We, Brazilians, value what belongs to others.
We keep trying to find places that have those exotic famous landscapes.
Today, people go travelling, thinking about selfies.
They don't think about local knowledge or cultural experience.
Or getting to know a new city, or the people who live there and their lifestyle.
When we have the sun and sand tourism or mass tourism, as we call it,
people think that everyone works for a service, and they will pay for a service.
They expect us to execute the service the way they want us to do it.
The idea isn't having huge and gorgeous structures there on the island,
but bringing the people’s history, information and the model that we execute there,
that is, getting to know the culture, and a legally protected area.
Campeche Island World
Campeche Island is a national patrimony, known for its archaeological sites and landscape.
There we can find rock engravings and stone tools. We can also find a very preserved
native vegetation. These characteristics make the island
an important place for the community that lives there.
That's why it needs to be protected by the government.
The island is also one of the tourist hotspots from the State of Santa Catarina,
getting an average of roughly 60 thousand tourists per season.
In order to control this amount of people, IPHAN qualifies a team of monitors
annually in order to oversee the activities on the beach, and also guarantee the visitors
environmental and heritage education.
All the visitors that arrive on the island are welcomed by the monitors.
They will explain what visitors can do on the island, and where they can go.
What the attractions on the island are, and how they can visit the archaeological sites.
This reception we give prevents many problems from happening.
Because we warn the visitors like: Listen, you can’t climb the rocks.
Listen, you can’t do that. And if we didn’t warn them, there would be a lot of people
invading the trails, climbing the rocks, slipping and getting hurt, you know?
So I think the reception is very important. Rain or shine, we will be there to welcome them.
The course for monitors has been happening for 17 years. It’s very important,
because we form a group of people that is really concerned about the island.
So there is a group of monitors receiving the visitors
on condition of educational tourism.
Working with preservation, cleaning the environment,
and cultural heritage is like ant work.
Cultural heritage is our life and history.
Taking care of it means taking care of our past,
which is responsible for what we are today.
Actually, when we say we are taking care of Campeche Island’s cultural heritage,
we’re not only talking about the archaeological sites .
We’re talking about the connection, and the traditional communities
that live at Campeche and Armação beach.
It’s them who bring Campeche Island to life.
This is what we call it, in countries with more advanced cultural politics,
they call it living historical heritage.
And if they’re removed from Campeche Island,
there will be a huge cultural loss.
In the middle of 17th century, Campeche Island started to be used
by fishermen from Armação do Pântano do Sul as a basis for the first big
industry in the south of Santa Catarina Island: the whaling industry.
The name “Armação” comes from the process of setting the hunt,
in which they built structures necessary for whaling.
This “Armação” has had three names:
Armação de Santana, in honor of the Patron Saint.
Armação da Lagoinha, because of Lagoa do Peri.
And today it’s called Armação do Pântano do Sul
because of the district of Pântano do Sul.
Building “Armações” in the south of Santa Catarina Island
has an economical importance, because in the past it was
the biggest industry of the State of Santa Catarina.
It was a factory system,
and all the structures were built there in order to attend to a commercial activity,
whose purpose was to produce whale oil,
which would be supplied to the city of Florianópolis
and all of the State of Santa Catarina.
The surplus would go to Lisbon in order to light up the cities.
Details of its original masonry.
The bay needed to be deep enough in order to do these activities.
It couldn’t be agitated, so that you would be able to
drag the whales into the water with the boats.
The whales should come close enough, so the fishermen could
hunt them, since our hunting was essentially coastal.
At the peak of this activity, an average of 600 whales were hunted annually,
which caused a fast vanishing of the Right Whales of the Santa Catarina Coast.
In the middle of the 19 th century, whaling wasn’t considered profitable anymore,
which caused the end of this kind of industry in the state.
Despite the end of whaling in Colonial Brazil at that time,
this kind of knowledge has remained among some families of the community.
But in the 20 th century, there was a revival of whaling in the State
of Santa Catarina, with different methods and techniques
from the ones used in the 18 th century.
In the whaling of 1957,
we knew that the whales would come to the coast from there.
Then, Mr. Arlindo decided to revive whaling,
and kill the whales in order to sell the oil. Then we killed five whales.
