Livestock farms in Nicaragua are often illegal and the subject of criminal disputes. Camilo de Castro explores the issue in the documentary Patrol.
The lights in the auditorium come on suddenly and, despite the subject of the documentary still often being considered a "niche" one, the rows are almost full. Among the people present at the screening of Patrol, in Mexico City, some are visibly crying, some cannot hold back grimaces of anger, and some keep applauding the efforts of the director, Camilo de Castro, who smiles from the stage, visibly moved.
During a moment's break, we manage to exchange a few words, a conversation that will continue over the phone in the weeks that follow. I tell him about how, over the past year and a half, I have been travelling through Central and South America to document the impact of human activities on biodiversity, and about how the massive presence of livestock in every region is not only evident but also plainly on the rise. And this cannot but bring with it extreme consequences, especially where its presence is unlawful.
The expansion of illegal livestock farming is undermining natural resources throughout Central America, especially in Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala, where it is linked to deforestation, irreversible environmental degradation and violence against indigenous communities, while at the same time fuelling a criminal market that generates profits worth millions of dollars.
Camilo de Castro
Fuelling the dramatic situation is the boom in the global trade in beef which, in this part of the world, operates largely without oversight and has led several producers to enter the black market. On the other side, livestock trafficking also serves a range of criminal interests: for drug traffickers, it is in fact a tool for controlling territory, and is fundamental for laundering money with ease, as well as for accessing valuable natural resources and thereby diversifying their profits.
All elements brought to life by the powerful images of Patrol, directed by Camilo de Castro and Brad Allgood and filmed in the Indio-Maiz reserve in south-west Nicaragua: 2,639 km² of tropical forest, roughly ten times the size of the country's capital, Managua, 524 documented species of mammals, reptiles, insects, birds and amphibians, and the fundamental presence of the ancestral Rama community and the Kriol, descendants of Africans, who day after day see their territory invaded and destroyed. For this reason, community members have organised themselves over recent years to patrol the territory with the few resources available to them, at the risk of their own lives.
Here, the rate of deforestation is severe. While between 2001 and 2006 some 411 hectares of virgin forest disappeared, between 2018 and 2022 the figures point to as many as 9,824 hectares and, Castro explains, "according to information that is beginning to reach us, the situation has worsened enormously over the past year."
The documentary project lasted more than a decade and benefited from the support of the film fund Ambulante y Pacific Pioneer Fund, as well as Re:wild, Juli Films and Perpetuo Films. Among the most powerful moments captured on film is one in which a group of rangers from the Rama-Kriol community discovers a new settlement inside the reserve: a ramshackle wooden house, a visibly destitute woman and her children waiting for their father — who has been given a handful of dollars by some large rancher to invade the reserve and tend to the livestock — to return from the forest, where he is probably felling trees to make room for grazing.
"We don't know how many illegal farms there are in the reserve, but according to an investigation by InSight Crime, it is estimated that there are around 12,000 head of cattle. Once they have grown, they are slaughtered in industrial and municipal facilities. Ninety per cent of the cattle end up in seven slaughterhouses certified for the export of meat to the United States and elsewhere. Ten per cent of the meat is destined for the domestic market," de Castro continues, his eyes fixed on the images from his documentary scrolling across the large screen.
But how is it possible that all this is happening? To understand it, one must know the history of Nicaragua, a country ravaged by civil wars and dictatorial regimes such as that of Ortega, in government from 1984 to 1990 and then again, uninterruptedly, from 2007, which has meant that human rights violations and the repression of opposition have become systematic, leaving ample room for corruption and drug trafficking.
"At the moment there is no way of knowing the exact origin of the livestock, because the national traceability system has systemic flaws that make it unreliable, and the information it contains is not in any case accessible to the public. According to interviews we conducted with former employees of the Institute of Agricultural Health and Protection (Ipsa), animal movements are not recorded, and this makes it easy for ranchers to move cattle from farms outside protected areas to farms in indigenous territories and protected areas such as Indio Maiz."
"Some of these cattle are smuggled into Mexico, where they feed domestic demand for meat, or are mixed in with beef exports to the United States." A common thread held by SuKarne, a Mexican company that manages more than seventy per cent of the country's national meat exports and which, according to information received by de Castro from local contacts and confirmed by an investigation by InSight Crime, has reportedly been buying cattle reared illegally in the Indio Maìz biosphere reserve in Nicaragua for years. The company, which effectively runs a monopoly, is also expanding its influence in Belize and Guatemala. Despite questions over the provenance of the cattle from which the meat placed on the market is obtained, in 2021 it won the National export award conferred by the Mexican government for having sold its products in 12 countries across four continents, with an average annual revenue of around 985 million dollars.
Even though Nicaragua does not export meat to Europe, we know that several European Union countries purchase by-products such as leather, used above all by the automotive and fashion industries, particularly footwear.
Camilo de Castro
A market from which our own country, Italy, is no exception: in 2021 alone it purchased as many as 3,663 tonnes of leather originating from Nicaragua, the traceability of which proves unreliable and dangerous for all those who are fighting to protect one of the most important biosphere reserves in the world.
"The incursions by ranchers keep advancing and have now reached the banks of the Indio river, endangering the safety of community members, their food security and their way of life. And yet, despite the lack of support from local authorities, the forest rangers continue to patrol the reserve. Margarito, one of the protagonists of the documentary, has had to leave his home because settlers have seized his plots of land. Yesterday he called me to tell me that last week he was threatened with a rifle and that he has no one to turn to for support."
For his investigative work and activism, Camilo de Castro Belli had his Nicaraguan citizenship revoked on 15 February 2023. His assets were expropriated. Patrol, the documentary telling the story of the Rama Kriol community's struggle, is illegal in the country.
