Productos naturales basados en ácidos grasos

At the time of Independence, most of the territory of what is now Costa Rica remained outside of the political control of the recently formed state.

Outside of the Central Valley, where the main urban centers are located, government presence was limited to a handful of townships in the Northern and Central Pacific seaboards and a single seaport in the Caribbean (Boza Villarreal, 2014). Though Talamanca was part of the lands that were claimed by the Costa Rican state, there were no official representatives assigned to the area, leading state control to be insignificant (Fernández, 1976). Moreover, these territorial claims would remain constantly challenged by other geopolitical actors.

On one hand, since the late 17th Century, the Miskito – an ethnic group from modern Nicaragua and Honduras – had been involved in constant attacks and raids into territories claimed by the Spanish Crown alongside the Caribbean coastline of Central America. These attacks were backed by the United Kingdom (UK) in an effort to challenge Spanish power and guarantee geopolitical control over the Caribbean Sea.

Effectively, the Talamanca region had completely fell under Miskito control for the better part of the first three decades since national

independence (Villalobos and Borge, 1993).¹¹ This limited Costa Rican state presence in the area, at least until the United States and the UK signed the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty in 1850. This agreement required both powers to remain neutral with regards to the internal politics of Central American nations, thereby settling tensions over geopolitical interests in the Caribbean Sea (Solórzano Fonseca, 2013).¹² The actual political effect of the treaty was Britain’s abandonment of its territorial claims in the region (excepting Belize), including of their financial and political support of the Miskito.¹³

With that said, the end of political dominance of the Miskito over Talamanca did not translate into a stronger control by the Costa Rican state. Indeed, the Costa Rican government was not able to assign state officials to the region until the 1860s (Boza Villarreal, 2014). And, even so, a permanent presence was not completely guaranteed until 1885 with the establishment of the San Bernardo Agricultural Colony, a state-led land reform project that was meant to offer agricultural lands to mestizo settlers in the area. It must be added, that this project was abandoned a decade later given the limitations of the Costa Rican government to guarantee a continuous supply of necessary goods for the colony to be actually productive (Viales Hurtado, 2001).

On the other hand, in the context of subsiding pressures of Miskito colonization, political rivalry between Costa Rica and Colombia began to pile up. By the late 19th Century, Talamanca became the object of a long-lasting border dispute. Territorial delimitation of Talamanca changed constantly as Spanish authorities in colonial Costa Rica and Panama attempted to realize control over this area. After Independence, the unclear nature of the boundary led to contesting claims of sovereignty between the Costa Rican and Colombian (and then Panamanian)¹⁴ governments (Lansing, 2014). In view of their limitations, Costa Rican claims over Talamanca and Bocas del Toro could not have been backed up with the constant presence of government authorities or colonists in the area (Boza Villarreal, 2014). This situation allowed the Colombian government to send a military detachment to Bocas del Toro in 1837, both to colonize these lands but also to protect their international boundary from encroachment by the Miskito Kingdom. This action by the Colombian state was viewed as a challenge for Costa Rican sovereignty over the Talamanca Valley. This boundary dispute continued to be a serious issue of contention during the 19th Century, and then between Costa Rica and Panama after the independence of the latter in 1903. While a US-backed border agreement was eventually signed in 1907, granting the Talamanca Valley to Costa Rica, the Panamanian state refused to accept this decision leading to a violent skirmish in 1921 and the suspension of formal relations until 1928 (Guevara Berger and Chacón Castro, 1992). It was not only until 1941 that an enduring border agreement was finally reached between both states, leading to the current configuration of the frontier.

In any case, given this continuous tension, and the limitations faced to back up their territorial claims with either colonists, troops or government officials in Talamanca, the Costa Rican state began developing political relations with Bribri and Cabécar leaders in the area.

This was done as a means affirming the authority of the state upon these lands (Solórzano Fonseca, 1996). One way entailed the validation of existing indigenous political positions within the governance structure of the Costa Rican state. As said earlier, the political position of the ‘cacique’

existed in Talamanca since before colonial times (Ibarra Rojas, 2002).

