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2016 Cultural, Social, and Environmental Effects of Tourism: A Case Study on Coastal Costa Rica Thuy-Linh Pham

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THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

Cultural, Social, and Environmental Effects of Tourism: A Case Study on Coastal Costa Rica

By

THUY-LINH PHAM

A Thesis submitted to the Department of Anthropology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with Honors in the Major

Degree Awarded: Fall, 2016

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The members of the Defense Committee approve the thesis of Thuy-Linh Pham defended on November 28, 2016.

______

Dr. Kristin Dowell

Co-Thesis Director

______

Dr. Joseph Hellweg

Co-Thesis Director

Outside Committee Member

______

Dr. Rochelle A. Marrinan

Committee Member

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Acknowledgements

First, I would like to thank Florida State University’s Social Science Scholar Program for providing me with the funds to travel throughout Costa Rica to collect data, especially Dr.Mayo and Dr. Taylor who assisted me in determining the best process.

I would also like to Dr. Romanchuk for pushing me to conduct my own research after working on his projects for the last couple years.

Lastly, I would like to thank Dr. Dowell, Dr. Hellweg, and Dr. Marrinan for serving on my thesis committee. I know that the process has been less than ideal with timing, but I appreciate all the time and effort they have put into this project, which has been a dream of mine since I was a child.

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Table of Contents

Chapter I: Introduction ...... 5 Significance ...... 6 Chapter II: Background ...... 9 Overview of Costa Rica ...... 14 Theory...... 10 Contact Zones...... 10 Commodification and Tourism...... 12 Surfing...... 16 Chapter III: Methodology ...... 17 Data Collection ...... 18 Sample Population...... 19 Chapter IV: Ethnographic Data…...... 23 Global and Local Tourism Industry: How “Eco” is Ecotourism? ...... 23 Surfing: The Creation of a Subculture...... 27 Identity and Belonging: Mas Tico que Gallo Pinto ...... 31 Chapter V: Conclusion...... 36 Appendix A: Interview Questions...... 37 Appendix B: A Brief History of Costa Rica...... 38 Appendix C: A Brief History of Surfing...... 42 Appendix D: Epilogue...... 46 Bibliography ...... 47

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Introduction

If I could define Costa Rica with one phrase, I would say “Pura Vida!” From the rural coastal town of Uvita, to the tourist metropolis of Jaco, to the small mountain town of

Monteverde, many locals I conversed with used this motto. The phrase was one of the first in

Spanish that I heard when I landed in the small, lush, and tropical Central American country.

Pura Vida means “pure life” in English, but it means much more to a Costa Rican local or resident. The phrase can function as a greeting such as “hello” or “goodbye,” or a response to myriad questions such as “how are you” or “what are you doing.” But to locals, the true meaning of the phrase transcends these mundane usages. Pura Vida epitomizes the general, optimistic, casual, and tranquil Costa Rican lifestyle built upon relationships between people and the relationships between people and the environment. It was the intersection between complex local-tourist relationships and the environment that inspired the focus of my research.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and discuss these complex local-tourist interactions.

Surfing is a major constituent of the tourism industry. This paper will delineate how surfers, local and foreign, create a subculture. This paper will also analyze how these local-tourist interactions shape the environment within what Mary-Louise Pratt (1991) calls “contact zones” through the process of commodification. Especially in coastal Costa Rica, the global and local tourist industries struggle with local residents to determine who has claims on the place.

Whoever holds legitimate claim has the power to determine how that space is defined and used.

The claiming of a space within a contact zone can be done through the strategic use of resources as language, capital, knowledge and the understanding and manipulation of the physical environment. Pham 6

First, I will describe Mary-Louise Pratt’s (1991) concept of “contact zones”. Next, I will discuss the scholarly discourse on tourism especially that of ecotourism, cultural tourism and recreational tourism and their merits with regard to sustainability. Then, I will provide a brief history of surfing in Costa Rica and its importance to the tourism industry. Finally, I will provide an analysis of my ethnographic data that illustrate the complexities of local-tourist interactions and their implications on the environment. In particular, I will show how local-tourist interactions in Costa Rica and their cultural, environmental, economic, and political implications challenge popular and scholarly assumptions that locals universally rebuke the degradation of the environment and local culture that result from tourism. In fact, in Costa Rica, such degradation is encouraged by local practices as well as the global tourism industry.

Significance

At the 1980 World Tourism Conference, the World Tourism Organization declared that tourism was “an activity essential to the life of nations because of its direct effects on the social, cultural, educational, and economic sectors of national societies and on their international relations” (UNWTO 1980:1). The growing number of nations fostering tourism as one of their largest and fastest growing economic sectors leads to a drastic increase in voluntary mass migration for tourism and permanent relocation. Mass movements of people result in the increase of unique contact zones as visiting tourist cultures encounter other cultures in the host country.

Ecotourism, cultural tourism, and recreational tourism are several of Costa Rica’s most attractive demographic pull factors. Recent scholarly discourse focuses on the “social, economic, and environmental merits” of ecotourism and its relation to cultural and recreational tourism by questioning its eco-friendliness and sustainability (Stronza 2001:263). Pham 7

Amanda Stronza (2001) criticizes recent anthropological research on tourism for resulting in a partial analysis, either by primarily focusing on the impact of tourism on locals or on factors spurring tourism through an examination of tourists themselves. She posits that new anthropological research should seek to answer questions such as these: “On the host end, what are some of the factors that can explain particular kinds of local involvement in tourism? On the guest end, what are the differential effects of certain kinds of tourism on guests’ attitudes and behaviors, both in the midst of their tour and once they have returned home?” This thesis contributes to this new research by focusing on the interactions between locals and tourists in

“contact zones” and how interactions cause social, cultural, economic, and environmental change. My research will provide insight into and support for a critique on the sustainability of ecotourism and cultural tourism within “contact zones.”

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Figure 1: Map of Costa Rica

Public Domain Source: WPClipart

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Background

Overview of Costa Rica

Costa Rica comprises only one percent of the world’s landmass, yet holds over five percent of its biodiversity (World Factbook 2016), which makes ecotourism a particularly important industry for the country. Tourism there began its rise as a an important economic sector in the

1980s as the country’s wealthy entrepreneurs created businesses to cater to domestic tourists.

The government later invested into the industry to encourage international tourism and formed the Costa Rican Tourism Institute (Honey 2008:162). “Zero to 22 percent of Costa Rica’s foreign exchange earnings and 7 to 8 percent of its GDP” results from tourism (Honey 2008:163). In some areas of the country tourism generates “sixty-five to seventy percent” of the local or regional income (Honey 2008:189). Forty percent of Costa Rica’s visitors are American, drawn by as some of the world’s most renowned surf locations, several cultural destinations such as The

Monteverde Cloud Forest as well as indigenous groups such as the Boruca and the BriBri

(Honey 2008:185).

Because of ecotourism’s importance to the country’s income and heritage, the government has implemented strong conservation policies. Costa Rica is one of the most environmentally progressive countries in the world and is ranked in the top fifty most sustainable countries in the world. It plans to be carbon neutral within the next decade, has banned recreational hunting, and protects twenty-four percent of its total land mass. Costa Rica’s environmentalism was encouraged first by the abolishment of its national army in 1948 and, second by its debt-for- nature agreement with the United States in 2007, which forgave twenty-six million dollars of

Costa Rica’s debt in 2007 for protecting its tropical rainforests (Conservation International

2007). As a part of the country’s environmentalism, Costa Rica’s Tourism Board implemented Pham 10 the Certification of Sustainable Tourism program, which rates businesses on a scale of zero to five green leaves (LePree 2008:63). A business can earn a leaf by having a certain number of environmentally friendly programs or features, such as composting, recycling, and solar powered buildings.

