Senior thesis by Sierra Curtis-McLane

Biological Anthropology major, Swarthmore College

Advised by Michael Speirs

May 16, 2002

Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………….3

Chapter 1 …………………………………………………………………………...……20

Chapter 2 ………………………………………………………………………………...35

Chapter 3 ………………………………………………………………………………...44

Chapter 4 ………………………………………………………………………………...64

Acknowledgements ……………………………………………………………...………76

Interview subjects cited as personal communication………………………………...…..77

Works Cited …………………………………………………………………………..…78

Appendix A ……………………………………………………………………...………79

Appendix B ………………………………………………………………………..…….82

The theories that dictate how to conserve biota responsibly have evolved greatly since the origin of designated conservation areas (Wells et. al. 1992). The original method of removing residents from their land in order to preserve biodiversity often had negative consequences for the land, the people, or both (Kuznar 1999; Brandon et. al. 1998). In order to avoid the social and economic problems associated with relocation, and recognizing the fact that humans are often integral and dynamic components of ecosystems previously considered pristine, recent efforts by conservationists have shifted away from relocation and towards incorporation of resident peoples into conservation initiatives (Smith and Wishnie 2000; Orlove and Brush 1996; Western and Wright 1994). Called Integrated Conservation and Development Projects (ICDPs), these initiatives help to incorporate people that live in areas that are targeted for protection to be economically progressive while conserving the environment. Such endeavors are imperative for sustainability and enforceability of environmental protection to augment rather than restrict the societal development of the peoples whose land is affected by the protection measures.

The largest proposed ICDP to date is the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor (MBC) (Map 1). Biological corridors are narrow passages of land that connect existing preservation areas, with the intention of promoting gene flow and faunal migration between the forest fragments. Fundamental to the idea of a biological corridor is that biodiversity has ecosystemic and economic value, and that some geographical areas are richer in biodiversity, and therefore more valuable, than others. The MBC initiative is based on solving the paradoxical dilemma of how to reduce fragmentation-related biodiversity loss while promoting economically progressive, environmentally friendly land use practices in Latin America.

Eight countries from Mexico to Panama are currently participating in the creation of the MBC. Funded by the World Bank, the United Nations, bilateral donors and non-

governmental organizations, the MBC is understood to be:

Contrary to previous conservation methodology, only the most essential parcels of land will be purchased; the rest will remain in the possession of the current owners, with monetary, educational and societal incentives to preserve biodiversity. This means that active participation of the peoples who live within the corridor is central to the development and success of the project.

This thesis illustrates the imperative that integrated conservation and development projects in indigenous communities strike a delicate balance between benefactor and recipient control, knowledge and ownership of the project. Illustration of this point is achieved via a systematic evaluation of a small-scale ICDP in the Bribri village of Mojoncito in Talamanca valley, Costa Rica. The emphasis of the evaluation is on the way in which tensions regarding control of knowledge and ownership play out in the project. The Mojoncito pig-penning project is exemplary of the type of ICDP that will be established by the MBC throughout Central America. My goal is for this analysis to prove useful to the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor staff as they begin to facilitate analogous projects with indigenous peoples and campesinos throughout Central America.

A few years ago it was recognized that the local pig populations were directly preventing crop diversification in the Bribri town of Mojoncito due to their destructive foraging techniques. The project that I became involved with seeks to address the problems caused by the pigs through the construction and use of pigpens. The stated goal of the pig-penning project is to allow people to rediversify their crops for the sake of reviving traditional communication networks and associated cultural traditions that are based on family and clan-based food exchange. It is believed that rediversification will lead to healthier diets, less dependence on imports and increased food self-reliance, less social tension between neighbors based on crop destruction by pigs, and correspondingly, greater community unity in the face of external threat. Rediversification also promotes environmental conservation, since traditional Bribri cultivation techniques are far less ecosystemically destructive than modern monocrop farming techniques in the ecosystem of Talamanca. Also, community empowerment allows for proactive decision-making in the face of development pressure.

Before exploring the intricacies of the pig-penning project itself, it is important to understand some fundamental aspects of the two paradigms on which this thesis is based: 1) conservation in indigenous communities; and 2) development, with emphasis on specific implications for indigenous communities. These general terms are discussed below, with corresponding specific references to the indigenous of Talamanca region.

Indigenous peoples inhabit many of the world’s most biodiverse areas (Stevens 1997). This is due in part to the use of sustainable agricultural methods by indigenous peoples, which have been created over time in synchrony with the cycles and natural efficacy of the land. It is also due to the fact that many indigenous groups were marginalized during colonization, and forced onto remote, treacherous lands that, in the case of Latin America, were often extraordinarily biodiverse. This means that now many indigenous peoples living in biodiverse areas of Central America are prime targets for the inception of Mesoamerican Biological Corridor-sponsored ICDPs.

The Talamanca region of Costa Rica falls within a proposed segment of the

Mesoamerican Biological Corridor (Map 2). It quintessential of the type of area that the MBC is targeting in its conservation and development efforts, in that tremendous biological diversity is harbored in an area that is largely under the control of the Bribri and Cabécar. The MBC plans to promote environmentally sustainable projects in the Talamanca indigenous reserves while also assisting the indigenous residents in guarding against from environmentally unsound development proposals such as petroleum extraction or large-scale monocrop farming.

The Bribri live in an extraordinarily diverse ecosystem, and their traditional agriculture practices (which were dependent on a low population density) functioned in equilibrium with the greater ecology of the area. The geography and climate of the Talamanca range and valley are fundamental to the ecosystemic diversity. The Holdridge scheme classifies the region as "very humid tropical", with an annual precipitation of approximately four meters, and constant 85% humidity (Borge and Castillo 1997). Within the reserve, there are two distinct areas: the low, fertile valley, and the mountains that are part of the Cordillera de Talamanca. Mudslides and floods are common in the region due to the steep incline of the mountain slopes and the high level of precipitation. This means that the valley, which is surrounded by a horseshoe of mountains that breaks only east to the Atlantic, is constantly flooded with nutrient-rich sediments from hundreds of streams and four major rivers. Agriculture is practiced chiefly in the valley, whereas the mountains are used mostly for hunting and the collection of fruit, medicinal plants, and construction materials.

Talamanca region harbors the greatest biological diversity in Costa Rica, and is one of the largest forested regions in Central America. Among other things, Talamanca region is home to over 90% of Costa Rica’s large flora species and over 70% of all faunal species, including 45 endemics (Borge and Castillo 1997). The Talamanca indigenous reserves overlap with La Amistad International Park, which was deemed a World Biosphere Reserve by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) due to its international boundaries and its extraordinary biological diversity (Evans 1999).

Traditionally, the Bribri are highly attuned to and invested in the preservation of ecological diversity. The Bribri agricultural practice includes cyclic fallow periods of 8-10 years for every 2-3 years of cultivation. Bribri agricultural lands have up to 70 different species per hectare, which has a cumulative beneficial effect of preserving biotic diversity, soil quality, providing integrated pest management, as well as providing the Bribri with a nutritional diversity of food crops (Figure 1). Older generations of Bribri especially scorn the use of pesticides and fertilizers, and feel strongly that it is irresponsible to use the land in non-sustainable ways (Borge and Castillo 1997).

Historically, the Bribri use a "random" crop layout, meaning that they do not plant their crops in any decided pattern. Rather, the Bribri plant their crops in the location that they think will best suit the specific crop based on soil, light, and water conditions (Borge and Castillo 1997). They also plant more of any given crop than they actually need, with the assumption that they will lose a large percentage of the harvest to plagues, pests, and browsing animals. The recent increase in human population density, however, has effectively limited the amount of land available per family. There is no longer enough space to practice the traditional style of land-intensive agriculture. Now, reduced space on which to grow crops means that the loss of a substantial percentage of the harvest has drastic consequences for food security and entitlements.

The international development era began shortly after World War II in an effort by rich industrialized nations to exert their influence in what were perceived to be underdeveloped countries. Development initiatives worked specifically to reduce poverty and food insecurity by establishing infrastructure and creating industry (Hopkins 2000). Although some theorists explain these resource transfers as acts of altruism for the sake of world peace, others claim that they were thinly veiled ideological and strategic tactics of the Cold War (Todaro 1999). Aid was used by the east and west blocs to create loyalty and alliance within resource-hungry developing countries. Nations with capitalist economies were particularly interested in creating long-term trade benefits by opening and expanding new markets through development initiatives.

Through the 1970s it became clear that the development initiatives being implemented throughout the third world were failing more often than succeeding (Todaro 1999; Krishna et al 1997; Korten 1980). Often the projects would be initiated, only to terminate prematurely without long-term success of the original mandate. The primary reason cited for these failures is that the projects were not contextually appropriate for the location in which they were being applied. The projects are sometimes referred to as "blueprint" approach projects, because of their top-down, non-contextualized nature. The projects were usually based on Western ideologies and technologies that did not coincide with the developing community’s worldview, nor their interests and desires. They were most often planned and carried out by non-native researchers. The projects were capital intensive for a short duration, requiring intensive pre-planning while hardly any funding was allocated towards long-term sustainability (Todaro 1999). Also, they usually did not build on local institutions, and therefore did not truly penetrate the outer layers of community involvement and ownership (Korten 1980; Gow 1991). In summary, the "blueprint" approach to development was found to work well on paper, but proved to often fail in context.

The contextualization of development came about with the entrance of anthropologists into the discipline. In the 1970’s, the failure of development projects en masse led to the incorporation of anthropologists by development teams for the sake of gaining site-specific cultural sensitivity within the developing communities (Escobar 1991). It was hoped that this sort of study would help to prevent project failure due to translation problems between Western and indigenous worldviews. With employment within the academy of anthropology at a particular low, anthropologists were happy to enter the burgeoning field of "development anthropology" (Escobar 1991).

The entrance of anthropologists into the development field met with harsh criticism from both inside and outside the discipline of anthropology. The chief complaint was that anthropologists were forsaking their positions as unbiased observers for the sake of finding "solutions" to problems that earned them paychecks. The projects that they designed had to fit the development organization’s implementation capacity, rather than address the exact needs of the indigenous group. In Escobar’s words, "Because of their adherence to mainstream models in both anthropology and development, anthropologists reinforce ethnocentric and dominating models of development. Moreover, these practitioners disturbingly recycle, in the name of cultural sensitivity and local knowledge, conventional views of modernization, social change, and the Third World" (1991). The feared effect of anthropologists joining the development world was that interactions between the peasants and development organizations would be socially constructed in ways that would redefine the history and future of the community.

Realizing the moral dilemma of development anthropology and the continued failure of "blueprint" approach development projects, developers have begun to use a new approach. The so-called "learning process approach" to development emphasizes community involvement and long-term sustainability (Korten 1980). The fundamental criterion behind learning process development is that the development project is not rigidly structured, which provides room for error and timing flexibility. More importantly, it allows the project to be based on the community’s existing cultural and ecological knowledge and systems.

Process approach development relies on anthropologists to identify traditional social structures and community hierarchies through which to disseminate information. In this approach, the anthropologist’s dilemma regarding how to function responsibly within the development field is partially assuaged, because although they play an active role in the development process, their task is to recognize community structures within specific populations and to adapt the development initiative to that specific group, rather than to irrespectively impose the same generic Western development paradigm onto all populations.

Process approach development bases the science involved in the development project on the ethnoecological knowledge of each unique indigenous group. The young field of ethnoecology is based on recognizing that peoples across the globe have extensive knowledge of their ecosystems based on centuries of experience. This "traditional ecological knowledge" or TEK, once considered naïve and basic, is now recognized by developers as one of the best sources of regional information available when designing development plans (Berkes 1999).

The indigenous populations of Talamanca are struggling to strike a balance between traditional and Western culture, which involves juggling development pressure from many sides. Talamanca region experiences unusually high development pressure for many reasons, including that organizations get good PR if they give aid to the region, religious groups see the potential to spread their influence, and petroleum and hydroelectric companies see a dream region of untapped rivers and petroleum reserves. In Costa Rican anthropologist Carlos Borge’s words, Talamanca region is a popular place to give funds to because, "…hay indios, hay bosques, hay buenas organizaciones y porque el solo hecho de llamarse Talamanca tiene magia para el donante primario" ("…there are Indians, there are forests, there are good organizations, and because the simple act of saying the name Talamanca inspires magic for the donor") (Borge and Castillo 1997, pp. 47-8). Anthropologists attract international attention through their research, and with the attention comes money, non-indigenous cultural influence, and inevitably, development pressure.

