SITE MUSEUM FINCA 6
Phone: +506 2100-6000
E-mail: [email protected]
The Site Museum Finca 6 is located in Palmar Sur of Osa, on the road to Sierpe, in the province of Puntarenas, Costa Rica.
SECTIONS
During the times of the banana company, the administrative hierarchy of the fruit company was ordered in Divisions, Districts and Fincas. Within this logic, Palmar Sur, with 20 fincas on their hands, was a district of the subdivision of Golfito. It is here where the administration was as well as the chiefs’ dwellings were and their supporting staff.
Palmar Sur was where the main offices were, controls were carried out, checks and other procedures were drafted. From here the orders for the managers located at the fincas of their jurisdiction were issued. There were garages and gas stations to supply the company’s vehicles, a construction department with carpenters to build, repair and redesign offices and houses, and plumbers in charge of maintenance of drinking water and sewage pipes in the offices and quadrants of the fincas.
Palmar Sur was also a housing and entertainment center. The district manager lived here, other top personnel and their support team. Most of them resided in the so called American Zone, where Club 1 was, where the highest rank functionaries attended. In the vicinity was Club 2 (currently CENECOOP), of popular access; in both food and drinks were sold.
There was also a swimming pool, a baseball field, churches and a health center in the locality.
Palmar Sur is currently a charming town conserving its characteristic features of the banana plantation architecture. It has been described as a dormitory town. Commerce is scarce; most of its dwellers work in agricultural farms or in the urban centers of Palmar Norte or Ciudad Cortés. Many of them are teachers, nurses, and public employees. There is a landing field, a home for the elderly, a school, clinic, headquarters of SENARA, several recreation and sport areas, a church and a hostel. A locomotive machine from the ancient railroad is a witness of a past era facing the town’s park, where assemblies of pre-Columbian spheres are carefully arranged.
Palmar Norte is the most important urban center of the Osa canton; it represents a second county seat. It was founded at the end of the nineteenth century by boruca natives, known then as “El Palmar de the Indios”, name by which it is still sometimes mentioned as homage.
The city as we know it today, prospered owing to the economic influx of Palmar Sur as administrative and work center of the Banana Company. Palmar Norte is what is known in banana company argot a “civil town,” conformed by peoples performing an independent economic activity, around the banana plantation population. Both localities, Palmar Sur and Palmar Norte, are divided by the Térraba river.
For Palmar Norte’s original population mention is made of occasional employees from the banana company, traders, food vendors and others, some of them Chinese (Wong and Achío). In the banana plantation times dance halls were famous as well as the refuegos (places of doubtful reputation) where banana workers from Palmar Sur came, crossing the river by using the boatmen’s services.
Palmar Sur and Palmar Norte are currently united by a bridge constructed by the end of the 50’s decade to continue towards the Panamanian border through the Interamerican highway. The bridge over the Térraba is an icon of Palmar. The bridge and the Interamerican highway’s construction contributed as source of employment and economic activity to the city’s rise.
Today, Palmar Norte is the most important commercial center and for sale of services in Osa; and the second county’s capital. The headquarters of the Universidad Estatal a Distancia –UNED are there, the Universidad Metropolitana Castro Carazo -UMCA, academic and technical college of the Ministry of Public Education, headquarters of the Instituto Nacional de Aprendizaje -INA, state services, the agency of the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad -ICE, Banco Popular, Banco Nacional, Red Cros, Correos de Costa Rica, Police Force, the core staff of the Integrated Health Care Teams -Ebais, commerce and many lodging facilities.
Video Canción “A mi adorado Palmar
Ciudad Cortés is the Osa county’s capital. There we can find the main state services, the Municipality, the Tomás Casas Hospital, Courts of Justice, the Supreme Court of Elections, Banco de Costa Rica -BCR, Red Cross, Correos de Costa Rica, Instituto Nacional de Seguros - INS, Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad -ICE, schools, college, churches and recreation areas.
