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BREAKFAST OF BIODIVERSITY/New Epilog

The 1990s had not brought much positive news regarding rainforests. Nicaragua, suffering from extreme poverty, continues to view the rainforests as an escape valve for social problems that might otherwise cause those with power some consternation. Costa Rica continues its long tradition of love-hate relationships with the banana companies, with some deviation from the pattern we reported earlier. Nicaraguans, facing a continually crumbling economy, proceed with their migrations to Costa Rica seeking work in the banana plantations and finding themselves out of work with no prospects other than homesteading. And much of the rest of the tropics seems mired in the neoliberal economic model which seems to encourage the same sort of social relations that were at the base of deforestation in the 1980s. Anticipating this new epilog for Breakfast of Biodiversity, we had hoped to report on some positive progress. Only by grasping at straws would we be able to do so.

Nicaragua, Caribbean Coast Tensions

Nicaragua veered to the political right in 1990 and even further to the right during the elections of 1995. The Constitutional Liberal Party (PLC) had a massive win in the national elections of 1995, leaving the Sandinistas a minority in the national legislature. The president is Arnoldo Aleman, a long-time foe of the Sandinistas who seems to have a personal vendetta against them. He is a strong advocate of the neoliberal model in its most pure form, promoting the privatization of everything. Furthermore, the many large landlords who left the country during the Sandinista administration, and whose land was thus confiscated and redistributed to the peasants, have been returning to reclaim their land. The peasants who held title to that land under the Sandinista’s agrarian reform program have been effectively thrown off of the land, although in most cases with compensation (as to whether it is JUST compensation, there is some debate). Consequently, we have seen over the past decade an effective reversal of the Sandinista’s agrarian reform program. Since that program was effective in reducing pressure on tropical rainforests, we might expect renewed pressure resulting from the new agrarian structure. Indeed, that is what we find.

The tropical rainforests of Nicaragua are concentrated on the Atlantic coast of the country, where a multiethnic mix of political factions are in continual contention over natural resource issues, including forests and agriculture. Miskito Indians, Black Creoles, and mixed blood Mestizos are the three dominant ethnic groups there, and the contradictory nature of their views toward managing the resources of the region have recently intensified as a result of the national trends of the neoliberal model. Miskitos have large expanses of land they have traditionally used for hunting and the extraction of timber and non-timber forest products, which is to say they have been preserving the rainforest as part of their traditional culture. Creoles are more than anything focused on marine resources, but also engage in traditional agricultural practices and some timber extraction. They, too, have relatively large expanses of land under traditional management systems, which also means they have been preserving large expanses of tropical rainforest. The mestizos at the present time must be divided into two categories: those with a long history living on the Atlantic coast, either born there or moved there when young, and recent migrants. The traditional coast mestizo clearly regard themselves as "costeño" (a coast person) while the new migrants (frequently called "spañards" by locals) bring with them the baggage of the Pacific coast Nicaraguan culture.

Presently the politics of the Pacific coast are driving much of what is happening on the Atlantic coast, and to the rainforests. Current national government policies emphasize privatization and "free markets," undercutting much of what was gained by the peasant class during Sandinista times. Much land is again purchased for speculative purposes, which makes its price inflate rapidly. Peasant owners can hardly be expected to withstand the pressure of selling their land when it appears they are getting much more than they thought the land was worth. Furthermore, with the idea that there is free or almost free land to be had on the Atlantic coast, the temptation to sell out and move to the Atlantic coast is frequently irresistible.

Unfortunately, much of the "free" land that is the traditional land of Creoles and Miskitos, is still forested. It does not take much of an analysis to predict that there will be conflicts. For example, on a trip up the Kurinwas River in 1995 our Miskito guide was showing us the forested banks of the river that constituted the traditional lands of the Miskito village of Tasba Pauni. Suddenly we came upon a clearing and as we approached the shore, we could hear the telltale raps of axes and machetes clearing forest a little further on. Our guide insisted on confronting whoever was clearing forest so we moved on with him to eventually find members of a small family, two men and a woman, in the process of clearing the land. The conversation went something like this:

Miskito guide "What are you doing here? Don’t you realize this land belongs to the Miskito people of Tasba Pauni"?

Farmer "We didn’t know. It is just forest, no one is using it."

Miskito guide "Of course it is forest. We use it as a forest. We and our ancestors have been hunting and extracting timber from these lands for hundreds of years. You have no business cutting it down."