The prominent Costa Rican anthropologist Carlos Borge guided my research during the summer of 2001. Borge specializes in the research of indigenous agricultural systems. He has worked with the Bribri for over 20 years, and is currently overseeing the project that is attempting to control the pig populations in Mojoncito. Over the last couple of decades, Borge has noticed a marked decline in Bribri crop diversity. He believes the decline to be due to Western, capitalist influence that has been brought about by a shift to cash crops (Borge and Castillo 1997).

The consequence of the decline in crop diversity about which Borge is most concerned is the replacement of traditional interfamilial communication and exchange network by linear networking of each family to the local food market. Bribri culture is in many ways based on interdependence of families in a subsistence environment; families are necessarily interconnected in complex trade networks when they depend on each other for the exchange of excess harvest goods. Contrarily, in a monetized economy, connections between families are replaced by linear networks to the local pulpería (small grocery/hardware store). Break down of the communication network leaves the community susceptible to loss of traditional ecological and cultural knowledge (language, cultural traditions, the traditional belief system), as well as to exploitation by outsiders due to community fragmentation. Thus, loss of communication within Bribri social networks is feared to be a harbinger of loss of traditional Bribri culture in general.

Borge was also concerned that the replacement of subsistence crops with monocrops would lead to a switch in sex roles. This is because males tend to dominate the cultivation and sale of commercial crops, which by extension, puts them in control of decisions regarding cultivation and ownership of land (Borge and Villalobos 1995). Also, loss of crop diversity means that diets are less diverse and less nutritionally balanced than they were in the past, causing notable health problems in the region. Borge and Castillo estimate that 46.6% of Bribri children under age six are malnourished (1997). It is well recognized that the dietary staples in Talamanca: rice, yucca, plantain and banana, are rich in carbohydrates but low in protein and fat, and consequently do not provide a balanced diet. Lastly, environmental homogeneity leads to declines in quantity and quality of soil nutrients, which eventually leads to both ecological and agricultural productivity problems.

About four years ago, Borge brought this problem to the attention of a group of community leaders in Mojoncito with whom he has foraged close friendships over his years working in Talamanca region. This team formally identified diverse cropping as a cultural tradition that should be revitalized for the sake of reviving traditional trade/communication networks in the region, with the desired end being the rejuvination of Bribri culture, autonomy, and ecological knowledge. With the help of the Canadian agronomist Neil Watley, the community began to plant traditional crops that were becoming obsolete such as cassava, tiquisqui, ame, corn, and beans (Borge pers. com.). These crops were no longer being grown extensively by the Bribri, and instead were being purchased in pulperías, or not consumed at all.

The diversification project was begun in some family farms in 1997, only to be pronounced a failure after one year, because of destruction caused by local pigs. Until recently, Bribri families kept as many as 10-30 pigs for meat and trade. The pigs were free to wander and feed at will, returning to the house only at night. It turned out that the pigs like nutritional diversity in food just as humans do (Borge, pers. com), and they destroyed all attempts to grow the new crops. Supposedly independent of Borge, the community leaders involved in the diversification project decided that the appropriate response to this frustrating setback in plans was to organize a project to pen the pigs.

The pig-penning project was begun in Mojoncito three years ago, funded primarily by a local NGO and by Costa Rica’s arm of the Baha’i Faith. As of August 2001, there were forty pens under construction. All forty of the pens have 20 by 20 meter fencing made of wooden poles and barbed wire, and a small shelter made from wood and covered with a palm frond roof (Figure 2). Only twenty-seven of the pens have cement feeding platforms to date; none of them yet have running water.

The key issue is that as of yet, only two or so of the pens actually house pigs on a regular basis. The project leaders and many of the participants claim that when running water is installed, the pens will be much more functional and it will be feasible to pen the pigs. However, although there was no official timeframe established for the project, the benefactors are beginning to be nervous about the lack of results.

My task during the summer of 2001 was to interview people in multiple communities and with varying degrees of connection to the Mojoncito pig-penning project. My data is from eight weeks of formal and informal interviews and conversations with residents of Mojoncito and other surrounding towns, as well as with project benefactors, NGOs, government officials, and Costa Rican citizens. The data is augmented by available published literature and internal reports on the Bribri and the pig-penning project. In this thesis I assess and evaluate performance indicators of the project’s conception and progress to date.

I was inspired to do a project relating to ICDPs in the MBC during my fall 2000 semester abroad in Costa Rica with the Organization for Tropical Studies. I traveled to Costa Rica with support from a Scheuer grant at the beginning of summer 2001 with the general goal of researching the social impacts of the implementation of ICDPs in Costa Rican indigenous communities encompassed by the MBC. The specific nature of my project was co-conceived by Carlos Borge and myself during a couple of conversations that took place in June of 2001, with refinements throughout the duration of my ten-week stay in Costa Rica. Borge encouraged my pig-penning project evaluation based on his perception of there being a dearth of assessment information for a three-year-old project.

Mojoncito serves to demonstrate the striking intermediacy of Bribri lifestyle between Western and indigenous culture. It takes around six hours to reach Mojoncito from the closest large town, Bribri, which is just outside of the reserve. The inhabitants combine subsistence and commercial farming to generate the food, goods, and money they need to survive. A few families in Mojoncito have generators and tiny solar panels that run a smattering of lights and refrigerators. Most families have battery-powered radios on which they listen to remade American pop songs and to Costa Rican soccer games for which they cheer patriotically. However, all families cook their meals on wooden tables heaped in wood ash. Horses carry harvested plantains and bananas to the road, and children help in the fields from a very young age. After dark reading is done by candlelight, and the day begins with roosters crowing and pigs jostling below the house with the first light of morning.

The crossroads metaphor is borrowed from the title of Borge and Villalobos’ 1995 book, Talamanca en la Encrucijada, which places the Bribri at a crucial junction in their cultural evolution. It is fair to say that Mojoncito is not "lost" to unchecked Western influence. Its autonomy is helped by the relatively strong and nationalistic reserve and village organizations that have shown a strong capacity to critically appraise potential development projects. Mojoncito’s community leaders appear to have a good hold on regulating the direction of their own cultural evolution. However, now more than ever before in Bribri history, Bribri leaders are being called upon to guide decisions that will affect their people long into the future. The pig-penning project is but one small example of Mojoncito’s struggles to reach a culturally appropriate solution to the rapidly evolving problems originating due to Western influence.

The organization and outcome of the Mojoncito pig-penning project and similar projects have implications for the design and implementation of integrated conservation and development projects in indigenous populations associated with biological corridors throughout Central America. Taking lessons from existing projects is extremely valuable, since ultimately the success or failure of the MBC and ICDPs around the world will not be rooted in conservation policies, but in village-by-village work.

The layout of this paper will be as follows: the first chapter establishes the place of indigenous Talamancans in Central American history. Bribri human ecology and worldview are elucidated by an examination of the role of pigs in Bribri society. The changes in Bribri society over the last half century are examined, with a particular focus on human population expansion and its multifold effects on social relations as pertaining to pigs.

The second chapter uses development history and modern literature to assess the critical determinants of an ICDP’s overall success or failure. It lays out the theoretical underpinnings of process-approach development, and then establishes an official project cycle, from conception through implementation to monitoring and evaluation. It ends with four assessment criteria that can be used to evaluate the project overall: outcome, sustainability, donor and recipient performance and satisfaction, and local impact.

The third chapter uses the project cycle to create a comprehensive outline of the pig-penning project itself, including its mission statement, conceptual model, management plan, and monitoring plan. The chapter draws heavily on interviews and first hand interactions with the project’s participants and Western affiliates, as well as with people from surrounding communities. After each section of the project cycle is an assessment of the pig-penning project in regards to the particular criteria of that section.

The final chapter examines the pig-penning project based on the assessment criteria laid out in Chapter Two. It ends with conclusions regarding the eventual fate of the pig-penning project, recommendations for how the project could have been improved, and a summary of how lessons from the pig-penning project can benefit other MBC initiatives.

Many Costa Ricans would deny the existence of an indigenous population in their country, which is only the size of New Hampshire and Vermont combined. In fact, it was referred to by a scholarly text of the 40s as the "Estado Blanco del Caribe", the white state of the Caribbean (Berger and Castro 1992). Others will tell you that the indigenous exist, but live backward lives of poverty, drugs, laziness and despair. Certainly Costa Rica's indigenous have struggled, as have all descendents of pre-Columbian American people, for life, land, identity, and autonomy. They have struggled for existence within a country that prides itself on a long history of democracy and peace, but which has spent centuries attempting to annihilate, then assimilate, its indigenous peoples. And they continue to struggle today as their way of life is influenced directly by national and multi-national corporations interested in exploiting their land and rivers, as well as more indirectly by Western cultures, growing populations, and development pressure.

This chapter lays out relevant background information that pertains to the pig-penning project. It begins with a summary of Bribri history, with emphasis on the impact of Western influence on Bribri human ecology since colonization. The history section is broken into three eras: 1) Talamanca pre-twentieth century, 2) the United Fruit Company (UFC) era, 3) the era from the UFC’s abandonment of the region in the 1930s until the present. The fourth section describes the political evolution of Talamanca region’s indigenous reserves and politically autonomous indigenous organizations. The last section describes how the Costa Rican non-indigenous community currently perceives the indigenous people of Talamanca .

The second half of the chapter is devoted to a description of current Bribri culture and use of the environment culture. It focuses specifically on the intimate link between population growth and the changing role of pigs in Bribri society, as changing living patterns based on increased population density is the overwhelming basis for the problems associated with pigs. An examination of the role of pigs in Bribri society is integral to understanding the pig-penning project’s historical, cultural and ecological context.

It is believed that Costa Rica has been home to indigenous populations for over ten thousand years (Molina and Palmer 2000). What little is known of Costa Rica's pre-Columbian history suggests an evolution from hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a complex agronomic society with yucca and maize as the principal crops (Berger and Castro 1992). When the Spanish first arrived in the 15th Century, the population of Talamanca region is estimated to have been over 400,000. However, between disease, exploitation, and war, Costa Rica's indigenous population was decimated by the 17th century. By 1611, only 10,000 Indians remained (Molina and Palmer 2000). By most popular accounts, however, the indigenous population ceased existing altogether around that time: so portrays the National History Museum in San José, in which the last mention of indigenous people in the walk-through timeline is a life-size diorama depicting helmet and bible-bearing Spanish men in stern confrontation with barely clad men, women and children in an indigenous village (pers. obs.). The other half of the museum talks of Catholicism and politics as if the indigenous had disappeared altogether.

In reality, certain indigenous populations were hit harder than others during the Spanish conquest. Fables of gold in Talamanca spurred attempted takeover of the region for centuries; however, the vast majority of these expeditions came to no avail. In contrast to the rest of the country, which experienced almost complete subjugation to Spanish rule by the 17th century, Talamanca region resisted all colonization attempts prior to the 20^th century. The Bribri to this day hold proud acclaim that they were never dominated by the Spanish, and have only recently begun to have extensive outside contacts. Such extraordinary resistance was possible in part because of the rugged landscape and the extreme density and humidity of the forest, and in part because of the fearsome resistance demonstrated by the region's inhabitants (Berger and Castro 1992).

The first successful takeover of Talamanca occurred at the turn of the 20th century when the American entrepreneur Minor Keith was allowed to establish expansive banana plantations throughout the Caribbean lowlands. Keith was allocated 800,000 acres on which to do as he pleased, as payment for his economic bail out and subsequent completion of the Atlantic Railway to port Limon (Molina and Palmer 2000). Keith chose to claim his prize acres in the fertile Talamanca valley, and with no mind for its autochthonous Bribri inhabitants, he proceeded to convert the valley's tropical forest and indigenous agricultural land to plantations of monocrop bananas.

For 30 years Keith's United Fruit Company, called the Chiriquí Land Company in Talamanca valley, exploited the valley's rich biotic resources by mass-producing bananas for export to the United States. In 1930, just as quickly as it had come, the Chiriquí Land Company abandoned the region and moved to the Pacific side of the country, leaving thousands of workers jobless and the region of Limon in economic ruin. The banana company was fleeing devastation that it had helped to create: widespread banana plagues, soil fertility loss, and destruction of infrastructure (particularly bridges) by floods due to erosion caused by the leveling of the region's forests (Berger and Castro 1992; Borge and Castillo 1997).