“Cortés” is one of the places where the canton started growing. So explains the Historian Ana Luisa Cerdas: “by the end of the nineteenth century a penal colony was founded at the Father Nievorowsky’s farm, in charge of the evangelization of Térraba and Boruca. This colony received the name of Dios Primero, later El Pozo and subsequently Puerto Cortés, current Ciudad Cortés. Its population was composed by limited Costa Rican persons and their families; by Chiricanos and a series of immigrants who were coming the first decades of the century, among which: José Wong, Francisco Olaso, Víctor Sobaja, Mariano Rodríguez, Manuel Ureña, Rafael Sing, Fabio Calvo and Geo Webb.”
El Pozo was a river port located some 10 Km from the Térraba river’s mouth, on the Pacific Ocean. It ran until the middle of the century as true port of entry to the South. The only way of communication from the Central Valley to the southern Region was by sea, leaving the Port of Puntarenas by boat to El Pozo; and from there a boat upstream, by foot or horse-back, until reaching the destinations in Térraba, Boruca or so many other towns of the South.
In the South the memories of the elderly are full of histories about their travels to El Pozo. The people of Buenos Aires, Curré or Potrero Grande had to go to El Pozo to be able to sell their crops and shop for things. Often these travels were real boat adventures back and from on the Térraba river. El Pozo gradually became a commercial center where native peasants, natives and Chiricanos sold rice and lard, and bought fabrics, tools and even bread. Important actors on this stage were the chinese (4.5), the Wong and the Chan among others, who owned department stores, shops, butcher shops, bars and cinemas.
In the banana plantation times, El Pozo boomed as a port of entry and exit of thousands of migrants coming to try their luck with the Banana Company. Merchants, gamblers and peoples of all sorts also came. El Pozo was also an entertainment center for the workers of the fincas who crossed from the other side of the river the headed to the bars and dance halls so abundant in the place.
It is believed that the name “El Pozo” owes to the place’s proclivity to floods, characteristic of a highly rainy area on the banks of the Térraba River. Some pictures of those days present images of a flooded city and boats flowing on its streets. In 1934, a neighborhood committee requested changing the city’s name for Puerto Cortés, in honor of León Cortés Castro, then Secretary of Promotion, who years later would become President of the Republic (1936-1940).
Although Ciudad Cortés (El Pozo) ceased being a port, the settlers still recall those ages as a glorious past full of legend. There are novels and stories, and artists paint and recreate diverse styles of the times lived there, in “El Embarcadero.”
The community of Finca 6-11 is located in Palmar Sur. It is a former banana farm next to the archaeological site Finca 6, where there is an on-site museum by the same name. In the year 2005, by means of an agreement between SURCOOP, owner of the finca, and IDA (today INDER), the cooperative donated 10 hectares to the National Museum of Costa Rica, dedicated to the study, conservation and dissemination of the archaeological heritage.
Since 2015 there is a visitors’ center, a spheres’ park, services and a tour of the site with information about the site’s archaeological findings.
The Archaeological Site Finca 6 is one of the most important of the region, declared UNESCO’s World Heritage in June of 2014. It has “in situ” Stone spheres, meaning they have never been removed and have conserved their original position for over 500 years. This singularity confers the place with an exceptional opportunity for studying and learning about the pre-Columbian peoples who built the spheres.
The fincas conserve the names given to them during the time of splendor of the Banana Company. Today, in the former banana farms coexist three worlds simultaneously: the pre-Columbian world, the banana plantation world (1930 – 1984), and the current population of the fincas.
There are around 330 persons living in the community according to data from the National Museum of Costa Rica (Amador, 2014), of which 118 perform some remunerated work activity; with scarce exceptions they are of low economic income. 63 % are agricultural workers who work in plantain and oil-palm for SURCOOP, COOPALSUR, Palmatica and Empresa Bananera Siglo XXI. 23 % work as guards, drivers, lawn mowers, traders, cooks, in the community or in hotels and urban areas of the region. 7 % are public employees and 4 % works in construction, fishing and independent agriculture.