In 2016 Costa Rica has a population of 4,872,543 and is demographically diverse as a result of its complex history (see appendix A). Its large Caucasian population (eighty-four percent of the total) is a result of Western tourists, primarily expatriates and retirees, who become permanent residents (CIA 2016). Eighty percent of real estate buyers are American. In addition, nine percent of the population is a result of the mass displacement of citizens as a result of the

Nicaraguan Civil War (Nygren 1999:270). Nicaraguans make up a majority of Costa Rica’s immigrant population and they do Costa Ricans do not wish to, such as legalized sex work and construction. This has led to the scapegoating of the Nicaraguan population for the country’s misfortunes such as reduced job availability and social conflict (Sandoval-Garcia 2004:xiv). In this thesis, I explore how all these dynamics have combined to create a precarious situation for the future of Costa Rican ecotourism.

Theory Contact Zones Mary Louise Pratt, in her talk, The Art of Contact Zones (1991), and James Clifford, in his book, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (1997), use the term

“contact zones” to refer to “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today” (Pratt 1991:34). For

Pratt (1991:35) a contact zone functions as a physical stage and main driver of social, cultural, Pham 11 environmental, and economic changes through the process of “transculturation,” “whereby members of subordinated or marginal groups select and invent from materials transmitted by a dominant metropolitan culture.” Clifford’s (1997) application of Pratt’s concept illustrates the complexities of interactions between different cultures. Clifford (1997:192) characterizes contact zones by “their organizing structure as a collection becomes an ongoing historical, political, moral relationship––a power-charged set of exchanges, of push and pull.” Clifford’s (1997) reference to the historical contingency and exchanges within these places applies to the contact zones in Costa Rica, where current and future local-tourist interactions are a result of an ongoing process that began many decades ago. Local-tourist interactions in Costa Rican are characterized by the voluntary transculturation of local residents and tourist and/or the resistance to transculturation and the commoditized “commons” that result from tourism.

This thesis will make use of Michel DeCerteau’s concepts of “space and place,” which play a pivotal role in contact zones. Place is defined as the raw physical material of a natural or constructed environment, while space is the aggregate of the values and experiences assigned by the people within the place (1984:171). I also employ Pierre Bordieu’s notions of “cultural capital and social capital”, delineated in his influential article “The Forms of Capital” (1986).

Populations and the cultures they identify with are engaged in a struggle to determine how and by whom space will be defined. Spaces can have multiple layers of meaning, but these layers are hierarchical because of the unequal distributions of cultural and social capital difference.

Individuals and groups in power determine not only how space is defined, but also who can participate there based on markers such as socioeconomic status, ethnicity, gender, age, or language.

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Commodification and Tourism

Under capitalism, a space has either what Marx called use-value or exchange-value. Dino

Franco Felluga of Perdue University (2002) outlines Marx’s distinction between use-value and exchange-value follows:

Use-value is inextricably tied to "the physical properties of the commodity" (Marx 1955:

126); that is, the material uses to which the object can actually be put, the human needs it

fulfills. In the exchange of goods on the capitalist market, however, exchange-value

dominates: two commodities can be exchanged on the open market because they are

always being compared to a third term that functions as their "universal equivalent," a

function that is eventually taken over by money.

Small business and local residents and business owners can often define a space by its use- value in terms of providing a space of resident, recreation, and/or place of income. By contrast, the high-end tourist industry, through hotels and resorts, can define a space by its exchange-value in terms of the monetary flow associated with the people it attracts.

Costa Rica’s environmental, cultural, economic, social, and political issues are a result of this commodification. Global tourist companies appropriate the land from locals by purchasing iy land and excluding them. These companies have taken the use-value of land and exchanged it for tourist money for profit by selling the use value of the land to the tourist. This is an exploitive process that creates a crisis of production. These global tourist industries exhaust the land of its resources until the company can no longer garnish money from it and then moves on to the next location that has more resources. Tourists and locals play important roles in this process because they unconsciously perpetuate the process. Tourists, especially surfers, lament the destruction of the environment because they cannot use it like they did before, although in fact they led to its Pham 13 demise. Renato Rosaldo (1989:70) refers to such mourning of an object as “imperialist nostalgia.”

Tourism functions by exchanging the use-value of landscapes such as beaches for tourist capital, commodifying all it touches. John Urry, a British Sociologist in his book The Tourist

Gaze (1990) defines tourism as:

a leisure activity which presupposes its opposite, namely regulated organized

work; tourism relationships arise from the movement of people to, and their stay in,

various destinations; the journey and stay are to, and in, sites, which are outside the

normal places of residence and work; a substantial proportion of the population of

modern societies engages in such tourist practices; places are chosen to be gazed upon

because there is an anticipation, especially through day-dreaming and fantasy of intense

pleasures…anticipation constructed and sustained through a variety of non-tourist

practices such as film, television, literature, magazines, records and videos, which

construct and reinforce the gaze; an array of tourist professionals develop who attempt to

reproduce ever-new objects for the tourist gaze.

Ecotourism, cultural tourism, and recreational tourism revolve around the businesses that result from the tourist gaze and commodification of the land, culture, and activities — of the

“commons,” in short (Hardt and Negry 2009: viii). Tourism poses particular benefits such as economic development, increased diversity, and enhanced conservation to both the travelers and locals within a tourist country. By the same token commodification may also cause harm in the form of environmental degradation and growing economic disparity. Tourism and associated demographic change increase cultural encounters by attracting travelers from around the world to Pham 14 various destinations. Travelers may visit these destinations for leisure and to experience peoples, places, and activities that are novel or unavailable to the traveler in their home.

Martha Honey (2008:29), a significant scholar in ecotourism research, defines ecotourism as a form of tourism based on eight criteria: it “involves travel to natural destinations, minimizes impact, builds environmental awareness, provides direct financial benefits for conservation, provides financial benefits and empowerment for local people, respects local culture, and supports human rights and democratic movements.” Ecotourism attractions need not possess all eight features to be considered as ecotourism. Both ecotourism and cultural tourism present a paradox. The very act of visiting such destinations in order to interact or admire them destroys or degrades the environment where they exist, whether directly or indirectly. For example, transportation vehicles such as planes and cars produce emissions that are harmful to air and water quality, diminishing conditions for wildlife. Tourism businesses such as hotels and resorts, must build infrastructure such as buildings and roads in order to accommodate and encourage travelers to visit. Such construction entails the modification and destruction of the land to clear a path for these infrastructures. Travelers imagine they are visiting the “wild,” yet their visits vitiate that concept because the “wild” has been altered by human activity. For example, many animals in Costa Rica such as Capuchin Monkeys and Macaws depend on humans for sustenance because tourists feed them to lure them in for a closer encounter (Orams 2002:284).

In an attempt to ameliorate these impacts, countries such as Costa Rica where tourism serves as the primary economic driver seek to create conservation policies that will prolong and maintain the qualitative and/or quantitative aspects of the environment in order to reap the long term benefits of its commodification. Such policies function as a buffer against one of the features of capitalism that David Harvey (2001:121) calls the “factory of fragmentation.” Pham 15

Capitalist business often drain an area of its resources until it no longer possesses a suitable exchange value. They then uproot and replant themselves at another location with more of the same resources, repeating the cycle, leaving abandoned lands and facilities in their wake.

Cultural tourism suffers a similar paradox. Cultural tourists visit other destinations in order to be exposed to (Smith 2012:32), what they imagine is another authentic culture, and yet their visits promote inauthenticity as locals attract business by providing travelers with what they desire. A traveler may have a stereotyped image or concept of a culture that they wish to experience, but despite the fact that the image or concept is inaccurate, tourist workers will

(re)create the image or concept for the sake of business. Jeremy MacClancy (2002) provides examples of such interactions. He focuses on local sentiments and behavior toward outsiders, frequently manifested as resentment due to outsiders’ sense of entitlement, as well as their taking up space and opportunity that locals feel belong to them (McClancy 2002:419). MacClancy

(2002:420) demonstrates how these negative feelings lead locals to hide parts of their real lives from tourists and (re)create inauthentic cultural traditions to show instead.

Tourist businesses generate income by keeping visitors inside a “tourist bubble” that creates a “right to ignorance” which shields them from the environmental, social, and economic realities of the places they visit (Carrier and Macleod 2005:316). Costa Rica and other similar tropical destinations are marketed as “paradise.” Since “paradise” is not supposed to have problems with water, pollution, income disparities, or social injustices, large estates of land are reserved for tourists where living arrangements and amenities are provided, subtly dissuading tourists from leaving the resort.

