Click on the image to find out what happened to this spot.
Photo courtesy of www.almanaqueazul.org
For how long will we have to fight our own stupidity? Well, in case you haven't heard, looks like the whole Republic of Panama is being sold. And a tiny corner of it, Red Frog Beach in Bastimentos Island (part of the province of Bocas del Toro), is being devoured by bulldozers and chain saws as part of a shady mega-project that wants to replace indigenous communities and modest local homes with condos and swimming pools. This is not cheap fiction, my friends.
The people buying (into) this attractive little scam are not necessarily evil. Many of them have no idea that what appears on the project's website is nothing more than embellished BS. If you buy now you will in fact acquire a little piece of tropical heaven. You'll be at arms reach of Bastimentos National Marine Park (think of all the colors you know, then picture marine flora and fauna wearing all these colors). However, by the time you actually move out there, all the mud from the construction site washing out to sea will have killed the coral, there will be no tropical forest left because, well, you'll be standing on it only now it's a golf course, and the locals will silently hate you because they'll still live in modest wooden homes and you'll be living in this:
Image borrowed from the project's website
Those of us opposing the approval and development of the project (whichever happens first, corruption trickles down to even the tiniest of places) don't have a lot of money or power to step in and immediately make a difference, but we do have information, we do have a very strong will and consciences that cannot be bought. We also have contacts. I mean you, reading from the comfort of your home or looking over your shoulder at your office so no one catches you checking out a blog from some girl in Panama. You with e-mail addresses of people from around the world, you writing blogs, sharing links...
If you have time to surf the net, you have time to pass this info along. The locals of Bastimentos are powerless if compared to this huge developing company, to the governments promoting all of these "sustainable" tourism projects, to the millions of dollars flowing around, luring and hooking on more and more people like a gigantic bait out at sea.
Here's a list of links with very useful, interesting information on this. Feel free to check them out and share them!
Almanaque Azul's report, English version
Stop Red Frog Beach - the site
Comments from an Interamerican Development Bank Consultant to La Prensa (local, prestigious newspaper)
Interview to Eligio Binns, Mayor of Bocas del Toro from La prensa
Have you bought a piece of this corner of heaven yet?
Photo courtesy of www.almanaqueazul.org