In Finca 6-11 there are organizations working for communal welfare: School Board and Trust, Housing Committee, Committee pro Development Partnership, Water Committee, Pastoral Council. Catholic church, Roads Committee, Sports Committees, Committee for those Affected by Nemagon, Emergency Committee and the school. Nevertheless, the community has difficulties for joining efforts due to the instability generated by the lack of employment and migratory flows (constant entry and exit of dwellers).
The community of Finca 6-11 acknowledges the patrimonial value of stone spheres and the archaeological sites, and is proudly identified with the spheres.
Cañablancal INDER is the community where the archaeological site Batambal is based; one of the 4 southern sites in Costa Rica declared as world heritage (June 23 of 2014). This community is located 2 Km from the city of Palmar Norte, over the Coastal highway. It is a settlement of the National Institute for Rural Development (INDER); its extension is 82 hectares and was founded in 2000. The most densely populated part is one kilometer up from the entrance, climbing a steep hill. The Settlement is made of 17 parcels and 44 family farms.
NDER’s settlement Cañablancal was created to relocate the people affected by the hurricanes Juana (1988) and César (1996). The movement to acquire lands was headed by a group of indigenous people coming from another community also called Cañablancal, located on the margins of the Térraba river, who joined other non-indigenous from other communities to get some land; among them Vergel, Cajón, Guácimo, Zapote, Palmar Norte and even from the former banana farms.
The indigenous core of Cañablancal INDER is constituted mainly by persons from the community also called Cañablancal, located on the margins of the Térraba river. This community was formed by natives from Boruca and Palmar Norte; also by natives displaced from the Banana Company and the growing urbanization of Palmar Norte, formerly called Palmar de los Indios.
In Cañablancal INDER, as well as Cañablancal, on the river’s margin live descendants of Indio Venancio, a character remembered as symbol of the resistance to indigenous disarticulation, done by the Banana Company.
Although it is INDER agro-settlement, few people live from the agricultural exploitation of their land. Productive activities are low scale, for family consumption. To survive, the neighbors work outside of the community as laborers (in Finca 6, Palmatica and others), in construction, or temporary jobs as domestic employees, retailers (supermarkets, bazaars), and others. The vicinity to Palmar Norte and Ciudad Cortés offers work options and the community profits from that.
The people of Cañablancal speak with hope, assuring the small town --barely 15 years-old is-- getting better.
In Cañablancal live 60 families. The number of inhabitants reaches 228 persons; approximately 50 % identify as natives (Amador, 2015). The adults express concern for the lack of work opportunities for the young. Many of the young do not study and work harvesting oil-palm. Some women heads of household face serious income problems.
The existing organizations are: the Indigenous Association Culture Rescue and Arte Batambal, the ASADA (Aqueduct Committee), Board of Education, School Trust, Methodist Committee, Catholic Committee and Banco Comunal.
The coexistence of natives and non-indigenous people in the same settlement of recent formation has caused interethnic issues, basically due to mutual fear. The indigenous leaders fear the non-indigenous deny the initial participation on the foundation of the settlement. On the other hand, the non-indigenous fear the settlement becomes an indigenous territory, affecting the school plans and other repercussions.
The management of the archaeological site Batambal by the National Museum of Costa Rica is a meeting point for the community. The diverse local interests combine in the promotion of a communal and sustainable cultural and tourist development. The site is increasingly a communal integration factor.
Since the creation of the Settlement in the year 2.000, the indigenous sector identified with the archaeological site Batambal as an identity factor and indigenous pride. The Asociación Indígena Rescate, Cultura y Arte Batambal was created to promote the Site’s protection and its better utilization by the community.
Today, Batambal’s heritage is seen by all as opportunity for economic, social and cultural development. The challenge faced by the community now is how to insert themselves in the process and derive economic benefit for everyone.
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