THE YEAR BEGAN with a work camp that took 37 North Americans to San Luis for a 10-day intergenerational Quaker work camp. The project touched hosts and visitors alike; QEW gained new participants. The visit allowed some of the founders of our collaboration to reunite after 10 years, share the fruits of their labors, and to publicly reassert the vision that underlies the project. Powerful connections were forged and strengthened through our sharing.

We are still in the process of working towards transfer of the Finca La Bella property to the parceleros as a group. Conservation easements or servidumbres ecológicas in Costa Rica have been used mainly to conserve forest and tourist development properties. The integration of multipartite social goals is novel and we lack local templates. During facilitation work in 2004, I was not encouraged to work on the issue. Others presented easements as a necessary imposition from above and outside the community, rather than a tool to enable the parceleros’ vision, thus fostering suspicion. It is a challenge to provide patient, focused energy to this process from afar.

Partners in the project are working to find the legal form that most securely protects both the conservation values of the project, and the parceleros’ home place. To participate actively in that process, we await an English translation of the convenio, the current project constitution and basis for future agreements, from Tim Curtis of the Monteverde Friends Meeting. AK/SL has again raised the funds that would be needed to endow an easement, or cover related legal costs.

While La Bella’s interim trust agreement with the Monteverde Institute is listed as expired in Costa Rica’s National Registry, this contradicts the paper document we have on file. Institute staff and lawyers are clear that the property is in no immediate danger of a lien or claim, but the parceleros recently wrote to express strong and understandable unease with the situation. The Institute board is working to follow up with the parceleros about legal options, particularly an easement. Board member Tim Sales has conferred with the AK/SL clerk, and he and the Institute’s lawyer recently met with parceleros about this. This meeting did not allay all fears, and we must work with Institute and parceleros to move forward with clearer understanding and communication. Additional allies or partners for the La Bella project may include the U.S. non-profit Alliance for the Monteverde Institute (AMVI), the AIDSL (San Luis Integrated Development Association) and their new reservas comunales or community trust initiative and Pacific Slope Trail project (please see www.pacificslopetrail.org). Could that trust perhaps hold title to La Bella?

In May we wrote to the parceleros and the board, “We are in agreement with the request of the junta de la Asociación Agrícola Finca La Bella Ann Kriebel to immediately initiate the process to transfer the title of the La Bella property, as long as the title is encumbered by an easement or equivalent perpetual protections…. Our strong belief in the capacity of the parceleros to administer the project was confirmed in our conversations and all that we shared during our recent visit to San Luis, during the workcamp. Here we are only trying to put in writing the solemn spoken understanding that we established there. We want to emphasize that our need for these protections to be in effect do not reflect a lack of trust. Our commitment to the donors who made the project possible makes us need to ensure that protections are in place so that the property cannot be sold individually or all together, to an individual or another private party. Also, in making any changes to the present convenio, we believe, as we know you do, that the ethical principles of the project should be maintained and upheld. In addition, we would ask that any decisions for development or projects need to be made collectively.”

Paz,

Susannah McCandless, clerk