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Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
We Evolved From Jiu-Jitsu Strangleholds To Empowering Locals
Costa Rica has been known to surfers for decades, going back to the 60s, but ever since the early 90s, when the country decided to really emphasize the importance of their natural environment and embrace eco-tourism, it has thrived and become a model for countries around the world. Many visitors were so well impressed and taken by the natural beauty and way of life that they decided to move there themselves. In recent years this has caused concern, especially in some communities, as the mostly wealthy visitors have changed the very fabric of the place with extravagant homes and a tendency to think that they have every right to call the shots. Lo siento chicos, no es asi. The following article is the first part of the story of Surfistas Locales by Tara Ruttenberg Ph.D., about a group of local instructors who work together to ensure their own livelihoods and homes are respected. Portraits by Roselle Knaus. Unpopular opinion: "The locals are always right." Costa Rican surf instructor and style master Tavo Rio says it with a broad smile, his lean body tan like cinnamon, and shirtless beneath the breezy shade of the coconut palms. 'Twenty years ago, Santa Teresa was just trees. Now it's full of buildings. It used to be five or ten of us in the water. Now it's a hundred every day, maybe more.' We're at the south end of the stretch of beach break he's been surfing since he was a kid. Before paved roads, electric lines, development. Before surf tourism really became a thing. As we're all uncomfortably aware, Tavo's story is unfortunately not unique. Gringo surfers show up with Endless Summer dreams on their tropical horizon. Sleepy-fishing-village-turns-busy-surf-town seemingly overnight. Bars. Cafés. Surf camps. Yoga resorts. Backpacker hostels. Luxury vacation villas. All predominantly foreign owned. Speculative real estate markets pushing land grabs for the ultra-wealthy. Inflation and inequality. Local cultures marginalized and native families edged out of town. All that fucking trash. Famously, Steve Barilotti named this ubiquitous phenomenon 'surfer colonialism in the twenty-first century.' In Costa Rica, local surfers call it coastal gentrification, where native families are priced out, towns transform rapidly, and paradise becomes a playground for the wealthy. In popular surf towns the fabric has become markedly non-Costa Rican, with the majority of coastal businesses owned by foreigners – upwards of 80 percent, in fact, in the popular northwestern region of Guanacaste, according to the Tamarindo Integral Development Association. In Playa Jacó, one of Costa Rica's original surf tourism destinations-turned-surf city by the sea, gentrification and foreign investment have transformed the coastline and cultural landscape dramatically since the 1990s. Jacó native, Juan Calderón, is an architect, surf instructor, entrepreneur, and newly appointed municipal government advisor whose grandfather was among the original town founders. Juan owns and runs a surf hostel out of his converted family home in the heart of Jacó, where we chat over coffee, roasted right in his backyard. 'As tourism towns grow, the cost of living gets more expensive for the community. Price inflation on rental property displaces native Costa Rican people who find everyday life more and more difficult to afford.' Juan pauses for a sip, cleans the lens on his glasses, fondles his beard. He looks astutely professorial, save for the six fresh stitches adorning his upper lip – a surf accident, he says. 'Sure, tourism brings some jobs and opportunities for a certain sector, but many local people are being affected by the incredibly high cost of rent and property. Since Jacó has become a destination focused on tourists, the international prices here are much higher than the reality of the costs that locals and natives can pay.' Juan's family coffee company, Bohío, borrows its name from the thatched roof mud-floor huts his grandparents built and lived in as farmers and fishermen prior to the arrival of tourism. We flip through the worn pages of a photo book made for his family as a gift from one of Jacó's early visitors, with images of the undeveloped coastline in the 1970s. A far cry from the many high-rise hotels, casinos, condo buildings, and shopping centers lining Jacó's main drag today. Overdevelopment, rent inflation, and an increasingly high cost of living aren't the only impacts of coastal gentrification in Costa Rican surf towns. Livelihood access and job security have become serious issues confronting local surf tourism workers, as many foreign-owned businesses hire other foreigners and pay them under-the-table wages to evade taxes and worker benefits required by Costa Rican law. In the surf tourism labor market, safeguarding jobs for local surf instructors has become something worth organizing for. Enter Surfistas Locales, a national network of Costa Rican surfers and surf instructors promoting the local surf industry and advocating for stronger regulation and enforcement against foreign tourists working in the country as surf instructors without legal work permits. Surfistas Locales co-founder Mauricio Ortega Chaves started the first surf school in Tamarindo in 1996, and celebrates the Costa Rican surf industry as a 'blessing for the community. It's helped the community grow and families feel supported, because before the industry existed here there wasn't much work. It was hard to survive. So, it's an industry that locals have to protect for the benefit of local communities.' It's late morning on New Year's Eve, and peak tourist season slaps hot and heavy across lounge chairs and candy-striped beach umbrellas, migrant vendors pushing five-dollar coconut water. 