We would go on a rescue boat, because if the whale broke the boat,
as it would happen the first time, there would be a rescue boat.
Then we would shoot the dynamite.
We would make a harpoon out of an 80-centimeter piece of iron,
32 millimeters... And 1 inch.
Then we would fill up the stick of dynamite.
On the tip, we would take a spear and weld it to the tip of the iron.
Then we would light the fuse.
Today we use an electrical detonator, which is quite different.
That time we used a fuse. A fuse is a string that burns.
Then we would set fire to the string, and it would burn.
When it arrived at the fuse, it would detonate the fuse,
pull over the stick of dynamite and then explode.
The iron would explode inside the whale.
If it was a direct hit, it would probably kill it.
In 1973, the hunting of a 157-inch whale
has marked the end of whaling in the State of Santa Catarina up until this moment!
On days of rough sea,
on the sands of Campeche Island, we can find bones
other traces related to that time.
When it wasn’t possible to drag the whale to Armação do Pântano do Sul,
the whales would be dragged to Campeche Island, and also there on the island,
they would do all the process of cutting off the whale lard and burning the oil.
Usually, we wake up at about 4:30 or 5 a.m.
I get up and the first thing I do is go outside to feel the wind.
Then I go to the beach, walking. I get there and see how the waves are,
if there are too many of them, if the wind is too strong…
I love fishing... I love fishing…
When I’m there I feel calm, there is no one to bother you,
there’s just no stress... If the weather is bad we don’t go,
we just go when the weather is good...
When you get there, you can hear the sound of the ocean.
Sometimes there are birds singing, seagulls and other birds...
Sometimes suddenly a fish jumps out of the water...
Since I was a child, I’ve always lived with the artisanal fishermen...
And they’re people who have suffered so much.
It’s not like: Yeah, I’m an artisanal fisherman
and I can pay my dues comfortably.
Many of them are fishermen and construction workers...
Others are bus drivers. So, many of them have two jobs.
From the moment the tour to the island started,
they started to have better quality of life.
We get no incentive from public agencies. So most fishermen
survive on the boat touring. Fishing is complementary...
We won’t leave our roots aside. We were raised fishing....
But fishing today is very bad, very weak...
Today, fishing is very weak, we can barely pay the fuel.
Life at sea is very poor.
You can see 40 or 50 shrimp boats
pulling everything they find in the ocean.
Trawlers kill the young as well as they kill the big ones.
What is good is put in the basement, what is bad is thrown away.
If you stimulate industrial fishing in an unbridled way,
little by little you will see the impacts on Campeche Island.
How many times have you seen tuna boats fishing with live baits?
Manjubinha, which belongs to the fish food chain, is vanishing,
because tuna boats take it all in order to fish tuna. If there isn’t food for the fish,
they won’t come to the coast.
It’s a biomass that could be getting fuller.
You’d be able to see more fish species in Campeche Island
if there weren’t tuna boats around.
Today we can only see iron boats. This kind of boat holds up to 200, 300 tons.
These are refrigerator boats, they stay outside.
They throw down the anchor and slaughter as many fish as they can.
So we are at a disadvantage.
Last year’s mullet fishing for example, the industrial fishing fleet has
exceeded the limit. So, this has an impact on the
lives of the artisanal fishermen.
Not only on the environment, but there’s an issue
that you’re taking the fishing away from people that
really depend on it to survive.
Couto Association has a very peculiar history on Campeche Island.
At that time, it was a club, and not an association.
Hunting, Fishing and Shooting Couto de Magalhães Club.
It’s origins were part of the military forces, and also at that time,
the best places for the high society to meet up
were these hunting, fishing and shooting clubs.
In 1942, there was a time that this club
gained legal status, was formalized, and received National Registration.
And also received the property title of Campeche Island.
After the society changed its values for more ecological,
environmental ideals, this club was renamed as
Couto de Magalhães of Campeche Island’s Preservation Association.
I’m sure that if Couto Association hadn’t had the property title of the island,
as a preservation association, today there would be a big resort, a big hotel
and the general population wouldn’t even be able to land on the island.
