DISCUSIÓN

Developing a historical background of the nature, orientation and goals of territorial interventions of the Talamanca Valley and the recurrent themes that these efforts share is of critical importance given that it offers an interesting ground to reflect on the manner in which current political actors behave and reflect on these histories, thereby affecting current political circumstances of conservation. From this perspective, the next two chapters argue that current conservation efforts in the Talamanca Valley are reflective of prior political strategies with deep roots in the historical development of the national and regional political economy of Costa Rica, as well as in the ethnic struggles and the history of dispossession that determined it.

The Talamanca Valley has historically been a geographical space mired by the competing claims between capital, state power and indigenous people and it is also an example that embodies the way in which territory comes into being transforming both discursively and materially both land and people in the process. The historical territorialization of the Costa Rican capitalist state in the region became materialized in the land grab of UFCO in order to transform the Talamanca Valley into a banana plantation in the early 20th century, and later into an energy production facility in the 1970s and 1980s and, as we will see later on, into a key region for achieving the promises of sustainable production of cacao and environmental security and financializing through forests-as-carbon-storage. In all these instances, the indigenous subject was formed and reformed discursively according to changing state rationalities and territorialities. This is a process that clearly reflects and informs the very constitution of the Costa Rican nation-state, particularly with regards to the formation of a national imaginary about national progress.

At the beginning of the 20th Century, state territorialization was related to a discursive formation of the indigenous people as both an obstacle to capital accumulation and as tool for state sovereignty. These

contradictory discourses mirror the politics and economics that outlined the 20th Century of the Talamanca Valley. Indigenous communities were defined as being part of the nation-state, yet separate from the capitalist processes that co-constituted its very formation. This contradictory position has been a feature of the Talamancan relationship with capitalist development and state formation ever since. It resulted from state attempts to consolidate control over national territory and the contradictions implied by the use of capitalist accumulation as a means to realize these goals. This tension was eventually reflected in the status of the Talamancan region as a contested space between transnational interests towards capitalist integration with the Panamanian economy and state interests of safeguarding the already weak territorial claim and adverting any further encroachment in the region by its geopolitical neighbors. This concluded with the reinforcement of capitalist relations and a violent insertion of the Bribri and Cabécar into these through marginalization. Some nominal hegemony was maintained and reflected in the formation of special state-mandated reserves which were extremely weak at first and then consolidated with considerable limitations in the 1970s. In this sense, the indigenous reserves studied here are in some way a manifestation of the contradictions resulting from internal territorialization, and of the compromised position of the Talamancan peoples within the Costa Rican nation-state. It is critical to remember this when dealing to the new forms of territorialization guided by conservation and the green economy.

Notes

1 Though this quote was originally part of a report made for the Costa Rican government, it was first published in 1895 by Swiss geographer Henri Pittier and then re-published in Luis Ferrero’s compilation of Gabb’s writings in 1978.

2 In 1988, the Talamanca Indigenous Reserve was separated to create the Talamanca-Bribri Indigenous Reserve and the Talamanca-Cabécar Indigenous Reserve.

3 To exemplify this: these lands are formally considered as property of an Integral Development Association (a private local community board with an assembly composed of all inhabitants of the indigenous reserve), whose Development Council is responsible of handling the sale and demarcation of property, as well as constituting the main form of political governance within the indigenous territory. Consequently, within these territorial forms the delineation of property rights is handled as an internal matter without involvement of the national authorities in charge of land registries and surveys. While being exempt from legal obligations in terms of property, indigenous people are required to follow the environmental laws. The extraction of timber, as well as mining rights, for example, must follow

guidelines mandated by the state to all other property owners in the land (see Guevara Berger and Chacón Castro, 1992).

4 Colonial historical sources on Talamanca often use this name to refer to a region much larger than the Valley studied by this dissertation. Recently, Costa Rican and Panamanian historians have contested the idea of a clear-cut conceptualization of this geographical space, as its characteristics originate from the intended political district of the Costa Rican province that the Spanish colonists wanted to establish in the area. Indeed, the very name

‘Talamanca’ was actually given in honor of a town located in the outskirts of Madrid. In any case, most historians tend to use the name Talamanca, much like the Spanish did, in order to refer to an area roughly including all lands between the Chirripó and the Changuinola Rivers, alongside what is now the Costa Rican and Panamanian seaboards (see Fernández, 1976; Guevara Berger and Chacón Castro, 1992). With that said, recent studies have argued that the local indigenous people conceived a much wider area as their lands, including most of the Southern Pacific seaboard of Costa Rica (see Boza Villarreal, 2014).

This redefinition is based upon evidence of trade relations, migration processes and jurisdictional power structures linking this entire area under a loose form of indigenous governance. In any case, the Talamanca Valley constitutes a small fraction of both these historical conceptualizations of the Talamanca region.

5 Spanish records also speak of other loosely defined ethnic groups in the area of which there is very limited historical information, such as Dorasques, Changuenas, Ara, Cureros, Urinamas and Siguas. Yet, there is little historical evidence to evaluate this claim.

6 An obvious example of this is the fact that the ‘encomienda’ contracts between the Spanish Crown and the colonists – which legalized the capturing and forceful use of indigenous labor – rarely referred to a specific place, but to a particular indigenous group. This became an incentive for some colonists to expand the definition and the variety of groups recorded in order to reap higher benefits from the captured populations (Fernández, 1976).

