The Death of Majagual
Sic Transit Gloria Mundii
I watched as the water taxi crept onto the beach, backwards, at a place I didn´t recognize. The captain killed the engines and lifted the outboard out of the water. A long painted wall stretches from hill to hill, barely leaving thirty feet of shadeless, scorching beach at high tide. Two 20-foot platforms stand out like prison towers. I don´t reconize any of this. As the other passengers stumbleoff I say, ¨are you going any further north?¨
¨to where?¨ the captain replies
¨to Bahia Majagual¨
¨This is Bahia Majagual¨
I object in broken half-spanish for a second. ¨Get down, sit down!¨ barks the assistant, and a heavy rogue wave slaps the boat as it rests nudged up against the shore. I look at this hideous site, this ruined beach that still bears so many memories. Gazing off to the hills I see the familiar rock faces, the beach has moved in spots, but there it is, all coming back to me. ¨Come on¨a voice calls out, the outstretched arm gesturing for me to step off into the shallows.
My heart is thumping in my chest. The others from the water taxi are already making their way to the edge of the beach and the path that leads south towards Playa Maderas. They have no idea what I am feeling. I know everything without needing any further explanation, but the longing for specifics pushes me forward. At a break in the wall a trailer is parked, holding two brand-new waverunners. A man stands guard, holding a bandana in one hand and leaning up against a shovel.
¨Are there services here? Bathrooms? Water?¨
He just shakes his head.
¨Is there still a hotel here? A Hospedaje?¨
He shakes his head some more.
¨Is there just a private owner then?
He nods in agreement.
I loudly curse the Aussie prick who used to own the land. ¡Hijueputa Australiano! They bought him out! That motherfucker sold paradise! I cannot stop cursing his name.
The water taxi shoves off into the surf and I can barely move, staring at this barren, raped beach. All that beautiful land walled off in the selfish hands of some God-forsaken magnate. Look at this pathetic scrap of sad beach! Walking away I mutter to myself ¨beach access rights¨… Jesus.
I wandered aimlessly in the direction of Maderas, on pins and needles, half-certain I would take the first truck I see back to San Juan del Sur and straight out of this sad, doomed country. I feel truly sick to my stomach- no one else will ever know what a beautiful place that was and all for the damned pleasures of one wealthy family.
At the only local bar I find answers… when did it happen, who how much? A littlw over a year ago the Aussie Paul sold it, presented with a ¨blank check¨ by the buyer. One man says it was a million dollars, an older man sitting over his shoulder shakes his head and gestures up with his thumb- ¨Five¨ he says assuredly.
I then learn the new owner is a banker, a bastard financier who ¨owns businesses.¨ The hatred wells up inside me. From where I sit I can hear circular saws buzzing away, fast at work at poor Majagual. The old lodge, the bungalows turned into workers´tenements for the duration of the project. What? To build a bastard upscale resort there?
No, not that lucky even. A house. Just a big house or two.
That´s all folks, an Aussie´s greed, his fucked shame- the vergüenza- the man who sold the world for the vacation home of this rude, careless financier, whom I would gladly serve time in prison for beating to within an inch of his worthless, selfish existence.
The fire rages in me! I find out that the damned Aussie hasn´t even fled the country in shame, no, he´s living still in San Juan del Sur! I´m gonna find him, somehow, find him and remind him of the shame he´ll always carry, that no blank check can ever fill in! I´m gonna tell him and then I´m going to punch him in the face for leaving that poor virgin paradise to the greasey hands of the financier… to be walled off, privatized, and mutilated evermore for his decadent thrills. One day, I´m sure, we´ll all see it on some forsaken Lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-famous episode, as he leads some pathetic sot around agog at the damned Sodomite playground he´s built for himself.
Somewhere, off in Managua, the billboards still display the smiling and waving Daniel Ortega… ¨Arriba Los Pobres del Mundo¨ my ass.