Historical evidence suggests that this was formerly a third-tier position within the indigenous hierarchy – after the Usekar (the Cabécar religious leader) and the Usekol (the funeral singers) (Stone, 1961). Yet, in view that its functions were that of military commander and intermediary between the Usekar and the rest of the population, this position became greatly empowered probably as a result of the ongoing indigenous resistance against Spanish and Miskito dominance, as well as political infighting between the different Talamancan ethnic groups (Bozzolli de Willie, 1973).

Consequently, by the mid 19th Century, a single cacique with considerably more power than the others emerged and adopted the title of ‘blu’.

While the initial plan of the Costa Rican government was to offer political positions to various caciques in Talamanca, thereby distributing power to facilitate their influence upon the area, the presence of a powerful blu led the authorities to select only one. As a result, Santiago Mayas was selected as political chief of Talamanca in 1867 (Palmer, 1986).

The political chiefs were government officials in charge of managing local state governance, with responsibilities much like what today would be a county mayor, though with far more extensive obligations with regards to the administration of justice (Alfaro and Zeledón, 2006). Soon after a legislative decree was passed formalizing and deputizing the cacique as part of the governance structure of the state, and becoming a key political liaison between the state and the indigenous peoples. In 1880, Antonio Saldaña – the new blu – was appointed as political chief, and, even though he resigned to this position shortly after, he remained part of the government workforce and maintained friendly relations with key officials (Lansing, 2014). His position not only as political leader, but as related to the commercial exchange networks between the Talamanca Valley and nearby Puerto Limón, allowed him to become a very effective cultural and linguistic liaison between state officials and indigenous populations, even though the role of political chief eventually was passed to professional bureaucrats after the creation of the San Bernardo Colony.

Having said this, it is clear that the Costa Rican state had their reservations regarding the reliability of indigenous peoples as political allies. Indeed, the aforementioned 1861 expedition to the region was partly informed by reports received by the local authorities in Limón that Colombian claims over the region were aided by the most important

cacique in Talamanca (Solórzano Fonseca, 1999). While the expedition ended with a political agreement with the indigenous leadership of the time, shortly after, some indigenous groups staged an uprising leading to the burning of the main state offices in the area and requests to the Miskito for them to be put under British control (Boza Villarreal, 2014). This was probably an isolated act from specific segments of the indigenous populations in the area, as two years later in 1870, Mayas himself committed an armed force to aid the Costa Rican military in response to a dispute with the Colombian government over a border township (Solórzano Fonseca, 2013). While historical sources from the perspective of the Talamancan indigenous peoples are scarce, it is more likely that these were attempts by indigenous groups to politically manage their own tenuous position with regards to whichever geopolitical force suited better their own particular interests. Indeed, it would erroneous to think of the local Bribri and Cabécar peoples as defenseless subjects in this dynamic. In that sense, existing political intermediaries became critical to deal between state interests and the indigenous populations, even to the point of organizing electoral processes for the various national political parties (Villalobos and Borge, 1998).

While for the indigenous people this involvement was part of a strategy oriented at guaranteeing their territorial claims and their political survival; for the state, the continuous alliance with these local indigenous groups was part of a strategy to emphasize their claims against Colombia and Panama (Guevara Berger and Chacón Castro, 1992). The claim of the Colombian state depended on an 1803 declaration of the colonial government of Costa Rica that claimed that the Miskito Kingdom had taken complete control of this part of the seaboard (Solórzano Fonseca, 2013). This allowed the Colombians to argue that - being populated by peoples organized in a non-recognized state – control of the area was lost and therefore, it could be retaken by anyone. In turn, the Costa Rican argument was that this was not the case, as it still held political control. In other words, it is clear that the Talamancan indigenous peoples had a strategic legal importance in Costa Rican claims vis-à-vis Colombia and which is why it was necessary to integrate them somehow (i.e.: indigenous caciques on the payroll as state officials, the organization of voting processes and the establishment of legal state authorities with the power to exercise national laws in these lands). Put simply, the integration of indigenous citizens within the Costa Rican nation-state, while probably informed by new liberal notions of citizenship,¹⁵ was nevertheless, part of a wider strategy to support insecure territorial claims over Talamanca.