7 The reducciones were the most evident means of colonial state territorialization of indigenous groups in Costa Rica. Centralized living quarters composed of the house of the encomendero; a local church, a military emplacement and the houses of the indigenous people that inhabited the town often formed these townships. The town was surrounded by a large patch of common lands, where indigenous people worked on and the products of which were to be used to pay the tribute to the Church, the encomendero and for self-sustenance (in that order).

8 Pablo Presebere was a Talamancan Blu that led a successful indigenous insurrection against Spanish authorities in colonial in 1709. During the rebellion, several Spanish priests and soldiers were killed as fourteen missionary temples were destroyed. This rebellion appeared to be well-supported by indigenous populations from Chirripó in Costa Rica to Bahía Almirante in Panama, an alliance that eventually guaranteed the loss of political control of the colonial government over Talamanca until Independence in 1821.

9 The Miskito are an ethnic group that inhabits the Caribbean coastline of

well into the 19^th, the Miskito people entered in informal alliances with the British privateers that were arriving to the Caribbean as part of the effort of the Crown to beleaguer Spanish trade route towards the European mainland.

In 1740, a formal treaty of alliance was signed between these indigenous peoples and the Crown leading to the establishment of a British protectorate as a means of disrupting Spanish governance in Central America. The Miskito often raided Spanish colonies and indigenous territories in Central America and often sold people captured here as slaves in the British colonies.

10 It is likely that the position of King of Talamanca was adapted by the Bribri people as a result of their historical interaction with the Miskito, which themselves have developed a loose political structure of government with a King (Solórzano Fonseca, 1999).

11 The Miskito Kingdom territorial claims were extensive and included a significant section of the Caribbean coastline of Central America, from Yucatán to the Talamancan coast in Costa Rica. At the time of Independence, and with the support of the British, the Miskito held considerable military power to the point of dissuading any action by the recently independent Central American states. Indeed, the Costa Rican government actually paid tribute to avoid attacks by the Miskito during the early years of independent life.

12 The main purpose of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850 was to guarantee the political neutrality over any potential project to build a canal crossing Central America, thereby impeding any form of exclusive use either by the United States or Great Britain. To do this the treaty also demanded both powers to refrain from participating in the internal politics of the Central American nations in order to gain leverage over the control of the canal. This included avoiding the use of protectorates in this fashion.

13 With British interests beginning to wane in the region, the British systematically allowed the various Central American nations to have uncontested claims to the last areas occupied by the Miskito Kingdom in Nicaragua, provided that these peoples were allowed to self-govern themselves and remain under a semi-sovereign status. This led to the complete occupation of these lands by Nicaragua in 1894.

14 Panama attained its Independence from Colombia in 1903.

15 Indeed, the first nationalist governments of the recently independent Costa Rican state quickly denounced and repudiated colonial policies with regards to ethnic groups and even questioned the abuses that were allowed by the Crown (Molina, 1986). Indeed, according to president Braulio Carrillo’s speech to Congress in 1839: “it is important to communicate with these groups, to tolerate and respect their uses, cultural features and government, removing all devices used by our predecessors (the conquerors), so that, erasing hate and fear, we may open our doors to commerce, to our population and to our discoveries, and, in so doing, to show the world our moderation and democratic virtues” (cited by Guevara Berger and Chacón Castro, 1992: 40).

16 Cacao was used extensively for self-consumption and with ceremonial means by the Bribri and Cabécar. It symbolizes the blood of the Talamancan indigenous peoples and was used in various rites, such as marriages, as well as birth and death ceremonies at the time of this transition (Bozzoli de Willie,

1979). It continues to be significant in Bribri and Cabécar social practices, though with the expansion of Catholicism and Bahai religions, this is a much less relevant practice. With that said, cacao drinks are still prepared by Bribri and Cabécar households in order to receive guests, which implies the social and cultural relevance of the product.

17 Before the 1939 General Law on Baldíos there was a previous fleeting disposition that recognized the political right of indigenous peoples to vote in the national elections. This was introduced as an article of the Constitution of 1844. Not only does this disposition was never actually implemented, but it completely disappeared with the promulgation of the Constitution of 1847.

Afterwards, no form of legislation was created in order to define the legal position of indigenous peoples in the country, nor that of their lands within the property system (Chacón Castro, 2002).

18 Chichadas are Bribri celebrations in which they drink chicha, which is an alcoholic beverage made of maize. These celebrations take place for various reasons, from recreation and leisure to bringing together dispersed relatives and family members to the repayment of communal farm labor. Indeed, anthropological studies about the Bribri and the Cabécar often bring this latter use to the fore as a means of exemplifying economically-relevant traditional or cultural practices (see Borge and Castillo, 1994; Bozolli de Willie, 1979;

Stone, 1961).

19 The Costa Rican Association Pro-Indigenous Peoples was formed by very influential scholars that were experts on indigenous affairs at the time, politicians informed by the Latin American indigenist movement, and a few indigenous leaders selected from some of the various communities around the country. Amongst their biggest patrons was Karen Figueres, the daughter of one of the most influential leader of the National Liberation Party (PLN), the most well organized political party in the country at the time (Guevara Berger and Chacón Castro, 1992).

4 A political economy of sustainable