Mesothés

"We live like in jails. We live behind bars. We don't feel safe in the street; we all have insecurity. Honest people live behind bars, and the not honest people live outside of them." Javier Arguedas

It has been only a day and then some since I wrote my second blog post, but I already feel like an overwhelming amount has happened and that I am being bogged down with new experiences to share, and to reflect on.

Yesterday, four other ICADS students and I ventured into the big city of San José. Before I came here, I, and most of the other students were warned that San José is the ugliest, dirtiest, and most dangerous city in Costa Rica. All those things are probably true about it, but I still love it. I've never been anywhere that has more buses and cars rumbling and beeping, and more exhaust hanging in the stale valley air, or seen more people at bus stops and walking everywhere, or more women in precariously high heels and boots and young men in dress clothes.

We were given a map of San José, and on a separate sheet of paper a list of things to do that would offer us some practice in the basic skills we'll be using to survive in the city over the next 4 months. Fairly easy to understand the concept; however, the biggest thing impeding our way to getting the checklist done and having our school day be over was the fact that the ICADS school isn't actually on the map, and we had no idea how to get from off of the map onto it.

Because I vaguely remembered one of our instructors mentioning we could get onto any bus in any direction and it would take us to San José, and we had no other solid ideas (and the people we asked for directions did not know what name of the street they were on - apparently San José has no real street names or numbers. Try figuring out how that one works. I can't.) we got on a random bus which did, eventually, take us right into town!

We wandered around several central plazas, awkwardly asked for maps at a couple tourism offices, visited an internet café, and gained a semi-solid understanding of how the center of the city functions. There are lots of people, many of whom are clearly very poor, peddling lottery tickets, and umbrella as soon as the tropical rain begins to pour down.

Luckily, by the time it really began to thunder, we were already in the Mercado Centrale (picture an indoor market with a maze of stalls that sell everything from tanned leather to ground coffee, baby hampsters to sage bundles, octopus to chicken feet, and throw in some open-bar restaurants full of happily eating ticos (Costa Ricans!)). There we diligently followed our sheet, asking fish vendors whether they sold tiburon (shark) and whether their camaron (shrimp) are farmed or come from the wild, vendors of traditional herbal remedies (picture a stall entirely covered in bundles of moss, bark, and herb bushes) whether their products are local, and fruit sellers what the strange fruits they sold are called, and how to eat them. It was actually all very embarrassing, but we ended up finding a place to sit and get to know each other, while eating huge piles of delicious arroz con carne con gallo pintos y salsa fresca (rice and meat all fried up with spices and veggies, served with Costa Rican beans and fresh salsa that has been heavily doused in lime juice and cilantro), and fries (the worst part!) for muy, muy barato ( so cheap! Only 2,500 colones which is about $5 dollars here!) So delicious, no wonder I can't stop eating here! It's all so good! I'm glad my parents raised me on Mexican food, or maybe I wouldn't be so in heaven right now.

After the meal, we wandered around San José a bit more. At my request we roamed into a nearby open church, which I regretted immediately since it was much more full than most large churches at home are on a normal weekday at 3pm, and most people were praying (some out loud), and it was clearly not a tourist area. After some more walking, we took a cab (they cost so little here!) and got to experience more terrifying San José driving. We were joking about how easy it must be to pass drivers education here; basically you just get in a car with an instructor and go blind to all other cars, bicycles, and motorcycles around you and drive as fast as you can, begin use your hands as turning signals to let other cars know they need to move because you are cutting them off and will hit them if they don't, and somewhere in between those difficult activities try and hit all pedestrians crossing the street. Oh, and only turn on your turn signal when you are already turning, but only if you feel like it. And red lights? Those are for pussies.

After getting my bag at ICADS, I went back to a bar next to the engineering school (which might be a high school) which neighbors our own, where we watched the Costa Rica/Ecuador soccer game and relaxed as a group. We took our first group picture, and I drank my first beers of the trip, which were not actually Costa Rican. They have two native Costa Rican beers, but I blanked while ordering and drank some Stella instead. Better safe than sorry when you're exhausted and just want to drink something you know you like.

Despite having eaten an immense lunch, I had a huge dinner when I eventually arrived home. It was only 6pm, but it always feels so late! Right now it is only 7:45 and yet I feel like it's 10 or 11pm, and will probably end up going to sleep within an hour. Anyways, over dinner I got to know my host mother Rosie a bit more, and she is hilarious! I told her about the vague plans my ICADS friends and I had to go to the beach for the weekend, and she said if it didn't work, this Friday is Children's day in Costa Rica and therefore this Sunday she will be taking five orphans to the beach all day, and that I was welcome to come! So sweet, but so mysterious! I haven't sat down with her since, but I do need to ask her why and how she is involved with five orphans. After dinner I tried to do the many pages of reading I had left for me in preparation for today (Wednesday!)'s lecture, but only got a quarter of the way through before realizing how pointless it was.

I don't know if I have the patience to write about everything that happened today, after all this writing about yesterday. But I'll write an abridged version..

So, the first big exciting thing that happened today was that I finally figured out the electric water heater, meaning I had my first warm shower in Costa Rica! I already hate showers and bathing (don't get me wrong, hygiene is rad - just getting wet is a drag), so I didn't really care and didn't think much of the ice cold showers. Showering was just as unpleasant as it always is, just a lot colder. But today, all of a sudden it was warm! It was pretty wild, if I do say so myself.

At school, lessons were long but my Spanish teacher is muy divertida so it's alright. She accused me of having the photographic memory of an alcoholic because I could remember the word trago from the beer list last night, but can't seem to remember the word cerca (close). Her humor is much more personal than any teacher I've ever had, but at the same time I know very little about her, beyond the fact that she is an excellent professor.

