Capi Capi: Rejoiced in Resistance

This is not merely an account of the Maleku community but also a reflection of us as novice ethnographers who find ourselves constantly challenged and humbled. We spent five days living in the tribe, engaging in conversations with the Maleku people, helping to reinitiate the garden in the local school, attempting to contribute to reforestation works in reclaimed territories, and every night, deliberating on what the Maleku community had presented themselves to us during the day.

“Capi Capi!” The phrase joyfully burst through our lips, accompanied by tinkling laughter out of nervousness that we might have pronounced it wrong.

In the Maleku indigenous language, the phrase “Capi Capi” is equivalent to the saying “Pura Vida” in the rest of Costa Rica. It is used to greet, farewell, and express everything. This casual linguistic practice extends Maleku’s traditional cultural conventions into daily routines.

Guides to daily expressions in the Maleku indigenous language, translated into Spanish and English, were displayed at the cafeteria for tourists

The Maleku is the smallest tribe out of the eight indigenous groups in Costa Rica. Still, its resilience has been persistent through the colonial history of the Spanish Settlement, armed genocidal attacks from Nicaraguans, cultural indoctrinations by Catholic missionaries, and current government interference.

“People came in groups to take away land. The Maleku people defended their land, but people from outside almost killed the entire population. Since then, it has been difficult to restore the population. There was no written record of these conflicts, I learned about them when walking in the woods with my dad at the age of three,” says Dagoberto, the leader of the Tonjibe Palenque, a smaller community inside the Maleku tribe. Raised in a Spanish-speaking household while sustaining his grasp of the traditional Maleku language, Dagoberto bridges communication between his community and tourists from the rest of the world like us.

For most of us, this is our first visit to an Indigenous tribe, and we found our prior perceptions and assumptions of “indigeneity” subverted: nobody was barefoot or wearing those brown tribal costumes with animal skin patterns that came up in Google images when looking up “Maleku Tribe Costa Rica,” and instead, the community seemed as modernized as any other place in Costa Rica.

Soccer time with the community

“We are happy. Especially the teenagers are happy. They love dancing and karaoke, and they have phones to socialize with people around the world.” Dagoberto immediately negated the conventional and expected narrative of suffering. In social and cultural anthropology, we refer to these narratives as “suffering slots”, as there is an inordinate focus on the misery in the inherently oppressive structural systems when studying a community. Conversely, it is more comprehensive to recognize the positive aspects of human values, experiences, and aspirations, also known as the Anthropology of the Good.

Maleku strives in goodness. When asked how the community views external influence, Dagoberto introduced the story of their first contact with a foreigner. “When he came, the community members did not welcome him. We don’t accept changes in our culture. Bilingualism is not part of our culture. Other religions are not part of our culture. However, the idea of monetizing artworks and tourism was impressive. This is what later sustained our community economically.”

Therefore, every time we attempt to characterize the Maleku community as a manifestation of the intersection between performativity and tourism, I think about Dagoberto’s words. Tourism is not entirely an exploitive force but a resource for the community to pursue economic opportunities and a platform for them to preserve traditional culture. As the Maleku people explored, utilized, and manipulated these dynamics, they realized their own conceptions of a good life.