María
Suárez Toro, Escribana
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At present, the
land conflict between the peoples of the mountainous Keköldi* Indigenous
Reserve and the State, regarding the nearby coastal zone of Cocles near
Puerto Viejo in Talamanca, what might look like a case of indigenous peoples
against Afro-Costa Ricans is really one of government oversight when
assigning land in the creation of the Keköldi Indigenous Reserve in 1977 that,
ignored the fact that the land in Cocles was occupied by Afro Costa Ricans
for the last 100 years.
After two years
of conflict in court, a process of out of court conciliation was requested by
the KEKOLDI in the middle of 2013 but in August of this year the government
rejected such process.
What is means is
that although the case is between the Costa Rican State and the KEKOLDI,
those inhabitants that are affected by the case because they live and have
historical land rights of the contested territory (see map) will have to
become part of the case, at least in so far as they have to be heard by the
court regarding the case.
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A community
conflict created by multiple government´s mistakes
In 2011 a meeting of over 150 Costa Rican citizens and
inhabitants of many other nationalities worldwide met in the public school of
Cocles to share information about a land claim by the nearby indigenous
Keköldi.
The Keköldi Reserve is claiming the coastal land
inhabited at the present by many members of the group that met that day.
After three hours of information sharing among
homemakers, entrepreneurs, ecologists, activists, lawyers and fisherpeople
among others, the group asked ASO MUJERES** in their community of Cocles to
coordinate their struggle to be heard by government officials and society at
large regarding the indigenous claim to their land.
They discovered that the present claim is the result of years of mistake after mistake by government policies that in 1977. That year, when the Keköldi Reserve was created, it erroneously included inside the Reserve the coastal cacao farms in the Cocles area, which had been settled by Afro Caribbean peoples for more than 100 years.
The original allocation of that part of the coastal
land to the Keköldi was delineated by the government based on aerial photos and
never confirmed by an onsite visit to verify the “facts” in the airplane pictures
that showed no houses in the 1,000 hectares coastal land. The hundreds of
houses were shaded under the cacao plants of the Afro and the three they uses
to provide shade to the cacao plantations themselves.
Area of Cocles in dispute, foto by Escribana
When local Afro Costa Rican community leaders who
lived there became aware of this grave
error by the government in the late 1970’s, they travelled to San José in an
attempt to rectify the error. Government officials informed them that there was
nothing that could be done to change the decision.
Throughout the next decades, newer Costa Rican and
foreign migrants and investors arrived to live alongside Afro-descendants. Afro population sold them some of the coastal
land to these Costa Rican, European, Canadian and United States North Americans
and other Latin American small entrepreneurs that have built homes, small
eco-tourism businesses. Costa Rican oligarchs and new rich also bought large
extensions of land for speculation.
They all “co-habit” (live together) the coastal land alongside
a community of Afro Costa Rican descendants who have stayed in the area where
they inherited land from their ancestors who came from Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panamá
and Colombia more than a century before establishing themselves in unoccupied
coastal lands, where they fished and farmed, coconut and cacao.
Eventually they all lobbied the government for a
Presidential Decree that would free the
Cocles land from the original mistake that assigned the land the Keköldi
Reserve.
The Decree was adopted in 1996 by participation of
indigenous authorities. The National Indigenous Commission (CONAI) participated in fixing the mistake by the government. CONAI
is in charge of overseeing government policy about indigenous peoples.
CONAI drafted a petition asking the government to
eliminate the Cocles area (in dispute with their Afro neighbors) from their
Reserve. The reasons stated were that they did not want their relationship with
the Afro community living in Cocles to deteriorate.
In their argument, CONAI issues a statement that
recognized that “the indigenous peoples had not lived in that area occupied by
Afros and other dwellers for over 200 years.”
In order to arrive at that stance CONAI developed a
consultation process similar to the process that was established by the
International Labor Organization (ILO) Covenant 169 concerning the need for
consultation to indigenous peoples n any project that affects them. The Convention was ratified by Costa Rica in
1993.
Thus the President of Costa Rica at the time issued
Decree 25296-G in 1996 that removed the coastal areas of Cocles from the
Indigenous Keköldi Reserve and increased the total Reserve lands by giving the
Reserve lands along the southwest border towards Carbón.
However, in order to make this change with justice to
the Keköldi also, the government has to take other measures. In the Indigenous
Law of 1977, reduction of reserves is
strictly prohibited. Thus, in the new Presidential Decree, the 1,000 hectares in
Cocles that were removed from the Keköldi Reserve to be given back to the Afro Costa Ricans and
others were replaced by giving the Keköldi another 1000 hectares on the south western border of the Reserve in the mountainous end of the Reserve known as
Carbon.