After lunch, our class got two lectures; one, from the director of the program, Anthony Chamberlain, and the following from Javier Arguedas, who has worked closely for the Supreme Court, and is getting his doctorate in Political Sciences here in San José. It is his quote that I put at the beginning of this post, which refers to the iron fences and barbed wire that surround every single house in San José, and that are very normal to most Costa Ricans, but which I find frightening despite their brightly colored paint. Anthony spoke to us about the transition between orientation, and the beginning of our studies of Latin America. He also said a couple quite nice things which I jotted down, my favorite being: "experience without reflection is tourism".

Javier Arguedas spoke with us in greater depth about Costa Rica as a country of contradictions. One of Aristotle's philosophies, of "Mesothés", means almost having met success. It has also come to be known for its inverse, having almost been doomed to failure. As Arguedas pointed out, this is exactly the case for Costa Rica: it is widely hailed as the greenest and happiest country on earth, however it is also the country with the most pesticides used per hectare ( about ~57 liters for every 3 acres) and the 2nd most polluted river in Latin America. This is in a country the size of Virginia, which coincidentally harbors over 6% of all the biodiversity in the entire world! Costa Rica is one of the world's largest producers of desserts, supplying coffee, cocoa, pineapple - and yet it has almost no food security within its own borders, relying heavily on outside imports for basic necessities.

As Arguedas described, despite Costa Rica selling itself to tourists (especially eco-tourists here to see the verdant jungles) as having "No Artificial Ingredients", "Another phenomenon we find here is the poverty that affects the very young and the elderly. At best, we see children selling candy and chicle in the street; at worst we see them selling themselves to tourists." Arguedas argues that the only way to understand a country with such contrasts is by understanding the history that has shaped them. Since I spent the majority of my mornings this summer reading about the history of Central America for this exact reason, I was delighted to hear his lecture.

Though I won't go into the entire history of Costa Rica, here are some fun facts for all you no-nonsense neoliberal Americans who might come across this blog. Did you know that:

• Costa Rica never won its independence, but rather, as Arguedas described it cutely, "We recieved a note telling us we were independent, and we did not know what to do with it. We decided not to do anything, and to let the clouds pass."
• In order to show its unique stance in Latin and Central America, Costa Rica was the first country in Latin America to write its own constitution, called the "Pact of Concordia", which was one of the earliest constitutions to recognize and be built around the importance of peace.
• In the year 1940 (roughly) Costa Rica got rid of its military (and was the first country ever to do so), and poured that money into its education system, creating an "army of teachers".
• What money did not go to education was channeled into the welfare system, which worked to solidify a stronger and larger middle class and create greater social equity.
• The second constitution in Costa Rica, also written in the 1940's (at a time when most of Central and Latin America were being controlled by imperial and/or military regimes), was based on principals of solidarity, social justice, and democratic respect and participation.
• Taxes paid for a wide-reaching welfare system that provided all citizens with basic necessities, i.e. access to education (even higher education) for free, medical and health coverage, loans of money and land to start businesses and farms.

And though this may seem like a fluke, communist, or entirely unstable, this welfare-regime lasted for 40 years, until pressures from the United States forced Costa Rica to sign the Central American Free Trade Agreement and to re-privatize the public sectors. As Arguedas pointed out, when the welfare regime ended, Costa Rica had a society that had equity levels next to those of Scandinavian countries, but now, more than 45% of homes here live without the income necessary for basic survival on a day to day basis, let alone live comfortably.

Arguedas ended his lecture stating that capitalism and democracy do not go hand in hand, and that it has been proven time and time again that capitalism exacerbates social inequalities and extreme poverty. Costa Rica is now just one of many examples of this across the entire world, of countries which serve as resource platters for those who have enough money to buy themselves food and security. Arguedas finished by saying that, "Peace is not defined by the absence of war, but as the ability of all to live with dignity".

I was fascinated to learn more about the deeper economic history of Costa Rica - a subject that has been interesting me more every day, particularly in relation to the economics of the environment/environmentalism. But I was disappointed with the end of Arguedas' lecture, as I believe it left the ICADS students more frustrated than inspired. Not that he came to inspire us, but I learned so much through him, things that I did not know were possible for a country to ever achieve, and left with a much more deeply felt admiration for Costa Rica and its citizens. There is so much to be learned here, and to hear my fellow classmates talk about "how depressing" the lecture was leaves me wondering whether the real message was not gotten across. Of course capitalism is a huge fish to fry in a 2 hour lecture, and Arguedas is most likely exhausted by this country's past and its inability to resurface in the more conservative present of modern-day Costa Rica, but I cannot help feel that for such a small country with such a unique history to have made such progressive and successful strides towards ending poverty, illiteracy, and ill health cannot be taken so lightly! Of course the 40 years ended, and there are other very strong forces that came into play that I am choosing to omit from this post - but there is truth in my strong emotional reaction that gets precedence here, though no where else!

But even getting 'depressed' by the lecture shows a strong, passionate reaction to what we learned, and I just hope this allows those students to access their own knowledge and the knowledge of our professors and teachers of all forms differently than I do, and perhaps react to it uniquely, in the end providing something that is less disappointing to me and much more eyeopening. So maybe that wasn't so bad of a reaction after all, but I should just let everyone feel their own way through these next 4 months without expecting them to share the same levels of shock and awe as I.

Anywho - - - many thanks to Arguedas for making this blog post possible. If you ever Google your name, how embarrassing. I apologize for rambling! And to all those questioning this information, feel free to open Google and learn about it yourself, or check out "Rise and Demise of the Tropical Welfare State" in Peasants Against Globalization from your local library.

**I realize that I've left out what I learned about where & what I'll be studying later in the semester. I guess that will just have to be a surprise, since it's all too good to write more about now!