The natives that were driven high into the mountains with the arrival of Keith only began to return to Talamanca valley in the 1950s and 60s (Borge and Castillo 1997). They met with an environment drastically different from the one they had left decades before. With their complex secondary forest-esque polycultive systems gone, the Bribri were forced to grow cash crops in order to obtain from markets what they could no longer produce and procure for themselves (Berger and Castro 1992). Cacao was the most lucrative cash crop based on the ecology of the region and relative ease of growth; it was thus the principle income-generating product of the region until the arrival of the plague moniliasis in the early 80s (Berger and Castro 1992). The economic impact of the plague was devastating to individuals who were dependent on cacao sale and trade. Those hit the hardest were the younger generations who had not made the effort to reestablish traditional polycultive subsistence crops to augment their diet and income in precisely such crisis times as this one (Tafjord pers. com.). Elders who experienced the terrible toll taken by the cacao devastation remind their children to this day of the danger of pure monocrop farming.

Most families soon began to reestablish subsistence crops to augment fallen cacao sales. Families also turned to plantain and banana, the next most profitable cash crops after cacao, and these soon proliferated throughout the valley. Due to their high maintenance and sheer bulk, which makes them difficult to transport by horseback and canoe, plantain and banana are not nearly as profitable as cacao. However, the inhabitants of the region feel that they have few other economic options.

Plantains and bananas are being substituted in more than just abandoned cacao plantations; people have begun to grow them in rotating polycultive basic grain production areas and in converted secondary forests. Despite terrible losses from earthquakes and floods in 1991 that demonstrated again the danger of dependence on a single cash crop, hectares devoted to plantain and banana cultivation have been increasing steadily (Borge and Castillo 1997).

Another terrible blow to the Bribri was the entrance of the petroleum company, RECOPE, in the early 1980s. RECOPE persuaded and coerced indigenous leaders to allow preliminary oil and petrol investigations and drilling in the reserve. Hundreds of indigenous that were employed as salaried workers sold their farms, leaving themselves vulnerable to the employment decisions and economic fluctuations of RECOPE. When RECOPE left the region in 1985, hundreds of indigenous men and their families were left without jobs nor land (Borge and Villalobos 1995).

The socioeconomic and environmental repercussions of the petroleum explorations were multifold, and overwhelmingly deleterious. Contamination of streams and rivers, noise pollution, alcoholism, prostitution, familial disintegration, urban migration, further switch to capitalism, and loss of self-sustainability are among the many ills that came of RECOPE’s exploitation (Borge and Villalobos 1995). However, in the context of this thesis, transportation lines and a capitalist economy are considered to be the most significant remnants left behind by the United Fruit Company and RECOPE.

Talamanca is currently considered to consist of three parts: the most Westernized region is the area northeast of the river Telire/Sixaola which is inhabited by mixed clans and sikuas. Many of the residents of this area worked for or are descendents of people who worked for the Chiriqui Land Company and/or RECOPE. The region to the southeast of the Telire/Sixaola is inhabited by the families of those who descended from the mountains after the Chiriqui Land Co. left, is a mix of traditional and modern lifestyles. The third region generally encompasses the mountains to the west, which are inhabited by people who practice subsistence agriculture in the traditional manner described previously. These people buy from the valley only that which they cannot produce for themselves, including iron cooking pots, salt, clothes, basic tools, and matches (Borge and Villalobos 1995).

The gradient of Western acculturation is directly related to the proximity of the village to the nearest road network, with monetary exchange for cash crops prevailing near the roads, and subsistence agriculture dominant high in the mountains. To illustrate the accessibility of each of these greater communities to the outside world, imagine that it takes over a day to reach the mountain communities where even horses cannot navigate the steep and muddy trails, while the middle communities can make it to the nearest large town (Bribri) and back within a day walking/on horseback and by boat, with some stretches possible by car. The northeast communities have immediate access to roads, bridges and public transportation. My research focuses on residents of middle communities, those to the southeast of the Telire/Sixaola, that are experiencing the most profound tension between maintaining traditional lifestyles and adopting Western ones.

Ironically enough, the seeds of the region’s eventual political autonomy within the Costa Rican state were being sown even as the United Fruit Company ravaged the ecology and displaced the society of Talamanca valley. In 1939, the first national law protecting indigenous peoples’ land rights was passed. The initial law went through multiple revisions until it reached its current form in 1977. Called the "Ley Indigenas de Costa Rica" (Indigenous Law of Costa Rica), the law provides Costa Rica’s six major ethnic groups (Bribris, Cabécares, Malekus, Térrabas, Borucas, and Guaymíes) with territorial and political autonomy within 22 independent indigenous reserves. The reserves, according to Berger and Castro, are "inalienables, imprescriptibles, intransferible y exclusives para las comunidades indigenas que las habitan" ("inalienable, non-transferable, and exclusively for the indigenous communities that reside within them") (1992, pp. 59). The indigenous of Costa Rica comprise only approximately 1.7% of Costa Rica’s population of 3.6 million (Centro para el Desarollo Indigena 2002), but supposedly control through the Indigenous Law 320,650 hectares of land, or 6.3% of the national territory (Berger and Castro 1992).

The Bribri and Cabécar of Costa Rica account for approximately one fourth of Costa Rica's 36,000 indigenous people (CONAI July 1996 as cited by Evans 1999). Initially the Bribri and Cabécar were lumped together in one large indigenous reserve created in 1976, called the Reserva Indígena de Talamanca. In the early 1980s, the original reserve was divided in three: Talamanca Bribri, Talamanca Cabécar, and Cocles (Këköldi) with extensions of 43,690 ha, 16,216 ha and 3,538 ha, respectively (Berger and Castro 1992). Each reserve is governed by its own Asociacione de Desarollo Integral (ADI - Integral Development Association). This association serves as the reserve government and which maintains official liaisons with the Costa Rican national government.

The emotions evoked in non-indigenous Costa Rican citizens regarding the Bribri generally range from embarrassment to pity to disgust (Borge and Villalobos 1995, pers. obs.). A recent two-part newspaper exposé about Talamanca’s indigenous (to uncover what their lives are really like, since many Costa Ricans do not even know of their existence, according to the reporter who wrote the stories (Aguilar pers. com.) described only two aspects of indigenous life: poverty, and drug trafficking. The main headlines proclaim such exaggerated ills as, "Narco asedia a indígenas: Narcotraficantes locales y extranjeros se aprovechan de la miseria de indígenas en Talamanca y los inducen al cultivo de marihuana, dicen las autoridades" ("Narcotics besiege the indigenous: local and foreign narcotics traffickers take advantage of the misery of the indigenous in Talamanca by inducing them to grow marijuana, say the authorities") (Aguilar 2001a)," and "Pobreza hinca a indígenas: ‘Cambio mi hija por comida’" ("Poverty weighs on the indigenous: ‘I would exchange my daughter for food’") (Aguilar 2001b).

Although the articles touch on some true social problems, such as loss of profits to intermediary goods transporters, the dazzling pictures of helicopter-born military drug busts and unkempt children capture most of the audience’s attention. It does not take a lot of listening to hear grumbling that the indigenous brought such conditions on themselves by being backwards, stupid, and lazy. Despite these perceptions being rudely ignorant and false, they have had a large influence on the way outsiders perceive the Talamanca indigenous.

Recently, Nicaraguans fleeing sociopolitical turmoil in their native country have immigrated to Costa Rica in search of a better life. Some have found refuge from discrimination by national Costa Ricans in Talamanca. Unfortunately, like produces like in this situation, and the immigrant Nicaraguans are often as harshly discriminatory against the Talamancan indigenous as non-indigenous Costa Ricans are.

Spatial arrangement and distribution of Bribri households have changed dramatically since the return of the Bribri to Talamanca valley post- Chiriqui Land Company abandonment of the region. After a brief outline of how the Bribri have used the physical environment since the United Fruit Company era, I describe how human population growth and consolidation have influenced Bribri lifestyle, especially in regards to pig ownership.

The essentiality of the natural environment to the Bribri cannot be overemphasized. Anthropological records from the 20^th century regarding Bribri ecosystem usage reveal that the Bribri have a complex array of knowledge that served to prevent Tragedy of the Commons-esque overexploitation of natural resources. Transgressions against fellow organisms elicited repercussions dictated by Duarok, the owners and protectors of the spirits of animals (Borge and Villalobos 1995). When properly abided by, the rules serve to limit each individual’s exploitation of natural resources to only that which was necessary.

The Bribri have always relied on and had access to land both in the valley and in the mountains. These two geographic zones serve very different purposes: the valley is generally used for agriculture, livestock farming, and fishing, the mountains for hunting and collection of non-cultivated forest products. The main agricultural products grown in the valley are corn, squash, cocoa, pejibaye, beans, cassava, and potatoes. Since Colonial times, the list has grown to include plantain, banana, sugar cane and rice. In terms of domesticates, families typically own pigs and chickens, and if they are well off, cows, horses and dogs as well (Borge and Castillo 1997).

Traditional Bribri communities are widely dispersed; they do not exist in the Western core-periphery sense of the word, but rather consisted of families in the same clan living in general proximity to one another. Bribri households, even those of close relatives, are traditionally located at least 1km apart, allowing for productive areas of no less than 10ha surrounding every house (Borge and Villalobos 1995). It is common for families to own multiple farms located within a few hours’ walk of the principal abode. The various farms are cultivated on a rotating basis, with fallow periods lasting from a few to a dozen years.

Population pressure in Talamanca valley has been increasing in magnitude due to an increasingly large population attempting to inhabit an increasingly condensed area. The expansion of total population size is primarily due to two factors: larger family size, and lower mortality rates. When the indigenous first descended from the mountains to repopulate the valleys after the abandonment of the area by the Chiriqui Land Corporation, there were huge tracts of unclaimed, agriculturally profitable land available. Lack of resource restraints in the unpopulated areas, coupled with the need for large numbers of children to work the agricultural lands, led to an explosion in family size. Not only did birth rates rise, but death rates fell, due to the sudden availability of modern health care by means of the roads left behind by the Chiriqui Land Company (Borge and Castillo 1997).

While population growth and decrease in mortality led to greater population size in the valley, other infrastructure developments led to increased population density, specifically along transportation and aqueduct routes. Between the Chiriqui Land Company, RECOPE, and humanitarian aid from donor organizations, aqueducts and roads have been constructed far into Talamanca valley, both with enormous impacts on Bribri culture and living pattern.

Aqueducts have changed what used to be highly dispersed living communities into communities arranged along pipelines, meaning greater neighbor-to-neighbor interaction. The Bribri have so far been willing to give up privacy and familial independence for the sake of clean water. Lack of an aqueduct is cited in a study by Borge as one of the largest health risks at stake for the community, as unclean water (due to livestock runoff, soap residue from washing clothes, etc.) causes diarrhea and parasite infections, two of the greatest causes of infant and other mortality in Talamanca (Borge and Castillo 1997).

Roads have facilitated growth and export of primary goods, which has caused a shift from traditional subsistence farming to monocrop farming. Monocrop farming necessitates less land than traditional farming, which leads families to sell and give away land that they no longer use. This as well leads to closer overall proximity of neighboring families (Borge and Villalobos 1995). All told, potable water, transport, school and sanitary serves, plus demand for labor in the valley have all influenced the increased concentration of people living in the valleys as compared to the mountains (Borge and Castillo 1997).

Although no one is entirely sure of the Talamanca Reserve’s current population, it is estimated to have passed 10,000 inhabitants in 2000, up from approximately 6,500 in 1994 (Borge and Castillo 1997). Borge’s fieldwork has led him to conclude that the Bribri cannot maintain their traditional production methods with more than 12 inhabitants per square kilometer, due to there being insufficient cultivation land per inhabitant (Berger and Castro 1992, pp. 63). In 1997 there were approximately 10 inhabitants per square kilometer (Borge and Castillo 1997). Using Borge and Castillo’s projected population estimates, in the year 2000 this figure would have risen to approximately 16 residents per square kilometer. Although this figure does not take into account regional density, it is still clear that in the more highly populated areas, traditional means of sustenance are no longer possible.

Population pressure is impacting Bribri society in a variety of ways, but one of the most obviously problematic results of the change is manifested in the evolving social and ecological role of pigs (Figure 3). Pigs have played significant roles in communities throughout the world since prehistory, with varying degrees of acknowledgment. Roy Rappaport’s Pigs for the Ancestors (1984), which was the inspiration for this thesis’ title, is eminently famous for its examination of the role of pigs in the ritual life of New Guinea’s Tsembaga, but a number of other ethnographies have touched on the key role of

pigs in agricultural societies as well. Although these ethnographies vary greatly in their content, nearly all of them depict one common theme: pigs are highly destructive animals.

