From the Bolivian jungle to the tip of Chile, from the sugar cane fields of the Dominican Republic to Colombia’s Andean highlands, and finally to the frozen expanse of Antarctica, “Vanishing Homelands” chronicles the loss of land and culture across Latin America and the Caribbean in the 500 years since the arrival of Columbus.
Vanishing Homelands
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1991-1992
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Cecilia Vaisman, Alan Weisman
Vanishing Homelands
Flowers for Export
Cecilia Vaisman, Alan Weisman
Vanishing Homelands
Flowers for Export
Outside Bogotá, some of Latin America’s best soils have been covered with a sea of greenhouses for growing flowers for export.
During the 1980s, carnations, roses, and chrysanthemums became more abundant and cheaper than ever on street corners and in supermarkets throughout North America.
Most are grown in a sea of greenhouses surrounding Bogotá, Colombia. For Colombia, flowers now rank with coffee as a major source of employment and foreign exchange.
But they also convert some of Latin America’s best soils from the production of food to luxury crops. And the chemicals required to produced perfect flowers endanger the environment and the health of the workers.
Narration is by Edward James Olmos, who hosted a series of 13 half-hour Vanishing Homelands specials.
Date
August 1992Outlets
Weekend EditionTags
Regions: South AmericaMedia: AudioOther Contributors: Cecilia Vaisman, Alan WeismanOther Tags: colombia, cut flower industry -
Sandy Tolan, Alan Weisman
Vanishing Homelands
Caribbean Dreams
Sandy Tolan, Alan Weisman
Vanishing Homelands
Caribbean Dreams
Different sorts of dreams collide in the Dominican Republic, where industrial parks, sugar cane fields, and a posh resort all belong to a single U.S. corporation.
To most Americans, a Caribbean holiday sounds like a dream. For many, the dreamiest of all is a stay at the Dominican Republic’s Casa de Campo, a place where people can, for up to $2,000 a night, luxuriate in the region’s poshest, most complete resort. Even the maids here are postcard perfect, dressed in kerchiefs, peasant skirts, and aprons designed by Oscar de la Renta.
But outside the oasis of pleasure lies the rest of the Dominican Republic, one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere, where, increasingly, the people who live and work there are seeing their own dreams dissolve.
Narration is by Edward James Olmos, who hosted a series of 13 half-hour Vanishing Homelands specials.
Date
August 1992Outlets
All Things Considered -
Cecilia Vaisman
Vanishing Homelands
Sustainable Colonization
Cecilia Vaisman
Vanishing Homelands
Sustainable Colonization
In Brazil, a peasant cooperative has planted native crops using methods designed to preserve the delicate forest soils. But the farmers have little formal education, and even less experience managing a business.
Since the 1970s, hundreds of thousands of poor peasants have streamed into the Brazilian Amazon in a desperate search for farmland.
Many of them arrive only to find that rainforest soils cannot sustain the kinds of crops they knew back home. So they end up in a vicious cycle – slashing and burning new areas of forest year after year.
Now, a small group of farmers living in the most devastated region of the Amazon is trying an alternative. Some say it may become a model to stop the destruction of the jungle.
Narration is by Edward James Olmos, who hosted a series of 13 half-hour Vanishing Homelands specials.
Date
July 1992Outlets
NPRTags
Themes: Economy, EnvironmentRegions: South AmericaMedia: AudioOther Contributors: Cecilia Vaisman -
Katie Davis
Vanishing Homelands
Escaping the Tourist Trap
Katie Davis
Vanishing Homelands
Escaping the Tourist Trap
In the Mexican state of Chiapas, Chamula Indian artisans are trying to create a tourist economy on their own terms.
More than almost any country in the Americas, Mexico has turned to tourism to help its economy. Entertaining tourists is touted as a clean industry that creates jobs, attracts dollars, and promotes friendly international relations.
But critics say that tourism reinforces an image of Mexicans as servile to rich Americans, and that villages and seacoasts are being defiled by developers.
Katie Davis visits the Chamula region, where some say that colorful traditions will only survive if a way can be found to market them.
