An Amazonian Indigenous community evades extinction and finds alternatives to extractivism through developing an ecotourism project in the Bolivian jungle.
This article was originally written in Spanish by Sergio Mendoza and Yenny Escalante for La Nube and Escalando Voces. Read the original here.
In the early 1990s, San José de Uchupiamonas in the Bolivian Amazon was facing an exodus due to high levels of poverty and a lack of modern services. The young Indigenous leaders of this Amazonian village were desperate to save their community.
People were dying due to lack of access to health services. Education only reached the fifth grade. There was no water and basic services, no access to mobile phones. The villagers who for centuries have lived off the forest were facing the increasing need to generate cash, a good that was becoming more important in a capitalized society. San José de Uchupiamonas was a village forgotten by the State and by the early 90s, a good part of the families had left in search of better luck.
In 1991, an Israeli man in his thirties named Yossi Ghinsberg returned to the village to thank those who had saved his life a decade ago when he got lost in the jungle for three weeks.
The new leaders told Ghinsberg of their plans to develop an ecotourism project in their territory to generate jobs and cashflow from abroad. They hoped this would provide the local Indigenous community with an opportunity to stay in their town and make money by protecting nature, without needing to turn to deforestation for timber sales. Ghinsberg undertook to raise funds in the United States, which he did successfully.
On 1 May 2024, San José de Uchupiamonas celebrated another year of existence since its ‘discovery’ by Franciscan missionaries 408 years ago. Guido Mamani, once one of those young leaders, sits in the patio of his house remembering a time when there was no dirt road for cars (the road was only built in 1999) and the quickest access route to the town was through the Tuichi River: nine hours in a boat with an outboard motor from Rurrenabaque.
‘The population was already in exodus. People were packing their suitcases to leave. The question was: how were we going to support the population?,’ Mamani recalls. ‘That’s where tourism came in.’
The Chalalán project is born
The village is tiny, only seven by four blocks. The houses are made of wood, adobe, or bricks. The roofs are constructed with motacú palm, jatata leaves, or sheets of calamine. Fruit trees abound on the streets and house patios. The 70 families that live here grow cassava, rice, corn, peanuts, and walusa and keep livestock. The dirt roads are paved with grass.
In one of the houses, almost two blocks from the main square (an open field with four rustic crosses on each corner), lives Zenón Limaco, 64 years old, an old friend of Guido Mamani and Yossi, one of the masterminds behind this crazy idea to save his people from extinction and extractivism through tourism. His inspiration came from outside of the community. In the 70s and 80s, a Frenchman used to bring tourists to the Santa Rosa lagoon, a large reservoir located 40 kilometers from the town. The locals were already collaborating with him and witnessed the foreigners’ interest in the beauty of the thick and dangerous jungle.
Now the community of San José planned to build a hostel in the town where tourists would come from all over the world, generating resources for the community in a sustainable way, and offering a reason for locals to stay.
They decided to place the hostel on the Chalalán lagoon, a forested reserve where the Indigenous people did not hunt because a dark spirit protected the area. The spirit was expelled by a Yatiri, an Aymara community healer who was brought down from the La Paz highlands to help them.
Funding from the International Development Bank secured by Ghinsberg was used to build the infrastructure of Chalalán, to train the Uchupiamonas Indigenous workers in hospitality and guiding, and to consolidate the company and other expenses over five years, from 1995 to 1999.
At the beginning of the new millennium, the company Albergue Ecológico Chalalán S.A. was active. Today 74 families own 50 percent of the shares. The other 50 percent belongs to the community, represented by its authorities on duty.
The community members were enthusiastic about the arrival of tourists to the cabins and the income they generated. The community ecotourism idea was beginning to reap results. People began to unpack their suitcases and tuition levels increased up to high school level (although sometimes with only two students). The water supply service improved, a cell phone antenna was built, and the community registered 210 thousand hectares as its territory within the Madidi National Park, one of the most biodiverse in the world, created in 1995.
‘The venture injected resources into the community and often replaced the role of the State in paying teachers and supporting budgets for projects like the water service,’ proudly expresses Álex Villca, Indigenous leader and entrepreneur of one of the eco-lodges that came later: the Madidi Jungle.
Like him, many young people began to finish school, enter universities, and learn English. The development of human capital is one of the greatest achievements of entrepreneurship, say those interviewed.
One of the many who trained at Chalalán is Sandro Valdéz, 42, an experienced birdwatching tour guide. He boasts of having seen 1,187 of the almost 1,500 birds recorded in Bolivia, and of having learned English by ear. Today he works at the Sadiri Lodge, one of the six ventures that emerged after Chalalán, and the only one specialized in birdwatching.