In the case of Campeche Island, since we have petroglyphs and rock engravings,
we have an ethical and moral obligation, besides a legal obligation
of allowing people to get to know the island.
Coatis were introduced to the island in the 70’s
by Couto de Magalhães Association.
They were introduced for two purposes:
there are scorpions and spiders there on the island,
so they were introduced for the purpose of being scorpion
and spider predators. And in case people couldn’t land on or
leave the island, they would be introduced to the island,
in case there was any problem, they’d be able to feed on the scorpions and spiders.
The problem was after hunting was prohibited in Brazil, and Coatis
stayed at Campeche Island. They reproduced, and there’s no
natural predator for them, and now we see, especially in high season,
coatis coexisting with visitors in a way that is not natural or wild anymore.
We tell tourists not to feed the coatis,
we turn our backs and they keep giving chips to the coatis,
because they want to take pictures of them,
and this is fairly dangerous. Coatis have long claws,
and they may also transmit some diseases,
such as rabies. We also have to look after the children,
because they get closer to them and may tug at their tails,
and the animals really don’t like that.
They rob visitors’ food and take the packages into the vegetation,
a place that most of the time is hard to reach.
If the monitors aren’t there cleaning the beach and the vegetation,
the waste may remain there for years
impacting the patrimony’s ecosystem.
Species that are introduced to humans, in any place,
are considered exotic species.
Exotic species that proliferate without control,
representing a threat to the native species,
and also to the ecosystem and its balance, so they may be called
invasive species. It's the case of the coatis on the island.
What would the impacts on the island’s fauna be
if coatis were removed from there?
Would we be able to find more birds on Campeche Island?
Would we be able to see more plants in bloom and bearing fruit?
We’ve been told by the regulatory agency
that castration would be the best option.
Coatis are considered part of the charismatic fauna,
so the tourists really like them, and they interact with them.
Therefore, castration would be the best option to remove them from there
little by little and decrease their population on the island.
Tourist activities here in Florianopolis began
in the late 70’s and early 80’s,
when surfers arrived through the new highway, BR-101…
Actually, they were the first tourists here on the island.
They arrived looking for beautiful waves.
At that time, they used to call us. Some of us already had telephones...
They would also come on vacation, rent our houses
and some of them would even ask to charter our boats...
And we would take them there...
Some wanted to go fishing with us, others just wanted to enjoy the island.
They would come back every other year asking us to take them to the island,
and that’s how we started to get more and more customers.
I work as a monitor on the island,
and if there’s a day when the weather isn’t very clear,
the tourists come to us complaining:
"How come the water is not so clear? Isn’t this the Brazilian Caribbean?"
And we tell them: Man, that’s nature... We have no control over it.
I don’t have the power to say: Now this water is going to get crystal clear!
People come to the island wanting to take so many pictures, so many selfies,
that they just want to get to know the beach, and they end up not collaborating with the
heritage’s conservation, which should be the focus on the island.
We can find beaches anywhere. But the heritage we have there,
the human heritage and both the scenic and the archaeological one,
we can’t find anywhere else.
When the island began to arouse touristic interest,
to Couto Association it was a little bit shocking,
because we would see lots of boats
full of people arriving on the island, landing,
invading the island and having inappropriate behavior,
such as littering the beach, writing on the rocks... And we started to feel helpless
What should we do?
Sometimes we would take them one day and come back the next day.
Camping was allowed on the island too.
There was a big disorder…
People hanging their clothes, hanging their swimsuits...
We would also ask them to stop it, because we feared
the possibility of the island catching fire.
And it was too much work taking their styrofoam boxes
and their barbecue grills to the island.
Tourists wanted us to take these things for them. We would take their stuff
because we didn’t want to lose money.
So the association started to look for the public agencies,
IPHAN and Public Ministry, to find what we could do in order to protect
the island from all of those unruly tourists.
National Historical and Artistic Patrimony Institute (IPHAN) is responsible
for the Brazilian Cultural Heritage and its preservation, ensuring its appreciation
for present and future generations. The Cultural Heritage from a country
is chosen by its people, from what they consider most important
and most representative of their identity, history and culture.
Campeche Island was listed by the National Heritage in 2000.
Thus, through specific legislation, several measures were implanted,
such as establishing a maximum limit of 800 visitors per day.