'Tis the season. Between fielding phone calls and slinging surf lessons, Mauricio spills the tea on Surfistas Locales' origin story, complete with jiu-jitsu strangleholds and neighborhood vigilante visits intended to remind disrespectfully loud-mouthed tourists that localism is very much alive and well in pura vida-landia. 'That's how the engine of the movement started. To tell people that when you enter a country, you need to respect [the locals]. We created a mission and a vision for Surfistas Locales so it wouldn't become a nation-wide gang, because that would have been very dangerous.' As it's evolved over the past few years, Surfistas Locales has become an informal organization, network and movement to connect and empower locals in surf towns across the country. They've sponsored the installation of 'Our Rules' signs at popular surf spots to communicate acceptable norms of surf etiquette, including 'respect the locals' at the top of the list, as well as 'hire a local guide if you don't know how to surf' and 'be humble, don't destroy our pura vida'. Visiting surfers: consider yourselves forewarned.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Yahoo
Meet The Costa Rican Surfers Demanding Respect From Gringos
Many new surfers today may not have a clue as to what localism is or, at least, what it used to be. It may be something they've heard about and view as a relic of the not so distant past, like an iPod or a CD. Sure, while the heavy aggression that was once associated with spots that were localized is rare today, there are many who agree that a certain type of localism is necessary to maintain a semblance of order in the water. Not just that, modern localism also seeks to safeguard the character of beloved coastal communities and the very livelihoods they support. Such is the case in Costa Rica, one of the most highly-visited surf destinations in the world, where local instructors have banded together to ensure that visiting gringos remember that they don't make the rules and they don't get priority. They're not being unreasonable either, they just want respect and a fair chance to continue living in the places where they were born and raised. If you've ever experienced your home break get overrun by people you've never seen before, people that clearly don't live there, then you have felt what is at the root of localism. That experience can make us feel territorial and, if left unchecked, violent. But, if you love surfing more than anything and you live in a surf destination, the chances are you work with tourism. So, therein lies the Catch 22, on one hand, all the visitors can sometimes drive you crazy, on the other, those visitors help pay the bills. This issue isn't particular to just Costa Rica, it's happening around the world from the Maldives to Mundaka, South Africa to the North Shore, and everywhere in between. Thanks to the work of our friend Tara Ruttenberg, Ph.D, with photography by Roselle Knaus, we're back with the second installment of her article on the fight against gentrification by the Surfistas Locales of Costa Rica. You can read part 1 by clicking here. In effort to protect the labor market for Costa Rican surf instructors against ongoing processes of surf town gentrification, the Surfistas Locales chat group is known to share information on foreign-owned surf camps and tourism providers that hire non-local instructors and workers. They've even lobbied the Costa Rican government to intervene specifically in known instances of instructors working on tourist visas without proper work permits. Similarly, affiliated surf instructors' associations in towns like Santa Teresa have implemented informal regulatory frameworks for surf lessons, including student-to-instructor ratios, price floors to keep earnings competitive, and no exceptions for non-local instructors. 'They came up and asked me if she was Costa Rican,' first-generation national surf legend Andrea Diaz relays poolside at El Chante Surf House, where she and her longboard champion daughter, Lia, are staying for the week while coaching visiting clients. 'Yes, of course my daughter's tica. They obviously didn't know anything about Costa Rica's surfing elite,' Andrea laughs behind her rose-colored sunglasses. 'Then they relaxed. It's good though, how they do it here. There should be that kind of regulation, because people don't understand that surfers' lives are often at risk. I explain to my clients that there's so much localism and regulation here because a local surfer was killed a few years ago when a beginner's board hit him, and he drowned. Localism is necessary, it should be respected, and it needs to be enforced.' Andrea and Lia's lives and livelihoods have always revolved around surfing. Now they work together as a mother-daughter coaching duo and host surf retreats throughout Costa Rica. 