Review of Green Dreams
by Ron Mader

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Mainstream media usually gives Latin America a raw deal. News articles zero in on violent crime, political uprisings and natural disasters, while tourism features tout escapism from cruise ship extravaganza to Fantasy Island-wannabes.

Rarely are environmental issues discussed, let alone ecotourism initiatives. However, this situation is improving. Case in point is the publication of Green Dreams, (Oakland: Lonely Planet, 1998, 278 pages, $13) by Stephen Benz.

This new volume in Lonely Planet's Journeys series provides narratives from the authors travels in the Amazon, Chiapas, Honduras' Mosquitia, Guatemala and Honduras. Despite the chapters about his adventures in South America and Mexico, the book is unwittingly subtitled, "Travels in Central America."

The chapters are arranged chronologically, detailing the authors first forays into "ecotourism" by traveling to Iquitos, Peru's port on the great Amazon River. He has been told he can survive as a stringer if he writes unusual travel pieces.

"Not much money, but a quick and easy by-line, and it paid enough cash to keep you going for a spell without having to resort to the even older stand-by of giving English lessons," Benz explains in the opening chapter.

A year later he headed to Honduras, another political hot spot, in search of journalistic opportunities. But instead of covering the war, he finds himself wanting to explore the country's wilderness.

"Here it was, the object of my quest, the Rio Platano. I should have felt exhilarated, but in fact, I felt vaguely disappointed; I had no idea why, exhaustion perhaps," Benz writes, adding, "Or perhaps the biosphere had become in my mind something so fantastic, a place so sublime that reality was bound to seem anticlimactic."

Benz's observations are candid and thoughtful. He recounts other adventures in Costa Rica, and a trilogy of chapters about the "Mundo Maya" - a megaproject tourism scam that exploits the indigenous peoples.

On his journeys - seemingly random in choice - he meets up with an incredible cast of characters perfectly detailed and familiar to anyone who has spent time traveling in Latin America. Here are his meetings with journalists with fat travel expenses, government lackeys, ugly tourists, and dare devil bus drivers.

His epilogue recounts some of his adventures on the internet, trying to touch base and keep track of places he grew to love, if not on his first journey, then in memory.

Thanks to the author's candor, Green Dreams redefines the travel narrative and paints a realistic picture of what green travelers can expect south of the U.S. border.

Ron Mader is the host of the Eco Travels in the Americas website (http://www.planeta.com). He travels extensively in the Americas and is the author of the new guidebook, Mexico: Adventures in Nature (John Muir Publications, 1998).

Selected Excerpts:

So Willis holds court all evening, telling his best stories to an enamored crowd. 'You've got to expose yourself to get the expose,' he says. 'I've helicoptered into combat zones, been through mortar barrages, dodged machine-gun fire...' He's really on this evening, his audience in the palm of his hand, and he's felling awfully good about himself because he's come down to Honduras to file a major expose for a well-known men's magazine - the real story of Reagan's secret war, told in between doctored photos of nude women in compromising poses. It'll be the definitive report, the one that will cast a shadow over all Central American reporting for some time to come. (p. 42)

I tried to track down some information on the [Rio Platano] biosphere, but no one seemed to know anything about it. Given everything else that was happening in Honduras, with rebels and mercenaries and CIA agents everywhere, the news of a biosphere was easily lost. (p. 43)

Back on board (the bus), Douglas talked about real estate, about how cheap it was to buy land in Costa Rica. 'You can get two thousand hectares for a few thousand bucks,' he informed me, 'but you got to get around the kickback mortgages.' He'd come to 'Cawster Rickuh' to take some tours - like whitewater rafting on the Reventazon River - and to check out some land deals, 'get a feel for what's going down real estate wise.' (p. 126)

Costa Rica

To me, an outsider, the government seemed uncertain of it course, pulling in opposite directions. I asked Warner if Costa Ricans had a sense of where there country was headed. 'It's like this,' he explained. 'Protection of the environment is important to the country's identity right now... But the big money is in resorts and these ministers always go for the big money. Remember they stay in office only for a few years so they're not interested in where the country will be in ten or twenty years. They're too busy getting what they can out of their position. Everyone talks environment, but the real identity of Cost Rica is corruption.'

'So you think the ministers are not sincere when they speak of sustainable development?'

'Of course they are sincere. They sincerely favor the development that sustains themselves. (pp. 135-136)

Guatemala

In the grassy area outside the government tourist market, women from different highlands villages were demonstrating the use of the belt loom... We walked around the park, stopping at different stations to learn about the spinning, dyeing and warping of wool. The women, dressed in their finest traje - the traditional clothing of their village - were completely absorbed in there work... Some of their aloofness was due to the presence of a young INGUAT representatives who stood in front of each demonstration and explained what was going on to anyone who stopped to observe it. The Mayan women were not given the opportunity to speak for themselves; they were displays in this museum o the Maya, and the INGUAT representatives, dressed in dark blue suits, were the interpreters. (p. 180-181)

Mexico

Beyond the boundaries of the Mundo Maya, the purple prose of those brochures might resonate with tourists who liked the idea of the beach resort-jungle ruins-unspoiled settings combination that the tourism ministry was promoting. But within the Mundo, there were growing numbers of doubters, particularly among Mayan activists. If the Mundo Maya had a credibility problem, it might have been because the agency had a tendency to refer to the Maya as a 'product.' (pp. 248-249)

To order Green Dreams from Amazon.com, click here.

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