Lastly, conspicuous waste and consumption are also parts of the processes of commodification and tourism. For example, a surfer may buy a surfboard, which later breaks Pham 16 after one season of use. Instead of repairing it, the surfer buys a new one. Thorstein Veblen’s

Theory of the Working Leisure Class (1899) explains that individual or group power and wealth are insufficiently conspicuous on their own. The individual or group in question consciously and/or unconsciously also exhibits their power and wealth through status markers of possessions, activities, and by engaging in waste. Others who want to resemble these individuals or groups will aspire to have the same brands and objects as markers of their own status. When individuals have enough wealth, they can discard a broken object because they can easily replace it rather than having it repaired. Tourists who are affluent enough to take time off to go on lavish trips litter, creating problems of waste disposal. They may also leave possessions behind as gifts for guides or because they were purchased for use on site and are no longer needed.

Surfing

Like many subcultures, the subculture of surfing is defined by distinct language, visual indicators, body gestures, shared sentiments about the beach use, and ways of inclusion and exclusion (Hebdige 1979:84). Surfing is often likened to the lifestyle of cowboys because an individual rides a singular object — a surfboard, looking for the new frontier—the next good wave. The selfish nature, referring to the goal of a single rider looking to be the surfer of the next good wave, of the sport creates aggressive and territorial methods of inclusion and exclusion, from entering the sport itself and then inserting oneself into a local environment (Butts 2001).

Unwritten rules and rites of passage need to be followed to prove a surfer’s place in the hierarchy. These unwritten rules and rites of passage that determine inclusion and exclusion are shaped the rich history of surfing (see appendix b). Whether by showing that they know who has right of way or by displaying skills in riding a wave. Pham 17

Surfing, like other sports, has its own jargon. For example, there are three different types of surfing locations — beach breaks, point breaks, and reef breaks, only beach and point breaks will be focused on in this paper. These are determined by physical features of the ocean floor and shorelines, which determine the location of waves, which in turn dictate where the line-up will be (Brown). The line-up refers to the linear orientation of surfers in the water waiting to compete for the next wave. A beach break results from a more linear beach with a parallel sand bar. The line-up at the beach break mimics the linear formation of the sandbar and the shore. Point-breaks result from an inlet or curved shoreline, where the waves are not created by a sandbar, but by the friction created by currents as they hit shore. Unlike the beach where surfers have a widespread area to wait and catch waves, point-breaks have a single spot where the waves are optimal.

Knowing how to exploit these dynamics distinguishes good surfers from bad ones, as does knowing where to find optimal conditions to surf. Costa Rica is one of those locations, where tourist marketing focuses on attracting surfers by advertising the country as one of the world’s surf Meccas because of its abundance of both beach and point-breaks.

Methodology

During the summer of 2016, I spent the month of July traveling to eleven towns along the west coast of Costa Rica during a study-abroad trip with the University of Georgia’s Surfing and

Sustainability Program. Every two to three days I traveled to a new town. By visiting multiple sites, the program seeks to provide students with a more holistic view of how tourism has changed various regions of Costa Rica. This enabled me to conduct a multi-site ethnographic research project. Towns ranged from small, rural, coastal and mountainous communities to large tourist cities. I traveled with the environmental anthropologist Dr. Peter Brosius, Tanya Ortega a teaching assistant who has lived in Costa Rica for more than a decade, and eleven of my student colleagues. The program consisted of hands-on participatory work such as ethnographic Pham 18 interview sessions and participant observation activities. I stayed in an array of accommodations from hotels to huts to camps on the beach.

My initial research plan focused on ethnoecologies, the study of how locals view and understand the environment. However, the great majority of my conversations and interactions involved my informants talking about local-tourist interactions. These encounters led to my gathering data on how tourism affects the country, the community, the individual, and the environment — physically, socially, economically, and culturally. These frequent conversation shifts in my interviews led me to alter of my project to focus on how the commodification of tourism has shaped local-tourists interactions and concomitant changes in the social and physical environments.

Data Collection

I decided to conduct a qualitative study based on Michael Agar’s Speaking of

Ethnography (1986) which work delineates the benefits and characteristics of qualitative design, how it fits in many domains of research, and the criticisms and points of vulnerability of such research in comparison to quantitative research. Agar highlighted key techniques that should be utilized when designing the research methodology, particularly in ethnographic research. I used qualitative methods such as formal and informal interviews, journaling, field notes, and participant observation to gather my ethnographic data. Using Emerson et als Writing

Ethnographic Fieldnotes (1995) as a guide, I used double entries for my field notes, in which I jotted down terse phrases and words during my interviews and participant observation, which I later elaborated on my own. This allowed me to take notes without making my interviewee uncomfortable by taking extensive notes during interviews. I wanted the interviewee to know that they had my attention. I also kept a daily journal to record my reactions throughout my trip. I Pham 19 participated in major festivals, such as Guanacaste Day, which celebrates the annexation of

Guanacaste by Costa Rica, and in activities such as surfing.

In addition to my field notes and participant observation, I did formal interviews, having received approval from Florida State University’s Institutional Review Board to do so. I audio recorded of the interviews after interviewees read and signed consent forms that explained the project and their rights. I quickly realized however, that formal interviews made informants ambivalent and even inhibited with me because such formality was not habitual. Costa Rican communities and their population are generally relaxed and easy-going, which helps promote the leisurely lifestyle that many locals project in accord with the tropical atmosphere that they want to create for business.

After two formal interview sessions, I decided to rely on informal interviews which resulted in more organic interactions with my informants. Less formality helped to build rapport with them and provide me with more meaningful insights. Although Costa Rica’s official language is Spanish, a large portion of the population speaks English due to the tourism industry.

I have advanced low proficiency in Spanish (American Council of Teaching Foreign Languages

– equivalent) and conducted interviews in both Spanish and English, depending on the informant’s preference.

Sample Population

I interviewed a total of thirty-seven individuals: twenty-four were men and thirteen were women. I wanted at least thirty interviews, fifteen with men and fifteen with women. I chose interviewees between the ages of eighteen and sixty-five who were not pregnant. I randomly selected them upon my arrival on a site and asked a selection of the questions listed in Appendix

A, in no particular order. It was not until I started analyzing my data that I realized that my Pham 20 interview ratio between males and females was two to one, but I realized that this was a byproduct of the demographics of the places where I conducted interviews. There were more men than women at beaches and in the water given the gender dynamics of surfing and other activities in Costa Rica. I noticed that the Costa Rican men I encountered had more outgoing personalities and were more willing to talk with me than their female counterparts. Both men and women who were tourists seemed equally willing to speak with me. I have assigned pseudonyms to all individuals mentioned in this thesis.

I have grouped my interviewees by distinct characteristics such as occupation, activity, or family history. Each category will include the number of individuals and a brief contextualization of the individuals whose interviews I discuss. These categories are not mutually exclusive, and individuals may occupy one or more of the categories at the same time.

For the purpose and length of this thesis, I will use data collected from nineteen out of the thirty- seven interviews I conducted.

I will now discuss the range of people I interviewed to give a sense of the diverse populations meeting in the contact zones I studied. Ten out of the thirty-seven individuals I interviewed owned their own businesses which included souvenir shops, restaurants, yoga studios, bookstores, farms, surfing schools, and hotels. I will use data from two out of these ten interviews. Katherine Bodega, for instance, owns her own souvenir shop in Jaco, a city on the

Midwestern part of country. She and her entire family are from Costa Rica, and she grew up in

San Jose, the capital. I interviewed her in the middle of the day inside her shop, and hers was one of the two formal interviews I conducted. I met Jeffrey Ruiz in Mal Pais, which I would characterize as an town intermediate town between a small village and a large tourist city like Pham 21

Jaco or Tamarindo. Jeffrey moved to Costa Rica almost twenty years ago from South America and owns his own souvenir shop. Jeffrey also owns his own surfing school.

Three out of the thirty-seven individuals owned their own surfing schools. I met Arnold

Mendoza at Playa Hermosa, a beach primarily surfed by expert or intermediate level surfers because of the strong currents. Arnold’s surf school offers video recordings of students to help improve their techniques, which was a unique feature among surfing schools. When I met

Arnold, he was recording one of his students in the water.