Pigs feed by shoving their extremely strong snouts into the ground and rooting out choice vegetation. They leave behind a distinctly porcine trail of turned soil and lost crops. When allowed to forage at will, pigs wreak remarkable ecological havoc wherever they wander. Pigs are problematic in monocrop banana and plantain fields because they eat the newly budded shoots (Borge and Villalobos 1995). They are, however, an even bigger problem in the diverse fields planted by indigenous community members and Watley, because according to Borge, they are attracted to the nutrient richness of diverse crops (pers. com.).

Although some Bribri will tell you that their ancestors have always raised pigs, in reality pigs were not known in the Americas until the Spanish arrived in the 15^th century. During the subsequent 500 years, pigs became an inextricable part of Bribri culture. The criollo type thriving throughout Talamanca as a half-feral domesticate has adapted quite well to the region’s tropical conditions. Due to the low cost of maintenance necessary for pig upkeep, until recently it was not uncommon for families to own up to 30 pigs.

The primary role of pigs in Bribri society is as a nutritious food source. Pigs are one of the Bribri’s most valuable resources because they can be grown year round, and kept until times of intense need. If a family is low on cash or food, they can butcher a pig and eat, trade, or sell the meat. This is not true of most crops, which must be grown and harvested seasonally. Pigs are also valuable because they cost practically nothing to raise in the traditional fashion, but yield a very lucrative end product. It takes about six months to raise a piglet to full size; the meat from a 40kg pig sells for about 16,000 colones ($50), which is about a third of an average monthly income in the indigenous reserve. For these reasons, pigs are often referred to as "money in the bank" in Talamanca region. Since as of yet almost no Talamancan indigenous possess bank accounts, pigs as banks is not only a figurative concept; pigs literally serve as money on the hoof. In fact, the number of pigs that you own serves as an indicator of how "rich" you are (Tafjord, pers. com.).

Pigs also play a spiritual role in the context of traditional funeral ceremonies. Traditionally, when an individual dies, his or her livestock are slaughtered so that the spirits of the animals can defend the spirit of deceased owner from bad spirits as it makes its way to a final resting place in the underworld (Jackson pers. com.). The significance of pigs in this context has declined in recent times, however, as elaborate funeral ceremonies have changed with influence from national society and culture.

In Bribri society, care of domesticates is chiefly the domain of women and children. Pigs, specifically, require very little care, since for the most part they feed and water themselves. Most families feed their pigs a small amount of food, usually bananas, plantains or corn, in the morning and the evening so that the pigs have an incentive to come home at night. Usually the pigs and chickens and dogs sleep under the house. Occasionally pigs are tethered to keep them from wandering. It is generally the women who slaughter and prepare the pigs with help from their children.

The Bribri did not used to have problems with pig feeding habits because familial spatial separation was great enough that a) it was always ones own pig that ate one’s crops, and b) there was plenty of space in which to plant excess of each particular crop, so that some loss due to pigs was not significantly detrimental. Pigs have only become problematic in the last decade or so, because of increasing density of living patterns in many areas. There are far more instances now of pigs foraging in farms that do not belong to their owner, because of the increased proximity of neighboring houses. Also, the cost of crop loss due to pig foraging is relatively greater now that families have smaller land plots on which to plant and harvest. For these reasons, pig destruction of property is considered by many to be the most significant cause of social tension in current Bribri society (Mayorga pers. com., Escalante pers. com.).

Decisions regarding what to do about the pig problem have varied within the reserve based on population density. Highly populated towns such as Suretka have decided to ban pigs altogether, while more sparsely populated towns such as Mojoncito and Amübre have encouraged reductions in the number of pigs owned, while also imposing rules for how to deal with pig conflicts. In Amübre, the individual whose crops are destroyed is encouraged to respond by bringing a complaint before the town-level governing body. In Mojoncito, the victim is encouraged to kill the transgressing pig and to give the meat to the local elementary school. The latter method is effective in stopping the damage done by an individual pig, but it is not ideal in that there is still a loss to the pig owner, crops are still destroyed, and tensions build due to nebulosity regarding whose pig is killed and in which circumstance.

These are the qualifying factors behind the decision by Mojoncito residents to begin the pig-penning project in 1998. The impetus for the project should now be clear; it is hoped that having the pigs penned will decrease social tension and allow for crop diversification, the combined effect of which will be increased societal unity, cultural revival, and enhanced ability to mediate societal evolution. The pig-penning project itself will be critically examined for the next three chapters.

This chapter examines the theory behind the design and implementation of successful integrated conservation and development projects that involve benefactor-recipient relationships. The theory behind the creation of ICDPs stems directly from the development theory described in the introduction. The first half of this chapter is devoted to a more in-depth examination of what makes a successful process-approach development project, with emphasis on the necessary balance between recipient and donor control. The second half of the chapter lays out a standard process by which to organize, implement, and evaluate an ICDP. The outline created in this chapter will be used in Chapter 3 to create and assess a project outline for the Mojoncito pig-penning project.

Through my research I arrived at a number of criteria that are integral to the creation and implementation of successful development projects. These criteria assume the presence of external actors in the development process, since ICDPs associated with the MBC will typically involve such actors.

The most fundamental criterion is that the project recipients have ownership and control over the project. In Gotsch’s words, "No evaluation of the dynamic potentials of an institutional structure should overlook the extent to which farmers have had experiences in organizing and carrying out group activities of one sort or another" (1972, pp. 329). Adequate motivation for the desired end product must be generated in the community, which can only be done if the project is contextually appropriate and rewarding to local participants (Montgomery 1988). Also, the recipients themselves must play key roles in the conception, design, implementation, and monitoring of the project.

In order for the local participants to have control over the project, it is critical that the task hierarchies within the project are based on pre-existing local social organization schemes. This is so that when the non-indigenous development workers are gone, the consulting and labor information channels associated with the project are well established and can function independently. Also, it is critical that these channels are used to facilitate collaboration between researchers, planners and administrators, both indigenous and non-indigenous, at all stages of the project. Decision-making in development projects is often confined to those farthest from the field, while those with the most intimate view have little voice in the planning process (Korten 1980). Because locals are not usually as familiar with development projects as Western developers, their projects tend to be "messier" than those created by bureaucratic hierarchies; however, these projects tend to result in more adaptive, appropriate products in the long run (Gow 1991).

Second, in order that the community can maintain the project without outside assistance, community members must be independently capable of managing any new technologies introduced in the development process (Gotsch 1972). For this to occur, it is necessary that the technology expands upon existing systems and knowledge. This is so that if any new technology is introduced, people are not "deskilled" due to lack of familiarity with the technology, and therefore dependent on external actors to work and maintain the equipment (Korten 1980).

Lastly, the way in which an organization responds to error can tell a lot about its flexibility and sensitivity, both characteristics that are critical to the long-term success of any development initiative. It is important to accept that error is an inevitable part of instigating new technology and services in areas of the world that have not previously experienced analogous interventions. It is tempting for people involved with development projects to want to deny error for the sake of maintaining professional integrity, since error often connotes failure. However, effective organizations embrace error as a source of information that they can exploit in order to improve the quality of their project (Korten 1980).

In partial counter-argument to the previous points regarding community control of knowledge and ownership, it should be noted that Western actors often play an important role in guaranteeing the long-term sustainability and donor support of indigenous development initiatives. As grassroots development analyst John Montgomery puts it, just as early development schemes suffered from "bureaupathology", there can also be "acute localitis" (1988, pp. 32). For numerous reasons, it has been shown that the most successful social reform cases usually involve a reduced, but not eliminated, bureaucratic regime. This regime does not necessarily have to have Western organizations at the top — it can very well be dominated by indigenous organizations. It is addressing a question of accountability, not of maintaining Western control.

First, local projects are rarely funded without recognition from intermediaries (indigenous or non) that bring the voice of the citizens to the funding organization. Often benefactors want concrete results from the project they fund, which necessitates the use of experimental designs and evaluation techniques that are beyond the skills of the indigenous project participants to design and perform (Tenorio pers. com.).

Further, there exists the potential in development projects for local leaders to become as corrupt as bureaucratic outsiders are stereotyped to be. Misdirected local leaders can skew elections and distort the local will in their favor, often more successfully than Westerners who tend to be under constant skeptical surveillance (Montgomery 1988). Lastly, many small, rural communities are ill equipped to manage the funds that come with development endorsement. It can be important for the sake of sustained allocation of funds to have money managed by someone with training in accounting (Montgomery 1988). This sort of training would be easy to give to one of the community members; it would just take a bit of time and education. For these reasons, it is important to realize the critical role of Westerners in the ultimate success of community-led development initiatives that are initiated and/or aided by outsiders.

Richard Margouluis and Nick Salafsky recently published Measures of Success: Designing, Managing and Monitoring Integrated Conservation and Development Projects (1998), which to my knowledge is the first book to focus specifically on the design and implementation of ICDPs. Margouluis and Salafsky identify a project cycle consisting of six steps that lead from design to implementation to evaluation and back to design. In the following chapter, I will summarize the design and implementation of the Mojoncito pig-penning project based on these six criteria (examined below). In the final chapter I evaluate the project’s outcome based on guidelines used by the World Bank’s development project evaluation department and parallels from other development literature.

For the sake of not reiterating Margouluis and Salafsky’s book in its entirety, I will merely outline the steps recommended for the creation of an ICDP. More detailed information can be found in the book itself (1998). The six steps of the project cycle are as follows:

The creation of the project cycle must be done prior to the initiation of the project, with revisions throughout the implementation process encouraged. Members of the community in which the project will be carried out should produce the project outline, with appropriate input from project participants, local government officials, scientists and social workers, and representatives of donor organizations. The process of going through the project cycle is considered to be circular, because it will often provide lessons and inspiration for further projects. Clearly every community’s experience with development is distinct and dependent on the specific people and environment, but the hope is that basic lessons learned from one project can be extrapolated to aid with the creation of projects in other communities.

Defining the group’s mission is the most important step in project development. The mission statement defines the most fundamental visionary projection of what the community seeks to achieve. The mission statement is composed of a purpose (what it seeks to accomplish), strategies (programs for how to achieve the desired results), and values (the common ethics of the group members). Immediately upon creating the mission statement, it is important to seek development partners whose missions coincide with your own. However, the partners should not overly influence the direction of the ICDP; it is critical that even at this preliminary stage, local stakeholders have a well-established sense of ownership over the project, as was outlined in the beginning of this chapter.

To create a conceptual model that presents a picture of the situation at the project site, it is necessary to review existing information in order to identify a target condition (the desired outcome of the modification performed by the project), the factors (events, conditions, policies, attitudes, ethics, and behaviors) that will influence the target condition, and activities that will modify the factors so as to influence the target condition in the desired manner.

The management plan is an outline of how to address the threats to the target condition. The management plan consists of goals that describe the desired state that the project is working to achieve, objectives that will lead to the fulfillment of the goals, and activities that can be undertaken for the sake of reaching the objectives.

Developing a monitoring plan necessitates an explicit understanding of who the audiences are (internal vs. external), the various audience members’ information needs, monitoring strategies that will meet these information needs, and indicators to measure changes in specific conditions. It is also important to determine when, by whom, and where data will be collected.

Monitoring plans must be enacted in tandem with management plans. Monitoring plans must be strategically designed using both quantitative and qualitative techniques including surveys, interviews, focal group discussions, and direct observation. The monitoring team must be well trained to both collect and process the data.

The final step is to analyze the project’s results. Margoluis and Salafsky present a model for how to analyze data, but I prefer categories presented elsewhere in development literature for the analysis of my largely qualitative data, and I consequently deviate at this point from the methods provided in Measures for Success. My analysis scheme is described below.

Analysis of indigenous integrated conservation and development projects entails looking at the project in terms of how well it satisfies numerous actors and criteria. Through my research, I have come up with four criteria that, if satisfied, make for a successful development project. They draw in part from operations evaluation criteria that are applied to all projects executed under the auspices of the World Bank. Such studies are executed for the sake of enhancing accountability, promoting efficiency, and allowing for comparisons across sectors and countries (worldbank.org 2001). The criteria are:

1) Outcome

2) Sustainability

3) Donor and recipient satisfaction

4) Local impact.

