The camel, the needle, Cabo

and the colonialist exploitation project

When Nory¹ picked me up from the airport in Los Cabos, she hugged me and gave me a kiss on the cheek, then we practiced our English/Spanish with each other all the way to Fresko, the grocery store. She accompanied me inside and gently assisted by wrapping my produce in plastic, pushing the cart, making sure I’d remembered the greens for my salad, and performing exchange calculations on her phone because I was too stupid to research this in advance. I worried about her getting tired (she’s older than I am) but she said she felt fine and had plenty of time. She’d already told me she and her husband are house cleaners but it’s the slow season in Cabo, so work opportunities are limited and if I needed driving anywhere during my stay, she could do that! Arriving at the condo I was handed off to another person who drove me to my unit on a little cart. I waved goodbye to Nory but she wasn’t looking my way.

I’m not one for quoting the Bible, but the line about the camel and the eye of the needle and rich people? It’s been on my mind. Not least because upon investigating activities in Los Cabos, riding a camel in the desert outside the cities is one offering.² But also because I just finished both Billionaire Wilderness by Justin Farrell and Our History is the Future: Standing Rock versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance by Nick Estes. And I finished them both while on this purely self-indulgent vacation to Los Cabos in which I participated in an abhorrent economy of colonialist exploitation and rampant American-flavored entitlement.³

I’d started Billionaire Wilderness on the plane and found it fascinating because it focuses on areas near where I live, primarily Jackson Hole although it also spends a chapter on the Yellowstone Club. The premise: ultra-wealthy people (think worth billions, not millions) are taking up residence — and land — in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where they engage in conservation philanthropy which has the effects of a) providing tax shelters for their money b) increasing their property values because there’s almost no land available for development c) making them feel good about themselves. In addition, they pump money into the service economy made functional by locals who are either cramming multiple families to a hotel room or trailer home or living over Teton Pass in Idaho because…property values. Many of these locals are Mexican immigrants. One of the favorite self-deceptions of these ultra-wealthy people is their hired help — housekeepers, builders, chefs — are their actual and personal friends. Spoiler: the help disagrees. According to them, this “relationship” remains purely economic, and that economy exploits and injures the working poor⁴ while enriching and uplifting the rich.

On high alert after reading this section of the book because of how I felt about my interactions with Nory, I arrived at the swim-up pool bar. Everyone at the pool was white, except of course the bartenders. English is the lingua franca in this condo complex. Even when I ordered food and drinks in Spanish, the bartenders responded in English. I noticed over several days many of the pool-goers were regulars and they knew the bartenders by name. They live here. The condo grounds are immaculately kept, with lovely palms, manicured lawns, and an HOA that prohibits hanging towels from the balcony. Elihu, the property manager, promptly fixed my coffeemaker when I reported it malfunctioning. I read somewhere the officials in Los Cabos work hard to keep the area safe because they want the tourists, whom Nory had told me are mainly Americans from the United States. Not too different from Cuba⁵ in the 1950s, known then as the playground for rich Americans.

Portrait of irony.

Or, probably, many other colonized places — perhaps not colonized politically, but certainly colonized by capitalism and the American dollar. A locale can also be colonized by people with money who go there, spend the money, and remake it in their own image. I am struck by this in Los Cabos, where you can pay for all things with American dollars, speak to everyone in English,⁶ and be assured there will be no fallen palm fronds on your walkways or poolside iguana poop.

Related to my professional work in Indigenous education, colonization of Indigenous peoples and places certainly applies to popular vacation hot-spots like Los Cabos. If nothing else, reading the Nick Estes book⁷ helped me re-realize the ways the dominant narrative of the US squelches whatever it disavows. Chapter after chapter shows how Indigenous resistance not only shaped official American policies but galvanized and aligned with other resistance movements in this country and abroad. Frankly this book radicalized me, provided another angle from which to view the Cabo experience, and added to my discomfort with my participation in it.

While I sat on the balcony writing this, an enormous cruise ship swung into the bay just by the famous Arco. Binoculars helped me read the words on its side: Carnival Fun Italian Style. More gross consumerism feeding this tourist economy.