Our proposal was not to have an authoritarian stance.
So we were trying to find the best option
until we realized that prohibiting camping would be a better option. First,
we limited a specific area for camping. We didn’t have
any rules. Anyone could camp anywhere.
The following year, there was a decrease on the number of tents,
since we noticed that in that situation camping was incongruous.
For us fishermen, the impact was big,
because at that time we would take almost a thousand to the island...
After IPHAN arrived, that was cut off.
I think the island should be preserved,
but not with that many restrictions.
Because they just took there someone I don’t know,
They conducted a study that we couldn’t keep up with and told us:
You’re allowed to take only 800 hundred people to the island. That’s all.
Our expectations were: since the island is protected, they will support us
in order to organize tourism.
But what happened was a little bit different. The public agency actually, of course,
doing their job, which is inspection,
in the association’s idea, it would be more of an organizational work,
but it was just inspection…
So, they started to demand things that should be done.
By telling us what shouldn’t be done,
but not telling us what should really be done.
I arrived on the island in 2005, on the team of monitors...
Although 5 years had passed since the protection law,
There were still many conflicts among everyone involved…
Associations have been charged for their behavior,
but there was a time that the associations realized that
if they didn’t protect the island,
everybody would lose Campeche Island.
It is also important to say that it’s not like:
the public agency is right and the community isn’t.
I think there is an evolution process from all sides and entities.
At first, there seems to be big difficulty between the actors.
When we see everyone together, we think: this is not going to work!
But then we start to realize how they work together
and how they have to adapt to one another, then we think:
well, that’s very nice to see!
Campeche Island is for sure the common point among them all.
Having that, you start to bring the technical part, the historical part
and the emotional part into the process.
And we are talking about a universe of people directly linked
to the island management of over one hundred people.
The fact that the first monitors were from Armação beach’s community,
helped with the approach to the actors.
Because actors used to complain of IPHAN’s actions.
But when their son became a monitor, they got home
and would tell their parents about the difficulties they had with tourists,
and also with the actors. And then they started to understand
the problems public agencies had daily on the island.
Today, the team of monitors’ profile is more of university students.
So now we have a more technical work.
We don’t do 40 trails a day, we do half of that, but this half
has a better quality and more information.
In Southern Brazil, Campeche Island is the place with the biggest number
of archaeological records in just one place.
It has more archaeological records than the whole island of Florianópolis.
So it is a very important and meaningful place, since we have
so many memories of indigenous peoples,
a history that’s been forgotten for a very long time.
The first thing visitors usually do is touching the rock engravings,
or trespassing on the limitation we set
in order to protect the archaeological record.
We ask them now not to touch it because of the weather impacts
the engravings suffer over time, such as rain, vegetation,
saline air... So touching them would cause even more damage.
Then people ask: what could happen if we touch such a strong rock?
Me, just one person?
So we tell them it’s not just because of one person.
There are many more people throughout the day…
This is our first stop, this is the first archaeological site.
we’re going to meet over the trail.
This archaeological site represents how ancient peoples of Santa Catarina
used to make their own work tools.
This rock isn’t made of organic material. If there’s no organic material,
we can’t do radiometric dating.
So we work with hypothesis. So we are aware of some people
that have been on the coast of Santa Catarina.
So we have three possible peoples that have been on the coast,
at some point: the Sambaqui people, the Jê grous and the Guarani tribes.
In the last four years, we’ve been receiving indigenous peoples from the region.
These peoples also have the opportunity to visit Campeche Island.
When I visited the island,
I saw some images registered left by them...
The Guaranis used to count how many families lived there,
and how many people also died there.
And we can see there are some graphics on the rocks.
It’s a way of identifying which ethnicity have been there.
So it’s like a book written on the rocks.
But when colonizers arrived, what did they do?
Today, we can’t see that anymore.
We can just see houses and old construction sites…
So it’s a part of indigenous peoples’ history
that have been vanishing over time.
Because white peoples’ constructions have been built on top of our own.
For us, receiving indigenous peoples, especially the Guaranis,
was like a reality check for us.
Because in History overall, it’s like an erased story,
It’s like they haven’t been there, like they haven’t even existed.