Four out of the thirty-seven individuals worked in a tourist business. Louis Vargas worked at a tour guide business in Uvita and was one of the first people I met in Costa Rica. He gave our group a two-hour long walking tour guide through the community. Julio Morales works at a surf shop in Dominical, a rural community just north of Uvita, as a clerk and surfing instructor. He came to Costa Rica from Argentina, he said, for the friendly people and the waves. Dominical is known for its large outdoor market with many artisans selling their handmade work.

Two out of the thirty-seven individuals were tourists. While surfing at Playa Grande, I met

Natalie Clark, a school teacher from the U.S. who was one of the very few women surfers I encountered throughout my entire stay in Costa Rica. She visits Costa Rica every summer, along with her husband and son. She initiated our first conversation which is uncharacteristic when surfing for reasons that I will explain later.

Three out of the thirty-seven individuals were executives of their own non-governmental organizations (NGO). Kathy Madera operates an NGO that seeks to conserve water on the

Nicoya Peninsula through educational programs about waste water and solid waste that makes their ways into bodies of water. Three out of the thirty-five individuals were turtle conservationists or worked at animal refuges. Pham 22

Sixteen of the thirty-seven individuals were surfers. My colleague Tanya Ortega and her boyfriend Peter Ochoa moved to Costa Rica for its waves. Tanya moved after her graduate degree in the U.S. about 10 years ago and learned Spanish when she arrived in Costa Rica. Peter moved from Venezuela around the same time and works as a surf instructor. Tanya and Peter functioned because my informants as they traveled with us the entire month. The surf shop owners and the next two individuals were also included in this count of surfer interviews.

Two of the thirty-seven individuals came from families who were the first to settle in their communities. Tyler Anderson and Adam Fuentes were close friends who grew up together.

Tyler’s family was one of the first white families to settle in their part of the Nicoya Peninsula, whereas Adam’s was one of the first Costa Rican families. These two interviewees were particularly helpful because they settled in an area that serves as a reference point of how the town was like before the effects of tourism. They were able to tell me how much the area had changed since they were born.

Two out of the thirty-seven interviews came from hotel managers. Luke Navarro and Flavio

Mejia were hotel managers of two different five-leaf hotels in Nosara. From them, I learned from them about the Certification of Sustainable Tourism and the seasonality of tourism in Costa Rica.

My last category of interviewees comprises of four miscellaneous individuals. I formally interviewed Burke Trujillo at the market in Dominical. I interviewed Vincent Santos, an architect designing sustainable buildings that are minimally disruptive to the environment. I learned from

Vincent about Costa Rica’s construction, tax, and zoning policies, which helped me to understand the fragmented nature of development throughout Costa Rica. I also interviewed a group of individuals who work at an illegal waste dump in Nosara. I will refer to this group as the Nosara recycling team. They do not work for any organization and collect trash from areas of Pham 23 town that do not pay for the town’s waste service pick-up. The group then sorts through the trash and recycles appropriate materials to sell to third party buyers.

Ethnographic Data

Global and Local Tourism Industry: How “Eco” is “Ecotourism?

According to Luke Navarro and Flavio Mejia, the owners of two different five-leaf hotels, there are three visitation seasons in Costa Rica: green, high, and holiday. These seasons determine business practices and marketing strategies based on the resources available during a particular season. The green season refers to Costa Rica’s rainy season that runs from late April to early November, the high seasons corresponds to the dry weather Costa Rica experiences from mid-November to mid-April, and the holiday season refers to the Thanksgiving and Christmas season in the U.S. These seasons are important because employment rates and pricing vary throughout the year. The green season is the time of lowest tourist traffic. It corresponds to summer during which eighty percent of Americana can enjoy the warmth at home, and for that reason is the slowest time of year for business in Costa Rica. These seasons serve as the temporal foundation of tourism in Costa Rica.

Because ecotourism is one of the most important kinds of tourism in Costa Rica, many travelers claim to be environmentally-minded and seek sustainable businesses to support during their visit. Although certifications of sustainable and organic business practices have increased in

Costa Rica, critical questions arise about the extent of ecological mindedness in various ecotourism businesses. Luis and Flavio used the term, “green washing,” to refer to a hotel’s claims that it is sustainable without actually following the guidelines to which it claims to adhere. Luke’s hotel currently has five-leaves, whereas Flavio claimed that his hotel had five Pham 24 leaves in 2015, but the hotel opted not to seek a rating this year because of the politics of the certification process

One requirement for a tourist establishment to keep the five-leaf ranking is to continue to develop sustainable approaches to hotel and tourist management. Flavio’s hotel fulfilled all the requirements for certification but could not improve much more because it had exhausted the certification’s list of programs and/or features. Hotel managers like Flavio criticize the fact that certification recognizes only the most expensive sustainable methods that only wealthy owners can afford. Some of the hotels I toured that claimed to meet the demands of these innovative environmental programs were indeed lavish, but they seemed to be advertising their programs and certifications to appeal to customers, not to conserve the environment.

Such business practices, which do not seem to align with their environmental certifications raise critical questions about ecotourism, provoking scholars like Stronza (2001) to call for research that focuses on the implications of local-tourist interactions on the environment and social and cultural relations. Critical questions also arise because of the constant flow of tourists coming to view the country’s natural features that directly and/or indirectly degrade what they are coming to appreciate or save due to carbon emissions from their flights and travel, intense waste and pollution, and destruction of habitats to build infrastructure to accommodate tourists and residents. Hotels and resorts in particular are major drivers of environmental degradation. Since the government’s investment in international tourism in the 1980s, hotels and resorts have played a pivotal role in perpetuating the tourist bubble by providing for their clients’ needs within the confines of their resorts. Catering to those needs requires the commodification of the environment, culture, and recreational activities for the tourist to see and do. Although building alternative spaces for leisure and living attracts certain types of travelers, such as Pham 25 ecologically-minded tourists and surfers, in the very process of erecting tourist-related edifices they will eventually deter the target groups as a result of the environmental consequences of construction. For example, hotels require abundant water resources for features such as swimming pools. In areas like Santa Teresa, a town in the Northwestern region of the country, many hotels and resorts have to import water from neighboring communities to sustain their high occupancy levels and amenities. This poses a problem because of the time of year when water is most in demand. High season corresponds to lower amounts of water because of low levels of rainfall, which makes water access difficult. The past four years has seen drought as a result of

El Niño during which people have had to ration their water, making the situation even more difficult.

According to Kathy, even without the presence of hotels and resorts, many municipalities already have difficulties managing water and waste treatment and water for current residents in the context of small-scale construction projects. The construction of major hotels and resorts entails infrastructural modifications to enhance access to facilities, which explains the rapid expansion of highways and roads. The growth of non-permeable surfaces such as parking lots, asphalt roads, and buildings increases surface run-off, which alters the movement and magnitude of ocean currents by decreasing infiltration of water through the soil. More runoff goes directly to the ocean. Surface runoff also rises and falls depending on the season, creating impromptu waterways in search of an escape route to the ocean, eroding the land along the way. Runoff also carries debris and pollution which can lead to algae blooms as well as waterways and roads littered with trash. Despite businesses marketing Costa Rica’s pristine beaches and forests to tourists, such developments actually deter those tourist groups from returning due to the environmental degradation the business has caused. Pham 26

According to Kathy Madera, the director of a local NGO that works with water quality and access, “water mafias” have increased in Santa Teresa due to the increased reallocation of water. Water mafias are companies that sell copious amounts of water for residential use. The intense water usage and disposal by hotels and resorts, coupled with immense amounts of run-off water create strong streams that make their way into the ocean. These streams create a visible difference in water quality, as seen off the coast of Durban, Kwazulu Natal, South Africa, in

Figure 1, and cause unseen changes to the contours of the ocean floor, which then alters the quality and quantity of waves for surfing. Once tourists learn why the water looks the way it does and what is in it they choose not to swim or surf, particularly since they can see what the water should look like within their field of vision.

Figure 1: The properties of the different water types prevent the mixing of the two (Getty Images).