The outcome criterion can be broken down into three factors:

1. The relevance of the project in relation to the needs of the community,
2. The efficacy of the project, that is, the extent to which objectives have been achieved, and
3. The efficiency of the project, referring to whether the project objectives have been achieved using reasonable amounts of funding.

Sustainability has to do with the project's "resilience to risk of net benefits flows over time" ( HREF=http://www.worldbank.org/oed/eta-approach.html 2001). The hope and expectation of development initiatives is that they will lead to long-term net benefits for the community. The main factors affecting the sustainability of development initiatives were discussed previously in this chapter; they include community ownership, social and technological appropriateness, flexibility, and balanced recipient and donor influence.

The successfulness of an ICDP must be assessed based on the satisfaction of the participants as well as the donors. This criterion is complex because often benefits from a development initiative go beyond the scope of the project itself. The outcome of a project must be assessed to see how well it satisfies the community in which it was implemented, but the outcome will not solely be a factor of the project's final product. Development projects often notably impact the community in which they are being instituted in ways not associated with the final product. Results may be derived and social structures impacted long before the project is formally completed, with both positive and negative repercussions outside of the project's boundaries.

If the benefactors feel like their money is not being used wisely, they can choose to withdraw funding. It is possible that the donor will not appreciate the secondary social benefits that potentially come from the money in the same way that the community does.

This criterion takes a more in-depth look at the effect of the development initiative on the local community and the ecology of the area.

Effect on community: This is perhaps the most difficult criterion to assess, since it entails examining the complex social structure, worldview, and individual entitlement holdings of a specific community as affected by the project. The hope is that development serves as an avenue to assist in the evolution these three factors in a way that is dictated by and satisfactory to the community. This is not, however, always the case, even if the stated objective of the development project is achieved. Sometimes projects create social tensions and resource imbalances between project participants, as well as between participants and those not involved with the project. These issues are most often based on shifts in power and wealth within the community that are caused by non-equal distribution of project benefits (Gotsch 1972).

Ecological impact: It is critical not only that the project itself is environmentally sustainable, but also that the project does not serve as a gateway for non-sustainable development to follow it. Preventing future non-sustainable development entails providing community members with adequate skills, political power and knowledge to be able to reject inappropriate development proposals. It is sometimes in the community’s immediate best interest to accept environmentally unsound proposals, such as from agriculture or mining multinationals, due to the economic resources that they bring. The primary intention of ICDPs is to replace lucrative but deleterious development proposals with economically viable environmentally sustainable alternatives.

In summary, this chapter provides an overview for means by which communities can go about creating successful ICDPs. It outlines the overarching factors behind all successful development projects: community ownership of the project must be achieved through flexible use of pre-existing leadership schemes and locally appropriate technology, while donor vs. recipient control of the project is maintained in balance. The second half of the chapter describes a project cycle from the design stage through implementation and monitoring, including an analysis scheme that addresses outcome, sustainability, donor and recipient satisfaction, and local impact. In the following chapter, a pig-penning project cycle is created with an assessment of the project’s progress in regards to each criterion. The final chapter evaluates the pig-penning project based on the criteria of the analysis scheme.

Because no comprehensive project cycle was ever created for the pig-penning project, I create one here. This chapter relies almost solely on information that I gathered through personal communication during my time in Costa Rica, with a small amount of supplementary information from the short project outline created by Borge and his colleagues in Mojoncito entitled "Programa de Control de Cerdos: Se Skowak Kane" (Program of Pig Control: Revitalization of the Indigenous Garden) (Borge et al. 2000). The project cycle that I create is a more comprehensive view of the project than any that currently exists. It is written entirely a posteriori, but it attempts to sound as if Mojoncito community members wrote it, for the sake of authenticity of voice. The outline itself is indented and italicized. Assessments of each section of the project are located below the points to which they refer and are written in normal formatting style. The project evaluation is saved for the final chapter of this thesis.

My field research consisted of eight weeks of formal and informal interviews and conversations with pig-penning project actors and observers in Costa Rica, with emphasis on project participants in Mojoncito and its surrounding area. I transcribed each conversation both during and immediately following its completion, usually with direct conversion from Spanish to English.

I performed a total of eleven formal and fifteen informal interviews and conversations regarding pigs with seventeen Bribri Mojoncito residents. I performed six formal and eight informal pig interviews with thirteen reserve and Bribri (the closest town to the reserve) inhabitants (ten Bribri, two Nicaraguan and two Hispanic Costa Rican). Lastly, I had five in-depth conversations about the pig-penning project with non-residents, including two anthropologists, an agronomist, and a geographer. I also discussed the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor more generally with seven Bribris (one of whom works for the Corridor Biologico Talamanca-Caribe (CBTC), a sub-corridor within the MBC) and three MBC/CBTC employees.

Within the Mojoncito community, most of my interviews and interactions were with people who were involved with the pig-penning project. This was a factor of my living in Escalante’s house and my association with him through Borge, as well as of restrictions to my movement based on my lack of familiarity with the area. I acknowledge some bias in regards to the community outlook on the project due to this factor. Within the subset of project participants that I was able to interview, there was also potentially response bias due to people’s unfamiliarity with me, and due to my connection to Escalante and Borge. I also inevitably carried the bias of being a woman and a United States resident with me in all circumstances.

I do not attempt extensive quantitative analyses in this thesis due to the mixed formality and informality of my data. Qualitative summaries of interview questions are provided, with specific exceptions to the general responses inserted when appropriate. The six-step project cycle, it should be noted, does not begin with the pig-penning project, but with the huerta indigena diversification project, as the problems of that project served as the impetus for the pig-penning project.

Assessment: This mission statement is significantly broader than most people currently involved with the pig-penning project consider it to be; I write it mostly as a formality, because of the importance of assessing development projects from their broadest to their most general scope. At this point, most of the project participants do not link the porkerisa project to ecological preservation nor culture revitalization; the project has come to be recognized by most Mojoncito residents as an attempt to reduce social tension due to pig destructiveness, with some understanding of the potential for rediversification.

Assessment: The diversity revival project was planned and implemented by Mojoncito residents, advised by Carlos Borge and with technical assistance from agronomist Neil Watley. Borge initially identified the need for such a project based on his extensive research in the community over the previous two decades; once the ecological and cultural ramifications of diversity loss were made explicit, however, the project formulation progressed with full input from the indigenous leaders and community members.

I am unsure of the timeframe or specifics of this project, but suffice it to say that over the period of a year, numerous gardens were attempted, only to fail primarily due to destruction caused by pigs and secondarily due to lost traditional agricultural knowledge. This unanticipated setback led to the creation of el proyeto de porkerisas (the pig-penning project):

Assessment: The five criteria used to create a functional "objective" are that it is impact-oriented, measurable, time-limited, specific, and practical. The pig-penning project objective notably lacks a timeframe both in terms of specific dates and duration. Although the scope of the project is measurable, it has changed drastically since the project’s inception. Initially, Neil Watley and the pig-penning project leaders decided to provide approximately ten families with experimental porkerisas. These families would be closely monitored and aided with their pens in a Western scientific fashion. The pigs would be watched for weight change and disease, and the families would be kept in close contact with Watley so that they could ask questions and provide feedback. The native criollo breed would be crossed with purebred pigs adapted to living in pens, and the offspring would be monitored for their sturdiness in Talamanca conditions.

As it happened, however, Escalante approached approximately 40 families rather than the initially decided on ten. The project donors were sold on the idea that this vast quantity of families was truly interested in setting up pens, and pledged enough funding for materials for all 40 families. This divergence from the scientific method was the cause of great contention between Escalante and Watley. Escalante went ahead with the project, organizing the 40 families into subgroups headed by two other leaders, Jacinto Dominquez Sancho and Jovino Gomez Gomez, and himself. Watley did not continue with the project past its initial stages.

Assessment: The assumption that pig penning is truly being done for the sake of facilitating rediversification, reducing social stress and reviving traditional exchange networks implies that when the damage caused by pigs ceases, community members will resume the rediversification project, some social tension will have abated, and inter-familial exchange networks will begin to be revitalized. This assumption maintains that community members are invested enough in regaining food self-sufficiency and the health benefits of diversified crops that they will counter the tide of the monetized import/export market. It also maintains that pigs are the cause of, rather than merely the scapegoat of, social tension. Each of these assumptions will be addressed in turn in the following paragraphs.

First, it is important to point out that the idea for the rediversification project was originally Borge’s. Working in the role of anthropologist, he identified the disintegration of community communication structures as being detrimental to the maintenance of traditional Bribri culture and livelihood. Borge and most community members whom I spoke with believe that traditional Bribri lifestyle is valuable and worthy of some degree of preservation. However, it is unclear whether the Bribri themselves would have reached the same conclusion regarding the loss of networked food exchange. It is easy to imagine that a community experiencing development pressure from many sides would honor the opinion of a trusted Western friend, whether it was because they perceived him as being an otherwise unavailable knowledge resource, or because they saw the potential for him to help bring resources into the community. The fact that practically no one sees the porkerisa project as a facilitator for rediversification makes me wonder if was ever actually a top priority of the community.

However, there are many reasons to pen the pigs other than the explicit ones described above, including ease of penning pigs as compared to fencing in the vegetables, protection of other crops from pigs, prevention of thievery, increased meat quality and quantity, regional project precedent, and resource influx associated with the project. As most of these reasons are embedded in the argument regarding whether it is better to pen the pigs or pen the vegetables, I will further explicate that debate before detailing the secondary reasons for penning the pigs.

I posed the question of why the pig-penning leaders decided to pen the pigs rather than the gardens to many people throughout my stay in Talamanca, and received a variety of responses. The most frequent response was that traditionally, the Bribri grow their crops over vast land expanses, based on where they know that the crop will thrive the best. This technique was possible when each family had enough land to grow crops such that if animals ate some portion of the crop and another portion was lost to disease, there would still be a large enough harvest to feed the family. Using the logic of this planting method, it takes much less materials and labor to pen pigs in a relatively small corral than to fence off kilometers of land.

The main problem with this argument is that according to a Baha’i video on the diversification project, it appeared that the planting was done in quite Western looking vegetable garden beds, not in traditional Bribri wide dispersal fashion (Baha’i video 1997). It is possible that the beds were an experimental phase of the project that would eventually be abandoned, but as it was, the gardens did not appear significantly larger than the size of a pigpen. If the Bribri are recognizing the need to adjust to new, higher density living conditions by changing traditional practices, it seems equally plausible for them to grow vegetables in pens as pigs in pens. In fact, fencing vegetables could be easier than fencing pigs, because that way the pigs could continue to principally care for themselves by eating non-cultivated vegetation. This was not, however, the opinion of the Bribri; I did not see any such gardens fenced or unfenced during my stay in Mojoncito, which leads me to believe that they were abandoned when it became clear that they were failing due to destruction by pigs.

The reason that the Bribri decided to pen the pigs rather than the vegetables was probably based on a number of factors that did not have to do directly with the diversification project. One reason is that the pigs were not only eating the diversified gardens, but they have for a long time been eating other crops as well. In particular, pigs enjoy snacking on banana and plantain shoots, as well as on the stacked piles of bananas and plantains that are left beside the road for pickup by the transport truck. A layer of leaves is put on top of the waiting produce, but this affords no protection against wandering pigs during the hours between harvest and pickup. Some areas, particularly at the intersection of trails and roads, are prone to heavy damage by pigs. The families that stack their bananas in these places sometimes have family members stay and guard the produce. Having the pigs penned would prevent this source of worry and crop loss.

Another reason that Mojoncito residents decided to pen the pigs rather than the vegetables is that pig stealing has become a problem during the last few years. Numerous people that I interviewed cited instances of their pigs and those of neighbors being stolen. The thieves are allegedly never community members, but always sikuas or "bad" Bribri. Pigs are usually stolen during the day while they wander unattended, but sometimes they are even taken at night. Many people connected their desire to pen pigs with a desire to be able to keep better watch over them, both by family members and by dogs. This benefit seems, however, to have been realized somewhat late in the pen-building process, as many of the pens are located quite a distance from the owner’s house.

Third, many program participants cited the possibility of generating greater quantities and qualities of meat in pens compared to what is currently possible. The logic behind this belief is that if one pen works, five pens will work just as well. This would allow community members to gain income by selling larger amounts of pork both in and out of Talamanca. Many community members also recognized the health benefits of having the pigs confined some distance from the house. The vicinity of the house is often quite unsanitary because of the presence of pigs, a phenomenon that is identified by some members of the community as leading to health problems.