Narration is by Edward James Olmos, who hosted a series of 13 half-hour Vanishing Homelands specials.
Date
1992 -
Cecilia Vaisman
Vanishing Homelands
Rainforest Crunch
Cecilia Vaisman
Vanishing Homelands
Rainforest Crunch
Deep in the Brazilian Amazon, seasonal rubber tappers harvest Brazil nuts to sell to Ben & Jerry’s. But the tappers aren’t happy, and the relationship with their NGO sponsor has frayed.
Rainforest Crunch, the candy and popular ice cream made with Brazil nuts, is an example of a new merchandising strategy known as green marketing.
Shoppers today, the theory goes, want products whose consumption somehow helps save the planet.
Developed by Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream and the Boston-based organization Cultural Survival, the Rainforest Crunch scheme is intended to prove that it’s more profitable to keep the Amazon intact than to convert it to cattle ranches.
The plan is to give thousands of people who live and work in the forest a stake in preserving it. But some question whether this really is responsible development.
Narration is by Edward James Olmos, who hosted a series of 13 half-hour Vanishing Homelands specials.
Date
July 26, 1992Outlets
Weekend EditionTags
Themes: Economy, EnvironmentRegions: South AmericaMedia: AudioOther Contributors: Cecilia Vaisman -
Cecilia Vaisman, Alan Weisman
Vanishing Homelands
Life on the Edge of the Ozone Hole
Cecilia Vaisman, Alan Weisman
Vanishing Homelands
Life on the Edge of the Ozone Hole
The world’s southernmost population, in Chile’s Magallanes province, finds itself on the brink of a deepening danger that may one day force them from their beautiful homeland – and eventually imperil us all.
The world’s southernmost population, in Chile’s Magallanes province, finds itself on the brink of a deepening danger that may one day force it from its beautiful homeland – and eventually imperil us all.
Narration is by Edward James Olmos, who hosted a series of 13 half-hour Vanishing Homelands specials.
Date
June 1992Outlets
SoundprintTags
Themes: EnvironmentRegions: South AmericaMedia: AudioOther Contributors: Cecilia Vaisman, Alan Weisman -
Cecilia Vaisman, Alan Weisman
Vanishing Homelands
Yacyretá
Cecilia Vaisman, Alan Weisman
Vanishing Homelands
Yacyretá
A giant dam project on the border of Paraguay and Argentina raises questions about the social and environmental impact of major infrastructure projects.
Dozens of dams were built in South America between the 1960s and early 1990s. Many were financed by the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, to bring progress to the continent by harnessing its powerful rivers for industry and growing urban populations.
The largest of these dams was Yacyretá, on the border between Paraguay and Argentina. Yacyretá was to produce thousands of megawatts of energy. But it was also to flood the biologically richest area of both countries, and force the largest urban displacement by a development project in history.
In the latter half of the 1980s, the banks held up loans to Yacyretá, pending plans to address environmental and social concerns. Then, despite protests that people and endangered animals would be left homeless, the banks began preparing to restart the loans, raising questions about the policy of international lenders to leave environmental protection and resettlement to the borrowing countries.
Narration is by Edward James Olmos, who hosted a series of 13 half-hour Vanishing Homelands specials.
Date
May 30, 1992Outlets
Weekend Edition -
Sandy Tolan, Nancy Postero
Vanishing Homelands
Refugees from a Fallen Landscape, Part 2
Sandy Tolan, Nancy Postero
Vanishing Homelands
Refugees from a Fallen Landscape, Part 2
Part 2 of a two-part report from Honduras examines attempts by foreign and private relief agencies to regenerate the soil and help farmers stay on their lands.
For decades, inequitable land distribution, slash-and-burn farming, and uncontrolled erosion have turned entire regions in Latin America into desert, and forced hundreds of thousands of farmers into towns and cities.
This has created a new kind of migrant: the environmental refugee.
But two programs in southern Honduras are looking at ways to help restore the damaged soils, and keep farmers on their lands.