As if they were invisible throughout this process.
We are in a place where our ancestors have already been,
It’s good to see where they’ve been,
where they made their engravings...
So as a Guarani, it makes me very sad to see that…
That our history is not being told to White peoples the way it should be.
They don’t know our culture, and most of the time will say: they existed,
they made things, but where?
And many times, Guarani peoples are still alive,
still living in the State of Santa Catarina,
and mostly they just talk about the past…
I can’t use verbs in the past like “they have been”, “they have done”,
They “left”. So it was a big warning for me. The way I speak
after this experience has really changed me.
And how have they done that?
With a technique called pecking, ok?
So they used to take a little hammerstone
with one hand, and another rock with the other hand.
and used to hit them together, and then they would polish them afterward.
They used to do this to make knives, right?
They would do this for several days non stop…
Yes, several days...
Can you imagine how long it used to take to make this kind of handiwork?
The School Project originated from an IPHAN’s initiative, it began in 2012.
It came from the need of bringing the community into the patrimony.
We would offer free rides to school children, ok?
When it’s a private school we charge a small fee…
But we don’t charge public schools.
The School Project is divided into two stages. First we go to schools,
and we make a presentation about the trip.
We show kids what they are going to find there.
And then it’s visitation day, so we receive kids in front of Armação’s church.
And then we go to the wharf, from where boats sail.
Children are very curious. It’s different from working with adults.
because adults are embarrassed to ask questions.
Children ask questions, want to participate and everything…
Their imagination goes far. And at this point in their lives,
it’s a very fertile age to sow good ideas,
have some environmental education and awareness.
So we bring them into Campeche Island’s world,
so they can see how this proximity works.
With urbanization, sometimes kids don’t actually have a clue
where food comes from.
Some of them think it only comes from supermarkets.
And we are losing this connection with nature.
So when they go to the island and we talk about the balance in nature,
we show them how fragile Campeche Island is,
and how the things that happen there could happen anywhere else.
It’s a very beautiful place, I had never seen a place like this,
maybe just when I was very little.
And I really liked it. It’s a beautiful place
and I really liked the art on the rocks.
It’s a heritage that belongs to the State of Santa Catarina
and it’s very good to learn about it,
It’s the first time I came here, so it’s a great opportunity for me.
I learned that if we don’t take care of the island,
everything could be destroyed.
But if we take care of things, we can still have everything,
and that’s why the island is so beautiful.
We learned that we can take care of the environment
without much effort.
We learned the names of new trees,
we learned about the animals that live there.
She told us that very long ago rock arts were not supposed to be arts.
Today, we see it as art,
but it wasn’t the same for the people who made it.
She told us it was a kind of rock record.
I loved it, because it’s a clean place, and people know how to take care of it,
I mean they have to. And the color of water is so pretty…
The main marine ecosystem here on Campeche Island is rocky shore.
Here in the South the temperature of water doesn’t favor coral growth.
On Campeche Island we have two important ecosystem services
that are essential for the island’s preservation.
The rocky shore works as a refuge and a nursery
for species of economic interest. So fishermen utilize
fishing resources found there as well as
we also have the cultural information service
carried out via underwater trails.
From the moment we take this person out of their comfort zone,
go underwater and show: look what we have down here!
And introduce something new to them,
They start to understand better why we should preserve all that.
The first thing I tell them is that it’s a contemplative activity,
so we are doing nothing but looking.
We’re going to enter a new ecosystem, and try to be a part of it,
and try not to cause any impact.
So I always tell them not to touch anything.
There’s no reason for us to take something away from where it belongs.
All the time, while doing this activity,
we keep collecting garbage. It goes from big ones,
such as plastic bags and flip-flops, to many other things.
There are also smaller ones like plastic cups and straws
and some that are definitely tiny.
So we need to get very close to these types of garbage in order to see
if it’s really garbage or any type of marine organism.
I show visitors the situation about the salps and comb jellies,
Because these are organisms very similar to plastic
and they serve as food for many animals.
If it’s difficult for us ourselves to distinguish them,
imagine what it’s like for a turtle, a fish or the whales?
The major problem with disposable plastic is practicality.