'As a single mom of three with twenty-five years' experience as a surf instructor, I'm proud to support my family and put food on the table thanks to surfing. We need validation from the government as an industry that brings fresh currency into the country. We need support for people like us who pay our taxes and generate jobs both directly and indirectly with our work. We need better regulation because of the heavy competition we face from foreigners.' Surfistas Locales' co-founder Cato Rodriguez opines that this type of 'localism is good because we have to defend our country, defend what's ours. Everyone is welcome here, as long as they come with respect.' That respect also includes behaving in ways that support the local surf industry. 'Some people come here with a lot of respect and hire local people like me as their surf guides, for surf lessons, or for coaching at different surf spots. That benefits us a lot, and they're good for the community. Then others come with zero respect, they bring their equipment from their countries, they act like they want to own the place, they don't want to let others surf. Obviously, that doesn't benefit us, so we as locals speak up and remind them of the rules of the game. They have to respect the rules or go somewhere else.' Cato Rodriguez Of course, locals recognize that surf tourism is a double-edged machete, since it brings jobs and income for local communities, and that it's important to strike a balance between localism and maintaining pura vida vibes in the water. Speaking of machetes, as local lore has it, southern Costa Rica's pointbreaks are home to more aggressive styles of localism, especially in the early days when locals would paddle out with machetes between their teeth and tie them to floating buoys just past the break. You know, just in case. Surf guide and Osa Peninsula naturalist Maykol Espinoza isn't naming names, but he does give a nod to the 'old school' surfers for setting the tone for respect at his local spot. 'Those guys were the example of heavy localism. That helped keep the place how it is now, nice and calm.' Maykol and his pro surfer protégé, Tosh Talbot, sit across from us on a pair of tree stumps as the tide and crowd fill in for the sunset Surf Show (spoiler alert: Tosh wins, easy). After a little siesta and before getting his sun-bleached curls wet for the win, Tosh shares his two cents on the issue of foreign surf camps and non-native surf instructors. 'It's important when surf camps come, that they help the locals, too. They often come and bring their own surf instructors from their countries. But this is our home. They're invading our home and taking our work. The businesses and surf camps that come here should also help us out - I mean they're coming to our home.' Tosh Talbot Maykol ties a fistful of shoulder-length dreads into a knot behind his head and gives his signature howler monkey call, as a sunburnt crew of clueless tourists pass in front of the camera. 'Let's see if they get it.' (They don't.) 'That's exactly what we're talking about. Say hello. Be friendly. Be respectful. Locals are defined by our place, our beach, our culture, where we were born, where we learned to surf. People who have lived in Costa Rica for maybe a couple years start thinking they're locals and they want to be working the jobs of Costa Ricans that we've personally educated ourselves for. We've completed the respective courses we need to be working legally. But there are people now who have it easy because they have the resources to start a surf school, a surf camp, and they're basically foreigners who come, make their dough and leave, and don't contribute anything to the community. We're a country that lives off tourism, and there are many locals like me who need tourism to survive.' As the sun drops behind the forest and day fades to dusk, surf school owners Aaron García and Oldemar Fernandez, and surf instructor/photographer Walter Vega share the makeshift bench at the surf check spot adjacent to their home break and place bets on what separates a true local from everyone else. Oldemar starts the bidding with, 'You have to spend a few seasons here in the jungle when there aren't any waves.' 'You have to swallow some rain,' Aaron calls. Oldemar raises: 'You have to work, and you have to be here when there's no work. You can't skip out on rainy season when there's no work and no money, when all of us are eating rice and beans, scraping the pot, and saving every last penny, and then come back and tell us you're a local. No, papi, you are not a local. You are a guest.' 'Exactly,' Walter's all-in. 'Locals are the ones who are here for the hardship, when it's difficult. Not the ones who leave when it gets hard and come back expecting that we give them priority. No way.' While the monopoly on distinguishing a true local from the impostors might be up for negotiation, respecting locals in Costa Rica is not. And as Surfistas Locales creates a nation-wide space of leverage for surfers to confront labor market competition resulting from coastal gentrification in the country's most visited surf towns, localism has become a vital strategy for collective resistance and, ultimately, survival. Santa Teresa surf instructor David Stellar Castro gives it to us straight: 'If we don't organize, we won't be able to live here anymore.' Yes, the stakes are that The Costa Rican Surfers Demanding Respect From Gringos first appeared on Surfer on May 22, 2025