One is a grassroots effort that could serve as a model for small-scale development projects. The other is a U.S.-funded plan that is trying to change the way people farm across the entire country.
Narration is by Edward James Olmos, who hosted a series of 13 half-hour Vanishing Homelands specials.
Date
May 28, 1992Outlets
Morning EditionTags
Themes: Economy, EnvironmentRegions: Central AmericaMedia: AudioOther Contributors: Sandy Tolan -
Sandy Tolan, Nancy Postero
Vanishing Homelands
Refugees from a Fallen Landscape, Part 1
Sandy Tolan, Nancy Postero
Vanishing Homelands
Refugees from a Fallen Landscape, Part 1
Part One of a two-part feature about the effects of deforestation and desertification follows poor farmers in Honduras who are fleeing their damaged lands to an uncertain life in Tegucigalpa.
In many parts of Latin America, the ecological crisis of deforestation and soil erosion has become so severe that hundreds of thousands of farmers and their families have been forced to abandon their lands and flee to the cities.
In southern Honduras, a generation of poor land distribution and slash-and-burn farming has turned once-fertile lands into useless patches of rock.
Narration is by Edward James Olmos, who hosted a series of 13 half-hour Vanishing Homelands specials.
Date
May 27, 1992Outlets
Morning EditionTags
Themes: Economy, EnvironmentRegions: Central AmericaMedia: AudioOther Contributors: Sandy Tolan -
Sandy Tolan, Nancy Postero
Vanishing Homelands
Shrimp Cocktail
Sandy Tolan, Nancy Postero
Vanishing Homelands
Shrimp Cocktail
Backed by U.S. government funds, salt flats along the southern Honduran coast have been converted into giant shrimp farms where lax enforcement of environmental, social, and labor laws are the norm.
Throughout the Americas, the U.S. government and international lenders are implementing a vast new policy designed to turn the hemisphere into one big common market.
The plan first calls for a North American Free Trade Agreement. Then, all of North and South American would be linked under the so-called “Enterprise for the Americas.”
Under this strategy, member countries would privatize national industries, implement austerity programs, and convert their economies to produce exports for the United States.
In many nations, this new policy is already in place. In this story, we travel to Honduras, where U.S. and World Bank loans have helped build prosperous shrimp farms along the country’s southern coast. But some critics warn of serious environmental and social costs.
Narration is by Edward James Olmos, who hosted a series of 13 half-hour Vanishing Homelands specials.
Date
April 18, 1992Outlets
All Things ConsideredTags
Themes: Economy, EnvironmentRegions: Central AmericaMedia: AudioOther Contributors: Sandy Tolan -
Sandy Tolan, Nancy Postero
Vanishing Homelands
Ecuador’s Golden Cities
Sandy Tolan, Nancy Postero
Vanishing Homelands
Ecuador’s Golden Cities
During the 16th century, the hills of southern Ecuador were a center of gold production for the Spanish. Today the region booms anew, its mines worked by thousands of desperate peasants.
One November day in 1532, Spanish general Francisco Pizarro began the conquest of the Incan empire in South America. In the first attack, thousands of Indians were slaughtered, and their king, Atahualpa, was captured.
To spare his life, Atahualpa proposed a ransom: an entire room filled with gold.
Soon, fine gold vases and figurines began appearing, brought by his subjects throughout the Andes. To make room for more gold, the Spaniards smashed the objects into small pieces. When the room was full, they melted down the gold, shipped it to Spain, and killed Atahualpa.
Today, centuries after the quest for El Dorado, poor peasants, struggling to survive, have taken up the search for gold. They fill the pit mines of Brazil, the rivers of Peru, the hills of Bolivia.
In Ecuador, thousands of people have rediscovered old mines of the Spanish crown. Armed with picks, dynamite, and mercury, they revisit a legacy that began with the death of King Atahualpa.
Narration is by Edward James Olmos, who hosted a series of 13 half-hour Vanishing Homelands specials.
