La Ventanilla is at a sustainable risk as deforestation is starting to be seen around the territory. Stronger hurricanes and climate crises hit the coast every 5 years. The expansion of tourism looms over the communities inflating prizes of land and and economic incentives to landowners to sell these. The territory has sustained and protected the community from hurricanes, but what happens when these get deforested. What is the future of the territory?
I reflected about this with youth leader Ignacio Martinez as I took this picture and saw the deforestation. "What is the value of our territory? We need community members to realise what is happening and reflect for a moment,". Ignacio is eager to take action to support his communities reconnection with their values of conservation.
As we walked back and night fell, the town felt quieter that ever before, but the sound of crickets and wildlife persisted in the background. I realised then that Ignacio was right, what if that sound stoped forever?
La Ventanilla has established a Unit for wildlife conservation (UMA) under government law. Through local and scientific knowledge, the community has implemented the monitoring of crocodile populations, nesting areas and a non-extractive breeding programme, allowing them to sustainably and safely manage an ecotourism strategy.
The conservation programme helps the community create a safe ecotourism strategy and manage crocodile populations. Together, they monitor between 20 to 25 nests a year, with just 17 nests this year, indicating that the crocodile population and the mangroves are just beginning to recover after last year's Hurricane Agatha. It is estimated that there are between 150 to 200 crocodiles in the lagoon, a population that has grown steadily thanks to the release of around 100 crocodile hatchlings into the wild each year.
In 1998, a year after deadly hurricane Paulina hit the south coast of Oaxaca, the La Ventanilla cooperative was founded and registered as an ecotourism company. Paulina was the first time the community had experienced a hurricane and, in Bonifacio's words, a “major wake-up call for the community to reorganise and act on their future”. It is in their community's organization that they have survived 3 hurricanes and a pandemic in their history (Paulina (1997), Carlotta (2012) Agatha (2022)).
La Ventanilla would only exist with crocodiles and the mangroves. Ecotourism has helped activate and sustain the local economy, and today a large part of the communities 200 inhabitants, directly and indirectly, lives from ecotourism, receiving between 100 to 150 tourists a day and 250 a day during a high tourist season.