Farmer "But we have nowhere to go. We have no land, there are no jobs to be found. We had to sell our land in Chontales (on the Pacific side) and we were told there was plenty of land to be had here on the coast. How are we supposed to know this is your land? It is just forest."

Miskito Guide "But it is our forest and we want it to stay forest. You have to stop your clearing right now."

Farmer (looking nervous) "But where are we supposed to go? We have to eat. Our children will starve if we don’t plant something."

Miskito guide "Maybe you can find some land in Pueblo Nuevo ( a small settlement nearby), but you cannot continue here. This is our land and we will defend it. We have guns and we are ready to use them to protect our land."

Farmer "What will become of us?"

This is all paraphrased, but the sentiments were much as these quotes suggest. What is difficult to put to paper is the feeling one had in this situation. The farmers were sad indeed, very poor people just trying to eke out a living. The Miskito guide, also a poor man, was defending traditional resource use policies that had been part of his community ever since anyone could remember. If these mestizo farmers are allowed to clear the forest, they won’t be able to produce there for very long anyway, and the riches of the forest will be lost forever. But as the mestizo farmer said "What is to become of us?" How will he feed his children? And will the Miskito come back with armed guards? It does not take much reflection to see the incredible potential for violence here. The farmers, if they are smart, will start to organize together to clear larger tracts of land simultaneously. Faced with the prospect of armed Miskito resistance, will they seek arms themselves? Large groups of armed and desperate people with conflicting interests does not make for a stable political climate.

The fate of the rainforests of Nicaragua is ultimately tied up with the contentious issue of autonomy. During the 1980s when the Sandinistas were in power, a long series of discussions and debates finally resulted in a constitutional amendment that granted the Atlantic coast limited autonomy from the national government. Especially important was the right to make their own decisions about natural resources, which included all the rainforests of Nicaragua. When the Sandinistas lost the elections in 1990, the coast people effectively lost their influence in high places. Despite the formal recognition of autonomy, the elected regional councils have been extremely weak since their establishment in 1990. Now with the growing hegemony of the PLC, prospects for the autonomy dream seem ever more fading.

Yet the question of autonomy is still at the core of all politics on the coast. While always autonomous at heart, the political realities of the coast have usually been otherwise. Formalizing the state of autonomy in 1990 was viewed by most as the beginning of a new era; the dignity of local people would be recognized and their power acknowledged through the ballot box. Most importantly their natural resources, including the rainforests, would be under their control. Their continual frustration has led to new political sentiments.

Autonomy is anathema to the political party currently in power nationally–the PLC. Seeing the riches of the coast’s resources, the national administration is not likely to relinquish its control over the region. Logging concessions are sold in defiance of the will of the regional council, fishing companies routinely over-fish the marine banks, and new migrants from the Pacific side cut rainforests to make their small farms. The PLC is not likely to grant true autonomy which would limit its ability to exploit all the logs, lobsters, and land it wants.

The neoliberal model imposed on the nation in the early 1990s and enthusiastically adopted by the current PLC administration, has been devastating. Privatizing lands in the populous western half of the country has made it difficult, if not impossible, for small scale farmers to make ends meet, as described above. They are losing their land in record numbers. Many migrate to Managua to contribute to the swelling shanty towns there, but many also see the Caribbean coast as a new opportunity. In this way the neoliberal model is pushing newly landless peasants eastward. Much, probably most, of the land available on the coast is traditional communal lands held by indigenous and Creole populations. Since the new migrants are culturally mestizos, not surprisingly, deforestation along the new agricultural frontier is attributed to them. Furthermore, since the mestizos are the largest and fastest growing of the ethnic groups, the agricultural frontier has also become a cultural frontier which represents another threat to costeños. While most people distinguish between newly arriving migrants and those with a long history on the coast, this distinction is sometimes blurred. And in recent times that blurring has become more common. It is easy to see how indigenous and Creole people could come to see the mestizos as their enemy.

It is convenient for the PLC to play up this new ethnic division. Their base of support is in the mestizo population, especially among the new migrants. As the flood of migrants turns into a riptide (as seems to be happening now), support for the PLC grows, especially if the mestizos see their position on the coast as threatened by the other ethnic groups. Interviews with mestizos in 1998 and 1999 revealed a new fear on their part. Repeatedly we heard people claim that if autonomy ever became a reality, the Creoles and Miskitos would throw all the mestizos out of the coast; that the Creoles and Miskitos don’t want autonomy, but rather independence. Yet interviews with Miskitos and Creoles indicated similar antipathy towards the mestizos, who are seen as bolstering the hegemony of the central government by voting for the PLC, and destroying the forests and fishing with their unsustainable agricultural practices. Furthermore, Creoles and Miskitos seem to be reinventing old rivalries as their shifting political alliances become ever more identified with ethnicity rather than autonomy. In short, ethnic rivalries among the three main ethnic groups seem to be taking the place of the previous politics of autonomy. "My enemy is in a different ethnic group" seems to be replacing the notion that "my enemy is in Managua."