This meant their Bribri and Cabécar integration in national everyday life including the rights to hold elected offices, voting and the obligation of following political and legal rule from the Costa Rican state.

Parallel to this process of state territorialization of indigenous politics and lands, the Costa Rican state also fostered an aggressive policy of agricultural colonization of Talamanca. Indeed, since 1839, new laws

regulating the property of the state ended up converting untitled and public lands in the country into baldíos, that is unproductive lands that could be claimed by individuals or organizations to be used for economic gain through a legal procedure called denuncio (Guevara Berger and Chacón Castro, 1992). As a result of the rapid expansion of coffee as a key source of internal revenues and the means of a rapid integration of the national economy into global markets during the course of the 19th Century, the Costa Rican state eventually stopped acknowledging any and all forms of communal tenure held by indigenous peoples as a means to facilitate land grabs by private actors (Viales Hurtado, 1998).

Ideologically, the denuncio process was supported by new liberal ideas with regards to the relationship between private property and productivity, which overall regarded tropical jungles and otherwise unused lands as an obstacle for economic and social progress (Mahoney, 2006). This is a view that has had a considerable influence in the Costa Rica agricultural policy, to the point that until the late 1980s, Costa Rican forestry laws used to offer incentives to farmers whom have managed to convert standing forests into pastures and agricultural plots, as part of the

‘opening up’ of the national agricultural frontier (Brockett and Gottfried, 2002). Indeed, land colonization narratives during the 1960s often saw the process of colonizing forests for agriculture as a means of constructing the nation’s future and therefore imbued these practices with ideas about rural progress and a clear sense of nationalism, through the pacification of the agricultural frontier (Llaguno Thomas, 2013). It is no coincidence that the Costa Rican national anthem frequently refers to the country as a nation made up of agricultural laborers, as a way of describing the very identity of the nation state.

Now, within this ideological basis, indigenous lands were more often than not considered to work against this self-construction of the Costa Rican vision of the future. In this context, indigenous peoples were often seen as backward and as vestiges of traditional societies vis-à-vis dominant ideas about enlightened progress in the country. Indeed, plenty of historical accounts of these political actors describe the Talamancans as having a fairing limited capacity to use land in a productive and modern manner, somewhat reminiscent of previous ideational construction of the indigenous peoples by the Spanish colonists before. For example, the previously cited William Gabb, was the first researcher to study land productivity of the Bribri and Cabécar peoples in Talamanca. His studies became the basis for new state agricultural policies in the area (Gabb, 1978). His impression was that indigenous peoples lacked optimized means of using the land, thereby becoming incapable of exploiting the full capacities of agricutlure. Indeed, when explaining why indigenous populations in Talamanca were smaller that he expected, he argued:

“(…) it is due to the unbeatable indolence of these people. While they could, with little effort and small labor invested, achieve very good harvests of corn, rice and nutritional legumes, and in spite of the

abundance of oxen, pork and poultry meats, their lack of foresight reaches the extreme of not raising more animals than what they need for immediate use, and they not hesitate on killing or selling their last cow, pig or chicken, instead of conserving them for raising. They are happy living all year long with plantains and chicha (alcoholic beverage). The natural consequence of such a voluminous and little fulfilling diet is an inferior state of vitality and without any power against disease.” (Gabb, 1978: 77).

This functioned to reinforce claims of the lack of civilized practices amongst the Talamancans as well as their inability to attain self-progress.

The key government officials in the region also voiced such views about the irrationality of the indigenous economic practices and regarding their limitations to produce economic value over time (Lansing, 2014). Indeed, historical accounts of the region conclude in the need of developing programs that could allow them to reform the ‘uncivilized’ Bribri and Cabecar inhabitants in order to counter their traditional ways (Fernández, 1976). This discourse extended to the spaces that these people occupied, which were exclusively characterized as derelict, reflecting onto the notion of the indolence of indigenous bodies. In other words, the Talamancans were considered to be incapable of producing economic value and therefore, superfluous to the dominant notions of economic progress. This view proved to be a major consideration of the main economic endeavours developed in the area, such as the establishment banana plantations in the area (Bourgois, 1994).

