powered
upstream we passed iguanas sunning themselves on trees over the water above our heads. One
was red and the size of a child. Boys and men tossed round nets into the water at many
places along the way, and pulled out small and medium-sized fish regularly. Their
riverside communities are only of a few houses each on stilts that are sometimes in the
water. The people were often ankle-deep to chest-high in the river themselves, catching
fish or pushing boats.
It seems an utterly untouched scene except that the river only represents a wild
corridor with huge expanses of shrimp farms just behind the bordering trees. Ranging from
one-half to twenty hectares, these flat, diked ponds now occupy 6,000 hectares of former
Rio Chone mangrove forest (only a fraction of the original extent remains) and recirculate
10% of their water daily through the use of large pumps. It's a nearly completely managed
environment, but with still-remaining large numbers of wildlife in a hugely reduced area.
Shrimp farming on this scale is equivalent to rice-growing or similar monoculture cropping
in other areas. At this point in the history of this watershed, more than enough native
mangrove forests have been sacrificed for the benefit of an aquaculture that feeds many
people and undoubtedly does a part in preserving some ecosystems that would otherwise be
sacrificed. There is presently no such thing as certified organic shrimp from any of these
farms, with the improvements that would bring in ecological terms. But some local
producers are strongly inclined in this direction and are initiating changes. Eventually,
restored mangroves as an integral part of the ponds, elimination of fish-inhibiting
poisons, solar-derived electricity powered pumps (instead of the present diesel-using ones
with attendant spills in the river), and other improvements could transform shrimp farming
into a more benign industry such as rice-growing is becoming in California. Exportation of
shrimp will continue to be a huge player in the bioregional future here since it dominates
the local economy by providing about 75% of the area's income and employing 10,000 people
(3,000 in the packing plant alone).
I've moved into Jacob Santos' downtown Bahia Bed & Breakfast to get closer to the
majority of residents and hopefully learn something about their receptivity for a green
city. (Cold water showers, bare wood floors, typical meals, and a young, dreamy but
helpful staff.)
At the Astillero barrio meeting, I met Eduardo Gonchozo who wanted to tell me
"About some ideas of my friends." We spent several hours walking through the
city while he inquired about Eco-Bahia and I listened to his story. He and Marcello
Luque,
who is one of the inter-barrio representatives who helped to arrange meetings, were
working on Marcello's father's land just over the hill behind the city to create their own
"Cerro Seco" nature interpretive center. El Nino mudslides wiped out the
building and in-progress works they constructed over three years of previous labor. It may
or may not have been worth all of the approximately $30,000 USD that Eduardo claims they
put into it, but their dream for which professional architectural and landscape plans that
he showed me had been made was definitely ruined, and they don't possess $5,000 needed to
start over now. This particular crisis was even more painful to understand after Eduardo
concluded by saying that his generation's brightest hopes may have been irreparably
damaged by the city's experiences, and that Eco-Bahia should concentrate hardest on the
present teenagers who seem everywhere, needing jobs and a future with promise. Currently
Eduardo operates a small food stand near the ferry landing.
Our appeal brought at least 30 e-letters of support for Eco-Bahia from Catalonia (both
city council and a green organization), Italy, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and from big cities
and small towns in the US. They have meant a lot to the organizers but can mean a great
deal more shortly in leverage with local, national and international agencies. Some have
been published in the local press, and they may also be read aloud during the gathering.
Nicola Mears makes beautiful "Eco-papel" recycled paper stock with imbedded
dried flowers that is popular for uses ranging from note paper to wedding invitations.
Dario Proano-Leroux and she carry out an impressive variety of ecologically oriented
activities ranging from an organic farm cum visitors center to a company specializing in
"organic tourism." Dario was instrumental in starting the eco-ciudad prospect
through Stuarium Foundation, and they both have worked unceasingly to make the
Eco-Gathering a success, including final touches on a compostable waste recycling program
at the city's main mercado.
There is a remarkable organization titled Coastal Resources Management Program
(PMRC)
that works to protect natural features such as the remaining mangroves and gave workshops
about potable water, waste systems and electrification in the small communities throughout
the Chone estuary. It is a perfect support group for bioregional aspects of Eco-Bahia such
as mangrove reforestation that will be featured during the gathering (Motohiko
Kogo,
founder of Actmang, is here to make a presentation). I had the sensational luck of meeting
the new coordinator his first day on the job and was able to establish a partnership role
for PMRC in whatever form of inter-institutional support group(s) are formed following the
gathering for the purpose of creating participation opportunities for all the sectors and
every person in Bahia.
I closed a radio call-in show yesterday with "Viva Eco-Bahia!" Let our best
intentions now become manifest!
[Top]
<<<<====>>>>
By Peter Berg
Ecuador Eco-Gathering Report #7
San Francisco, California
March 24, 1999
It's a few days after the vernal equinox in San Francisco, a date when the equal length
of days and nights is the same here as it is all year in Ecuador. How remarkable to find
anything similar to what happened there just three weeks ago.