Solid waste also increases during the high seasons because of higher population density, resulting in the growth of illegal landfills and litter throughout towns. High tourist traffic areas like beaches and major travel routes are always well maintained because businesses want to attract tourists. However, as I traveled inland and away from these high traffic areas, I saw plenty of unorganized trash and wildlife feeding on it. I visited the illegal trash dump in Nosara and interviewed the Nosara recycling group who informed me about the solid waste habits of the Pham 27 local communities throughout the year. Nosara does have a trash pick-up service, but many locals do not see the service as necessary or too expensive, yet still throwing their waste into the street. This behavior coupled with runoff created by non-permeable surfaces creates polluted water mixed with trash. The recyclers claimed that tourists separate their recyclables from the trash more than the locals, which brings up the issue of who is most responsible for preserving the local environment. Burke Trujillo, the housekeeper in Dominical, made similar claims saying that tourists take care of the environment more than locals do.

Surfing: The Creation of a Subculture

Despite intense marketing strategies designed to attract surfers and tourists who want to learn to surf, hotels have unwittingly begun to deter these target groups because of the ways they are changing the very attraction that brought these travelers them to Costa Rica in the first place: waves. The degradation of the land and water with pollution and trash that resulted from hotel construction and service alters the quantity and quality of waves that surfers pine for. Surfers are one of the major groups of tourists who come to Costa Rica for the consistent, year round, large swells off the coast and the warm water that cannot be found off the coasts of California and

Florida, in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, respectively. I interviewed many local and traveling surfers, in and out of the water, whether they have lived in Costa Rica their whole lives and their family has lived there for generations or whether they have only visited Costa Rica a couple times a year for a week at a time. All agreed that beach and wave quality have severely declined in the past couple of decades as a result of the commodification of the environment, culture, and recreational activities such as surfing.

Surfers also told me about other consequences of these trends. One such consequence is the appearance of figures I call imposters. With the commodification of surfing in the media, Pham 28 such individuals seek the surfing lifestyle without bothering to learn the unspoken rules of the water. These imposters, who have only recently learned the sport yet claim to be experts, brag about their (minimal) talents and even offer instruction. Other consequences of the increase in surf tourism are environmental and social. Pollution, waste, and water problems are associated with the resorts surfers stay at and beaches they visit. These environmental issues, finally, cause tensions in relationships between locals and surf tourists when local surfers are left with the degraded environment caused by tourists.

I witnessed the degradation of water quality when I went surfing at a point break in

Cabuya on July 17, 2016, where the water looked identical to the water in Durban (as shown in

Figure 1). Even as a beginning surfer I did not want to venture into the brownish water containing waste water and runoff coming out of the estuary mouth. This water is frequented by crocodiles all the more easily hidden in the murky flow. In addition, I had numerous encounters in the water with trash and microplastics — plastic objects broken down through years of being out at sea under sun exposure. The trash and waste concerned me not only because of my health but also that of the marine life. While surfing at the same location I saw several sea turtles swimming nearby for several hours.

At another surf location, Playa Grande, I met Natalie Clark, one of few women whom I saw and met in the line-up there. She said that in the past she was able to find wave after

“perfect” wave without a problem, but that things had changed in recent years. Natalie distinguished “perfect” waves by their size, smoothness, and speed. The waves that morning were small and slow, and not “perfect.” Jeffrey Ruiz said similar things about the changes in waves due to the altered contour of the ocean floor, whose ultimate cause is construction using non-permeable surfaces. He, like other surfers I met, conceded that mediocre days in the water Pham 29 are better than not being in the water at all, but I eventually saw the surfers’ disappointment that mediocre days now far outnumbered good ones. In addition to the quantity of waves, their quality determines if surfers will return to a given beach.

Crowding was another theme that almost every surfer I met raised. According to them, apart from the quantity and quality of the waves, it was the main factor that most determined how their day at the beach went. Crowding has resulted from the commodification of surfing through advertising and the media (Butts 2001). Many individuals come seeking the surfing lifestyle, but only poorly learn the unspoken rules of the water — for example, the surfer who is closest to the peak of the break (crest) has the right of way and other surfers must retreat — and claim to know much while actually knowing very little (Preston-Whyte 2002:319). The increase in interested surfers and the presence of the hotels that host them has crowded the line-up, which sours the surfing atmosphere and the bond between surfers and the ocean. The size and composition of the crowd determines how a surfer will surf — whether in a more leisurely or more aggressive style, on any given day. The crowding and environmental issues that Costa Rica has been experiencing, such as the denigration of the water and the change in wave quality and quantity as a result of development, has been pushing surfers to seek new surf breaks outside

Costa Rica because all the “good” breaks have become too popular, forcing surfers to limit themselves in their behaviour and surf styles.

I experienced this inhibition in behaviour because of the crowding in almost all of the beach and point breaks I surfed. The one place that I did not experience crowding was at Witch’s

Rock, one of the best beach breaks in the world located in Santa Rosa National Park. The beach is a three to four hour hike down a mountain, at the base of which my fellow surfers and I camp in tents because there are no hotels there. The only other way to get to the beach is a four Pham 30 hundred dollar boat ride that few people can afford. The beach is surrounded by mountains and trees without a single building or road in sight. The only people in the water were the people from my group.

In addition to the environmental context, surfing subculture is defined by equipment, language, behaviour, and group composition as I mentioned before. Surfing apparel and equipment are very expensive, and surfing requires a lot free time. I surfed for about six hours every day depending on tidal changes. For some beach breaks I had to rise at six o’clock in the morning to surf at optimal high tide, which would last for several hours at best. Because surfing was a major ethnographic part of the study abroad program I attended, I had time set aside to surf, but few locals can afford to take such time out of their day to surf because they have to make a living.

In surfing subculture, it is one’s skill that determines one’s placement in the hierarchy of surfers on the ocean. There is also an unspoken rule, for instance, that only highly skilled and/or sponsored surfers should wear bright colors or large brand labels on their equipment, and/or if they are sponsored by brands like Quiksilver or Billabong which are some of the most popular surf brands. But even if a surfer were highly skilled, I noticed that most of them wore neutral colors that did not stand out. Many surfers noted to this connection between skill and visual markers of status. Surfers expressed their distaste for those who vaunt their skills and wear surf apparel just to wear it. Surfers also expressed distaste for large company marketing strategies that commodify surfing leading to an increase in the number of unskilled surfers and therefor crowding. Peter Ochoa and other surfers opt not to wear any labels or brands on their apparel or equipment because doing so turns them into free walking advertisements for companies. In addition, they feel that surfing should not be about showcasing your skills to others and that Pham 31 surfers should avoid drawing attention to themselves by wearing or using certain brands. Their refusal to purchase or use particular brands creates a counterculture to the commodified surfing culture of marketing companies.

The commodification of surfing also tinges gender dynamics, another important part of surfing subculture. Most surf shops cater to a male audience with regard to apparel. If they have a women’s section it is limited. Most surfing ads featured men in action shots, whereas the few that feature women objectify them, often failing to show their faces while highlighting their apparel. The television channels devoted to surf competitions and clips that I saw at the taco bar and at Café Negra in Jaco featured no women, no doubt because some surf competitions located in places where massive waves are only accessible to men, which fuels the stereotype that I heard that women do not like big waves.

Reflecting the male-dominated retail stores, competitions, and advertisements, a majority of the beaches I visited had a male to female ratio of 10:1 in the line-up based on my count for the duration of my stay. The few women I encountered in the water were raised by surfers or were affluent travellers who frequently came to Costa Rica. They had dominant personalities, as was necessary to survive in line-ups crowded with competitive men. They were also better than most men in the line-up, but despite their skills, men consistently disregarded the unspoken hierarchy and rules of surfing and rode waves that were not theirs to take stealing them from women. In short, surfing remains a male-dominated sport.

Identity and Belonging: Mas Tico que Gallo Pinto? “More Costa Rican than a Spotted Rooster?”

Tourism and surfing subculture in Costa Rica are major parts of Costa Rican identity.