Some of that land in Carbon was comprised of
forest. Other parts had been settled by families creating subsistence
farming by Costa Ricans displaced from other regions in Costa Rica, and
although they had set up homesteads on these lands they never obtained rightful
titles and in theory the land was part of the national patrimony.
In trying to do justice to the Keköldi Reserve, the
government created a new problem by once again decreeing lands to the
indigenous community without assisting in the relocation of the non-indigenous
small farmers. Thus, some of the land continued to be occupied by farmers
although it had legally allocated to the Keköldi Reserve.
That solved the conflict with the Afro and other
non-indigenous inhabitants of Cocles for the time being. Notwithstanding, at
the time a group of residents from the Keköldi reserve brought a constitutional
court challenge to the 1996 decree arguing that CONAI lacked the authority to
act as valid representative of the Keköldi indigenous and that the consultation
pursuant to ILO Covenant 169 should have been held on site directly with the
entire population.
What constitutes due consultation is an issue,
however, the fact remains that the reserve boundaries were never demarcated on
site and some of the inhabitants who had settled on the newly designated Keköldi
lands were not made aware that they would never be able to title their
claims. The government made no efforts
to compensate or relocate these people and the Keköldi were left to fight for
their newly designated territory.
This led the Keköldi obtaining legal counsel to file a
legal case in 2011 to reclaim the territory of Carbon, now occupied by small
farmers, but also by foreigners who bought the land from the small farmers. In
Italian businessman - Idolo Augustine Mastronei – claiming that he had bought
land in Carbón in an auction, violently evicted a group of Bribri indigenous
families from “his” land of 50 hectares.
His security guards, accompanied by officers of the judiciary of the
government, violently entered the Keköldi Indigenous Reserve to forcibly remove
the Bribri. A local court resolved the
ownership of the land against Mastronei respecting the 1996 Keköldi borders.
In the judge´s resolution about this case, it is
stated that Carbón belongs to the Reserve and “the Keköldi can also claim
Cocles back is they wish to do so.”
This is how the legal conflict with the Afro Caribbean population and other recent inhabitants reemerged. The outcome of the case gave the land of Carbon back to the Keköldi and the judge of the court told them that they could also claim Cocles.
A lawyer and retired agrarian court judge, Danilo
Chaverri, together with the then President of the Association de Desarrollo de Keköldi,
Demetrio Mayorga, filed the case demanding that Cocles once again become part
of the Reserve. This led the Keköldi to
extend their case to include that coastal land.
What might look like a case of indigenous peoples
against Afro-Costa Ricans is really one of government oversight when assigning
land in the creation of the Bribri Keköldi Indigenous Reserve in 1977 that
overlooked the fact that the land in Cocles was occupied by Afro Costa Ricans
for the last 100 years.
Underlying the historical relationship between the
Afro Costa Ricans and the indigenous people in the Reserve, there has been conflict
over land, but it is mostly characterized by living together, sharing, trading
and mutual respect.
However, the social, cultural and economic needs of
both groups have been historically ignored and marginalized by government
policies and plans.
Talamanca has one of the lowest Human Development
standards in the country, according to United Nations reports in the last
decade. Yet the area is characterized by a number of natural and indigenous
reserves (90% of the Talamanca land), including the Gandoca-Manzanillo Mixed
Wildlife Refuge created in 1985.
In 1982, Cahuita was declared a National Park to
protect important endangered coral reefs. sea turtle nesting takes place on the
beaches of Tuba Creek, Puerto Vargas, Playa Negra and Gandoca. There are also
the Talamanca-Bribri Reserve, the Talamanca-Cabecar Reserve, the Keköldi Bribri
Reserve, and the Hitoy Ceare Biological reserve as well as the bi-national
Amistad Park.
The area in dispute now – Cocles - is populated by a
combination of housing belonging to the descendants of the original Afro
population, homes of people that have bought land from them in the course of
the last 50 years and newcomers continue to arrive.
Small scale hotels, restaurants, cafes and bars, small
eco-tourism businesses (horse rental, surfboard rentals, guided nature walks
through rainforest trails dolphin watching, bird watching, turtle watching,
diving instruction, kayak rentals, Spanish classes, hair braiding, laundry,
food services, fishing, dance classes, etc.) and one five star hotel
characterize the zone.
The vast mountain lands in Talamanca, occupied by the native Bribri and Cabecar peoples and the coastal lands occupied by Afro Costa Ricans and others are located in areas that are highly desirable by transnational and national corporations for the extraction of oil and minerals and for big corporate tourist businesses.