The regional elections of March, 1998 were revealing. The PLC gained an absolute majority in the North, with the Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional (FSLN) a clear second and Yapti Tasba Maska Nanih Aslakanka/YATAMA (mainly representing Miskitos) a distant third. The PLC gained the most votes in the South, but not enough for a majority. While the FSLN was second, strong showing was made by a new third party, the Indigenous Multiethnic Party (PIM). Only two months old, the PIM’s platform seems to be nothing more than opposition to the two main national parties (PLC and FSLN). Its strong showing, mainly among Creoles and Miskitos, is evidence of both anti-central government feelings and growing antipathy towards at least the newly arriving Mestizos. Another new party, the Coast Alliance, mainly representing Creoles, also made a respectable showing. But most telling of all was the abstentions. In a region where over 90 percent participation in elections is common, only 49 percent of the electorate took the time to come out and vote. Most local political analysts read this fact as frustration with the normal political process with its cronyism and corruption.

Coast intellectuals recognize the growing ethnic tensions and cynicism with traditional politics, and are warning of the early signs of ethnic conflicts. Researchers at the Center for Research and Documentation of the Atlantic Coast (CIDCA) are emphasizing the importance of identifying as costeños rather than as an ethnic group, and of the need for the national government to recognize growing ethnic tensions as an outgrowth of its anti-autonomy position. Workers at the Center for Human, Civil, and Autonomous Rights (CEDEHCA) continue pushing for a coast identity independent of ethnic group, with autonomy as a central rallying cry. Responsible leaders are trying to reinvigorate the autonomy process as the only way to unify coast people–multi-ethnic to be sure, but a unified coast for autonomy.

What this means for the future is hard to predict. Ethnic warfare is certainly not inevitable. It is not out of the question at this point, as it seems to have been in the 1980s. But the future of the rainforests is at least partly tied to the future of autonomy, and that is in question.

Costa Rica Bananas Losing their Charm?

The situation in Costa Rica has become considerably more complicated than it was when we first wrote of it. Here we have the good news/bad news situation. Deforestation of tropical forest has declined somewhat according to all estimates, and there are some indications that reforestation from some abandoned agricultural land is becoming important. Furthermore, in the case study that we presented of the community of El Progresso, the lives of the people have considerably improved and it is highly unlikely that these people will engage in the forest-felling activities that their counterparts did only 10 years ago. That is the good news. The bad news is that the near future may bring a conjunction of forces that could change those two tendencies.

There seem to have been two forces involved in the lowered deforestation rates (and higher reforestation rates). First, the availability of forests not included under protected status is very low, since former high rates of deforestation have resulted in almost complete deforestation outside of the protected areas. Since agricultural land seems to be in the process of being abandoned, much of the pressure on forested lands is consequently lowered. While there is still concern that landless peasants will begin moving into the protected areas, that force seems minimal at the present time. Second, and probably more important, Costa Rica’s industrialization program has taken off and there has been a large rural-to-urban migration in response. Intel, for example, recently built an enormous chip assembly plant and estimates are that exporting chips will soon be a bigger source of income for the country than either bananas or coffee. This rapid development of the industrial sector has created non-rural jobs that attract former peasants from the countryside into the cities. Traditional pressure on the forests is, as we described earlier for Puerto Rico, minimized by this migration.

However, this creates a different problem, at least in the short term. Bananas and coffee are still major sources of income for the country and both are quite labor intensive. Not only are they labor intensive, they require very cheap labor, not the sort of salary scale that industrial workers normally command. Industrialization thus could have created a crisis in the banana and coffee industries of the country. However, the pattern that was beginning in 1994 has accelerated dramatically, with Nicaraguan migrants streaming into the country at rates that would make any banana company official ecstatic. The vast majority of banana and coffee harvesting is now done by Nicaraguans, as is the case with most of the lower status jobs that Costa Ricans no longer want, such as maid and janitorial service. So while the industrial program has elevated the salaries of the average Costa Rican worker, the massive migration from Nicaragua has averted a crisis in the traditional agricultural economic base.