So passes away the pristene glory to the lecherous advances of Big Money, and it will not stop. This shoreline will be crushed by foreign capital, ripped open for high end towers, splayed by real estate agents hungrily consuming acreage at wholesale and selling the plots at 800% profit a month later!
I stopped there in my diatribe to grab a few things and head back over to the source of my grief to watch one more wistfull sunset while listening to the men hammer and chisel, installing the white iron gates that so graciously adorn the openings in the yellow wall.
Majagual is such a beatiful gem of a beach. A lovely crescent shaped bay edged on both sides by strong rock cliffs made of sedimentary rock, angled upwards by the tectonic plates into complimentary diagonals. the waves roll onto Majagual in the shape of her crescent, a beautiful curved wave front that sometimes crashes all in unison, sometimes breaking to the right or left, sometimes splitting in the middle.
The wind whips around here more than I remember from the past, pushing the sand in painfull waves, swirling in all directions. Sometimes these microbursts shoot down from the cliffs overhead making circular blasts in the sand, pushing out in all directions until the bigger gusts sweep the whole display into the crashing surf.
I´m seated on a log at the southern edge of the beach when one such gust topples the unopened can of beer I had set next to me, covering it with sand. Annoyed, I walk down to the water to clean it off, and as I turn around I see THEM.
It hits me, there he is that Aussie Paul… along with two other men (I think both Nica) and their petite, pale, pretty trophy wives. My eyes burn, I can see right through the whole putrid scene, I can see right through their souls & flesh to the blowing sand.
The one guy, I know is HIM, the banker. Chubby, tall, dumpy looking, shabby dresser. He has shorter black hair combed back in a billowy half-fro. A solid red chip shirt, untucked, except for where it is bunched up behind his bright blue blackberry clipped to his shorts. Dumb black mid-height sneakers, bunched up white socks. He pulls out a pocket comb and runs it through his hair. Tucked into a back pocket is a white roll of paper.
Pulling out what I quickly ID as bluprints or sketches he points to the property as Paul makes expansive gestures with both hands. There was my chance! My great chance to murder them all. Alas, I lack both the violent streak and the necessary cruelty. I don´t even have the energy to confront them verbally. Nothing, nada cambia. Nothing I can say that they will listen to long enough… get lost kid, get the fuck out of our selfish dreams. I wan´t to cry for this beautiful crescent beach and the memories of heaven that are washing away in the tide.
The party of wealth walks off and turns right into the property midway down the beach. So passes away, them, and stuck between their toes the tiny grains of decency, the rights of the Nicaraguan people to enjoy their land.
More I learned, and stronger I wish to be un-learned. What a bitter pill to swallow! Why must I be doomed to realize this as a poor man? Why could I not come here wealthy and buy up all this land years before to leave it beautifully untouched as nature herself intended it to be! Why must I be poor, while the rich ones who could actually do something never get far enough off the beaten path to find out.
I know things like this are happening everywhere, but I feel a little less pained over the death of an acre of farmland than I do over an acre of beach. How can those bastards take from where sea & sky & earth embrace? How is it okay for them to snatch it as their own and never let anyone else enjoy!
Robert Treman owned much land in and around Ithaca, NY. One parcel of land contained the spectacular Lucifer Falls and the creek leading into and out of it. He owned the dazzling, cool gorge. Treman could´ve built a palace there, high above the falls, spanning the gorge itself with a lovely terrace to take it all in. He COULD have but Robert was a wise and decent man, a conservationist who could see far beyond the restraints of his own life. He could truly see the future and gave the land to the STATE, which became a state park bearing his good name.
Where did the men like that go? What went wrong to bring us to this present disgracefull crisis? where is my winning lottery ticket so I can buy up all the land and leave it undeveloped? Who are these men who sell and buy our very paradises like they are commodities?!
Where went our decency and when will arrive the flood? Where is the hideous Tsunami to set Majagual back to the stone age. Come and wipe them out in the middle of the night, come and free her, dear Majagual.
4/17/08
4 years ago