Two weeks ago we posted a report on tourism and another report on how land speculation is affecting land rights in El Chile, a small community on the San Juan del Gozo Peninsula.
We wrote the report on El Chile in full cooperation with the community and they approved the final draft. Hours after we posted it, however, a community representative called and asked that we wait on posting it due to growing tensions in the region.
We met with the community again this week and they gave an enthusiastic green light on posting the report. Tension around the issue has not subsided but the community feels it is important to get their story out, and they are more determined than ever to defend their land.
Please take a look at the El Chile report. Even if you’ve never been to the San Juan del Gozo Peninsula, the struggle for land rights and the opposition to large-scale tourism in the Bay of Jiquilisco will soon be a national issue, and El Chile appears to be where the struggle to prevent large-scale tourism is beginning.
Voices on the Border 
I think you guys do great work. But I think the first two grafs of your report hurt the credibility of the overall report. You don’t need to try and justify that the lives of people in El Chile are good in order to denounce the actions of Mr. Guerrero. I think by any honest account, you’d at least need to give some health, education and income statistics rather than just say ¨they are happy living off the land.¨ That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t be happier with lower infant mortality and rates of disease. Again, that doesn’t take away from the land grabs and actions of Mr. Guerrero. They are bad, and your report does a good job of explaining why. It just threatens to make the report sound like some idealized version of the reality these people are living.
Thank you for your constructive comments.