Who Owns the Lake?

Adam poses as he jumps off a 10-meter high dock into the pristine waters of the volcanic crater lake located near the hotel and restaurant mentioned in this blog post.

Adam Shank and Marisa Cylmer Shank are serving with MCC in Nicaragua. Adam works with the Peace and Justice Commission of the Mennonite churches and Marisa works with a literacy project.

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

This is a well-known phrase in discussions about “development.” But once in a classroom discussion, my sociology of international development professor added a new line to the saying that challenges the axiom and the theories of development that undergird it:

“BUT… eventually we may need to ask ourselves, ‘Who owns the lake?’”

This last phrase challenges us to rethink and re-identify the roots of the problem.  Is it possible that the problem doesn’t lie in a person’s lack of physical resources or in their skills to make a living and feed their families? Is it possible that the problem lies elsewhere, perhaps in the way society is structured; maybe the man has his net and his boat ready to go but the lake is “private property”?

Never did I imagine that one day this theoretical discussion in a university classroom would become a literal one that I would experience in real life.

Fish and violence in Nicaragua

In my work with a MCC partner, the Anabaptist Peace and Justice Commission, we were invited by a rural Mennonite church to lead a workshop on Conflict Transformation and reflect with church members on why violence has become something seen as “normal” by many Nicaraguans.

We started out the workshop brainstorming all the ways we saw violence manifest in the local community. As church members shouted out their ideas I was surprised when several people mentioned “privatization of natural resources” and “limiting access to public land” as violence.

View of the lake-front cabanas and dock.

I  asked them what they meant by “privatization of natural resources.” The church members told the story of lake Laguna de Apoyo. The community where the church is located, along with many other small pueblos, surround Laguna de Apoyo. For generations these communities have survived off of the lake, depending on its fish as an important source of food for their families. However, with a rise in tourism to Nicaragua and the ideal position of the lake between two popular tourist cities, the land along the edges of the lake is quickly being sold to private investors who are building beautiful lakeside hotels and restaurants

I am familiar with this lake – the MCC team had a “fun day” at one of these restaurants, lounging in the sun, doing crazy stunts off the dock, and landing in the deep, cool water. This is a place I’ve returned to many times since; it is a popular tourist spot. When you can have a delicious lunch and spend the day relaxing on the banks of a beautiful lake for under $10, how could anyone resist?

Much to my shock the church members continued to describe the latest concern over lake access, which involved this restaurant. Apparently the restaurant owners were claiming the public road as their own and not allowing locals to pass through, severely limiting their access to the lake.

Asking a deeper question

It is common for NGOs to focus on income generation projects, equipping people with new skills and techniques to help them make a better living for themselves and their families. Unfortunately, NGOs may never ask the question, “But, who owns the lake?” and therefore ignore one of the root causes of poverty, which historically in Latin America has been the grossly unequal land distribution and, more recently, limitations to access to natural resources because of privatization.

In the same way, governments have turned to tourism as a source of revenue for the county but have neglected the fact that this new income often stays in the hands of the few and has other unintended consequences such as denying local fishermen access to the lake they depend on to survive.

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. BUT… eventually we may need to ask ourselves, ‘Who owns the lake?’”

This is a shortened version of Adam’s original blog post. You can read the full post here.