Paper short abstract:

Our presentation will show how the San Juan River has been seen and lived in other times and how it is seen and read today according with ways of naturalization-culturization usefull to the actual diferent uses and practices and the actors who make them

Paper long abstract:

In the last decades environmental protection policies have been implemented in the San Juan River basin, that is the border region between Costa Rica and Nicaragua. Parallel to this process of conservation and patrimonialization, and largely connected with it, is producing the development of tourism in the area, which leads to new uses and readings of the environment. Activities like gathering and hunting, agriculture, livestock, fisheries or forestry and transportation have developed and changed historically in the San Juan River by different factors, but now these activities are directly or indirectly linked to nature protection and tourism, generating new definitions of the environment. In our paper we analyze this new reality, showing the evolution of the practices, appropriations and perceptions of the different biophisical elements of the river, making particular reference to the connection, exchange, contrast and conflict between the actions and discourses of different local social sectors, different types of global tourists, and state agencies and NGOs.

In this connection we will underline the different forms of naturalization-culturization that are made with regard to the river and its various spaces and places, depending on the uses and the actors who are elaborating, promoting and performing them.