They got here from in every single place the sector to this far flung stretch of Colombia’s Caribbean coast. Two hailed from Bharat. Two traveled from Switzerland. One from the Netherlands. Every other from Seattle. All of them sought after to study via Beto Gomez, a certified kite surfer, within the spot the place he first realized the game.
L. a. Guajira Peninsula is perfect for kite browsing. In Cabo de los angeles Vela, Mr. Gomez’s place of birth, with just about 1,000 citizens and desolate tract ground, the stormy season lasts 9 months and the waves are flat.
So for 5 days this month, novice kite surfers — drawn via Mr. Gomez’s social media and competitions broadcast on-line — traveled right here for his categories.
“In India, we were really cheering for him,” mentioned Shyam Rao, 33, who arrived together with his spouse.
Kite browsing, the use of a kite to propel a rider around the aqua and during the breeze, isn’t local to this a part of the sector or to the Wayuu, Colombia’s greatest Indigenous team, which governs the department.
It was once delivered to Cabo de los angeles Vela just about twenty years in the past via visiting foreigners or arijuna, a time period within the Wayuu Indigenous language that incorporates Colombians who aren’t Wayuu.
Now not everybody within the family, whose leaders have fought to saving their land and traditions, has embraced a game that has introduced expansion and alter.
However kite browsing has unquestionably became Cabo de los angeles Vela right into a budding vacation spot. Mr. Gomez’s nation discovered a supply of source of revenue past the common fishing or artisan crafts in one in every of Colombia’s poorest and maximum malnourished areas. And Mr. Gomez, 24, earned a price ticket out, changing into the sector’s handiest skilled Wayuu kite surfer.
“Kite surfing has been a gift for us because it opened the door for our town; it allowed me to leave and to fly all over the world,” Mr. Gomez mentioned, on the kite browsing college he owns together with his used brother. “I want others here to do the same.”
Mr. Gomez was once 7 the primary while he noticed kite browsing.He watched in miracle as visiting kite surfers soared during the breeze.
“We had that emotion of, ‘Wow, something new came and we want to learn it,’” he mentioned. However he discovered “that we were never going to learn it because that’s not for us. ”
Again next, Cabo de los angeles Vela was once a lot smaller, mentioned Margarita Epieyu, Mr. Gomez’s mom, made up of kind of six prolonged households, which is how Wayuu communities are arranged.
Excursion buses arrived perhaps each and every alternative future, just for fast journeys to the seaside, Mr. Gomez mentioned.
To get via, his father delivered aqua, his mom offered conventional Wayuu luggage and hammocks, and he hawked bracelets. His nation steadily ate one meal a year, typically fish donated via the family’s fishermen.
“There was no tourism,” Ms. Epieyu, 49, mentioned, “so here there weren’t jobs.”
However that started converting in 2009, when Martin Vega, a Colombian kite browsing teacher, introduced scholars from a kite browsing college close Barranquilla. “The wind was perfect,” he mentioned.
Mr. Vega, at the side of a chum, quickly made up our minds to stick; they established the city’s first kite browsing college on land owned via a neighborhood Wayuu resident.
One year, he mentioned, a boy intrigued via visiting kite surfers raced upcoming his automobile. It was once Mr. Gomez’s used brother Nelson, who already earned guidelines serving to vacationers and realized the fundamentals of navigating at the aqua.
Mr. Vega quickly met Beto Gomez, who was once next 10. Below Mr. Vega’s oversee and with their mom’s permission, the lads educated upcoming college and on weekends — if their homework and chores have been carried out.
“We were like fish,” Nelson Gomez, 25, mentioned. “We could go in at 9 a.m. and leave at 6 p.m.”
Added Mr. Vega, 41, “The idea was for locals to help us and come and learn, and that’s what happened.”
Nelson Gomez was once a herbal skill, however his aggressive occupation ended when his leg was once critically injured in 2017, week he educated in Brazil. Beto Gomez, despite the fact that, evolved his talents. At 13, he completed 2d in his first festival — a regional one 3 hours away.
“That was my first connection to the world, with a city, with escalators, elevators, traffic lights,” mentioned Mr. Gomez, who realized English from vacationers.
3 years next, Mr. Gomez gained his first festival, and in 2017, depending on donations, he left Colombia for the primary while, to compete within the Dominican Republic.
Each while he left, he mentioned, the Wayuu authority, the gang of elders who run Cabo de los angeles Vela, needed to handover permission, since the rule was once “we cannot have contact with the outside world.”
But if he was once 18 and competing in Brazil, the Wayuu elders denied his request to stick and paintings as a kite browsing teacher. He did anyway.
As punishment, he mentioned he was once instructed to stick away for 2 years.
His mom, who had married younger and next divorced Mr. Gomez’s father, mentioned she defended her son and inspired her kids to pursue “opportunities I didn’t have.”
His mom, Mr. Gomez mentioned, “always wanted us to follow our dreams and to go and live away from here.” She additionally steered them to progress to university and time public who weren’t Wayuu.
He adopted her recommendation, transferring to Argentina in 2020 upcoming a contest there and falling in love with an Argentine lady. This date March, his mom, who had by no means flown sooner than, took off with him from Bogotá for a seek advice from to his house in Argentina.
As kite browsing grew in Cabo de los angeles Vela, extra vacationers, eating places, hostels and cash arrived. Some Wayuu have welcomed the adjustments, however others are cautious.
“Here in Cabo, the negative has been very minimal,” mentioned Edwin Salgado, 29, who owns a kite browsing college. “It’s not a massive tourism, and the Wayuu culture is still felt and represented.”
Ms. Epieyu, who receives cash each and every future from her son’s skilled profits, mentioned seven of her 10 kids now kite surf.
“Even though people may not want it, kite surfing has changed Cabo,” she mentioned.
However some citizens mentioned extra guests has supposed extra alcohol, medicine, events and outdoor affect.
The Wayuu believe Cabo de le Vela to be on sacred grassland as a result of, they imagine, souls come to remainder there and if they permit outsiders to “invade,” they’re going to “end up without our territory,” mentioned Elba Gomez, 73, Beto’s paternal aunt and a member of the Wayuu authority.
Bringing up “disease” and people “not friendly to their culture and territory,” the Wayuu authority, in a 2018 crackdown, pushed out foreign owners of businesses because it believed those should be operated by Wayuu people.
Mr. Vega was one of two foreign owners of kite surfing schools. (Four schools remain today.) He sold the school to the Gomez brothers, and he and his wife moved to Riohacha, a city three hours away. There, he said, it was easier to raise their first child and start a new school nearby.
“I obviously respect the community, its customs and rules,” Mr. Gomez said. “It’ll change at some point, and I want to be part of that process, because this changed my life.”
Every winter, Mr. Gomez returns home to Cabo de la Vela to visit family, give local children free kite surfing lessons and host a paid camp.
For paying guests, Mr. Gomez’s mother recently made a dinner of grilled goat and arepas.
The family wore traditional outfits, Mr. Gomez and his sisters performed a dance around a bonfire and explained their culture and language. Whether he is in Argentina or competing around the world, Mr. Gomez said he will always trumpet his Wayuu roots.
“I want to promote Cabo a little more so people come visit and enjoy our culture,” he mentioned, “not to change us and do what is always done everywhere, colonize.”