Date
April 18, 1992Outlets
Weekend EditionTags
Themes: Economy, EnvironmentRegions: South AmericaMedia: AudioOther Contributors: Sandy Tolan -
Sandy Tolan, Nancy Postero
Vanishing Homelands
In Panama, a Clash of Cultures on the Frontier
Sandy Tolan, Nancy Postero
Vanishing Homelands
In Panama, a Clash of Cultures on the Frontier
The construction of a road and hydroelectric dam in eastern Panama has threatened the survival of Guna Indians who live in the area.
In the early 1970s, many Latin American nations looked to the untapped resources of their jungles as the key to prosperity and modernization.
Huge development projects – dams, coal and gold mines, oil exploration projects, colonization and road-building programs, cattle and cash crop export strategies – were funded by international development banks.
In Panama, the World Bank loaned the government nearly $70 million for its master plan for the jungle. First, a dam would be built, to help generate new industry, and wean Panama from its dependence on the U.S. and the canals.
Second, to promote land reform and new settlement, a road would be carved into new lands in the jungle.
The dam flooded the homelands of the 1,500 Guna (also known as Kuna) Indians, who were relocated to villages along the highway. Now, nearly 20 years later, tens of thousands of landless peasants have streamed down the new road, and have come face to face with the Gunas.
This is a story of two cultures colliding on the fragile soils of a new frontier.
Narration is by Edward James Olmos, who hosted a series of 13 half-hour Vanishing Homelands specials.
Date
January 25, 1992Outlets
All Things Considered -
Sandy Tolan, Nancy Postero
Vanishing Homelands
Quichua Indians and Oil
Sandy Tolan, Nancy Postero
Vanishing Homelands
Quichua Indians and Oil
In the Amazon of Ecuador, two native villages have radically different attitudes toward oil development.
Government officials, industrialists, and Indian activists are staking out turf in a battle over the future of Ecuador’s Amazon.
In this story, Sandy Tolan and Nancy Postero visit two Quichua Indian towns with radically different attitudes toward oil development. At the center of the dispute is an ARCO oil rig in the heart of the jungle.
Narration is by Edward James Olmos, who hosted a series of 13 half-hour Vanishing Homelands specials.
Date
1992Outlets
Morning Edition -
Sandy Tolan, Nancy Postero
Vanishing Homelands
Ecuador’s Amazon
Sandy Tolan, Nancy Postero
Vanishing Homelands
Ecuador’s Amazon
Faced with crushing debt and pressure from lenders, Ecuador is rushing to open its section of the Amazon to oil development. But spills and dumping threaten settlers, indigenous people, and the land itself.
In the 1970s, large deposits of oil were discovered in Ecuador’s Amazon. The country’s leaders turned to Texaco to build an oil industry in the jungle and help pull the country out of poverty.
Now oil provides for more than half of the country’s national budget and foreign debt payments. But the ecological costs have been huge. And now many Ecuadoreans are beginning to question whether the benefits of the industry have been worth the price.
Narration is by Edward James Olmos, who hosted a series of 13 half-hour Vanishing Homelands specials.
Date
January 1992Outlets
Morning EditionTags
Themes: Economy, EnvironmentRegions: South AmericaMedia: AudioOther Contributors: Sandy Tolan -
Cecilia Vaisman, Alan Weisman
Vanishing Homelands
Argentina’s Guaraní Indians
Cecilia Vaisman, Alan Weisman
Vanishing Homelands
Argentina’s Guaraní Indians
Once the largest tribe in South America, the Guaraní have nearly all left their native forests. But one last band is holding out.
The Guaraní Indians were the once the largest tribe in South America. Their home was a forest that stretched from the Argentine pampas to the Brazilian Amazon.
Four centuries ago, Jesuit priests arrived in Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil to evangelize the Guaraní, a story told in the 1985 movie “The Mission.” The Jesuits coaxed the nomadic, hunter-and-gatherer Guaraní to live in Catholic missions called reductions.
Some Guaraní, however, never accepted the church, and remained hidden in the forest. Today, their descendants confront a world in which paper mills, dams, settlers, and tourism development have so diminished their habitat that, increasingly, the forest’s edge is all that’s left.
