Costa Rica

My new home, crime and perceptions of the U.S.

The Enchadi's house on the south side of San Jose

I met my family on Sunday, the Enchandi's. Carlos, Julietta, their son Carlos and his wife and boy. Also Jose the other son and the two maids Anna and Jorlenis. Also staying here is Jeff a student from Taiwan going to a private school, and Anna-Joy, a lady from Great Britain working with a world organization dealing with children's rights issues. Like me she is only going to stay about a month, and then will be heading on to Brazil to work for a week and then on to Argentina to meet her boy friend for two weeks before heading back to England.To say we have a house full is an understatement. Besides the two sons and the one family, everyone else, all 7 of us will be staying here. But the house is also large enough where the guest's all have their own room.

Our street in San Jose

One of the advantages to owning a home in Costa Rica is there is so many people coming here from all over the world that need a place to stay that you can rent part of your home out to supplement your income. And in my case, the cost of taking 3 or 4 weeks of Spanish classes, that includes a place to stay with all meals and laundry, comes out cheaper then trying to stay in many hotels. I met other people from the U.S. here as well that had found renting apartments or doing home stays a much cheaper alternative to the hotel scene. Other economical ways to go are Youth Hostels, some I have seen for about $15 a night, or if your set up for it, camping. Also if your up for adventure and don't mind interesting neighbors or the street life, there are many low budget hotels everywhere, though many I have not priced. Some just say cheap rooms on them, what ever that happens to mean.

The neighbors house

Jose, Juilieta's son is a congressmen here in Costa Rica. He gave me his card and perhaps the next time I cross the border or run into a ticket being issued by the police I can flash his card. Those kind of things do seem to go a long way down here. Carlos the other son is a civil engineer and his wife has a masters in marketing. I found it interesting that all Costa Ricans are required to attend both high school and college. But why there seems to be such a large population of have's and have not's, if everyone is required to attend school, I'm not sure. Crime seems to be on the verge of being completely out of control here, at least in San Jose. No one would think of leaving their car out on the street without alarms or someone watching it at night. Most people have gated yards and garages for their cars, and have barbwire strung all over the top of their fences and buildings to deter thieves. This level of security is one of the most striking things about all of Central America and Mexico. You see these kind of precautions in the inner city of big cities in the U.S., barred windows, and doors, but usually just at businesses. Here its at every home, even in the suburbs or way out in the country.

Jorlenis, one of our maids. She is from Nicaragua and is supporting her 3 yr. old that still lives there.

Carlos, Julietta's other son told me how at his home he has a fence surrounding his house with barb wire circling the top. The fence is electrified and he also has a big German Shepherd. Even with all these precautions, his home still got robbed of a television and some electronic equipment! It's just sort of mind boggling. Other crime stories involve another biker that was here from the states last year. Apparently he was on his way to a Volcano and was stopped at an intersection and was robbed of his bike and all his belongings at gun point. He ended up flying back home to the states. Another friend of one of my Spanish teachers got home only to be attacked and robbed at gun point. The stories go on and on. I was changing my spark plugs in the driveway and I heard someone push the gate and looked up to see someone walking away. Apparently they had tried to get in and get my tools laying on the ground but the gate was locked and they did not see me on the other side of the bike. This right in the middle of the afternoon. Carlos says he would never carry his laptop with him outside and always watches to see if anyone is following him home.

I asked him why things were so bad here. He like everyone else starts out with "it didn't use to be this way". That sort of echo's of the old ethnic neighborhoods in Grand Rapids Michigan where I come from.They use to be quiet clean neighbor hoods with very little crime 50 to 90 years ago, now many are rental units for the so called "slum lords", who for many only care about making money, not investing in the community or the property itself. Also a lot of these old neighborhoods are now infested with drugs, unemployment, gangs and crime. Some of the people who still live in the neighborhoods or others who live out in the suburbs blame it on the" blacks or the Mexicans" who moved in and rent and don't work (an attitude often based in ignorance or racism). And the other side of it maybe the attitude of that there are no opportunities or too much racism for someone that is a minority to improve their lives, or even move out into "white suburbia". Another factor that may also maybe true, but while not getting into all the sociological factors that change neighborhoods from safe places to crime areas, it is hard not to look around San Jose, see all the barred windows and houses, hear all the stories, with out wondering why. Certainly "blacks or Mexicans", aren't the problem here, or just drugs, or just any one thing. We seem to continually look for simple answers to complex problems. Another "part of the problem".

