concepción

ten cuidado, dicen…be careful. don’t forget your contraceptives.

you never know what will happen.

sometimes it only takes one bulldozer of a night and then your life is changed forever.

the encroachment can be subtle, but it can also be swift. suddenly there they are in broad daylight, demolishing dunes in the name of development.

they, the famous they. we can name them or we can not. if you know then you know, and if you don’t, i’ll leave a link.

“In The Heart Of Natural Splendor”

Concepción, set in Baja California’s breathtaking landscape where the Pacific Ocean meets the Sea of Cortez, offers an unparalleled fusion of natural beauty and cultural richness. Just 20 minutes from the airport and 5 minutes from San José del Cabo’s historic downtown, Concepción is near renowned locales like Flora Farms, Tamarindos and Acre.

A short 12-minute drive leads to East Cape’s pristine surfing coastlines. The nearby Marina Arts District, featuring Hotel El Ganzo, Crania, Veleros Beach Club, and Botanical Gardens, is easily accessible by golf cart, offering scenic walks, waterfront dining, abundant artistic inspiration and easy access to a variety of boating enabled activities—an ideal destination for those seeking the spirit of Baja’s heritage and adventure.

This self-proclaimed “Coastal Community for Intentional Living” is now intentionally destroying the previously public (nationally protected) dunes in order to prepare the land for lots to sell to intentional billionaires like Musk and Zuckerberg, the latter of whom already parked his yacht(s) out front this winter for a whole month and is rumored to have ridden his helicopter to the top of Picacho, the highest peak in Baja.

Concepción is a thriving beach settlement that integrates a culture of creativity, optimal health and well-being, and a deep relation with nature into our projects, fostering an intentional community united by the drive to live a playful and purposeful life and contribute to regenerative place-making.

Our community appeals to those who are constructively critical, passionately curious, and profoundly creative. We are a gathering of minds and spirits who are not satisfied with the status quo and are relentless in our pursuit of purposeful, impactful living.

From a marketing perspective, they have a decent pitch. They know who they are, or at least who they want to be, and know how to articulate it. The only problem is their actions, or at least those approved by their developers, are starkly in contrast with the mission and values they claim.

“Regenerative place-making” — “A deep relation with Nature”

and then this:

of course, the reason they are doing this is to protect their investment. if one is going to sell multi-million dollar lots to billionaires they need to at least pretend that they are going to be protected from the eroding forces of the ocean which is there, hungry and lapping at the shore just meters away.

supposedly one needs to leave 20 meters to beachfront, legally speaking.

supposedly the lighthouse that sits back on these dunes is a protected museum with a hectare of deeded land, but no one seems to know who has that deed, or who happened to sell it to Puerto Los Cabos.

unfortunately, no matter how much noise we make now, the majority of the irreparable damage is already done.

i was walking on the beach this morning, as i do nearly every morning, and there i encountered Alfredo, a local fisherman who has lived in the area of La Playita his whole life. his aunt used to live in my house before they decided to sell it. i have seen him around regularly for the last few years, and sometimes we talk.

this morning it was about the new construction, the latest chapter in a decades-long history of semi-legal acquisition of what basically amounts to the lion’s share of the pueblo and its marina, which was built by excavating out a significant portion of the estuary about 20 years ago.

the once sprawling white sand beach in front of my house was quickly decimated by erosion caused by the jetty they built. even in the short 5 years that i’ve been here, i’ve see it….every year we lose meters of the beach, until during hurricane season, in which we lose most if not all of it.

this morning Alfredo was telling me that the beach used to extend out to where to the farthest edge of the jetty, and behind that, the expanse of clay and sand dunes, the vantage point from which i took this photograph, and which they are currently busy bulldozing. if you want to imagine it, just picture a white sandy beach, precisely the ones they advertise in your dreams.

When humans think they are smarter or bigger or more powerful than nature, they do things like build jetties and force the waves to pound against the shore in a new way, changing the tides and almost inevitably causing erosion.

these humble dunes are traditionally covered with a mixture of sea grass and shrubs, with the occasional choya cactus or other endemic species. these plants hug the sand in a supportive embrace that prevents a significant amount of erosion.

maybe it’s not so sexy, but it is effective.

a lot more effective than this, that’s for sure.

i’m not exaggerating the angle here, there is a significant pitch downward in this particular dune, which the developers seem convinced that they will none-the-less be able to build upon.

who knows, maybe they will. maybe they’re build a house or two and make a bunch of money, and then a few years later it will look like this, an abandoned and eroded pile of concrete.