During my interviews, I noticed interesting trends in how individuals and groups identified themselves and other people. Mas tico que gallo pinto is an idiom that translates to “more Costa Pham 32

Rican than a spotted rooster,” Gallo pinto also refers to the popular Costa Rican dish of rice and beans. The idiom alludes to the recognition of the in-depth acculturation of foreigners by Costa

Rican locals. This acculturation may include a fluent comprehension of the local Spanish dialect, as well as lifestyle and behavior. Language and status markers play determining roles in the process of inclusion and exclusion in contact zones as they perpetuate “us” versus “them” mentalities because not all foreigners or national locals will be recognized as such by the regional local community. According to Pratt’s (1991:35) concept of transculturation, identities can become blurred in contact zones, due to internalizations of other cultures, where there is cultural mixing and individuals feel they must accentuate certain features of their culture to be able to distinguish their culture from others. At the same time, individuals feel like they must repress certain self-identifiers and adopt new-ones in order to thrive.

One of the most impactful interviews I conducted was with Katherine Bodega, a local souvenir store owner in Jaco, who inspired the focus of my paper because of her insightful interactions with me. Jaco is one of the most popular tourist cities in Costa Rica, known for its relatively tame waves for beginning surfers and the legalized sex industry. She said, “What really bothers me a lot is when tourists come to live here and they criticize the culture all the time, but they are living here and also there are also some people here who are not interested in learning Spanish, and they live here.” She expressed her frustration with travelers moving to

Costa Rica for its culture and the environment without wanting to be fully a part of the culture by learning the language. Yet, when a white tourist and I walked into her shop, she changed the music from Spanish flamenco to top forty billboard artists from the U.S. Despite wanting tourists to learn Spanish, she was perpetuating the pattern by playing American music, in order to make them feel more comfortable when shopping at her store. My conversation with Katherine Pham 33 illustrates how tourism is altering Costa Rica socially, culturally, linguistically, environmentally, and economically, especially since tourism is Costa Rica’s top-earning economic industry. The increased exposure and interaction between cultures in contact leads to shifts in cultural practices, income, values, and other domains for both locals and tourists.

Many of the local business owners I interviewed saw tourism as a positive force, saying it had brought prosperity because of “constant” business, referring to the temporal tourist seasons.

They added that the tourism helps to protect cultural heritage of the land because development increases the kinds and accessibility of services and helps build hospitals and schools that attract tourists and foreign residents, but also serve locals. But not all local residents share these sentiments. Although Burke, the housekeeper in Dominical, also saw tourism as a positive force, he also raised issues like the drugs and sex work that accompany increased development and tourism. Many of my interviewees mentioned increased drug addiction in their towns, especially in the younger generations. Burke felt that these features are part of the tourism package, and nothing could be done about them.

As Katherine Bodega, the shopkeeper in Jaco, mentioned, tensions arise from how locals adapt to the transition to tourism by learning English, and foreign residents’ fail to reciprocate by learning Spanish. There is also the issue of access to public spaces. All beaches in Costa Rica are public, but major tourist facilities have indirect ways of restricting access. If an area is physically inaccessible to an individual or group, then a high price for admittance reinforces the impression that they do not belong, effectively excluding them. Some hotels are so far from a main road that getting to the entrance without a car is a problem. Once I was on the vast hotel grounds of one of

Central America’s most renowned hotels and noticed that there were no obvious signs to tell locals where the beach is, making it very easy to get lost, even with a vehicle. In addition, when Pham 34 people feel they cannot afford the products or services at a facility, they are not only unlikely to visit that establishment but also feel resentment toward the facility and its tourists.

Multiple uses of identifiers and labels reinforced such exclusion. Some of the most blatant displays of identifiers that I saw included words that identified someone as a Costa Rican or a foreigner. Costa Ricans refer to themselves and other locals as ticos or ticas, meaning a

Costa Rican woman or man, and to foreigners as “gringos or gringas,” which signifies a non-

Latino. How foreigners or locals determined who was a foreigner or local varied throughout

Costa Rica and depended on social, cultural, economic, linguistic, and aesthetic factors. One of my first encounters with this complex process occurred on the second day of my journey. My colleague Tanya Ortega and I were on a walking community tour in the rural town of Uvita when

Louis Verde, our tour guide, was asking questions about local fruits and called on Tanya by referring to her as tica. Many people commonly mistook her as a native Costa Rican because of her fluency in Costa Rican Spanish and dark skin from surfing. She replied in Spanish that she was not a tica, but Louis was adamant that he considered her a tica because of her language, knowledge, and lifestyle.

I later asked Tanya why she did not consider herself a Costa Rican despite moving to Costa

Rica for its people and the environment. She said that she was born and raised in the U.S. and her whole family still lives there. The U.S. is where her roots are, and she identifies it as her home.

Tanya’s identification and reasons mirrored those of many other migrant individuals who move to Costa Rica to have a surfer’s lifestyle or for other reasons. In contrast, other migrant individuals I interviewed proudly claimed to be ticos or ticas or in some cases created new categories of identification. As I was walking around the outdoor market in Dominical, a town thirty minutes away from Uvita, I met Julio Morales, the shopkeeper of a surf school. He moved Pham 35 to Costa Rica nine years ago from Argentina, but refers to himself as an “Argentico,” for instance.

In contrast, Gringo or gringa is a general term to refer to non-Latinos, or, for some people, it is a derogatory term to refer to a Caucasian, non-Spanish-speaking person. Although skin complexion and language markers were common features by which to identify someone as a foreigner, the equation did not always hold. Many white individuals may not have a Latino cultural heritage, but they may have many generations in their family who have lived in Costa

Rica and may themselves have been born in Costa Rica. In Mal Pais, I met Tyler Anderson, a white man whose family was one of the first families in general to settle in the area. Being born and raised in Costa Rica, Travis considered himself a “Tico” because of his Spanish language skills, upbringing, and surfing lifestyle. The community also considered him a local because he grew up with their children, knew local Spanish, and skipped school to go surfing like everyone else. I met many other surfers who moved to Costa Rica for the waves and had given birth to children there. They may not have identified themselves as Costa Rican, but they wholeheartedly believed that their children were because of their language and behavior.

Due to increased tourism, cultural mixing in contact zones results in blurred lines of locality. Self-identified foreigners like Tanya and Jeff had no problem internalizing features like the local Spanish and activities like surfing in order to be accepted by their new community. But because of the properties of contact zones, the community also internalizes features of the foreign culture. Some part of the community understands that this internalization is inevitable and necessary, which they feel indifferent about, but others resent.

Pham 36

Conclusion

Costa Rican contact zones are complex, diverse, and dynamic spaces where the interactions between individuals affect the bonds among those individuals and their physical environment and vice versa. My experience at Witch’s Rock is just one example of how contact zones created through tourism lead to rapid economic, environmental, cultural, and social change. Many surfers and tourists are now looking toward Nicaragua as the new surfing and vacation frontier because property is affordable, and there are “undiscovered” beach and point breaks that the general population know little about. Global and local marketing strategies that sought to attract surfers and other tourists to the beautiful environment and inhabitants of Costa

Rica have actually deters from its attractiveness because of the environmental problems that result from the construction and maintenance of tourist facilities. My ethnographic data offer many reasons why scholars and tourists should question Costa Rica’s environmental reputation.

Local-tourist’ interactions have resulted in changes in identity, language, economics, and the physical environment.

The consequences of such interactions will likely further repel more tourists if the tourist industry continues to degrade the environment, which can have a negative impact on the country as a whole because a large portion of its income comes from tourism. Despite Costa Rica’s world renowned reputation for environmental conservation, I was surprised to see so many environmental policies and patterns that contradicted that reputation. My ethnographic data show both the positive and negative ramifications for local residents, travellers, and the environment which can contribute to a dialogue about how to achieve truly sustainable tourism. For future research, I hope to remain in Costa Rica for at least an entire year to observe the annual round changes in the country, especially the cultural, social, and economic patterns of local residents Pham 37 away from the presence of tourists. I also hope to address the struggle with being an environmentalist and a tourist as the same time (see appendix c: epilogue.)