I think it was Ralph Waldo Emerson who said "I don't give a damn about simplicity on this side of complexity. To find true simplicity, one must go thru complexity first".

It is also worth noting that my own experience with the inner city and street life in the U.S. in general was that as much as anything it is white middle and upper middle class that buys a lot of their drugs in the inner city and also support such things as prostitution. So to say the minority's that live in those neighborhoods are the whole problem is naive. The problem is much bigger then that. The problems of drug addiction, alcoholism, greed, corruption, etc. are never confined to one race or one class. These are universal problems that know no boundaries, more a part of the overall human condition then anything. When we buy our drugs from the black kids on the street, aren't we just as liable for their problems. In fact in that sense, don't we all have the same problem here?

Jeff from Taiwan, staying at the house and going to school in San Jose for business

Of course all this points to the fact that part of the problem is our perception of it.I remember driving a taxi for awhile in the inner city of Grand Rapids and finding some of the most honest and hard working people trying to make a living in these neighborhoods under the most trying of circumstances. Some like in San Jose, dealt with robberies on a daily basis, or bullets flying thru their windows or walls. They were watching their youth just simply take the revolving door route from the streets and drugs to the county jail, and then back out to the street to repeat it all again. I remember giving a ride to an older black lady frequently who worked at a nursing home. She just seemed so full of life and laughed so freely and talked about her lover from Louisiana that she just dumped because "he was no good". She also talked about how a person has to do something with their life, regardless of the circumstances. No excuses, I think she felt too many of her people used their circumstances as an excuse to live the way they were. She then said something that I always try to remember. It went something like "life isn't always fair, but it is always just". It sort of struck me how a women that had lived thru segregation, and probably struggled with women rights issues as well, and lived in such a crime ridden area could still just have such a positive and realistic grasp of life. Like one of those old strong black women you hear about, the rock of the family that keep it all together (of course this perception too is a stereotype to some degree, coming from my own up bringing). I don't know if that's exactly what she was, but her strength and optimism under the hardest of times was a light for me as well, and I knew she was a person that "would never make excuses". Of the thousands of people I gave a ride to, she was one of the ones I will always remember. And when someone tells me how hard things are, I remember someone always has it harder, and quite often do more with it.

Ana our other maid, who is a great cook, neither her or Jorlenis speak a word of English, we all managed to get our points across.

Back to our perception being part of the problem. While I don't want to pretend to have all the answers here, but I do know from growing up in white middle class I was shielded to some degree of knowing "these people" from the inner city,to a point where I simply stereo typed them and lumped them all into one group. I think as a United States citizen it is one of our problems with dealing with the rest of the world as well. We perceive everything as outside ourselves, or our borders, and thus everything is someone else's problem. We never take a good look at what our role maybe in the problem or the solution. This narrow view of ourselves and the world, like the narrow view that suburbia often has with the inner city is "part of the problem", not the solution. Like I said, I don't have all the answers, but you can't have all the answers until we begin to see all the problems.

God is the answer to every problem, and the problem to every answer.......Yogi Bajhan

So in one analysis, we as Americans can not afford a narrow view of the world or an illusion of separation any more then any other country can. And suburbia can't afford a narrow view of the inner city and its problems. Because guess what, people are right when they say it wasn't like this 50 years ago, but the inner city problems continue to move out into suburbia in part because the problems were not being addressed in a realistic way to begin with. Or we didn't recognize our own roles in the problem. Again you can't see the solutions, until you see the problems.

Anna-Joy from Great Britain, so positive and loved to laugh, her work with children's rights issues make her feel she is doing meaningful work

A part of this trip for me is beginning to see what other people in the world think of the United States and its people. One lady, and I have heard this before, take issue to us calling ourselves Americans. "No one country either in South or North America can make that claim", she says, "the Americas are too big, from Canada to Argentina we are all Americans". She seems to have a point. In fact like English, Spanish has words for residents of each country like Canadians' or Mexicans, for us its estadounidense. These seemingly small differences in how we view ourselves and others view us may not seem like much, but to me if someone asks me to not refer to them in a certain way because it offends them I usually listen. If I don't then I'm not showing the level of respect required for us to work on the relationship. And I know there is an attitude in the U.S. like who cares what anyone else thinks of us, but its the small things that effect the big things. And if we expect cooperation and help in areas we need help in, then we must be willing to understand others concerns and respect them as well. This certainly doesn't always happen. If calling ourselves Americans like we're the only ones offends some people then maybe we should listen. Of course a lot of the world calls us that as well so I'm not sure where the answer lies with that one either. But also much of this sort of anti-U.S. if that's what you want to call it, or for some just a major annoyance, could be and will be negated I think as we begin to change the way we view ourselves. Like president elect O'bama said, "what has made the U.S. great is not our military or economic might, but rather the morals and values that we try to implement thru our constitution, Bill of Rights and our government". And the message we do send the rest of the world starts with how we view ourselves. Its nothing new, as long as we have an arrogant attitude, or more to the point ignorant attitudes towards our neighbors and others on the planet, we are going to continue to feed others negative view of ourselves. The longer I am " south of the border" I am finding out more of what people really think of us. From vendors, to border handlers, to even some of the teachers at my school. And it is by no means all negative. In truth much of the world may well have a love hate relationship with us,I don't know. For many it is partly just frustration of not even being consulted about decisions that effect them as well. Also much of the world knows as much about U.S. politics as they do their own. Which is a very curious thing in ways. The opposite is not true for most "Americans".