An additional factor, perhaps only subtly associated with the general problem, has been the abandonment of the enclave system by the banana companies. In the past, when workers were let go, they not only lost their job, they lost the roof over their head as well. For many banana workers this is no longer the case. For example, in the homesteading community of El Progresso, which we described in detail in Chapter Seven, almost all males and many of the females are employees of the local packing plant (which in this case belongs to Dole). In fact, buses owned by Dole and Chiquita stop by the community to pick up the workers every morning and bring them back in the afternoon. When the packing plant is forced to lay them off (as will probably happen soon), rather than being forced to seek a piece of land on which to homestead, the process of homesteading has already been accomplished, and the workers will at least still have a roof over their head. For most of them the amount of land they have is probably not sufficient for maintenance of their families with subsistence production. But it is likely that the inexorable pressure to find a piece of land on which to homestead will be far less evident for these people than it was for workers earlier when being fired also meant being immediately kicked out of your house.

Another factor that may be of importance is the ability of some of the organized workers to take advantage of Costa Rica’s remarkably progressive social security network. Again taking El Progresso as an example (although we think it is not atypical), just four years after being established, the community has organized to petition the government for more than only title to their land. While most still are waiting for formal titles, there is no question that their right to possession of the land is secure. This is clearly a consequence of their coordinated effort initially in invading the land collectively. Furthermore, the community organized to build a school for their children, and then petitioned the government to send teachers, which was required by law. Sporting activities, community fiestas, sometimes to raise money for community projects, are all organized on a communal basis. Visiting the community in 1999, we almost did not recognize what had been a ramshackle collection of huts mostly made out of scrap wood in 1994. Many of the houses are made of cement blocks; the main road is not yet paved, but is graded much better than the two-track rut it had been; and small stores dot the landscape. El Progresso now looks like a (relatively) prosperous community, compared to the way it looked in 1994. And it must be noted that this prosperity is built on the capital provided by the banana companies, of which El Progresso residents are seemingly quite supportive.

It is worth reflecting on what caused this remarkable transformation of the El Progresso community. On the one hand, there are political conditions in Costa Rica that allow such progress. On the other hand, there are people organized to take advantage of those conditions. Both factors are important. First, Costa Rica is not El Salvador or Honduras. Stemming from its liberal revolution in 1948, Costa Rica has no army, and basic human rights of the lower classes are respected (at least comparatively so). Legal protection of homesteaders extends to all citizens and tradition accords those rights, to some extent, even to foreigners (i.e. Nicaraguans). When poor people are accorded such rights, their natural tendency to bond together in organizations that can take advantage of those rights is impressive indeed. Several civic organizations have emerged in El Progresso, and they function to pressure the government to intervene on behalf of the people. Gravel roads have replaced mud ruts, electricity is available to all residents at a nominal charge, and state-paid teachers instruct their children even though none of the residents yet has formal legal title to the land!

At the same time, working conditions for the banana workers remain relatively the same as they were earlier. Costa Rica has progressive labor and environmental laws and the banana companies have been forced to clean up much of their act regarding housing, pollution, and pesticide exposure. Hiring and firing workers to save on payments to social security seems to have been replaced by a desire to maintain trained workers–the money saved on having to pay social security apparently is small compared to the cost of continuously training new workers. Yet there is still an effective ban on union organizing, which is ultimately the only real power workers have to determine their own conditions of work.

The basic pattern of bust and boom for the banana business has progressed. Worse, after the massive expansion of the early 1990s, interrupted by only one major downturn in prices (1992—1993), the companies are apparently facing what looks like a major crisis in the near future. According to one Chiquita representative, an individual plantation must be able to sell a box of bananas for $5.80 to break even. In August 1999 they were receiving $4.80 per box. Overproduction, the major problem in all of modern agriculture, seems to have reared its ugly head again, and too many bananas are flooding a market that was not stimulated by expansion in Eastern Europe as had been expected in 1989—1990. According to this representative, something was going to have to "give" soon. Rumors have been spreading that a recent mammoth expansion of production in Ecuador is currently coming into production and, because of lax labor and environmental laws there, competitor companies are producing bananas at $2.00 per box. If these figures are even approximately true, it is difficult to see how the three major companies (Chiquita, Dole, and Del Monte) can maintain their current high levels of production in Costa Rica. What then will happen to the truly enormous number of workers who have been drawn to these frontier areas?