The festivities for Bahia de Caraquez's Declaration as a "Ciudad Ecologica"
(Ecological City) — included here as
an attachment — and the first International Mangrove Day took place February
27-28. Here are some quick sketches that shone through the blur of transforming events.
A parade of at least six triciclos painted green with signs proclaiming
"Bienvenidos a Bahia Eco-Ciudad" carrying event organizers to a presentation at
the combined workers union hall. The organization's president announced endorsements by
both his local and the province-wide labor group.
A morning of public panels and talks on various ecological projects and ideas followed
by crowded afternoon workshops where participants included activists, businesspeople,
government agency staffers, and many ordinary citizens. In one of these it became
instantly clear that there needed to be a new organization capable of containing all of
their perspectives when a woman facilitator drew a large circle on the blackboard titled
"Eco-ciudad" and then put circles inside it whose labels translated "city
government-legal" and "community-moral." It was astonishing to see the
vice-mayor nod vigorously in agreement, thereby publicly conceding that city bureaus
weren't capable on their own of carrying out needed changes toward sustainability.
The mayor standing alongside as Flor Maria unveiled the new plaque at the entrance to
City Hall proclaiming "Ciudad Ecologica" status to a crowded circle of local
government representatives and townspeople. There were emotional eye-to-eye smiles and
relieved congratulations between members of the core group who had fought like a band of
samurai for this moment.
An intensely formal declaration ceremony inside the full municipal theater. A uniformed
chorus sang Ecuador's national anthem (followed by another song that may have been the
canton or province song). Then a tuxedo-wearing announcer with a stentorian voice
announced the program, read some of the congratulatory letters that had been received from
places like Barcelona, and announced speakers. The mayor stated the need to counter
worldwide ecological destruction. Ecuador's Environment Minister Yolande Kakabadse
explained the significance of a recent government acquisition of Amazonian rainforest as a
protected area, and Dario enumerated local ecological projects.
For reasons that still remain unclear, I was invited onto the stage at the beginning to
sit with these dignitaries and others such as the vice-mayor, the Ecuadoran Navy Captain
of the Port, the head of the city council, Flor Maria, and the reigning beauty queen of
Canton Sucre. It was almost cinematic to silently view the proceedings and pick out
audience members who had been main performers in the creation of this event such as
Patricio, Nicola, the director and many members of Stuarium Foundation, Kogo, Mother
Monica, and Keibo Oiwa with his group of eight Japanese women college students who were
the most radiant example of working eco-tourists that I have seen. When the announcer
finally read the official "Ciudad Ecologica" by-law that had been enacted, I
felt my arms go up in the air in exultation. The reception that followed in the theater
foyer was nearly jubilant, and the crowd exited into an outdoor show of standing exhibits
featuring PMRC projects, the organic farm at Rio Muchacho, and the proposed Cerro Seco
tropical forest restoration and interpretation center.
Planting rows of red mangrove seed-pods in the tidal mudflats after a boat ride on Rio
Chone and a knee-high slog through gray river-bottom ooze. An intrepid press corps came
all the way with a hundred or so of us, popping photos of Yolande Kakabadse and others
wearing mud-streaked new t-shirts that had been made to commemorate International Mangrove
Day. Motohiko Kogo, the poetic wizard of mangrove reforestation, explained to me why
certain previously planted seedlings grew well and others failed, how various depths of
water and currents affected different varieties of mangroves, and why these variations
made every planting an experiment. Three women from Actmang's reforestation project in
Esmeraldes worked so fast at planting mangrove rows that it was obvious a new craft had
been born.
Anja Light ignoring her flu to debut the song she composed for this time,
"Celebrate! Regenerate! Mangrove Bringer of Life" in Spanish and English, first
in a folk style accompanying herself on guitar and then with both rock and jazz musicians.
On the sidewalk in front of city hall with an audience overflowing into the street, young
hip-hoppers jumping up and down and townspeople passing around bottles of rum and
cana.
There were too many events in this long weekend for anyone to see them all. I missed a
symbolic tree-planting, the opening of the new recycling program at the mercado, and more
that I didn't even know were taking place. Too much going on is probably the best gauge
for knowing that history is being made.
<<<<====>>>>
There is a new organization, Centro de Educacion Ambiental Eco-Bahia (Eco-Bahia
Learning Center), which is intended to fill the need for a broadly-based group that
represents the entire community. It is acquiring nonprofit status and has authorized
Planet Drum Foundation to initiate proposals regarding assistance and funding from various
national and international sources. Outside help is required because Ecuador's already
fragile financial status has recently declined into a full-blown economic crisis and hopes
for internal aid are unrealistic. This is an opportunity for people and groups everywhere
to combine disaster relief with development funding in a way that creates an ecologically
sustainable future for Bahia de Caraquez. The result can be a model for other bioregions
throughout the world.
If you can help or know contacts for possible assistance, this is the time to get
involved. Please contact Planet Drum's website at http://www.planetdrum.org/
for further information, or email planetdrum@igc.org
to let us know how you can help. (Go to "International
Bioregional Groups" under "Links"
to access addresses for getting in direct contact with some active groups in
Bahia.)
[Top]
|
S