Appendix A

Interview Questions 1. How is your day? 2. What are you doing at this location today? 3. What is one thing that you would like other people to know about your country? 4. What areas would you like to see improvement within your country? 5. What are very important or popular traditions in your community? 6. What do children, teenagers, and or adults do for fun around here? 7. What are your favorite activities? 8. What is a typical job here or where do most people work? 9. What and how were you taught about the environment when you were growing up? 10. How would you describe the environment? 11. What do you love most about the environment? 12. How do you feel about tourists/tourism? 13. What do you feel about losing some protected land/environment if it brings more business and tourists to your community? 14. Your country has the 69th best standard of living in the world and is number one in Latin America and it is in the top 50 most environmental countries in the world, did you know that and how does that make you feel? 15. What is your understanding of the effects of development on the environment?

Interview Questions in Spanish 1. ¿Cómo va su día? 2. ¿Qué estás haciendo en este lugar hoy? 3. ¿Qué es una cosa que le gustaría que otras personas sepan acerca de su país? 4. ¿En qué áreas le gustaría ver una mejoría en su país? 5. ¿Cuáles son las tradiciones muy importantes o populares en su comunidad? 6. ¿Qué hacen los niños, adolescentes y adultos por diversión o por aquí? 7. ¿Cuales son tus actividades favoritas? 8. ¿Qué es un trabajo típico de aquí o Dónde trabajan la mayoría de la gente? 9. ¿Qué y cómo le enseñaron sobre el medio ambiente cuando estaba creciendo? 10. ¿Cómo describiría el ambiente? 11. ¿Qué te gusta más por el medio ambiente? 12. ¿Cómo se siente acerca de los turistas / turismo? 13. ¿Qué siente por la pérdida de algo de tierra / entorno protegido si trae más negocios y turistas a su comunidad? Pham 38

14. Su país tiene la mejor norma 69ª de vivir en el mundo y es el número uno en América Latina y se encuentra en los mejores 50 mayoría de los países del medio ambiente en el mundo, ¿sabías qué y cómo te hace sentir? 15. ¿Cuál es su comprensión de los efectos del desarrollo sobre el medio ambiente?

Appendix B: A Brief History of Costa Rica: Colonial Times to Present

Christopher Columbus and his family arrived in what is now Modern Costa Rica starting in 1502, but did not gain permanent settlement from Spain until 1559 after a series of failed expeditions (Walker). Colonists, who sought a new beginning by owning plantations, found themselves working on their own land because Costa Rica lacked a consistent and concentrated population to subjugate into slaves. As a result of the topography, viable agricultural lands were limited to the central parts of the country called the Meseta, which did not have difficult landscapes such as mountains and valleys. The topography restricted agriculture to subsistence farming because it took arduous travel over rough terrain to reach neighboring countries and ports to international locations. There were limited exports of “cacao beans, tobacco, and mules.”

Coffee dominated exports after the crop was introduced from Cuba in 1808.

Continuing into the 1800s, Costa Rica, as a part of the Kingdom of Guatemala, gained independence by default when the Kingdom declared independence from Spain in 1821, along with similar declarations from Mexico (Walker). In 1823, Costa Rica joined the United

Provinces of Central America with Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Costa

Rica annexed the Province of Guanacaste from Nicaragua in 1824, which is commemorated on

Guanacaste Day. Costa Rica declared full independence in 1838 under the leadership of José

María Castro Madriz, who was elected by congress as the country’s first president and established the first republic with a constitution.

Madriz’s presidency was brought to an end by the collective power of the country’s coffee barons, who were powerful coffee farmers (Walker). They replaced Madriz with Juan Pham 39

Rafael Mora Porras in 1849. Political unrest because of the country’s relations with Nicaragua escalated under Porras’ presidency when the Nicaraguan economic liberals wanted to overthrow that country’s feudalist. The liberals hired William Walker, the leader of a group of American

Mercenaries who was successfully displaced the feudalist, but also declared himself ruler of

Nicaragua in 1856. Slavery was implemented under his rule and the transport system, which has already existed in Nicaragua.

President Porras of Costa Rica created a force of about ten thousand Costa Rican citizens that ousted the mercenary regime of William Walker (Walker). After a series of attempts to regain power in other parts of Central America, Walker was captured and executed. The victory against Walker and his regime came at a great price, as about half of the Costa Rican soldiers were killed during the conflict. Under Porras’ presidency, the period prior to the conflict and after was characterized by the country’s financial strife which led to a coup d’état, and another president, Jose María Montealegre, being installed by the coffee barons. General Tomá Guardia

Gutiérrez sought to end the control of the coffee barons. He led a successful coup d’état to overthrow Montealegre and established himself as president in 1859.

A new constitution was written under Guardia’s presidency, as well as new programs such as free and mandatory education, and the creation of a railroad from the central lands of

Costa Rica to the East Coast (Walker). Cooper Keith, an engineer and major entrepreneur, headed the construction of Atlantic Costa Railroad and also cultivated the banana industry with the establishment of the United Fruit Company. As mentioned before, much of Costa Rica did not have concentrated populations and Keith needed a large labor, which he obtained through

Jamaican immigrants. The mass migration of Jamaicans signaled the beginnings of demographic change in Costa Rica. Pham 40

Fast forward to the 1900s, this demographic change was spurred on by the Nicaraguan

Civil War in 1927 (Walker). The war began when the Conservative party overthrew the democratic government and many liberal citizens rebelled against the coup d’état. Eight percent of the Costa Rican population is Nicaraguan because of the mass displacement of citizens as a result of the civil war (Sandoval-Garcia 2004: xiv). This percentage is important because

Nicaraguans make up a majority of Costa Rica’s immigrant population and this presents a particular social issue. Nicaraguans work jobs that many Costa Ricans do not wish to do, such as legalized sex work and construction. Nicaraguans are often seen as the “other” group in Costa

Rica and are derogatorily referred to as “Nicas.” WWI was another driver of demographic change and caused financial distress for the country (Walker). In general, the coffee industry had difficulties with “declining international prices,” but Costa Rican coffee industry took a downward turn when the European markets were no longer viable. Germany, in particular, was

Costa Rica’s biggest buyer. Due to this fact, there were large German and Italian communities in

Costa Rica prior to the war. When Japan launched its attack on the U.S. in 1941, Costa Rica fought alongside U.S. forces against the Axis Powers composed of Germany, Italy, and Japan.

Germany sent a submarine that sank a United Fruit Company ship off the coast of Costa Rica.

Costa Rican president Calderon used this reason to attack German and Italian communities in the country.

Despite the Allies winning WWI and Calderon’s attack on the German and Italian business communities in Costa Rica, there was still a large presence of those communities with strong relations with non-Germanic communities after the war (Walker). The country was in a state of unrest over relations with these communities after the events and relationship between nations after the war. With the upcoming election of 1948 these tensions were further Pham 41 exacerbated because the next president would determine what was to be done in regards to these communities. Through a series of events, President Calderon was overthrown by Teodoro Picado

Michalski. The 1948 election comprised of Calderon, who decided to run again, and Otio Ulate

Blanco, another conservative. Ulate won the election, but Picado’s administration refused to recognize the results because the Election Commission’s decision was not unanimous.

José Figueres, a politically unknown rancher, led an insurrectionist army of over six hundred soldiers to overthrow administration (Walker). Figueres would serve as interim president for eighteen months after which he determined that Ulate would be president. The Civil war became known as Costa Rica’s bloodiest war with over two thousand fatalities. Figueres abolished the army in 1948 and replaced it with a national police force with conditions such as that the national army would band together during a national invasion and international political parties such as communist or fascist parties were deemed illegal.

After the eighteen month period, Ulate did become president. In 1951, after Ulate’s presidency, Figueres ran for president and won (Walker). His presidency became known for its

“urban development program, agricultural programs,” increased taxes on large companies such as the United Fruit Company, increased minimum wage, and increased import taxes to

“encourage domestic production.” Expenditures had increased so much that during Figueres’ eighteen month reign that during his legitimate presidency he decided to stop paying the country’s national debt. Figueres’ presidency also saw a Nicaraguan invasion of Costa Rica by

Nicaragua’s communist dictator, which Costa Rica easily forced to retreat.