A hopeful answer to this question is that they will be able to participate in Costa Rica’s industrial expansion. But here we see another problem that has arisen. Fueled by both the banana expansion and the horrible conditions in Nicaragua, extensive immigration of Nicaraguan workers has occurred since 1990, especially accelerated since 1995 (the year the first edition of this book was published). Depending on who you listen to, the current population of Costa Rica ranges from 10 percent to 33 percent Nicaraguan. Imagine if, in the past four years, over 100 million Mexican workers immigrated to the United States, if one of every three people you meet is from a different culture, one that has historically been seen as "different" in major ways. The effect on Costa Rican society has seemingly been great, and continuing. Never before have we seen such antagonism against Nicaragans in Costa Rica. Spray painted graffiti excoriates "Nicas go home" (sometimes also adorned with swastikas).

These people, pushed from their homeland by the dire circumstances there and pulled by the lure of the banana companies, are now doing all the menial tasks that the newly industrialized Costa Rican workers no longer will do (at least not at the wage levels required for international competitiveness). Nicaraguans now are the main labor force for the banana industry, for picking coffee, and for menial service work. It is not uncommon, for example, to read in the classifieds of local newspapers "Nicaraguan maid wanted." According to Chiquita officials and local union organizers, between 80 and 90 percent of all banana workers are Nicaraguan at the present time. And the second most important export crop, coffee, is now also almost entirely dependent on Nicaraguan labor.

In a sense, the availability of Nicaraguans has saved these two most important export crops for Costa Rica. With the industrialization process proceeding at a rapid pace, rural workers have transformed into industrial workers who demand wages excessively large for traditional banana or coffee production to be internationally competitive. While industrial output is growing, it is still second to agricultural output (bananas and coffee) in terms of export income for the country. Yet bananas and coffee would surely contract dramatically if they had to rely on the newly expensive labor. In this way the Nicaraguans have saved the banana (and coffee) business.

Yet what can be expected in the near future? Will the Nicaraguans return to Nicaragua when rural jobs evaporate? Perhaps. But of the approximately 20 families we talked with on Chiquita plantations and the surrounding area in August of 1999, none of them indicated a willingness to return to Nicaragua other than for short trips to visit with family. Will the Nicaraguans move into the industrial sector? Perhaps not, because of their generally unskilled character. But skills can be rapidly acquired and it is not clear exactly how much education is necessary to work on a computer chip assembly line. If they move into the industrial sector, this will exert downward pressure on industrial wages, undercutting the social contract normally associated with the process of industrialization (i.e. rising wages which create more demand thus leading to economic growth). Such a scenario could undercut the industrial growth currently underway. Will the Nicaraguans become the new flexible peasant class, eking out a subsistence living on recently cleared rainforest land until bananas (and coffee) undergo their next phase of expansion? Unfortunately, this latter scenario seems most likely.

Returning to Fenced-off Land with Armed Guards

During the time we were writing this epilog, several books were published with quite a different perspective than ours. Two highly acclaimed examples are John Terborgh’s Requiem for Nature (Washington, DC: Shearwater Books, 1999) and John Oats’ Myth and Reality in the Rain Forest: How Conservation Strategies are Failing in West Africa (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999). While they received some harsh criticism in the technical literature (Steven Brechin, C. Fortwangler, P. Wilshusen, and P. C. West, "The backlash to people-sensitive conservation and the future of international biodiversity conservation management," Society and Natural Resources, 2000), they were generally met with rave reviews in popular media, frequently cited as works willing to tell the hard truth to an idealistic yet naïve audience of do-gooder conservationists. While we share a great deal of the practical analysis that went into the construction of their arguments, we feel that in the end they miss the point. We are tempted to rehash the old parable of the gentleman who loses his lapel pin on a poorly lit street. To aid in the search for the pin his wife goes ahead to retrieve a flashlight and upon returning finds him searching on the side of the street opposite the side on which the pin was lost. Upon query as to what he was doing, didn’t he know the pin was on this side of the street, he replied "Yes, I know, but the light is so much better over here." Looking for a pin on the wrong side of the street is a suggestive analogy for the arguments presented in the above cited books.

