For a paradise, it is a paradise that is not without complications. Costa Rica – a stable democracy, great prosperity compared to its neighbors, free press and independent judiciary, good health and education system – is a great place to live, whether you have money (50,000 retired Americans, 1% of the country's population), as if it doesn't (the million Nicaraguan immigrants who cut sugarcane, grow pineapples, pick coffee, popsicles and gardeners, and still have some money left over to send home).
But the virus that afflicts democracies is very contagious, like the omicron variant, and has also reached the Central American oasis in the form of economic cracks: unemployment reaching 15%, uncontrolled growth of the State, public debt skyrocketing , a huge fiscal deficit, an increasingly abysmal gap between rich and poor, the sign of the times, an increasingly suffocated middle class, increasingly blatant corruption, and the consequent disenchantment of the people with the establishment and the political class. Turnout in the elections last April (which Rodrigo Chaves of the new Social Democratic Progress Party won) was the lowest in history.
Costa Rica has the nineteenth most unequal economy in the world, according to a World Bank study, a fact that would automatically put an asterisk on its status as a paradise, if it were not for the fact that in the United States, which calls itself "the best country in the world", a 1% of the population has 40% of the wealth, and 90% have to share a quarter of what is left of the pie after the rich have eaten. And in addition, the geographical context (with neighbors like Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras), also counts, and a lot. There is poverty, especially among Nicaraguan immigrants, although no one is starving. As bad as things go, it is said here, with bananas, coffee and yuccas, one survives.
It is not enough, of course, with plantains and yuccas, as good as they are. Costa Ricans ( ticos ) enjoy universal health insurance, a basic pension and a good public education (financed by employers and workers, who are deducted around 10% of their payroll or self-employment income). But, after the pandemic, the differences in quality between public schools (between the confinements and the strikes they spent almost two years without face-to-face classes, with online exams and general approvals) and private ones has become gigantic.
Part of the considerable Catalan footprint in the country (many buildings are by the architect Lluís Llach Llagostera) is the absence of an army, a decision adopted in 1948 by former president José Figueres Ferrer, winner of the brief civil war, one of the founders of the Second Republic. Son of a doctor and a teacher from Os de Balaguer (La Noguera) who settled in Central America fleeing the insecurity of Barcelona at the beginning of the 20th century. He grew up in the then isolated town of San Ramón (province of Alajuela), where his father was a doctor. He was so shocked that his friends ran barefoot through the streets that when he came to power, his first measure was to distribute footwear in rural areas.
Figueres Ferrer got into politics, linked to agricultural groups that demanded a fairer distribution of wealth. After a brief imprisonment and exile for denouncing the corruption of the Rafael Ángel Calderón government, he organized the Caribbean Legion, a political-military group that sought the establishment of democratic states in Central America. His small army prevailed and undertook the transformation of society, with a great public construction plan and the establishment of a welfare state. He had a long political career at the head of the National Liberation Party.
The father of the country is largely spared from the revisionism that has caused Costa Ricans to renounce almost all of their past presidents, including Óscar Arias, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Not so his son, José María Figueres Olsen, defeated by Chaves in the second round of the elections three months ago, who also became president (1994-1998) and went into self-exile in Switzerland after being investigated in the so-called Alcatel case, for charge almost a million dollars as advice to the French telecommunications company to access public tenders. Eventually, the Prosecutor's Office estimated that there had been no crime, but it has not managed to remove the stain. In the campaign, his own mother came to the fore to ask citizens to please not vote for him! And she got it.
Costa Rica had been governed by the Partido de Liberación Nacional de los Figueres (los pericos) and the Partido de Unidad Social Cristiana (los mariachis) until the Partido de Acción Ciudadana (PAC) burst in in 2014 to break the bipartisanship and assume the presidency with Luis Guillermo Solís first, and Carlos Alvarado later, in a progressive option that approved gay marriage, recognized gender identity and promoted the participation of women in politics. At first he achieved robust economic growth, tried to contain the deficit and launched a tax reform that displeased public officials. The pandemic took its toll on a country highly dependent on tourism. Unemployment and poverty skyrocketed.
From holding the reins for eight years, the PAC has gone on to be left without a deputy in the current Congress, a victim of inflation and the deterioration of the economy and insecurity (in Costa Rica all buildings are fenced, whether they are private homes, clinics or nurseries, and downtown San José is littered with thieves even stealing plastic bags from bins). Also of social tension, since, of the five million inhabitants, one fifth are Nicaraguan immigrants (Nicas), who in most cases cross the border through the jungle, without a visa, and as happens in developed countries, they do the jobs that the natives don't want. And because of the increase in drugs (drug traffickers hide cocaine inside pineapples).
Neither parakeets, nor mariachis, nor the PAC. Tired of corruption and the extremely generous lifetime pensions for deputies and public officials, Costa Ricans have opted for Rodrigo Chaves, a Catholic believer, against abortion, perceived by the establishment as a populist, a Harvard doctor and a World Bank official for thirty years , where several women denounced him for sexual harassment. He promises a revolution, but without the weapons to carry it out, because his group lacks a parliamentary majority (10 of 57 seats) and will need to forge consensus. “Pura vida!”, as the Ticos say by way of greeting, as if to suggest that with luck everything will be fine.
