San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua - On the Cusp of Development

We’ve been in Nicaragua for three weeks now, staying in a small beach town in the south called San Juan del Sur. It sits on a cove in the pacific, surrounded by some of the best surf waters around. Within the last handful of years, Americans and Europeans have discovered this place, and started arriving here in droves. The surf, combined with near-perfect weather year round, cheap goods and services, and a relative political stability after many years of fighting – all make for the perfect storm for San Juan becoming a tourist Mecca. With tourism comes the need for development. All these tourists want the conveniences they’re used to back home, from a comfortable bed, to flush toilets, to their choice of cuisines at dinner time. San Juan is catching on rapidly, though not quite there yet. It’s fascinating to be witness to a town on the cusp of development, and be able to document aspects of the transition as it literally unfolds right in front of our eyes. On the positive side, the economy here is thriving, at least relative to most of the rest of Nicaragua. People have jobs, street vendors have a constant supply of customers, and some of the roads are even paved! And then there are the downsides, which show up in unexpected ways. No one here has capital, and borrowing money to start a new project is nowhere as simple as it is in the US. That, combined with a surprisingly consistent lack of business-savvy among Nicas (short for Nicaraguans), results in a glaring class system like I’ve never seen before: all the businesses in town are owned and run by whites, and all the workers are Nicas. Hanging out with the whites almost always includes conversations about the immense business opportunities here, and the ease of making a profit in this nascent marketplace. Class extends beyond ownership too. There are the gringo restaurants, where prices are out of reach for most Nicas. And literally across the street are the “sodas,” which are basically women putting a grill and a table on sidewalk right outside their home, and serving up traditional Nica food. The pace of life is still laid-back here .. that hasn’t changed quite yet. Most of the buildings aren’t too intrusive on the beach front, but some of the new Western-style monsters are starting to creep up. Cars are still way too expensive to own for Nicas, so bikes abound, and traffic is not a problem. But the transition is starting to take place in that area as well, lead by the white minority. A land developer from Texas revamped a 4x4 from the 60s, painted it yellow, and is proud of joy-riding it around town trophy-showoff style. Small businesses can’t afford signs with their business name, so Pepsi and the like do it for them, at quite a price: the top 80% of the sign ends up being a Pepsi ad, and only 20% has the business name in much smaller font. Returnable glass bottles are still in use, but more convenient Western-style plastic packaging is on the rise, with no recycling infrastructure in place. No multi-national chain stores have made it here yet, but a headline in a Nica paper the other day was about Walmart buying 51% controlling stake in the three largest Nicaraguan supermarkets. So as I’m witnessing a country take its first steps towards “development,” I can’t help but ask the obvious questions. Does progress (the Western way) and a traditional, simpler way of life always end up being mutually exclusive? Are there any large scale examples of societies that have found the balance between having abundance in the material world, while also managing not to become enslaved by it? And if so, how did they go about it? Those would be lessons I’d sure like to learn and help spread around. Especially to a Nicaraguan society that appears to me to be headed to the same place that Western societies have all gone – and stayed.