The basic argument of these so-called backlashers is that conservation programs that have emphasized the needs of local people have not worked. Despite sincere efforts by conservation organizations to take the needs and desires of local people into account, the trashing of tropical rainforests continues unabated. They generally criticize case after case of conservation programs designed to bring local people into the management scheme or provide local people with some benefits from the conservation efforts. None of these programs has worked, they argue, and the entire effort should be abandoned. While we would love to see their logic applied in other cases (in the drug war in the US, or the structural adjustment programs of the International Monetary Fund, to take two random examples), the simple argument that something should be abandoned only because it has not yet worked seems a little silly when viewed historically (recall the wonderful movie Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines). Yet we largely agree with their overall critique in the sense that most programs, as they say, have been utter failures. Where we disagree is with their programmatic conclusion. When contemporary problems fail to be resolved, reverting to what existed before they appeared is one form of what John Stuart Mill referred to as "crackpot realism."

The chord of truth struck by these analysts is in the embarrassing failure of almost all conservation programs to decrease the destruction of tropical rainforests. What the backlashers fail to recognize is the obvious (but critical) fact that these programs have failed whether or not they included the fearsome human factor. The adulated Costa Rican program of the 1980s was a stark failure (by the way, it had no nasty local humans involved), and much of Costa Rica’s current reforestation has little to do with conservation efforts. So we can agree that conservation programs aimed at preserving tropical rainforests have been failures, but we fail to see the concrete evidence that the reason for those failures is the inclusion of human welfare in their formulation.

However, let us remember that the problem under analysis is the destruction of tropical rainforests, which is a sociopolitical issue. The strategies of the very people criticized by the backlashers were born of the realization that razor wire fences and armed guards will not protect rainforests in perpetuity. Those whose dream is the wilderness equivalent of the gated community need to understand that if it is a sociopolitical problem, it requires a sociopolitical solution. There is certainly much room for discussion as to exactly what that sociopolitical solution ought to be, but the gut level response of "let’s put a fence around it," is akin to the case in fifteenth-century Switzerland, where cutworms were taken to court, pronounced guilty, excommunicated by the archbishop, and banished from the land.

The magic bullet solution of making reserves human-proof is not likely to work, except for short periods of time in very special places. Authoritarian governments might force such a strategy to work temporarily, but when they fall (as we hope they will), what happens to the razor wire and the armed guards? Band-aid solutions that provide desperately poor people with the hope of being a maid in a foreigner’s eco-tourist hotel are not likely to work either (as the backlashers correctly point out). We feel that both approaches have been discredited by experience. In each case it is essential to analyze the web of causality, look for weak points in it, and do more than just tweak its strands. If the web itself is the cause, the web must be broken. The question is not whether some band-aid solution will work. The question is how to break the strength of that web that holds together the complex sociopolitical system that causes the forest to come down. In Breakfast of Biodiversity we have attempted to outline how to analyze that web, with the ultimate goal that understanding it will enable sensible political action focused on eliminating the system that causes the forests to fall.

A Closing Thought

We close this epilog with the story of Marcelino. We have been involved in a research project on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua for the past ten years, visiting the same communities once a year and have come to know some of the people there quite well. One young man, Marcelino, has been a constant companion of ours during the last five years. Marcelino is 13 years old and accompanies us to our rainforest study plots every year. He is a delight to have around. He is extremely inquisitive and has certainly picked up on a lot of rainforest lore from us, as much as he has provided us with local knowledge of the same.

Last year his mother told us that because of his time with us he has come to love the forest and now has a dream of going to school to "learn how to study forests." When we heard this we were at first overjoyed at the apparent effect we had on this local lad. We had made a new conservationist! A local boy would spread the word of the beauty of the forests and the need to preserve them. But only a few minutes of serious reflection reminded us of the web of causality. The truth is that Marcelino’s 15 year old brother has already migrated to Costa Rica to work in the banana plantations. Marcelino’s family has only a small plot of land, not really enough to feed the family even in productive years. He faces a future of trying to hire himself out as a machete wielder, cutting weeds in someone else’s plots. He is extremely intelligent and will probably become quite frustrated with this life. Costa Rica, especially since his brother has already found work in the banana plantations, will look very enticing and we fully expect he will also migrate.

But the life of a banana worker is hardly stable, and he will almost certainly find himself out of work periodically. He will also likely start a family. Given his drive and intelligence, he will surely want to make something for his family, and an insecure job in a banana factory will not likely be satisfying for him. But what else is there for him? Go back to Nicaragua where there are no jobs at all? Move to the shanty towns near the city? Probably not, since he has been a rural resident all his life. Most likely he will be forced to do what the others do: find a piece of forest, cut it down, and make a small homestead for his family. Thus, we begin with a 13 year old boy who loves the forests and wants to learn how to study them. And circumstances make a 20 year old man cut down those very forests. The web of causality spins its inevitable structure, captures this powerless individual, and the forest comes down.