The obvious effect of these aggressive agricultural and land policies was the opening up of an agricultural frontier in the country from the 19th Century until the mid 20th Century when the denuncio process was repealed. In the Caribbean seaboard, the use of denuncio led to a rapid opening up of an agricultural frontier for colonization. Between 1881 and 1935, there were over 650 denuncios declared in Limón, of which, plenty took place in the Talamanca region. Overall, these denuncios led to the privatization of roughly a quarter of the current land area of the province (Viales Hurtado, 1998). Foreign businesses were greatly helped by these measures. The United Fruit Company quickly became amongst the biggest beneficiaries (Boza Villarreal, 2003). Already the largest landowner in the province due to considerable land concessions, awarded by the Costa Rican state for its role in the building of the railroad connecting the coffee fields in the Central Valley with the main national seaport in the Caribbean Sea, with the denuncio process, the UFCO also became interested in expanding their productive area towards the Southern Caribbean, leading to a claim for about 20.000 hectares in the Talamanca Valley which were to be used as part of their banana plantations extending from Bocas del Toro in Panama (Bourgois, 1994).

The land appropriation was so large that it spurred interests by land speculators whom began declaring denuncios over indigenous lands in the

Valley in order to sell it afterwards to the UFCO in exchange of a hefty profit (Lansing, 2014).

For the Costa Rican state, though, the denuncio process entailed serious contradictions. For once, the process marginalized the indigenous inhabitants that were otherwise necessary for supporting national claims upon the frontier, thereby deteriorating state sovereignty in the region.

All in all, by 1913, the UFCO had managed to obtain over 13.000 hectares of land in the Talamanca Valley, integrating them to their banana operations organized from Bocas del Toro by its subsidiary, the Chiriqui Land Company (CLC) (Viales Hurtado, 2000). As part of this plan, the Company had begun the construction of a railroad line in order to communicate this area with their main base of operations in Panama in order to channel the production of banana that were planted by 1916.

Indeed, by the 1920s, more than 3 million bunches of bananas were being exported from these regions alone (Bourgois, 1994).

This originated concerns for the Costa Rican state, as the colonization of the Talamanca Valley by the UFCO seemed to integrate this area much strongly with productive networks originating in Panama.

For example, the main railroad line built by the Company ended up offering way more connectivity between this region and the provincial capital of Bocas del Toro than with the Costa Rican province of Limón (Viales Hurtado, 1998). Similarly, economic operations of the UFCO rarely used indigenous labor and eventually became extremely dependent of migrant labor including Panamanians brought from the main operation base in Changuinola. Consequently, most economic operations there became greatly dependent of the local Panamanian economy, to the point that the locals tended to use Panamanian or U.S. currency, instead of Costa Rican colones (Bourgois, 1994). With stronger transportation and production ties to the Panamanian economy, the use of the denuncio as a means of colonizing this frontier region ended up backfiring for the Costa Rican government, leading to serious concerns regarding the effect of economic development in the area for future claims of sovereignty over the Talamanca Valley.

This situation eventually provoked serious preoccupations for the local and national state authorities, given the existing political tensions with Panama over the international boundary. Local political authorities of the time complained to state officials in San José about rumors of the UFCO attempting to purchase the San Bernardo agricultural colony, a move that could have led to a serious challenge to Costa Rican national integrity (Lansing, 2014). Eventually, consistent political pressures put on the UFCO led to a nominal recognition of the law that established the colony in 1885 and the ones that followed which stated that this area should be set aside for its use by indigenous peoples. In other words, out from the contradiction between state claims of sovereignty and the expansion of capital to the region, is that the first indigenous reserve in Costa Rica was set aside and recognized by the state.

Nevertheless, the actual concession of the UFCO to state demands of an indigenous reserve was an extremely short-lived chapter of the story of the Talamanca Valley, and by 1918, the company had begun planting

Nevertheless, the actual concession of the UFCO to state demands of an indigenous reserve was an extremely short-lived chapter of the story of the Talamanca Valley, and by 1918, the company had begun planting