In one second, we’re holding it
and the next second we just throw it away…
So where is this plastic going to end up?
We already know plastic affects our health and also the economy.
There are studies showing how scenic quality of the beaches
are being harmed by water pollution
and how this is affecting our economy.
And it may even happen to Floripa, for example.
If tourists start to realize how beaches
are being polluted, they won’t come anymore.
That just doesn’t happen to Campeche Island,
because monitors clean the beach.
But imagine if we just left the beach dirty...
Florianópolis has a very cool project called Floripa Without Plastic.
Our governors understood the urgency of this process,
mainly based on people’s awareness.
We are in a tourist city, so we have to do something.
On Campeche Island, we don’t have garbage collection service
and we also have the coatis and a high visitation demand to deal with.
Not to mention the ocean that rises toward the beach
with its tides and brings most of the waste
we find on the beach, if we can remove
plastic within commercial operations, it would be
a great progress for the whole process.
I believe that if visitors arrive on the island and don’t find straws,
it will make them think about the problem:
well, why isn’t there any straws?
And they can be educated to understand
why it is considered a problem.
Although all visitors that arrive on the island receive the information
that all the waste produced by them has to return with them
every day, without exception,
we still find trash that was left there by them.
There used to be trash cans on the Island, so visitors would feel free
from any responsibility with their own waste, from the moment
they put the waste in the trash can. Then, at the end of the day,
our trash cans would be full, and we would have to have
a major team to handle all that trash.
It makes me sad to see most people lacking
the ability of leaving the island with their own waste.
Something that is so simple and that if they don’t do it,
someone else will have to do it for them.
For most people, during the reception from the monitors
is the first time they hear about
the archaeological part of the island.
They land on the island, after all the trip,
they planned it all, and will only know about the archaeological part
when received by monitors on the island. So I think disclosure
should be a fair. The disclosure of our heritage
that is so nationally important.
When we only deal with travel agencies,
and even the public tourism sector
that sells this image of sun and sand tourism
our demand increases and our acting ability to confront
daily problems gets impaired.
Monitors are the first to land and the last to leave.
They help us with the inspections
that should be done by environmental agencies
and by Port Authority. They make reports for IPHAN,
for the Public Ministry, and other parties involved.
They monitor terrestrial and underwater trails.
They give information on receptions along the beach, I mean, it’s a lot of work!
Imagine spending all day long there, on a hot sunny day, working,
going up and down... It’s hard physical work.
It seems to me that it is a job with a lot of pressure,
because they’re pressured all the time by visitors
that want to land any way.
We have the Conduct Adjustment Term on the Island,
signed since 2004.
CAT limits what associations can or can’t do on the island.
Groups signed on CAT are groups that have been traditionally
participating in the tourism of the island.
For example, fishermen from Armação Beach. They’ve been there fishing
on the island for many generations.
The island is currently being invaded by some irregular conveyors.
Those are conveyors that want to transport tourists to the island,
but haven’t signed the Conduct Adjustment Term.
Those conveyors contribute to exceeding
the island’s capacity limit.
They are dangerous for the safety of passengers, and for the safety of
National Heritage, for not respecting the regulation of Campeche Island.
They lack responsibility with visitors
and with our heritage. We don’t know who they are.
We don’t know how visitors get there.
Presumably, by deceiving many times, telling tourists:
There are trails, the water is absolutely gorgeous,
always crystal clear, it’s all good...
That’s not true, you know, it’s a natural area.
They are one of the faces of predatory tourism.
Everybody wants to land there, a small beach,
with little infrastructure.
This is Campeche Island. This is Campeche Island’s beach.
Monitors have been threatened many times by those conveyors.
I myself have been threatened many times.
It’s scary and might also affect them,
making the person very tense and worried.
It’s a lack of understanding and respect for all the work we do for the island.
And we don’t exactly have a way to approach them and ask:
Excuse me, do you know what conservation work is...
Every year, more and more people want to bring more tourists to the island
People don’t realize how that may be creating a situation,
in which, in a short time,
people won’t be able to bring tourists to the island anymore,
because the island will be degraded and tourists won’t be interested in visiting.
Many times, we see that the society tends to see places
as an economic resource.