A fifth reason for penning the pigs rather than the vegetables is the Bribris’ closest neighbors are non-indigenous populations that live in proximity to the Talamanca Reserves. These sikuas grow pigs as well, but by the dozen in tiny cement cells. Although the Bribri formally reject this method as being contrary to the norms and rules of their view regarding how animals should live, there is no doubt but that the neighboring pork farms are tempting to the Bribri due to their productivity. This style of pig raising at least subliminally influences Bribri thoughts regarding how to deal with pig problems.

The decision to pen the pigs was inherently linked to the fact that it is a project that had been attempted in the region before. A number of organizations both indigenous and sikua have attempted pig penning projects in the past, albeit without success. In fact, pig-penning projects are infamous in Talamanca for being attempted repeatedly and nearly always ending in failure (Borge and Castillo 1997). When pigs became a problem in Mojoncito, the precedent of pens from the past influenced thought on the matter, and the idea was not rejected despite the warnings.

One notable example of a failed pig project is the attempt of Fundación Güilombe, a Costa Rican organization that promotes sustainable agriculture, to pen pigs in the communities of Amübre and Cachabre. The organization soon abandoned the project for two reasons: first, it was made clear by some members of the community that sikuas were not welcome in the region. Division between those in favor of and those against the NGO’s presence caused extensive social tension in the populations surrounding Amübre. The division may have been at root due to problems of unequal distribution of benefits, resources, and power.

The second reason, as cited by the organization’s director, was that there is too much corruption in Talamanca for it to be possible to get funds to their proper destination. Demetrio Blanco, an Amübre community leader who was on the other side of the conflict, explained the situation differently, however. According to him, the man in charge of Fundación Güilombe was looking to make a profit for himself by exploiting the residents of Cachabre, which the dissenting Amübre residents claim they helped to prevent by driving him out (Blanco pers. com.).

NamasöL also tried to build pigpens, only one of which remains functional because of the hard work and dedication of its owners. Escalante believes that NamasöL’s pens failed because the organization was attempting to motivate projects over too great a geographic area (pers. com.). Eight pens were attempted, each in a different community. This made it difficult for the participants to share their learning experiences, and consequently most of the families dropped out of the project.

It is unclear how much evidence there was that the Mojoncito project would have better results than previous attempts at pig penning. The Mojoncito community’s strongest advantages are its small size and largely intact communication lines due to interrelatedness of families, the hard work of the junta de vescinos, and connection from Baha'i Faith gatherings. The community also gets copious amounts of advice and support from wealthy Western friends, especially due to their connection with the Baha’i Faith. These factors play in favor of a pig-penning project working in Mojoncito if anywhere.

The least explicit reason for the creation of the pig project is that it brings money and resources to the community. The three indigenous project team leaders received 70,000 colones ($230) each per month for most of the first three years of the project. This salary is equivalent to the high end of what it would be possible to earn being an unskilled laborer on a farm. It is also more secure than that of almost any other job in the region, since most jobs are subject to the income fluctuations associated with temporary labor and environmentally dependent agricultural production. Project recipients do not receive pay; they work only one time per week, and it is assumed that benefits from the pens will provide long-term paybacks in compensation for their work.

The resource inflow from the porkerisa project is impressive for a small project in a small town (see Appendix B). Although the materials are mostly being invested directly into the pigpens, the pure monetary value of the materials gives status to individual families that own them and to the community as a whole. Escalante most likely recognized this potential resource gain when he increased the number of families involved from ten to forty.

The distribution of resources in the pig-penning project is heavily skewed towards those receiving salaries. The three project leaders are receiving as salaries three quarters of the total resources being invested into the project (Appendix B). These salaries are supposed to serve as compensation for the lost time that these men would otherwise be spending planting and harvesting crops on their own or somebody else’s farm. However, it does not take into account the fact that such tasks may be redistributed to spouses and children, leading to a notably inflated income as compared to before the pig-penning project.

Most of the pen recipients have social and familial connections to Elías Escalante. In recruiting families for the project, Escalante attempted to have participating families be geographically dispersed for the sake of serving as models for non-participating families. However, it is unlikely that there was not bias regarding who was approached to be part of the project, and who, consequently, will receive the project benefits. The distribution of project resources may be a source of tension within the community, but it is not a subject on which I was able to collect data.

I ultimately rejected the theory that pigs are used as scapegoats for other problems between neighbors, rather than social tensions being due to pigs. All community members that I confronted with the question assured me that pigs are the source of inter-familial social problems; they do not merely receive the blame.

The assumption that the socio-cultural costs of the pig-penning project will not exceed the benefits is most questionable in regards to the project's effect on those who care for the animals. In Bribri society, women typically bear the burden of pig care. With pigs penned, this job will be far more time and resource consuming than it is currently. The time and resources could come out of a range of activities, including but not limited to caring for a personal farm, childcare, food preparation, and firewood collection. Family roles will inevitably shift under the new burden of pig care, with women potentially bearing the brunt of the additional labor.

The final question is whether the pens will actually work, with all possible reasons for success and failure taken into account. One factor that might affect the outcome of the project that has not yet been addressed is the role of animal spirits according to Bribri worldview in general, pig spirits specifically, in the community. Before the project was ever started, Borge and others worried that it might run into problems if the participants believed that Duarok (the owner of animal spirits) would be angered by the Bribri trying to control animals. If Duarok sees that a person is not treating the animal with due respect, it will harm or kill the offender. According to many of the people I interviewed, however, the Bribri themselves are in charge of dictating the fate of pigs, as well as chickens and cows, and their mandate is to manage these animals as best they see fit given the circumstance. Thus, penning the pigs is a valid action in the context of modern Bribri society. Even so, Borge worries that subliminally the Bribri may be attributing the sickness of penned pig to their being smitten by the wrath of Duarok for the mistreatment of his animals (pers. com.).

Another factor to consider is how long the pens will last. Pigs are known to be amazing escape artists, and in pens made of poles and wire, it seems like escapes will be frequent. This will warrant continual patching of fence holes and rounding up of missing animals, which could prove to be an inordinate amount of work. However, it is possible that fencing techniques will improve over time, thereby proving this a moot point.

Assessment: Benefactors: Funds for the porkerisa project have come through intricate networks from multiple donors. In order of importance, the donors are Holland, US Quakers, the Organization for Socio-economic Development (OSED) and a private Canadian Baha’i donor.

The money from Holland is channeled through a complex network of organizations. It initially goes from Holland to Iriria Tsochok, a regional NGO devoted to allocating funds and organizing projects within the Talamanca reserves. From Iriria, the money goes to NamasöL, a project in the Bribri Indigenous Reserve with an eight-year mandate. NamasöL is devoted to helping the indigenous develop in conservation-oriented manners by informing them, not imposing upon them (Tenorio pers. com.). Most of the money that NamasöL receives from Iriria that it gives to the porkerisa project goes from NamasöL to the Asociación Núcleo de la Universidad Rural (NUR), a program first started in Columbia with the mission of creating development programs (often education-related) in rural locations. As an organization, NUR is founded on Baha’i principles, one of the most important of which is to create a socially and spiritually developed global community (H. Mirkovitz pers. com.). The final transfer of pig-penning project funds is from NUR to the sikua coordinator of the Mojoncito Baha’i organization, Bowö, who allocates the funds according to NUR’s directions as influenced by reports from the pig-penning project leaders.

NamasöL initially provided one million colones (appx. $3,300) for the pig-penning project. Other than Escalante’s salary, which went directly to him, funds from NamasöL for the pig-penning project were all siphoned through NUR. The other benefactors were 1) the US-based Quaker group sustained the pay of the two other salaried porkerisa leaders, by providing $1,000 per month for the year 2000 (Escalante pers. com.). 2) OSED, a non-governmental development organization which provided $900 per month for some time, and 3) a Canadian Baha’i who donated money for Bowö to buy land and to aid in paying an agronomist. These funds are all funneled through NUR en route to Bowö.

Project leadership team: The indigenous members of the pig-penning leadership team are Elías Escalante, Irene Torres, Isaías López and Vilma Vargas. I am unsure of exactly how this group was initially chosen; however, all of them maintain long-standing relationships with Borge. Non-indigenous project leaders are Borge, who plays the role of anthropologist and long-time friend and consultant, and Helen and Ugo Mircovich, daughter and son of one of the first Baha’is who worked in Talamanca in the 60’s. Helen Mircovich lives in San José and works for NUR. She aids Bowö with monetary and decision-making matters. Ugo Mircovich lives in Mojoncito and runs Bowö with his wife, Mayra Morales Sanchez, Escalante’s eldest daughter. U. Mirkovitz is in charge of transporting and allocating funds for Bowö, partially because he is the only local project affiliate who currently has sufficient knowledge of and responsibility regarding monetary matters to perform the job (U. Mirkovitz.pers. com.). However, having a non-indigenous person in charge of the funds also helps the Bahai’s to control the direction of the project.

Porkerisa design: Borge and the pig-penning project initiators in Mojoncito designed the pigpen. They decided on a 20 by 20 meter pen, which would hold from six to eight pigs. The designers steered away from the small, concrete style pen of their sikua neighbors because they knew that criollo pigs cannot survive in tiny enclosed spaces, and that almost no Mojoncito residents can afford the expensive concentrated feed that the non-criollo pigs that can live in tiny cells must be fed (Escalante pers. com.).

Work teams: The style in which the project leadership coordinates with the participants has evolved over the few years since the project’s conception. Initially, the families were divided into small groups of just a few families. This did not work because the leadership was so fragmented; consequently, the families were reorganized so that each of the three coordinators was in charge of 10-15 families (Escalante pers.com.).

Pen construction: The project work style is based on the traditional Bribri style of communal work, in which extended family members aid each other with work, and receive labor or goods in return. In the pig-penning context, each family involved in the project is required to send one working-age family member to assist with the construction of the pens.

Communal work establishes friendships and connections between neighbors, friends, and family, and at the same time reduces production cost. It is the traditional manner of executing community-wide projects, such as the construction of a hammock bridge (Borge and Villalobos 1995). The communal work system has been changing over in the last few decades to a more capitalistic work structure involving exchange of money for labor rather than labor or goods exchange (Borge and Castillo 1997). The incorporation of this obsolescing method of work in the pig-penning project was highly strategic, as it reinforces the very sort of cultural tradition that is threatened by the fragmentation of the community’s communication and exchange networks. This aspect of the project seems well liked by project participants and benefactors alike.

Meetings: For the first couple of years of the project, the pen construction work teams met every 15 days to talk about the project’s progress and direction. As the funds began to be limited, this dropped to a meeting every 45 days (Escalante pers. com.). Even this meeting schedule became neglected by August of 2001, allegedly due to lack of project funds.

Assessment: None of these monitoring strategies were ever formulated within the porkerisa project as formally as they are in this project cycle outline. Indicators to measure changes in specific conditions were never formulated, nor were strategies on when, by whom, and where data would be collected. Step 4: implementation of management and monitoring plans and step 5: analysis of data and communication of results are merely hypothetical formulations of what the distant wishes of project actors might be.

As it currently stands, the pig penning project has proceeded through many of the steps necessary for the completion of the project, but the pigs are for the most part still unpenned. All of the pens have fencing and a casita, and all but 17 of them have cement laid. None of them yet have water directly supplied to them, which creates a large cost to pig caretakers who have to transport water to the pens twice per day. The leaders and participants of the pig-penning project envision the project’s success to be hinging on water as the final factor; most claim that once it is installed, they will begin to use the pen immediately. However, this will be an expensive factor, and as of yet there is no money for it.

Some families have begun initial penning trial periods with their pigs, but the result has in all cases been that the pigs become sick and skinny shortly after being enclosed. This phenomenon has not yet been studied, but is thought to be due to a number of factors. First, nobody knows exactly what the pigs typically eat. The pigs are fed scant provisions of bananas, plantains and corn in the morning and when they arrive back at the house in the evening, but there is little consensus regarding what they consume for nutrition and self-medication during the day. When their diets are reduced to bananas, plantains and corn in the pens, it is not surprising that the pigs do not maintain equal health compared with their independently-obtained forest diet. Borge and community members realize the critical need for this sort of study to be carried out.

Secondly, the pigs have also evolved during the hundreds of years that they have been in Talamanca to be somewhat feral, and are simply not accustomed to living in small enclosures. Among other things, the pigs are prone to disease when they are penned because they are in an enclosed space, and are more vulnerable to epidemics associated with sedintism. The Bribri are beginning to have the knowledge and the resources to provide the pigs with the sort of medicine that will prevent these diseases, and with training and funds will be able to surmount this problem in the future.