Besides the Madidi Jungle, Sadiri Lodge, and Chalalán, the other ecotourism ventures in San José de Uchupiamonas are Yuruma Journeys, Berraco del Madidi, Corazón del Madidi, and Santa Rosa del Madidi. The infrastructures were inspired in the first project (Chalalán), with wooden cabins built in the middle of the jungle, several meters above the ground, roofs made of native palms, and mosquito nets for windows and doors.
Some of them are managed in a similar way than Chalalán: they are companies whose shares belong to members of the community. Others are private or family-driven projects. All of them, except Sadiri, built at the entrance to the Madidi park, are located over the Tuichi River, many kilometers away from the town inside the jungle. There is a wide range of prices to suit every pocket. All the companies are supposed to generate income (directly or indirectly) for the community; because the Uchupiamonas territory is inside the Madidi park, all the tourists pay a fee to enter into the protected area.
‘We want the Madidi to continue, so we can protect this biodiversity that we show to all those who visit us,’ says Valdéz.
‘This is the community’s vision. Right now if you ask anyone, they will always say no to extractivism and mining. People are fighting to conserve their territory, as their ancestors did for a long time,’ adds Pedro Macuapa, administrator of Berraco del Madidi, sitting in his patio under the shade of a tree.
New threats, with the government at the forefront
‘The new generations stopped hunting and the entire town was convinced of the venture, and still is,’ says Ruth Alipaz, leader of the Sadiri Lodge, which boasts 35 women from the community as shareholders.
Alipaz, who is also an Indigenous leader in the region, says that although ecotourism made it possible to evade extractivism, the threats to this part of the Amazon increased with the boom in gold mining, the urgency of oil exploration, and above all, the projects promoted by the MAS government to expand agribusiness with monocultures of sugarcane, rice, corn, and lately African palm, a plant that would supposedly allow the country to reduce its dependence on imported fossil fuels. The government plans to use the oil extracted from African palm to obtain biodiesel, processing the raw material in three biodiesel plants.
‘The biggest threat is the government, because with its policies it tells us what development is, because with its programs they are going to destroy us,’ says Ruth, who attests to the waters of the Tuichi River no longer running clear since gold miners settled in the headwaters of the basin on the Apolo side. The fires that recur each year have worn out the forest. 2023 was worse, and since then the town lagoon began to dry up, she tells us.
San José de Uchupiamonas managed to survive the new millennium with ecotourism as the spearhead for generating economy. But not everyone is convinced that the town’s disappearance has been avoided.
‘I still have doubts about whether the project worked and if the town could be saved. But we did manage to postpone its death,’ says Zenón, hopelessly, about the situation in which this community still finds itself.
Tourists do not usually enter the town, but rather stay in the eco-lodges several kilometers away, but still inside the Uchupiamonas’ territory. Water service is frequently interrupted. The 30-kilometer road that connects with Tumupasa is impassable during the rainy season. Internet service is slow. There is still much to do to guarantee a better quality of life for the residents, and for them to see their stay in the town as a possibility to make money.
The key, according to Zenón, is to diversify the sources of income. ‘As a Brazilian once told me: “Conservation costs money”’.
Chalalán reached its best years in 2015, and then began a decline that reached zero with the Coronavirus pandemic in 2020. Things are getting better, but the project does not generate the same income as it used to. After tax, retirement contributions, health insurance and other costs, the community isn’t generating the income that it needs. For this reason, Guido affirms the company is talking to another private company to relaunch the venture this year, perhaps with a new shares system which is still under discussion.
Locals like Guido complain of mining companies not being held to the same local laws: ‘Of course, mining [companies don’t] pay taxes and no one says a thing, but here, we who take care of the environment and bring in foreign money have to comply with all the regulations. And the government sends us commissions that take money from us’ [including taxes and fines].
In any case, unlike his old friend Zenón, Guido is convinced that the main objective was achieved: saving the people from an exodus and evading extractivism. ‘Of course, we are talking about valuing who we are, about the self-esteem of our youth. Look how they are dancing now at the feast of San José, they are no longer ashamed. Other towns are copying this idea. The Chalalán is being replicated.’
1 May, the town’s anniversary, has already passed. It is after midnight and in the darkness of the village, illuminated only by a few whitish lights, you can hear the incessant drumbeat of one of the three troupes roaming. From a deserted street you can see them appear behind a corner, like shadows that sway from one side to the other to the sound of the bass drum and panpipes. Thankfully, the town is still alive and the party won’t stop all week.
This article was originally written in Spanish by Sergio Mendoza and Yenny Escalante for La Nube and Escalando Voces. The research was carried out with the support of the Fundación Para el Periodismo (FPP) within the framework of the Journalism of Solutions project, with the support of The National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Read the original here.