Week 1: pilot project

[Last modified: October, 16 2024 01:11 PM]

Eaten by the Sea: How the People in Palomino, La Guajira, Colombia, Live in Times of Existential Uncertainty

Palomino is a place often referred to as ‘paradise.’ It is a relatively small village in the department of La Guajira, located in northwestern Colombia. The place, which finds itself ‘between the sierra (mountains) and the jungle, between the river and the sea,’ experienced an unprecedented boost in popularity around the year 2014. Since then, the cultural and economic landscape has transformed. Its economy is now almost fully focused on tourism, creating new opportunities for the local people. One of the major consequences of this tourism-based economy is the construction of many hostels, hotels, eco-resorts, and so on. Due to minimal regulation of construction sites, many local mangrove trees were removed without adequate consideration. This has compromised the stability of the sand, resulting in significant beach erosion and loss of shoreline. While tourists initially brought economic prosperity to the area, they have inadvertently posed an existential threat to the village (Ávila & Baez, 2022; Parra, 2021).

Research has been conducted, although mostly at the bachelor’s and master’s levels, about the impact of tourism, its whiteness, and its effects on the cultural and economic landscape (Cortés, 2016; Rey, 2023; Rodríguez, 2019). However, the element of the beach rapidly disappearing doesn’t seem to be foregrounded in those analyses. It is, after all, a very slow process that extends into the past, present, and future, and therefore it doesn’t manifest in an urgent way. This research aims to include this notion of temporality in describing the rapidly changing landscape of Palomino. More specifically, I’m interested in the way the people of Palomino understand their environment and their future possibilities, while at the same time understanding the tourists’ conceptions of nature in Palomino—as they are free from the burden of having to imagine a future Palomino.

The methods I will use consist of participant observation and semi-structured interviews. Depending on the conditions in the field, I will work with drawings, pictures, and other ways to convey possibilities for the future.

Bibliography

Ávila, X. & Baez, R. (2022, March 23). Erosión costera en las playas de Palomino, La Guajira. ArcGIS StoryMaps. https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/f1f9a3b8a94b4a95aca1c74bf0a1f431.

Cortés Leal, J. (2016). Gestión activa para el turismo rural en el corregimiento Palomino, municipio de Dibulla-Guajira. Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

Rey, D. (2023). El mar que se quedó sin playa. Blanquitud, paisaje y turismo en Palomino, Guajira. Recuperado de: http://hdl.handle.net/10554/63928.

Rodríguez, A. (2019). El turismo como fuerza impulsora de cambio sobre el paisaje cultural : visibilizando perspectivas en Palomino, La Guajira. Recuperado de: http://hdl.handle.net/10554/40254.

Parra, M. (2021, November). Cómo ir (y volver) a un paraíso – Revista Late. Revista Late. https://www.revistalate.net/2021/11/11/como-ir-y-volver-a-un-paraiso/.