In 1992, when this story was reported, the government of Argentina was planning to relocate the last of that country’s Guaraní onto small plots of farmland. Yet one small band of Indians, in northern Argentina’s Misiones Province, was still holding out.
Narration is by Edward James Olmos, who hosted a series of 13 half-hour Vanishing Homelands specials.
Date
January 12, 1992Outlets
Weekend Edition -
Sandy Tolan, Nancy Postero
Vanishing Homelands
Saving Jungle Souls
Sandy Tolan, Nancy Postero
Vanishing Homelands
Saving Jungle Souls
The story of Bolivia’s nomadic Yuqui Indians and the American Evangelical Christians who coaxed them out of the jungle. The first story in the Vanishing Homelands series.
On Friday, October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus wrote in his journal: “At dawn we saw naked people.”
It was the day Columbus and his men walked upon a new world for the first time. They planted flags with crosses on a small island in the Bahamas. He gave the natives red hats and glass beads. These Indians, he wrote, “ought to make good and skilled servants… They can easily be made into Christians.”
Today, just as in the time of Columbus, Christian missionaries bearing gifts and promises of salvation venture into the last of these hidden outposts to try to save the lost souls of the jungle.
Sandy Tolan and Nancy Postero bring us the story of the Yuqui Indians, 130 forest-dwelling nomads in Bolivia, and the Evangelical Christians who coaxed them out of the jungle.
Narration is by Edward James Olmos, who hosted a series of 13 half-hour Vanishing Homelands specials.
Date
November 4, 1991Outlets
All Things ConsideredTags
Themes: Culture, EnvironmentRegions: South AmericaMedia: AudioOther Contributors: Sandy Tolan -
Sandy Tolan, Alan Weisman
Vanishing Homelands
Celebrating the Discovery
Sandy Tolan, Alan Weisman
Vanishing Homelands
Celebrating the Discovery
Preparations for the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ arrival in the Americas raise questions about the value of celebrating the event that led to the European conquest.
For the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ arrival in the Americas, the government of the Dominican Republic is throwing a gala party. They’ve spent millions of dollars to refurbish the capital city of Santo Domingo, which Columbus founded on his first journey in 1492.
The centerpiece is a huge lighthouse, which officials say will be a beacon of culture for the Americas. Heads of state from around the world will attend its inauguration.
But may Latin Americans object to the idea of celebrating the arrival of Europeans and the conquest that followed. Among those are more than 100,000 people who have been displaced for the construction of the Columbus lighthouse.
Narration is by Edward James Olmos, who hosted a series of 13 half-hour Vanishing Homelands specials.
Date
October 14, 1991Outlets
Morning Edition -
Cecilia Vaisman, Alan Weisman
Vanishing Homelands
Homelands Regained
Cecilia Vaisman, Alan Weisman
Vanishing Homelands
Homelands Regained
In Colombia, the Paez Indians have resorted to guerrilla insurrection to reclaim their ancestral territory from the great landed families of Spanish descent.
Five hundred years after Columbus arrived in the Americas, some of the people displaced in the aftermath are recovering what they lost in the country named after the explorer himself.
One of the big surprises to emerge from a recent constitutional convention in Colombia was the victory won by the country’s 84 Indian tribes. Henceforth, Colombia will be considered a multi-ethnic nation, with autonomous Indian regions and native tongues recognized as official languages.
Much credit for inducing Colombia’s central government to acknowledge India rights has gone to the Paez Indians, who live today in Cauca Province in Colombia’s southwest.
The Paez once lived on fertile plains bordering the Andes, until Spanish conquistadors drove them into the mountains. But over the past few years, the Indians have begun to reverse that conquest, repossessing their ancestral lands from some of the oldest European families in the Americas.
Narration is by Edward James Olmos, who hosted a series of 13 half-hour Vanishing Homelands specials.
