COLOMBIA:
Wayúu 'Sea Shepherds' to Cultivate Pearls
María Isabel García*
RIOHACHA, Colombia, Oct 8 (Tierramérica) - From oysters in sacks hung underwater,
pearls, mother-of-pearl for adornments and the nutritional oyster flesh are
harvested by fisherfolk in La Guajira Peninsula, which was a world pirate
emporium in the times when pirates sailed the Caribbean.
This simple yet innovative approach to pearl production could benefit 30,000
residents of La Guajira, including the Wayúu Indians, who see the ocean as
an enormous pastureland.
The fame of La Guajira pearls dates to 1499, when captain Alonso de Ojeda
and geographers Juan de la Cosa and Américo Vespucio explored the Caribbean
coasts, reaching Cape Vela, the first continental Spanish settlement.
Tales of the native Wayúu peoples who wore strings of pearls awakened the
greed of the Conquistadors, and along with the trade of these "sea stones"
began the slave trade of Indians and Africans to the Antilles, brought to
mine gypsum and salt.
The Indians traded pearls for firearms, dealing with English, French and
Dutch privateers and pirates, who battled with the Spaniards for control
over the region's natural wealth.
Thus originated the multi-ethnic population that today inhabits the
peninsula, located on the northern coast of South America, covering 21,000
square km, shared by Colombia and Venezuela.
During the hot afternoons in Riohacha, a Colombian city on the peninsula,
the elderly sit in rocking chairs in the doorways to their homes. Some
remember the "last pearl bonanza, sometime around 1920, when the town of
Carrizal still conducted big trade."
There is also talk of pearls at the beach, where fisherfolk gather. But
there it is not conversation of nostalgia for the past, but rather about
pears as a viable project, based on studies conducted in Cape Vela by the
Environment Ministry's Institute for Marine and Fishing Research (INVEMAR).
In 1990, experiments were begun for cultivating the pearl oyster Pinctada
imbricata in sacks hung beneath the water and in boxes set in the seabed.
This mother-of-pearl species "has great potential" due to its rapid growth
and high production of edible soft tissue, INVEMAR biologist Federico
Newmark told Tierramérica.
The high demand for pearls is taking its toll on natural oyster colonies,
whose reproductive cycle can be more than a century long.
The benefit of the INVEMAR project is that the oyster-raising system
protects the colonies and significantly reduces the reproduction cycle.
The project would have triple the production for some 6,000 small fisherfolk
and approximately 30,000 residents of the Guajira coast, anthropologist
Wilder Guerra told Tierramérica.
The formation of pearls is contingent on other factors, but the inside of
the shell - the mother-of-pearl - can be used for inlays in decorations
and jewellery, and the oyster flesh is nutritious, he said.
This has been proven by the project that has already been launched by
INVEMAR and the Fisherfolk Association of Playa del Muerto (ASOPLAM), in the
Tayrona national nature park, along the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, an
ecosystem that influences the La Guajira Peninsula.
Since 1994, a group of families that subsisted on fishing and tourism began
to raise the bivalve molluscs using simple techniques they learned from
INVEMAR biologists.
The entire process takes about one year. From the "planting" of the tiny
larvae in sacks suspended in water, until the larvae attach to the sackcloth
and reach 1.5 to 2.0 cm long takes two months.
In another two months, they are selected according to species - Pinctada
imbricata, Agropecten nucleus, Nudipecten nodosus - and transferred to
tubular and compartmentalised nets, where they grow to three or four cm in
length.
"The time of joy" comes when the result of the collective effort is
harvested, fisherman Bienvenido Pinto, one of 70 people involved in the
project, told Tierramérica.
According to biologist Guerra, if La Guajira can replicate what the
fisherfolk of ASOPLAM have done, "it would generate important income for the
Wayúu."
But changes must be made to legislation so that it covers "communal
territory rights over the sea," he said.
The indigenous peoples of the peninsula consider the sea an enormous
pasture, in which fish are the livestock. Many Wayúu said they found it
incomprehensible last month when a Korean fishing vessel was found catching
sharks, cutting off their valuable fins but dumping the bloodied carcasses
back into the sea.
For the Wayúu, the possibility that the Playa del Muerto project could be
expanded to their region brings with it the hope of improving their
marginalized status in the local economy.
Colombia has coastline on the Caribbean and the Pacific, but of the 90,000
direct and indirect jobs generated by small fishing operations, 62,000 are
in continental freshwater. Of the 379 motorised fishing vessels that make up
the industrial fishing flotilla, just 56 percent fly the Colombian flag.
The more romantic among the locals hope the song "El medallón", by Rafael
Escalona, will take on new meaning: "From La Guajira I will bring/ the most
beautiful necklace of pearls/ so that the stars are envious/ at night when
you wear it."
* María Isabel García is a Tierramérica contributor. Originally published
Oct. 4 by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica
network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the
backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations
Environment Programme. (END/2003)
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