Also, as mentioned before, the Bribri whose pens are located far from their house have some disincentives to grapple with: the farther the pen is from the house, the longer the amount of time necessary to tend the pigs. Some families chose to have their pen be located in a family farm, with the idea that they would be working there during the day anyway, and having the pen in the farm would reduce pig food transport costs. Now that the pens are built, however, some community members have begun to feel uncomfortable with the idea of having their pigs so far from the house due to fear of having their pigs stolen. Because of the fear of thieves and the sheer walking distance to the pens, families whose pens are farther from their houses are decidedly less incited to pen their pigs than those who built their pens in close proximity to the house.

Another probable reason that pigs that have been put in pens have gotten sick is that families have attempted to put too many pigs into a pen. Families see the potential for increasing their income from pigs by penning them; in some cases it was not initially understood that there is a limit to the number of pigs that can inhabit such a small area. However, this issue is being rectified by way of experience and basic education.

Lastly, the Bribri as well are simply not accustomed to caring for penned pigs. It is an economically expensive new routine for the women, in particular, to take on. It takes a lot of time and energy to harvest enough food to feed the pigs, and to bring it along with water to the pen twice a day. This is a task that must be added to the routine of pig caretakers, since it is a new task, rather than simply redistribution of existing chores. Many families have simply found it excessively costly to carry out this activity on top of the normal daily workload. The two pens that do have pigs in them on a more regular basis are owned and maintained by older, single women.

A couple of the individuals that I interviewed mentioned that they did not want to bear all of the costs associated with penning their pigs until other families in the community began penning, because otherwise the families might have the benefits of letting their pigs forage at will without bearing the social costs (unless the transgressor pig was caught and slaughtered).

As of August 2001, NUR was contemplating the restriction of funds to the pig-penning project because of the project’s failure to achieve its initial goal of having the pigs be penned. This aspect is confused, however, by the fact that the porkerisa project is losing its funding from NamasöL, due to NamasöL being at the end of its eight year existence. NamasöL has necessarily withdrawn funding, and NUR is not yet replacing it with funding from other sources, because of their uncertainty regarding and lack of control of the project’s direction (H. Mirkovitz pers. com.).

This final chapter is devoted to the evaluation of the project under the four criteria discussed above: outcome, sustainability, donor and recipient satisfaction, and local impact. The general question that the analysis seeks to address is, what have been the strengths and weaknesses of the project, and why? I extrapolate the results of the analysis to my final speculative conclusions regarding the fate of the project ten years from now, hypothetical recommendations for what should have been done differently, and lessons that can be extrapolated from the pig-penning project that may prove useful to peoples and organizations attempting similar projects along the entirety of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor.

Relevance: The relevance of the pig-penning project to the Mojoncito community is one of its greatest strengths. The project was born from the minds of Mojoncito community members, designed, developed, and implemented by them with fairly minimal non-indigenous input. It is a success story of great merit in terms of community empowerment and ownership. It addresses very community-specific needs arising from population growth and increased population density in areas along roads and aqueducts, which has led to closer living quarters and corresponding problems with neighbors’ pigs causing excessive crop damage. The porkerisa project draws from non-indigenous knowledge of pig-penning systems, but the community has modified it in order to make it fit the Bribri worldview. The project is perceived by the community to be an appropriate step for their dynamically evolving community.

It cannot be overlooked, however, that the project was conceived with many factors other than the need to diversify in mind. These factors include:

a) Anthropologists wanting to revitalize what they perceive to be a

c) Bribri who recognize the potential to grow more, better quality meat,

d) Influence from i) other failed yet precedent-setting pig-penning

Efficacy: As there was no time frame imposed for completion of the porkerisa project, it cannot yet be pronounced a failure. However, the fact that donors are withdrawing funds is indicative of their discontent regarding the lack of successfully penned pigs to date. The main reason that is cited for the project’s lack of success so far as based on its official mandate, is that no preliminary study was performed to see how pigs function in pens in Talamanca. No one has yet figured out precisely what nutrient combination criollos need, whether pens are more successful if pigs are hybridized, where the pens should be located in relation to the house, whether it would be a better idea to pen the vegetables instead, and what the social ramifications of the added responsibility of pig care are. A preliminary study that addressed these questions may have increased the project’s efficacy.

Nonetheless, it is important to remember that the knowledge of how to build the porkerisas has been disseminated, the materials have been distributed, the pens are near completion, and organization of participants into work groups by community leaders has taken place. These components amount to net gain for the community of resources, knowledge, and social organization despite the lack of completion of the project itself.

Efficiency: Including materials that have yet to be purchased and two more years of salaries, the project’s projected cost is $33,000 (Appendix B). Approximately $4,138 has been spent so far on materials (including transportation) and $16,258 on salaries. With the remaining cement, hose, and pig purchases, the materials estimate will be approximately $5,772. Another two years of salaries will bring the total salary bill to $27,097. This puts the projected total project cost at $32,869.

In terms of materials project has been quite cost effective because the project participants have done the majority of the work unpaid and using local materials. According to original estimates with ten families, the project would have taken a fourth of the money and time that it has; until recently, however, funding has not been a limiting factor, so this was not an issue.

Relative to the cost of supplies, the amount of money going towards salaries for the three pigpen construction team leaders is enormous. Three times as much money has been spent on the salaries than on all of the materials and transport costs combined. The project has slowed drastically in its progress since salaries were cut in April of 2001. Escalante predicts that the project will require two more years to complete. It is worth contemplating whether the project is being drawn out in favor of those receiving salaries.

If the project succeeds in penning the pigs, it will most likely prove to be sustainable, since the technology is appropriate, the community has been adequately involved in project planning and implementation, and the project has remained flexible to change throughout its duration.

If the project does not succeed in penning the pigs, whether it is because it is too difficult to become accustomed to tending the animals, because it is economically not viable to feed them, because families will not want to pen their pigs until all the local families agree to pen their pigs, or because the pigs cannot be made to stay healthy while penned, the project will obviously not be sustainable in the long run. Either way, beneficial lessons learned from the design, implementation and assessment of the project may carry over and increase the efficiency of future projects.

Community ownership: this aspect is very positive, since the project has been almost entirely community designed, implemented, monitored, and controlled. However, it is important to keep in mind that not all members of the community are receiving equivalent benefits from the project.

Balanced recipient and donor control: The pig penning project is a quintessential example of a project that has succeeded in most aspects due to the project being locally controlled. However, the early decision to skip an experimental stage and to instead jump directly into the construction of 40 pens is seen by some as having caused many of the problems that the project is currently experiencing. Partially in response, the Baha’is are attempting to reassume some control of the project by eliminating project funding. Community members could have done the majority of experimental monitoring that needed to take place, but it would have been helpful to have an animal husbandry specialist present to give advice as needed.

Participants generally seem to be well satisfied with the project, although they are frustrated by the difficulty of actually keeping the pigs in the pens. Most participants believe that the project will flourish once water has been installed and once they have crossbred their criollo pigs with pure-breeds from outside Talamanca. In terms of satisfaction with the project’s leadership and direction, the majority of responses were positive. It was difficult to evoke critical responses from those I interviewed, however, due to my association with Borge and Escalante. Also, since for the most part I only talked to people involved with the project, it is possible that there is non-affiliate social tension regarding how the project’s benefits are distributed.

Donor satisfaction varies somewhat depending on the level of the hierarchy that is accessed. The Baha’i advisors, in particular, express concern that the project has deviated so much from its original intent to initially be limited in size for the sake of experimental control. Both Borge and H. Mircovich are concerned about the fact that the pigs are not yet in the pens; Borge, however, fully supports Escalante’s expansion of the project to include 40 families rather than ten, although he initially sided with Watley’s more scientific approach (Borge pers. com.). Borge believes Escalante to have better capacity to know what is best for the community than Watley does, for the simple yet profound reason that Escalante is indigenous and knows his own community better than any Westerner could hope to (Borge pers. com.). Borge does, however, regret that there was not a better study done before the project began on the impact of pig-penning on the community and on the pigs themselves.

Ecology: The environmental friendliness of the pig-penning project is a key characteristic that makes it quite a success. It is a sustainable way to gain income that encourages rather than threatens continuity in Bribri society and agriculture. The pig-penning project may lead to sustained pig populations with less social unrest, or if it can be expanded, it may even allow for increased income because it will be possible to raise more pigs, and because less crops will be destroyed. The project will also allow for rediversification of Bribri huertas, which, if followed through on, will serve to improve soil quality, water quality, and natural pest resistance, as well as human health. This is assuming that the removal of pigs from the natural environment will not have negative ecological repercussions. No study has yet been done on this topic.

Another ecological benefit of the rediversification and consequent pig-penning project is that it has given further encouragement to the Bribri to explicitly identify themselves as conservation-oriented. Many Bribri traditions are conservation-based, but often implicitly so in the context of ethical rules of conduct. A formalized conservation self-identification encourages the Bribri to favor conservation-oriented projects, as well as to reject non-environmentally sound development initiatives. The Bribri recognize that ecology-conserving economic options are in their best interest in terms of preservation of their traditional culture and their land.

Community: The impact of an ICDP on the community can be viewed through the lenses of entitlements, worldview, and empowerment. Entitlement increases that may come of the completion of the porkerisa project are: a) simply allowing Mojoncito residents to keep pigs, b) better quality meat if pure-breed pigs can be crossed with the criollos, c) rediversification, if initiated, will lead to better self-sufficiency of Mojoncito residents, which will prevent food problems like the ones experienced by the younger generations during the cacao blight and floods of the early 1990s, and d) there being better social relations within the town means that there will be less social unrest, and correspondingly less potential for exploitation by outsiders. However, there is potential for negative entitlement shifts for some people, including women and people not participating in the project. This all of course assumes that the project will succeed. It is possible that the pigs will not ever actually be penned, in which case there will have been much time and effort wasted in the creation of useless products.

It is ignorant to pretend that indigenous worldviews are not constantly evolving. To say that the Bribri traditionally acted in particular ways is limiting to their ability to evolve in the face of changing circumstances. The Bribri have not previously penned domesticated animals, but nor did they even have pigs until the 1500s, and now many will tell you that Bribri have always owned pigs. Over the last few hundred years the Bribri adopted new styles of caring for domesticated animals that were previously unknown in Talamanca; now, like all cultures do, they are merely evolving further in response to a new social need. Everyone that I interviewed agreed on the importance of moving away from a worldview that disallows penning domesticates, for the sake of social progress.

It is possible to view the Bribri changing worldview in respects to the pig-penning project in a number of different lights. I put forth here my own hypotheses, to be rejected at will by Mojoncito residents or anyone else connected to the porkerisa project. The project may cause the Bribri to wonder what it is about their community that warrants "development". Development pressure often insidiously imbues its recipients with the idea that their culture is inferior and in need of alteration, when in fact it is just as "developed" and "valid" as any other. The Bribri may be feeling this contradiction, and correspondingly may be putting their own culture and/or the idea of development in question.

Contrarily, the project may make Mojoncito residents excited for the power that they have over their own cultural evolution. Development has been happening in the region for decades, with roads built, a health clinic established, organic produce buyers entering, and political organization of the reserve. However, most of these developments have been imposed on the Bribri, rather than being initiated by them. Giving the Bribri the capacity to autonomously initiate and pursue development projects allows them to recognize themselves as capable of proactive development in a manner than makes sense to and functions within the dominant Western paradigm as well as within their own worldview.

It is fairly clear that the very action of conceiving, designing, and implementing development projects empowers the Bribri. It unifies and gives agency to the community. The most explicit evidence of this empowerment in the context of the pig-penning project is the action on the part of community leaders to make Bowö independent, for the sake of having greater community autonomy, and having the ability to solicit funds from donors other than the Baha’i Faith.

The preceding project outline, step by step evaluation, and overall analysis leads me to three main questions that warrant explicit discussion: 1) What will be the fate of the project ten years from now, based on my structural analysis of the project to date, in regards to conservation, pigs, and the community? 2) How would I execute the project differently if I could start it over again? 3) What lessons can be taken from this project to inform the MBC, the success of which will ultimately be based on the outcome of thousands of analogous initiatives? I acknowledge that the first two questions involve pure speculation on my part; they exist chiefly as an academic exercise.

