Why I built Valle Escondido
By Sam Taliaferro
I hear a lot of people express their distain for gated communities, especially in foreign countries. They talk as if they are built as enclaves for the rich and a way to insulate the owners from having to be a part of regular society. Nothing could be further from the truth. The demand for gated communities is growing in leaps and bounds all over the world and it is not because people are trying to live behind security fences in order to keep them isolated from the real world. The growth of these communities in the first world is due to the fact that the population and demand for homes has overburdened the capacity of local municipals to keep up with the needed infrastructure. This includes police force, water, sewage systems, communication etc. Entrepreneurs have seized upon the opportunity to step in where government has failed or cannot keep up. As most people know who either live in or have visited third world countries, the lack of infrastructure is very acute. In Boquete for example there is a police force without the funds either for a vehicle or fuel to keep one running. They have radios but no funds for batteries. They have weapons but no ammunition. The homes in town dump raw sewage directly into the river. Many of the roads are falling apart as well as the bridges that are to support them. In some parts of Boquete there is no water for many days of the week forcing people to build tanks and buy pumps. Only in areas where private enterprise has taken over has there been some semblance of efficiency such as electricity and communication.
I consider myself a libertarian and I have a distain for government and the perceived need of many people for a big brother to take care of them. The idea of a gated community that is private, where people have the choice of living in them or not is much more appealing to me than trying to get the government to improve things. I know from experience in Latin America and America for that matter that you can complain until your blue in the face and nothing will change. If you want change you have to make it happen.
This is why I decided to build Valle Escondido. I saw an opportunity to build a private community that is beautiful, where there are services that work and at reasonable prices in keeping with the lower cost of labor for construction and lower taxes.
When I came to Boquete in 1997 I lived in a rented home on top of a mountain. It was a beautiful place and my family and I loved living here. Our only complaint was that there was not a lot to do and there was only one good restaurant in town. The people were very friendly but poor and getting poorer as the price of coffee had drop dramatically. The young people were leaving to find opportunities in the city and those left behind were going back to subsistence farming away from coffee. I saw the building of Valle Escondido was a way to improve the situation both for the locals by providing them another opportunity for work and for us, in that there would be more activities and restaurants. It has not been an easy task, as we have had to teach the locals new skills in both construction and administration, which is both time consuming and costly. The local government has deliberately tried to impede our progress through extortion and the federal government has changed tax laws three times in the last three years dramatically affecting our operation. I call it changing the rules in the middle of the game. We are now almost 5 years into the project and I have seen many changes take place in this small town. We have been successful in generating a lot of growth and employment, which has made the lives of many of the local people better. They now see a better future for them and their children. We have seen a number of our employee’s strike out as entrepreneurs, which is what this country needs more than anything else. We have seen a dramatic influx of foreigners who are bringing with them many skills and ideas that will continue to strengthen both the economy and democracy. As more of the locals become prosperous they will spread the gospel of free enterprise, which will help forge the prosperous future I see for this small country. And we have seen a proliferation in good restaurants, which is what I wanted most.