(this is not in some far-flung spot, mind you… this is a short 10 minute walk from where they are currently bulldozing, right alongside the Secrets hotel where newlyweds often frequent and get their picture taken.)

i suppose it is clear by now which side i’m on, and the fact is, sometimes you do need to take sides. mind you, i know the people more or less responsible for this project. i used to work for and with them in one sense or another. you could say i went in the big door on that one, and walked out the back entrance. once you have seen the bowels of the beast it’s hard if not impossible to unsee.

i’ve been there, treated as indentured servitude, where getting a proper paycheck is not guaranteed and instead one is made to feel that they should consider themselves lucky regardless. i remember the first time i was dealing with a situation like that, and a Mexican friend made clear to me that i was neither unique nor special, and that nearly all big hotels worked like that.

you are made to feel afraid that if you speak up, if you speak out, there is a good chance you will lose everything, and at least your job.

decide to play poker with the lion, and that is what you get. consequence.

conception and consequence.

ten cuidado, dicen… be careful.

they aren’t telling me to be careful about the crumbling dunes. they are telling me to be careful because bad things happen to people who stand up for the environment in Mexico. there are shockingly large number of such stories.

Homero Gomez was a defender of the habitat of the monarchs in Michoacan, and he was murdered, drowned in a well, most likely by narcoterrorists. His son continues his work, speaking out in social media, because the thing is, they, that infamous they, they want us to be quiet.

i remember speaking with a friend about the cartels on my porch once. we weren’t speaking overly loud, but we were confronted by the distinct sound of my neighbor shutting windows, as if shutting out the truth will protect you from its consequence.

ten cuidado, dicen.

on the other hand, if you don’t say anything, you lose it all.

that lighthouse that was protected, now it’s an afterthought, something around which a park might be built. if we are lucky. if they follow-through on their plan, which no locals had any say in anyway.

keep in mind, i tried to talk to them.

the powers that be.

i can honestly say i like some of them. not all. not the ones with limp handshakes and self-absorbed choruses. but the ones with posture and spine. the ones that may have had nothing to do with what has happened and were just born by chance and circumstance into the situation.

ponte los huevos, digo.

grow your balls big and speak out. change things. do it different for once.

make Mother Nature proud.

some of us aren’t really interested in moving to Mars.

anarchy love. that is the conclusion.

be real, be true.

don’t just talk about it.

do it. be it.

what are you conceiving, and why?

recently i had the pleasure of speaking to a Mexican about the birds and the bees.

“the birds and the bees,” i said, you don’t know what that means?

you know, that conversation that your parents or some other adult figure has with you when you’re an adolescent, where you get to listen awkwardly while they get red in the face talking about sex and its consequences.

why exactly is it that we call it the birds and the bees?

i’m going to refrain from using google here. if someone knows, please feel free to comment.

Leave a comment

but let’s leave it at that eh?

the birds and the bees… the ones that pollinate the flowers and live in the trees.

if you are going to conceive an idea, don’t just make it beautiful…

make it noble. build it to last.

…

there is one final point here.

as much as it is necessary to sometimes take sides, it is also crucial to be able to hold more than one version of the truth at the same time. i am told by all directions that all point in different directions. but that’s not really the case.

the associations formed by the developers and run by a kind-hearted local man; the big bad developers living out the legacy of the ambition of one man; the local population that never organized out of a combination of both fear and impotence… all of them overlap.

development is an interesting concept to consider. what it means “to develop.” people so often assume it only means to make money.

i am sent messages by local residents, employed by the very same hotels that destroyed their home to build a golf course. how are they to speak out against the hand that feeds them? and yet, if they don’t, then what?

this is not an easy history, nor a simple story.

but that’s life, isn’t it? neither simple, nor easy…

let’s see what happens. sometimes all you need to do is pay attention.

i see you.

because of course, that which we give birth to, is nothing other than a reflection of ourselves.

mírate en ese espejo y dime qué ves. look in that mirror, and tell me what you see.

thanks for being present.

nos vemos a la próxima.

rsvp: vidabierta