The parents who complain about the indecorous influence of ‘those people’, the riffraff, on their children’s behaviour; about the stain of their presence on the beautiful beaches, about their scuffles in public places – those are the very same managers, hoteliers and businessmen who built their shoddily planned neighbourhoods, who brought in boatloads of poor people to work in their shops, construction sites and hotel kitchens. No, natives don’t work the same as the people from those villages. They’re far prouder; they resent the invasion more than anyone else. That league of parents, offended because their children speak with a harsher accent and listen to champeta music, keep pressuring the state to enable their entry, defying native concerns over the overpopulation of this little island, defying OCCRE regulations. Besides, Rudy adds, you can buy a residency card, ten million pesos minimum, but hotels will never pay that for a waiter. Many end up as irregular workers until someone reports them and kicks them out, like lots of mototaxi drivers. Raizals complain about ‘those people’, too, but many live comfortably by dividing their property into lots and renting to ‘undesirables’, who then rig up a roof over their heads.

We turned left and strayed from the road, heading down a narrow path adorned with aluminium cans and other waste; the route led to a slope and opened out into a clearing that looked huge at first glance. Lifting my eyes, I saw that the landscape was hemmed in by a scratched grey-beige stone wall. Below, in a corner, was a small green pond. That’s the gully over there, the mythical swamp – ‘or it would be, since it hasn’t rained in something like three years’, Rudy said.

The student group started advancing towards the left of the quarry. ‘Did you know this is where they got the material for the ring road?’ I didn’t, or I’d forgotten if I ever knew. We hoisted ourselves up a few metres with the aid of a rope that didn’t inspire much confidence in me. The kids’ ruckus – the boys cracking up, the girls panicked – was full of unfamiliar slang I couldn’t repeat if I tried. Rudy and I were almost the last ones up. The students had already dispersed to take selfies and videos against the backdrop of the open landscape. The vista was relaxing at first, painted the exuberant palette of the Caribbean, but grew more unsettling as I focused in.

From up above, only the ocean was green. The canopies of the mid-sized trees covered the stretch between us and infinity: bare, hook-like brown and grey branches, scattered swathes of modest foliage, patchy in all directions. Nothing more. Plots of land, cleared and burnt for construction, were also distributed here and there.

‘Here it is. This is more or less all that’s left of the tropical dry forest in San Andrés.’ Rudy’s voice was steady despite the troubling sight.