[home] [contents] [back issues] [subscribe]

[submissions] [mission] [message board] [contact us]

Saving the Guaymí
an imperfect philanthropy project
text & photo by Lea Aschkenas
      

Guatemala has Rigoberta Menchú, and in Honduras, Mayan ruins line the cobblestone footpaths of Copán. Nicaragua has the legacy of its Sandinista uprising and a clan of rebellious poets who live out the revolution’s ideals on the communal island of Solentiname. And Costa Rica? Well, Costa Rica is just the tropics, or at least that’s the fashionable gringo gripe. It is beautiful landscape, but nothing more. Unlike its Central American neighbors, Costa Rica has no narrative of subjugation, no tragic struggle for independence and thus (from the school of thought that misery + strife = art) Costa Rica has no culture. Even worse, I’ve heard many an expatriate lament, Costa Rica has no indigenous people.

But in the southeastern corner of the country, on the border with Panama, there is a crescent beach whose name is a Spanish word for mosquito. Here, the rocky black sand will cut your feet and the heat will bake your wounds, and if you continue on into the jungle and hike five miles uphill through mud that pulls at your ankles like quicksand, you will come to a land inhabited only by indigenous people. In November, 1995, they greeted a group of visitors, but after our stay I imagine they’ve become more parsimonious with their hospitality. . .

. . .

. . . At first the Guaymí were excited to be hosting a camera crew. They did not have electricity so they had never seen a television, but they had a battery-operated boom box. The soundtrack of my time there was filled with Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” and a smattering of Michael Jackson hits.

The Guaymí’s enthusiasm for the camera crew and their high-tech film gadgets diminished, however, once they realized that the crew was not truly interested in hearing about their lives. The film crew wanted success stories, tidy tales of how everything had worked out once the grant money came through . . .

 

 

. . . To read the rest of this story, please subscribe.