The making of the Térraba-Sierpe Delta waterscape in Costa Rica: Thinking within and beyond the plantation

Abstract

Where does a plantation begin and where does it end? Plantations are renewed objects of inquiry in agrarian studies, in dialogue with critical perspectives on the Anthropocene such as the Plantationocene (e.g. Wolford et al 2021). Taking the plantation as an object, however, can risk universalizing understandings of agrarian transformations. Key elements in agricultural production, like water and agrichemicals, have not been considered in these debates, even though they play a determinant role in shaping agrarian landscapes. This article tackles such risk by incorporating a water lens into the historical and geographical study of plantations. The present paper analyzes the production of the pesticide-contaminated waterscape in the Térraba-Sierpe Delta of the South Pacific region of Costa Rica as a means to interrogate temporal and spatial relationships in and through plantations. In 1935, the United Fruit Company (UFCo) moved its banana plantations from the Caribbean to the country’s South Pacific region, drastically transforming the tropical landscape and socio-ecological relations. In 1984, the UFCo stopped banana cultivation while partly moving their farms to oil palm production. Almost four decades afterwards, the Térraba-Sierpe Delta is characterized by fragmented and shifting land use dynamics, where different monocrops coexist with conservation areas, peasant land occupations and fisherfolk villages. Based on 18 months of fieldwork between 2018 and 2021, which combined environmental science i.e. ecotoxicology, ethnography and archival research, I build on the notion of waterscapes as a conceptual tool to interrogate the limits/scope of the plantation

The notion of waterscapes examines how water and society are deeply intertwined and co-produced symbolically, materially, discursively and politically (Swyngedouw 1999). Firstly, I explore how UFCo created a water system for drainage and irrigation that expanded the area of the plantation beyond its territorial limits and that has persisted through time. This water infrastructure conditioned the spatial dynamics through successive land uses, in oil palm plantations and peasant land occupations, and increased the magnitude of floods due to climate events. Second, I examine what occurs beyond the apparent limits of plantations by following effluent flows, the movement of sediments and pesticide residues from the different existing plantations located upstream to the downstream delta. Plantation legacies are expressed not only in the pesticide stratification i.g. copper residues in the soil, but also as a remainder in the population, which reshapes territories and subjects. Ultimately, I argue that the delta materializes the ever-changing configurations of agrarian capital in and through plantations.