Project Name: CayucoTours Artist: Ralph Kistler Email: check-in@subtours.com Webpage: http://www.subtours.com

 CayucoTours was a selected project for the 3.Biennale of the Canary Islands that would have taken place in 2011. Due to the economic crisis in Spain, the Biennale, titled “Towards another reality. Paths and Detours”, was cancelled.

The idea was to restore an original African immigration boat to offer excursions for tourists along the south coast of Tenerife, Canary Islands, during the summer months of July and August of 2011. The aim of the project was to liquefy the frontier between the travelers of the first and third world by integrating a Senegalese fisher boat in the leisure activities of the tourist centers. CayucoTours would have been situated right in the middle of being a real (and maybe perverse) tourist attraction on the one hand and a utopian art project on the other. The ambiguity of the controversial project would have created an interesting situation of reflection about our society and immigration politics.  

Background

Most of the refugees arrived on the Canary Islands in the summer months between 2006 and 2008. Although the clandestine migration already started with smaller boats, called “pateras”, which arrived at the coasts of Southern Spain and Canary Islands since the nineties, the situation got dramatically complicate when Morocco started a stricter immigration politic due to EU pressure and with border enforcements along the Western Sahara because of the continuous conflict with the Polisario movement. Therefore African immigrants had to choose between the two options by entering to Europe via Libya to Italy or to start from Northern Senegal towards the Canary Islands with bigger boats, called “Cayucos”.

Although the authorities of the Canary Islands did their best to handle the situation, the arrival of thousands of immigrants was a complicate affair for the image of a top European tourist destination: While images of arriving immigrants on the Canary Islands were widely published in the international media, the tourist areas in the south were instead highly interested not to figure as a conflict region.

Therefore the travellers from the south of the world were separated as good as possible from the travellers of the north and while most of the immigrants were repatriated to Senegal, their boats were burnt and destroyed quite immediately after the arrival. My research for the project revealed that there is only one boat left on the western Canary Island that was rescued in 2006 by the executives of the Anthropological and Historical Museum of Tenerife in order to preserve at least one boat as a testimony of the History of the Canary Islands. 

The rescued Cayuco is a beautiful traditional wood boat and one of the biggest boats that arrived on the Canary Islands. It has 23 meters of longitude, 20 tons of weight and arrived in 2006 with 79 passengers on board who started their journey from Guet N´Dar in Saint Louis, Senegal. Although all immigrants were repatriated and their personal experience could not be registered, the museum is at least in possession of the passenger list as well as ritual objects that were found on the boat. 

Actually the boat is located “temporarily” on a terrain of the road construction department in the North of Tenerife. Unfortunately since 2006 it has neither been possible for the Museum executives to achieve a decent exhibition place for the boat nor to get a funding to go on with its restoration. Therefore the Museum authorities were interested to collaborate in the CayucoTours Project to restore the ship and get a wider public interest to be able to present it in a permanent exhibition space after the end of CayucoTours. 

Supposed planning

 It was planned to transport the Cayuco back to the south of Tenerife in January 2011 and to restore the boat at a harbor that is located right beside a beach. This perfect location would have made possible a performance-like restoration in front of interested locals and tourists. The fence would have been used for information panels about the project and the history of the Cayuco. The local council was interested to collaborate and to participate in the project. The idea was to invite professional Senegalese boat builders from Saint Louis to create an African –European collaboration.  

CayucoTours was supposed to start at the beginning of July 2011. It is the perfect time of the year with calm sea and the high season of tourism. The tours would have been realised all along the southern coast of Tenerife .The groups would have been guided by African immigrants, who would have reported during the trip about their experience of the travel to the Canary Islands, their reasons to come to Spain, as well as their actual living situation in Spain. Nevertheless the tours would have been realized like a typical tourist spectacle: CayucoTours would have offered his trips side by side with other boat trip offers like the “Whales and Dolphins Safari” or the “Funny Pirate Boat Adventure Tour”. The creation of such a surreal and confusing situation was an important aspect of my proposed project. Tourists therefore would have been able to stand on the quay and choose either watching dolphins or experience the African immigration tour. 

After finishing the tours at end of august, the Cayuco would have been passed back to the Museum of History of Tenerife.

Parallel Activities

 It was already planned that a filmmaker of the Canary Islands would have documented the entire CayucoTours Project starting from the negotiations with administration authorities until the return of the boat to the museum. 

Reason for the end of the project

Due to the economic crisis in Spain the whole Biennale was cancelled by the Government. The project had achieved the support of the director of the biennale, the director of the museum as well as the local authorities of the location where the boat was supposed to be restored. 

The legal situation in terms of permissions and safety regulations in order to put the boat back on the sea was not studied yet.

The Cayuco still remains at this unhappy place….