5 days ago
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.