This area is also so close to Panamá and Colombia,
that the territory has also become prey for drug trafficking and is now another
transit location by sea and land, creating serious social problems of addiction
and small scale crime, no different than in the rest of the country.
One characteristic of this area in the Caribbean coast
of Costa Rica is that over the past approximately 12 years, the multi-ethnic
(indigenous, Afros and others) have
together waged successful campaigns against the advent of oil or mining
development by international companies as well as protecting the beach front
from a marina resort project in Puerto Viejo.
Additionally in 2000
a Maharishi sect settled in the United States came to Talamanca to try to offer
to the Bribri and Cabecar Reserve the creation of an equivalent to what today s
now as “model cities”. According to interviews with them and also Bribri, the
Maharshi offered to create “with them” a
new set laws, a passport in the community, a new economic model where each Bribri
and Cabecar family would get a monthly amount of money from the sect in
exchange for the production of land, etc. Together Bribri and coastal
population expelled the project.
Talamanca as a canton rejected Free Trade Agreements
by far in the Referendum that took place in 2007.
Present challenge facing Cocles
In light of the most recent land challenges facing the
community due to the claim by the Keköldi in 2011, local people and their local
social organizations met with Aso Mujeres in Cocles, in more than five public
meetings to decide what to do.
They formed a committee in Cocles, led by ASO Mujeres
under the name “Committee of the Affected People” in September 2011 to give
voice to the people of the community affected by the new claim of the coastal
land by Keköldi.
They want to prevent that the past mistakes by
governments be used as an excuse to open the way for exploitation at the
expense of the people and their environments and for the indigenous peoples to
understand their position about the land claims.
African oral historical narratives, which are
documented in a book by Paula Palmer (Wa'apin Man-The Story of the Talamanca
Coast of Costa Rica, according to its protagonists, 1977) show that
historically the indigenous population came down from the mountains to work
temporarily in the cacao farms owned predominantly by Afro Caribbean
farmers, and to bring their own products
to trade and sell, but their communities were further inland. .
"What now seems a conflict between these
populations, has its origins in a series of irregular situations created by the
government of Costa Rica, through ignorance or lack of interest in us"
said Seidy Ortiz at one of the meetings.
She is a fourth-generation Afro-Costa Rican resident of Cocles.
Juanita Segundo Sánchez, leader and member of the Keköldi
Development Association of the Reserve, told Escribana in 2011 that she
believes that although the Bribri did not occupy the coastal lands as such -
because they lived in the highlands - they had trails in the shoreline, which
show that they occupied such lands for their mobility. “Our claim to the land
has to do with the amount of abuses that have been committed against us too.”
ASO Mujeres and the Keköldi women share concerns of
development models that exclude and exploit natural and cultural resources that
ensure the livelihoods of longtime inhabitants. They both want the same for
their children: to continue to live in the lands where they were born and have
access to their rights as citizens and residents and services: water,
education, health, pensions, respect for cultural identity, sustainable
livelihoods, etc.
That is what motivated Aso Mujeres to create a
bulletin ‘Journey Cake’ to share the perspective of their community but in
contrast mainstream media in the country only featured the indigenous claim,
rendering the Afros and other dwellers n Cocles and Playa Chiquita invisible
once again.
As of April 2013 the outcome of this conflict is still
to be seen. A reconciliation processes might be under way, as the Kekoldi seem
to be ready to undertake an out of court conciliation process. Juanita Sánchez
told Escribana on May 1st of this year that although the Kekoldi
Board of their Association had not met and the community has not been consulted
yet, more than half of the members of the Board of the Association have reached
an idea about the need to prevent a court conflict by seeking an out of court
agreement with the Costa Rica State so that the areas of Cocles that are
populated would remain on the hands of is settlers and the forest land that in
unoccupied be returned to them.
Eventually, last April, the KEKOLDI presented a
request in court for an out of court conciliation that would settle the dispute
without a trial in a negotiated process.
The conciliation process has been rejected by the
Instituto de Desarrollo Agrario (IDA) )one of the government organizations in
the court case), meaning that the case will have to got to court and as part of
it, the inhabitants of Cocles that have not been heard yet have to present
their defense in court.
(end)
*The Keköldi are part of the Bribri ethnic group in
the southern highlands of Costa Rica that were never colonized by the Spaniard
Conquista 500 years ago. They presently live in Reserves in the areas where
they always lived. One of them is the Keköldi Reserve in the mountains closest
to the coastal land of Cocles.
**ASO Mujeres is a not for profit association created
in 2010 that promotes organization and empowerment of female entrepreneurs in
local development. It has brought together 36 women who run small businesses in
Puerto Viejo and surrounding communities in the Southern Caribbean coast of
Talamanca in Limón, Costa Rica.