Cabo: the white people at the pool, the American diners in the restaurant where I ate one meal out, the gigantic cruise ship, and the Mexican workers everywhere…we are all part of a massive swirling garbage gyre. Tourists like me spend money, though possibly not enough of it. It doesn’t really trickle down, but apparently just enough of it does, to support the local economy. I am typically a generous tipper and felt like maybe tipping was a way to make things feel less gross? I don’t know but I did it anyway. And, will I come back here, or visit any number of other Americanized tourist areas around the world? The dilemma reminds me a little of the choice to become a vegetarian.⁸ You know your own individual choice to avoid red meat won’t change the industry, but it will likely make you feel better mentally because you’re not participating in something so harmful, and it might contribute a little to industry change, especially if others join. But what if all the tourists quit coming to Cabo and places like it? Nory has no more houses to clean. Elihu has no more American-owned properties to manage. Santiago has no more white ladies to serve $35 scallops to. A rhetorical dilemma, to be sure. This tourist economy functions as a pair of golden handcuffs, though these are more like beat-up tin handcuffs attached to some iron chains. And I essentially helped manufacture those handcuffs.

I acknowledge the privilege I have to even write this newsletter and criticize the very setup sustaining people around me. I know nothing of their lives and I’m just swooping in to offer some white-lady liberal critique of my own people on their behalf. The anxiety about my own identity and role regenerates, but that’s a post for another time.

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Back to the billionaires: one of the most repulsive findings in Farrell’s book is many of the ultra-wealthy believe conserving nature will make them more moral people because once it’s conserved, they can enjoy it — the way a simple, non-wealthy person would.⁹ This stance goes hand-in-hand with their other belief that non-wealthy people lead simpler, better, purer lives closer to nature. They seem to believe this flowchart exists for them:

1. spend money to conserve nature (either through buying up tracts of land to protect them from development or by giving money to conservation organizations via private foundation which protects their money from taxation) —>

2. wear jeans and drive a beat-up pickup truck to blend in with locals —>

3. hang out in nature and look at moose, either on a hiking trail or from the back deck of your $15 million house, the way a simple working person would —>

4. find peace from the anxiety you constantly feel about being rich.

In my opinion, this flowchart entirely fails to consider that non-wealthy people, the ones in their community whom they desire so deeply to befriend and emulate, do not have the time or wherewithal to “enjoy nature” via hunting, skiing, or even hiking: they are too busy fucking working.¹⁰ Furthermore, the ultra-wealthy profiled in this book often sought public approval for their contributions to the conservation and arts movements, but who gives a shit about that stuff when you’re being evicted¹¹ or driving 40 miles over a terrifying mountain pass to change the sheets in someone’s guest house? Only other rich people.

I wonder if that’s how people who own the Cabo condos feel.¹² Like, hey, we’re buying these up, we’re making a nicer place, we’re learning Spanish so we can blend in a little, we’re tipping big so we can support individuals. We’re all enjoying this paradisiacal place together! I wonder if that’s how people who briefly rent these condos feel. I wonder if it’s how I feel.

And if so, who does that make me?

1. This was my first time meeting her.

2. Which, don’t do this, because the captive-animals-for-tourism thing is awful

3. I thoroughly enjoyed my time away. It is beautiful here, warm and sunny, I love the pool, there are MAGNIFICENT FRIGATEBIRDS and iguanas. It’s just that…well, keep reading.

4. Farrell’s term for service workers employed in Jackson Hole

5. Side note, I had the opportunity to visit Havana in 2016 when the restrictions cracked open a tiny bit. I clearly recall a street vendor telling me to tell all my American friends to visit, because Cubans need our money. That’s exactly what he said (in Spanish).

6. I visited Panama once on behalf of the State Department and found the same. The US dollar is legal tender in Panama.

7. I’m also just about to finish Ned Blackhawk’s The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of US History, the broader historical version of this perspective. It unravels so much.

8. which to be clear, I have not done. But I did try, briefly, in my late teens/early 20s.

9. according to them.

10. cleaning and building rich people’s houses. e.g.

11. According to this book, no real renter protections existed in Teton County at the time of research.

12. Adding to the generalized ick over my trip, the condo I rented is owned by an American who lives in Chicago.