Date
October 1991Outlets
Weekend Edition -
Cecilia Vaisman, Alan Weisman
Vanishing Homelands
Miskito Coast
Cecilia Vaisman, Alan Weisman
Vanishing Homelands
Miskito Coast
On Nicaragua’s Atlantic coast, Miskito Indians and American investors face off in a battle over the future of the region’s resources.
During the 1980s in Nicaragua, the Sandinista government nationalized lucrative timber and seafood concessions held by U.S. companies on the country’s Atlantic coast.
They accused the Americans of exploiting the resources and leaving the region in poverty.
Now, with the Sandinistas out of power, American investors are coming back. But thousands of Miskito Indians who fought for their Atlantic Coast homeland in the decade-long Contra war against the Sandinistas have also returned. With their villages wrecked and no jobs, many now pin their hopes on foreign investment.
But the reappearance of American businessmen has touched off a battle over who should develop the rich resources of the Miskito Coast – and for whose benefit.
Narration is by Edward James Olmos, who hosted a series of 13 half-hour Vanishing Homelands specials.
Date
September 7, 1991Outlets
All Things Considered -
Sandy Tolan, Nancy Postero
Vanishing Homelands
Oil in Ecuador’s Amazon
Sandy Tolan, Nancy Postero
Vanishing Homelands
Oil in Ecuador’s Amazon
A U.S. oil company has a controversial plan to build a new road and oil pipeline into some of the most remote Indian lands in the Amazon.
Deep in the Amazon jungle of Ecuador, across the Andes from the Pacific Coast, an American oil company has discovered billions of gallons of oil.
The oil lies beneath an Indian reserve and a national park in one of the richest areas of biological diversity in all of the Amazon. The government of Ecuador, poor and deeply in debt, says the oil must be developed.
Recently, government officials granted a concession to Conoco to build a road an pipeline to extract the vast new deposits.
Conoco promised to take extraordinary precautions to protect the environment, saying this would be a model for rainforest development. Opponents of the plan point to the legacy of 25 years of oil development in Ecuador: Scores of poisoned rivers and epidemic disease for the Indians living in the country’s Amazon.
Rainforest activists in the U.S. threatened a boycott of the Dupont Corporation, which owns Conoco, if the oil company went forward with the plan.
In this report, Sandy Tolan and Nancy Postero go on a journey through the oil and Indian country of Ecuador to see what oil development has meant, and what this new plan might hold, for the people who liver there. The story begins at the edge of the jungle, near the headwaters of the Amazon.
Narration is by Edward James Olmos, who hosted a series of 13 half-hour Vanishing Homelands specials.
Date
1991Outlets
All Things ConsideredTags
Themes: Culture, EnvironmentRegions: South AmericaMedia: AudioOther Contributors: Sandy Tolan -
Sandy Tolan, Alan Weisman
Vanishing Homelands
Sugar and Sorrow in Hispaniola
Sandy Tolan, Alan Weisman
Vanishing Homelands
Sugar and Sorrow in Hispaniola
Haitian sugar cane workers in the Dominican Republic live in squalid conditions. Although the sugar they produce is exported to the United States, the U.S. government has declined to intervene.
On his second voyage to the New World, Christopher Columbus brought sugar cane to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. Sugar is now the biggest industry in the Dominican Republic, which shares the island with its impoverished neighbor, Haiti.
Early in the 20th century, and American company began importing Haitian field hands to work its Dominican sugar holdings. Every since, the backbreaking task of cutting cane in the Dominican Republic has belonged to migrant Haitians and their descendants.
The cane cutters live in hundreds of rural ghettos known as bateys. The living conditions of these permanent labor camps are considered to be among the worst in the hemisphere.
Recently, reports by human rights groups denouncing treatment of the cane cutters prompted the United States to review trade relations with the Dominican Republic. The U.S. concluded that workers’ conditions are improving and decided not to impose economic sanctions, thus preserving the Dominican Republic’s broad duty-free access to U.S. markets.
But, in much of the country, little has changed.
Narration is by Edward James Olmos, who hosted a series of 13 half-hour Vanishing Homelands specials.
Date
July 22, 1991Outlets
All Things Considered