I am an economist, and I’m not against generating jobs and income,
quite the contrary. But since Campeche island
is a very particular place, in first place, before anything else,
we must prioritize preservation.
What I see is that other countries value their heritage, while we don’t.
They go out and look at their heritage and find them marvelous,
but when they come back, they want to destroy our historic houses.
It’s like Brazilians had a lack of self-love and
self-respect. It’s like they can’t value their own history and origins.
If we only focus on tourism, we will forget
what we have been doing so far, right? Our habits will change...
Families need to be prepared, and people should know
that it’s not going to be like: yeah, I will visit the village,
but I will only see the forest, swim in the river and then go back home.
We need to have something precious so visitors can get
some knowledge, and learn about the legacy
that the Guaranis have been maintaining.
So, to me, I think tourism can work
but in time and with people.
If we get involved with tourism just to welcome people,
the rewards might just come for the moment.
We don‘t want this just for a moment.
We want this to always happen.
When IPHAN listed the Island as a National Heritage, they tried to do this.
But at that time, the conflict was so much bigger.
And everybody was afraid of losing the island:
Darn, they will remove us from the island!
The community was very defensive.
Now, it’s a moment that the community has understood:
Everybody wants us to stay here.
IPHAN was linked to the Cultural Ministry until 2019. However,
after a wide dismantle of agencies that protected the culture and the environment,
this ministry has been extinguished and IPHAN is now part of the Tourism Ministry.
This way, cultural heritage stops being a priority and tourism excels.
We are going through a dismantling of some of the most important subjects
that should be protected by the government:
environment, culture and education.
All of them impact directly on the protection of Campeche Island.
With the dismantling of the national cultural system,
how can you guarantee the money for heritage maintenance,
as it is Campeche Island?
Which is a protected area,
a heritage that is mine, yours…It belongs to all of us.
We are beginning a new phase for
Campeche Island National Heritage administration.
Before we had been preparing all this documentation,
and preparing the actors so they could understand
what they should and shouldn’t do there.
In the new phase, the process is more directed
by the administration of the actors themselves
and there’s a little distance from the public agencies.
So it’s a new process and we need to understand how it is going to work,
and understand how the actors are going to take on the responsibilities,
take actions and make decisions
about the conservation of Campeche Island.
Before, we had given them directions on what they could and could not do.
And now the actors will act directly
on what they want for the heritage.
Will we want a legally protected heritage that we care about?
Or will we want another process considering the reality of 2019
and the reality of Florianópolis, which is not the same as ten years ago...
Everybody goes to Campeche island and becomes enchanted by all of that:
Oh, my God! Look how beautiful… how gorgeous that is!
To me, Campeche Island is a beautiful place like anywhere else.
What makes it special are people on there.
It’s the coexistence of those who are there, working with one another
and cooperating, you know? This exchange experience is very enriching.
The importance of bonds and people on the island... I think it’s primary,
because it is what makes Campeche Island special, which are the differences,
mainly cultural ones, and the viewpoints of each one in all this process.
On one hand, this makes it difficult to bring ideas together,
but at the same time, it unifies and strengthens the conservation process
of the heritage, because we have different viewpoints in the process,
besides having this care and affection that come from families,
And from a long time ago in our heritage.
It’s a therapy, Campeche Island has a magic feeling.
You may get there with a thousand problems, but when you land on it,
it seems that all those feelings go away.
It seems like our minds erase everything.
I mean I wouldn’t exchange this for anything.
That fauna, that flora and that sand you can only find there,
you can’t find it anywhere else.
We can be very happy there. I think the secret
for Campeche Island is preserving its nature the way it is today.
I think we can’t give up on the preservation of our heritage,
Both cultural and environmental in our country, and more specifically in our state.
Yes, this is important. We need to tell the stories and wake up everyday
and believe that it will get better and that we can keep this going.
On July 18 th, it was the 20 th anniversary of Campeche Island conservation law.
However, its preservation mechanisms are fragile. Therefore, there is a debate
for the creation of a Conservation Unity, in order to increase protection and oversight for the island.
Cultural Heritage and Environmental Heritage complete each other, and should not be seen as opposites.
Therefore, try to get to know and value your heritage, because we protect better what we know better.