Conservation: The conservation ethic within the Mojoncito community in particular and the Bribri as a people, is clearly established and will most likely remain a strong theme in the community indefinitely. Whether this ethic was instilled in community due to Westerners, or simply reified by them, it is now a key part of the Bribri mentality. This is illustrated by the fact that the pig-penning project is not the only ICDP on hand in the Talamanca Indigenous Reserves. Other projects include production and sale of organic cocoa and bananas, agouti paca, iguana and talapia (a fish) farming for food and sale, and rediversification in the case of the former two, and the hosting of researchers and religious persons, and soon ecotourists, for the cash, goods, and information inflow that they bring.

Pigs: I believe that the pigs will eventually be penned. It may take some years to finish the pens and refine the penning process, but I believe that the entrepreneurial skills of some of the pig project leaders will carry the project through. What may happen is that the donors will force freeze the project until further studies have been carried out on how to keep penned pigs healthy. After this information is available, it will be possible to continue the penning process, with some reduction of social tension, and some rediversification as a result.

Community: Despite the assessments given above, it is undeniable that the Mojoncito community is ultimately moving towards Western culture. It is hard to imagine that trade networks based on subsistence farming techniques will really be revitalized to any fraction of the degree that they used to exist prior to monetization. People desire money for non-local goods, children see that there will not be enough land for them to live the lifestyle of their parents, and that they may need to leave community. Many crave the lives they hear about on the radio and read about in the newspaper.

The pig-penning project may not allow the reestablishment of communication structures based on the trade of diversified goods, but what the project IS doing is making the Bribri of Mojoncito see themselves as a successful, empowered, and able part of larger society, rather than the marginalized periphery that they were once deemed (and came to believe themselves to be). The project is teaching them how to organize, how to be versed in the language of development and benefactors, how to be economically savvy. This is not to say that the Bribri were not organized and savvy independent of Western influence; I simply assert that they are honing these skills to function within a globalizing world.

This is why Borge was loath to call the pig-penning project a failure, and I myself agree: because the very social networks that would be revitalized based on diversification are being revitalized within the very conception, planning, implementation, and lessons learned from the project. The project is not just about the pigs — it is about giving the periphery strength in their endless struggle for recognition by and autonomy in the face of the powerful core.

I would probably require there to be an experimental stage before the main project was initiated. However, I fear that this requirement might have made the project too "efficient", thereby undermining the many valuable lessons of the project. The Mojoncito leaders have learned through experience, rather than being told, how to network and organize and how to solicit funds. They have learned the value of preliminary studies for this sort of project, but more importantly, they have reinforced some of their own knowledge, values, and science. In my opinion, however, they would have done better in the long run by taking advantage of having an animal husbandry specialist on hand to teach them the scientific method of experimental testing and analysis. Even more ideal would have been a Mojoncito resident learning the skills of an animal husbandry specialist and applying them within their own community. Either way it would have taken longer for the project to get underway, but once it had started, it may have proceeded more efficiently than the current project.

If the pens themselves fail, I do not believe that the secondary benefits of the pig-penning project will have independently warranted its costs. There are other ways in which the community could have increased its social interconnectedness that would not have been so time and money consuming for the duration of the experimental period. Currently, unrelated to the porkerisa project, Mojoncito has Baha’i affiliated communal workdays that achieve similar community-organizing results to those indirectly achieved by the porkerisa project, and without the costs.

In terms of the pig-penning project’s organization, I believe that a prior sociological evaluation of the pig-penning project would have revealed that the salary being paid to the three project leaders is too high for the position. Taking into account the benefits of the job other than the salary (prestige, a stable income), it does not seem that such a sum is necessary to incite the leaders to take such positions. I believe that the salary is important, since the job takes a lot of time and does detract from the ability of the men to earn income in other fashions, but that it is too high. I admit that I do not fully understand the social dynamics surrounding the reception of these salaries, but signs of the money taking a central role in the drive of the project, and of ill-used extra income were enough to make me nervous.

In terms of the pens themselves, it is possible that a Western science-oriented pig-penning experiment may have found that penning the pigs in small, individual pens is not the optimal penning option. Other options could include a) penning the pigs in larger pens in order to allow them to do some self feeding and medication, b) fencing in the vegetables instead and letting the pigs roam free, or c) slowly phasing out pigs and replacing them with a less destructive domesticate such as tilapia. However, these are pure speculations, each of which would entail extensive review before being initiated.

In a speech on the state of the Bribri indigenous reserve, Aditibri president Avelardo Torres Morales insisted that (to paraphrase) he will not allow the staff of the Corridor Biologico Talamanca-Caribe (CBTC - a corridor which will ultimately be incorporated into the MBC) to invade with their cars and technical advice and to make decisions for the Bribri regarding the resources of the reserve (pers. com.). The reserve’s administration asks, instead, for the funds to train their own indigenous technical experts. The corridor staff, however, is concerned that the Bribri would not easily gain the sort of technical expertise necessary to create the caliber of project report required by the World Bank. They have seen "professional training" funds mismanaged in the past, and consequently would prefer to send the personnel rather than give money (Valverde pers. com.). To paraphrase Valverde, the CBTC cannot afford to have projects not work, the money wasted, and the blame pinned on them by the project donors. The indigenous leader retort that they are being robbed, as they see millions of dollars in development funds funnel into the country, with precious little of it making it to the ground in truly beneficial ways (Romirez pers. com., Oliver pers. com.).

Thus, there is a stalemate: Aditibri has rejected so far and does not plan to accept the assistance of the CBTC’s technical staff, and the CBTC will not give money rather than trained personnel. This friction over technical matters only exacerbates the existing political tension between the indigenous and national governments. The cooperation that has taken place between the Bribri and the biological corridor staff has been slow and burdened by mistrust.

The pig-penning project of Mojoncito is a small project in a small town, but nonetheless its lessons speak to the issues that are experienced between biological corridors and indigenous groups not only in Talamanca, but in Central America and the rest of the world.

The first lesson that can be extrapolated from the porkerisa project is that ICDPs are complex and ever changing. They are process rather than product-based, and must be respected as such. Secondly, indigenous people must have ownership of and control over their own development projects. Given that we believe in the autonomy of all peoples, we must accept indigenous groups to be the best regulators of their own evolution.

However, in the non-ideal but overwhelmingly typical situation that funding is limited, benefactors will hold the recipients accountable for the resources that they use. In these situations, it is in the best interest of both parties for the recipient to use the funds in manners that satisfies both the needs of the community in which the project is taking place as well as the requirements of the donor. At the same time, the donor requirements should be highly sensitive to the needs of the community.

The best way for the needs of both the recipient and the benefactor to be addressed is for the donor to employ a technical assistant to provide methodology and technical knowledge to the project participants. The assistance should be provided as it is requested, so that the advice expounds upon rather than dominates the indigenous ownership and control of the project. This may take some relaxing of stereotypes on the part of both indigenous peoples and project benefactors.

Lastly, the project must be analyzed in an open-minded fashion that does not preclude recognition of project benefits and drawbacks other than those associated with the final goal. It is with sensitive analysis, dynamic evolution and indigenous control that the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor will succeed in empowering the people and unifying the ecosystems of the Central American isthmus.

Foremost I would like to thank the residents of Mojoncito who shared their homes with me and showed me so much care and patience during the summer that I stayed in their community. In particular, Liduvina Escalante Sanchez, Elías Morales Escalante, and their seven children were tremendously generous in sharing with me their home and hospitality (Figure 4). Armando Mayorga Oliver, Rosendo Jackson Nersis, and the many other people that I interviewed and spent time with provided me with both joy and invaluable information.

I could not have begun to dream of doing this project without the guidance of Carlos Borge, and to him I am endlessly grateful. Bjorn Ola Tafjord served a critical role in my project as well, as a information source, confidant, and most recently as an editor.

On the Swarthmore end, professors Michael Speirs, Tim Williams, and Jose Luis Machado gave important advice and feedback for the project and thesis from inception to completion. I would also like to acknowledge Elisabeth Goldsmith for her editing advice, and my many friends and professors at Swarthmore for their help and support along the way. Lastly, I would like to thank Aurora Camacho de Schmidt for organizing the translation of my thesis, and Jesse Hartigan, Jacob Hodes, Laura Carballo, Katia Bobonis, and Theodore Alexander for doing the translation.

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1. Do you have pigs? How many? What breed?

2. Why do you raise pigs? How frequently do you kill one? Sell one? Eat one?

3. When a sow has piglets, what do you do with them? How many do you give away? Sell? Raise?

4. Where do your pigs live? What are their customs?

5. What do you do to care for your pigs? What do you feed them? How frequently do you feed them? Do you give them water? Medicine? What kind? Is there a specific person in the family who has the responsibility of caring for the pigs?

6. Sometimes pigs are tied and attached to the house or to a tree with a piece of rope. Why? Why is it only certain pigs? Are they always tied, or only sometimes?

7. What problems do pigs cause (social, health, economic, environmental)? Do the problems have solutions? What are they?

8. Why do you have a pigpen? Is it part of the Bowö project? How much time do your pigs spend in and out of the pen? Why are they not always inside of the enclosure? Do you have enough food to fully nourish your pigs when they are penned?

9. When you have water in the pen, will the pigs be able to live permanently inside it, or will they still need to go free sometimes?

10. How far away from your house is your pen? Is it better to have the pen closer to the house or closer to the farm? Would you keep your pigs enclosed more if your pen was closer to the house?

11. If you had the opportunity to cross your pigs with a different breed in order to make them better adapted to live penned, would you cross them?

12. Would it do the same thing if each family had less than eight pigs, kept them loose, but gave them enough food each day and crossed them with a well-adapted breed that was large and didn't stray far?

13. Do you have problems with your neighbors? How often? What are the consequences? Do the pigs cause the problems, or do they just receive the blame?

14. What do you think of Bowö's pig-penning project? What is the most important result that the project will bring? How could the project be improved?

15. Would the same pigsty construction group exist if the Baha’i Faith did not exist in this area? How would it be different? Would there be the same amount of money available to do projects such as the Bowö pigpen project?

16. If the pigpen construction group passed the same amount of time and money building whatever you would like, what would you like them to build?

17. What do you think of creating restrictions regarding who is allowed to have pigs or how many pigs each family can have? Who would decide such things?

18. What do you think of penning pigs? Do you want to pen your pigs? Why/Why not? Do you have enough food to fully nourish your pigs?

19. Do you know people who have their pigs penned? What is their experience with the system?

20. Do you know of the Bowö project in which there is a group that builds pigstys? What do you think of the project? What is the most important result that the project will bring? How could the project be improved?

21. If you had the opportunity to cross your pigs with another breed in order to make them better adapted to living penned, would you cross them?

22. When there are problems between neighbors, do the pigs actually cause the problems, or do they receive the blame for problems that they did not cause?

23. Is it possible to have more pigs loose or more penned?

24. What does the Bribri tradition say about penning pigs? Is this changing?

25. Do pigs play a role in Bribri history? Are there legends about pigs? Jokes?

26. What is the most important thing that Bribri people can do in order to protect the environment now and in the future?

27. How would you like for your children and grandchildren to care for pigs?

28. What do you think of Agouti paca farms? Talapia? Iguana?

1) posts for the fence (postes): need 120 posts per porkerisa. 1 day per pen = 0 colones.

2) barbed wire (alambra): 3 rolls per pen at 7,000 colones per roll = 840,000 colones.

3) hooks (grapa) (to attach wire to posts): 3 kilo per family at 400 colones per kilo = 48,000 colones.

4) house (casita): 4x4m. Materials (posts, wood, leaves) all from mountains. 5 days per pen = 0 colones.

5) nails (claves): 3 kilo per family at 400 colones per kilo = 48,000 colones.

6) cement: partially installed. 12 families got seven sacks, eleven got five. 17 more need five. 2,100 colones per sac = 176,400 + 294,000 = 470,400 colones

7) transport of materials:

San José to Suretka (truck): 25,000 colones

Suretka to Sepecue (boat): 14,000 colones

Sepecue to Mojoncito (truck): 16,000 colones.

8) hose (manguera): not yet installed. 5,640 m needed. 3,000 colones per 90 m roll = 188,000 colones.

9) one Yorkshire sow per family (not yet purchased): 3,500 colones per pig = 140,000 colones.

10) salaries: 3 x 70,000 colones per month x 12 months per year x 3 years = 5,040,000 colones.

11) salaries for two more years = 3,360,000 colones