Juleen runs a posada at her place in La Loma. She herself has collected dozens of tourists at the airport and even given them a crash course on arrival, so she learns first-hand about all the nonsense they believe when they show up. But it’s impossible to teach them everything, or guarantee that they pay attention, if they’re coming with the intent to go hog wild here. She’s the one who scolds them when they show up at the posada with bags of conches and coral they collected on the beach, when she sees the selfies they take with starfish at Haines Cay, when they stagger drunk off her terrace and into the neighbour’s garden. At least now the locals get to participate more actively in tourism.

But tourism was never the heart of the economy here. That wasn’t what Rojas Pinilla had in mind with the Free Port. And so, in ’53, we went from having two hotels to nearly fifty within just a couple of years. People swarmed the island, but not to get drunk and hurl themselves into the ocean; that came later.

They arrived from the Colombian mainland in search of cheap imported goods. The island became a shopping mall: first for contraband, then for money laundering. They didn’t even come for the landscape. Across Latin America, it was the era of import substitution policies, and the tax exemption made San Andrés alluring to many Arabs who came in via Panama and Barranquilla; also to the paisas, who came for business. As the entire mainland committed to consuming products from local industries, San Andrés grew dependent on imports for even the most basic items, which led to an essentially consumption-based economy.

‘Paisas, paisas,’ Juleen sighed, rolling her eyes and crossing her arms.

‘Ugh!’ Jaime exclaimed. ‘I come from a paisa family, but ugh!’ he laughed with a glance at me.