by Dean McKinley

Hola mis companeros. Allow me to relate to you a fable for our times. As with all fables, it is more true than less, as well as having a moral.

Once upon a time not so long ago or very far away, there was a sleepy little fishing village situated on a beautiful bay along the coast. The sea and the land were rich and the people lived comfortably on the resources abundant around them. Their needs were met simply and they required only the basics of creature comforts. However it was on a bay, so it had a harbor and in time entrepreneurs came and where once were only panga fishermen, now were big commercial fishing boats and on-land fish processing facilities as well as commercial shipping concerns. Now there were jobs. And while the work was hard, at least the people of the village had at last the effectivo (money) with which to improve their lot somewhat. This meant, however, giving up a way of life that had sustained them and their families for generations only to emerge, in the words of the sociologist Joseph Wood Krutch, “from something like destitution to find themselves all too soon immersed in all the problems, pressures and perplexities of modern civilization.”