Relations between Costa Rica and Nicaragua worsened over the years as border incidents increased under President Carazo’s presidency (Walker). Under his administration, the nation’s Pham 42 debt increased over threefold to three billion dollars and there was “inflation of 50 percent annually.” In 1981, Costa Rica officially declared its inability to pay its debt and made an agreement with the International Monetary Fund which included “a devaluation of the Costa

Rican currency, the colón, Costa Rica’s main currency, reduction of public subsidies reduction of public sector spending, including wage payments removal of price controls on public utilities and gasoline reform of the tax structure and the methods for collecting taxes.”

In the 1980s, as the country’s wealthy entrepreneurs created businesses to cater to domestic tourists, Costa Rica shifted from agriculture to tourism as one of its dominant economic sectors. The government later invested into the industry to encourage international tourism and formed the Costa Rican Tourism Institute (Honey 2008:162). 2007 was an eventful year when

Costa Rica created a diplomatic alliance with China for its investments, Costa Rica made the debt-for-nature agreement with the U.S. that forgave twenty-six million dollars of Costa Rica’s debt, and Costa Rica declared that will become carbon neutral.

Appendix C: A Brief History of Surfing

Surfing began as a cultural and religious Polynesian “royal sport” that dates back thousands of years (Nendel 2009:2432). Ancient surfing involved a ritualized and spiritual connection between the surfer, their surfboard, and the environment. Unlike today, when a surfer can purchase a ready-to-go surfboard, ancient Polynesians had to participate in ceremonies with priests who would “sanctify” the board and its creator, as well as production processes that included the selection of proper materials such as the balsa tree, preparing those materials, and actually surfing with the final board (Nendel 2009:2433). Ancient surfboards could weigh anywhere from one hundred to two hundred pounds and could be over fifteen feet long. Athletic Pham 43 activities served as status markers and affluent groups would verse themselves in surfing because it was considered one of the highest tiered sports. Not only did surfing function as status markers that connected an individual to their culture and its history, but it was also an act that would determine marriage pairs and would connect them with nature. Surfing was and is described as a

‘dance with the waves.’

Ancient surfing looks radically different from modern surfing because of the effects of

Christian missionaries in the 1800s, the annexation of Hawaii by the U.S. in 1898, and appropriation by America that turned surfing into a competitive sport in the 1900s (Nendel

2009:3434). Missionary groups banned surfing because its religious importance undermined missionary conversion agendas. Surfing was suppressed for a majority of the 1800s until the late

1880s when Hawaii’s king, David Kalakaua, decided to revive ancient Hawaiian activities, such as surfing, and began writing down Hawaii’s oral history (Nendel 2009:2435). The revival was aided by the monetary appeal of tourism seen by Hawaii’s elites in the 1900s. The revival transformed into a popular movement when Alexander Hume Ford created a canoe club in 1908, in order to introduce tourists to surfing. The paradisiacal setting and rich cultural experiences attracted many businesses investors, which caused hotels and other establishments to rapidly claim beachfront real estate. To cater to the high demand of tourist wanting to learn how to surf,

Ford facilitated the organization of “the boys on the beach” who were young native Hawaiian men tasked with instructing tourists in the sport.

The creation of the “boys on the beach” marked the beginning of local-tourist tensions in regards to surfing because although they served as valued members of Ford’s canoe club, the

“boys” were excluded from membership and were restricted to riding waves at certain locations for recreation. Duke Kahanamoku was a native Hawaiian and is considered the father of modern Pham 44 surfing because of his Olympic accomplishments that gained him fame which highlighted the importance and appeal of surfing. Kahanamoku had resented the exclusion of his people from these places and created his own club void of any restrictions. Kahanamoku’s club regularly competed with Ford’s, which sparked the beginnings of surfing as a competitive sport as tourists and locals alike crowded the beaches to watch the spectacles. Magazines began to cover these competitions and spurred the circulation of the sport as a sight to behold and commercialize.

The media coverage and migration of individuals between Hawaii and California served as drivers of the popularization of surfing in the U.S. Kahanamoku, because of his Olympic fame, traveled the world in 1910 to surf at exhibitions, which is why surfing has a parallel history and development in the U.S. and Australia. The curation of surf culture in California is largely attributed to the works of George Freeth, a native Hawaiian and Irishman who helped

Ford create the canoe company, and Henry Huntington, a “rail baron” who loved surfing (Nendel

2209:2437). Huntington invited Freeth to perform at an exhibition in California and was hired to stay there to perform at Huntington’s hotel, where Freeth became California’s first lifeguard.

Surfing further steered away from its traditional roots as surfing photography and film and surf boards became more common and accessible through the 1900s (Ford and Brown

2006:30). In addition to the film and photography creating a market of travelers, advancements in surfing technology and affordability functioned as other drivers in the popularization of surfing. Not every individual had the resources to create surfboard from scratch like the Ancient

Polynesians, nor did every individual have the ability to carry and maneuver a one hundred and fifty pound, eighteen foot surfboard. Along with the popularization of surfing in the early 1900s came the creation of shorter, lighter, and easier-to-handle surfboards made out of more affordable materials (Ford and Brown 2006:28). Longboards were on average nine to ten feet in Pham 45 the early 1900s. In the latter half of the century, short boards that were near or less than six feet and made out of lighter material such as Styrofoam instead of solid wood were available.

The increased affordability of surfboards caused an increase in participants in the late

1950s and rapidly increased in the 1960s because of the popular culture image of the laid-back, hedonistic, surfing lifestyle in Southern California that had a unique language, music, and fashion (Ford and Brown 2006:31). Big screen movies such as Endless Summer (1964) and

Gidget (1959) played significant roles in the popularization of surfing because they reached groups and individuals who did not have access to the warm, sunny, beaches. The transition into the 1960s marks the most recent history of surfing with the increase and development of surf competitions and the presence of a surfing counterculture (Ford and Brown 2006:32). The formation of the World Surf League, the governing body of professional surfers, paved the way for professional surfing lifestyles where surfers are paid by sponsors to travel and compete at competitions around the world. As a reaction against this competitive surfing style many individuals, like Duke Kahanamoku later realized, went against the traditional roots and purposes of surfing. This counterculture was labeled as “soul surfing” where the individuals surfed for enjoyment and went against the commercialized products of surfing, such as name brand objects and movies.

All of this leads to present day, when the popularization of surfing has crowded beach locations where waves are already naturally limited (Ford and Brown 2006:32). Surfing subculture today is characterized by exhibitions of localism and aggression to battle for these limited waves. These limitations further fostered the prevalence of traveling surfers who journey the world searching for beaches with waves that have been lightly touched or untouched by the commercialization of the sport and the crowds. Pham 46

Appendix D: Epilogue

Throughout my thesis, I critiqued tourists, especially ecotourists and surfers, for degrading or destroying the very objects and commons they are traveling to admire when I, in fact, had done the same thing. I traveled to Costa Rica on a plane, traveled throughout Costa Rica in a van, produced waste, did a majority of stereotypical tourist activities such as forest tours and animal sightseeing, and crowded the line-up by being the new surfer who did not know all the rules. Although I may have had a broader knowledge and understanding of Costa Rican history and environmental issues than the common travelers and I was in Costa Rica to conduct research, at the end of the day, I was still a tourist. I am one of the millions of people who travel to Central

America, who directly and indirectly alter the environment and its people.

Yes, I planted trees to stabilize coastal shorelines; I donated money to various organizations such as sea turtle initiatives, and collected trash at beaches and parks that I visited, and the entire study abroad program that I traveled with actually has a carbon negative footprint.

Nonetheless, these only functioned as patches to quell the effects that I had as a tourist, which makes me question the feasibility of sustainable tourism and anthropological research. I was conscious of my liminality of not being a local and not entirely being a tourist and my position in the whole system was puzzling to some of my interviewees as I was part of a small population of tourist, who could and chose to speak Spanish and was knowledgeable about the country and its people. Will I always be the “other” when I travel and conduct research? Will I ever truly be an insider? Can I avoid the pitfalls of tourism such as transportation and production of waste? I hope to address these questions and reflections when I continue with this research in the future when I hope to stay in Costa Rica for a longer period of time and find alternative modes of travel, stay, and journey on my own. Pham 47

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