I hope I'm not trying to find right or wrong here as much as I'm trying to bring attention to the way things are, and what I run into as I travel, and hopefully try to understand, just one part of the much bigger picture. For is not understanding the key to any meaningful change? Many countries are more messed up in different ways then ours is. But I think what I am saying is that many of the solutions to many of our problems do start with how we perceive ourselves and its our own attitudes and perceptions about our selves as well as others that are part of the problem. Again the advantage of travel abroad is one comes into direct contact with how others view us on a daily basis.

The three amigos, after our usual dinner together and discussions on the state of the world

While talking to Carlos further he also blamed the crime on the drugs, and" its addicts needing money for their fixes". I wonder about this common perception as well. You hear it a lot in the states too, like its the desperate out of control addict needing a fix that makes the robbery. I think more often then not its simply people who can't get it together to make a living any other way. Or desperate dealers having to pay off their boss, or perhaps its because their minimum wage in Costa Rica is $1.75 to $2.00 an hour. A carpenter makes about $3.00 and hour from what Carlos told me. With gas at $5.00 a gallon and inflation and prices not that much different then the states, its like who can make a living on that? Again as one begins to look closer one realizes that all this seems to only be the tip of the iceberg to a much larger problem.

Other contributing factors to the problem according to Carlos is the fact that the head of security for the country is apparently a woman who is a lawyer but is not trained in setting up a criminal justice system. and the police while maybe not as corrupt as some other countries down here, its hard to know, still for the most part seem to be ineffective. Carlos said when called for a mugging or a robbery they usually never show up. The only things they do show up for are shootings or murders, In which case their there immediately. And to top everything off he said that criminals that are caught are simply let back out on the street almost immediately and there is no real deterrents for them to stop being criminals.

I suspect also that unlike the U.S. that spends so much money on its law enforcement and prison system, Costa Rica either does not have the resources to really address the problem in that way, or the current administration doesn't put it as a top priority. Either way the bulk of the work is put on citizens to protect themselves and their homes themselves. Like many businesses who offer protected parking with security guards, or even many restaurants who have armed security guards as part of their staff.

One is continually warned from locals to not leave anything out, don't walk the streets after dark. Be careful at intersections so you don't get robbed. Check to see if anyone is following you. Don't carry a wallet or purse or backpack. It is almost to the point that one may not want to go out at all and experience Costa Rican life except at "safe" tourist spots or guided tours. This sort of protective travel is not what I want this trip to be about. But the reality of most of the trip down here is you have to be on your toes continually. And as Greg put in his book "Driving South", when riding, one needs to ride scared. For the most part in Mexico and Guatemala, this was not a problem, I was terrified!

So after I arrived I parked my bike in a small area of the gated driveway with Carlos's, the owners car. There are fairly high fences all around the drive but there were spots someone could jump the fence if they wanted. Carlos told me "don't leave anything on the bike or it will be stolen". Like usual on this trip I did take everything off the bike for the night. The saddle bags while expensive, run under the seat and are not easy to get off so I usually leave them. My boots were so smelly from the long trip I didn't dare bring them inside. There were a few odds and ends in the bags but nothing too important, I would get them later. I covered the bike with my rain fly and left it there. I came out in the morning a couple of days later and the rain fly was slightly lifted. I didn't have time to check it out till after school. When I did sure enough the bags had been gone thru and everything had been taken out that I had left in them, and my boots were gone. Over a hundred dollars worth of stuff. It was my own fault, Carlos had warned me. After that the family insisted I park it in the living room. The bike has never leaked a drop of oil, so outside of the room it takes up and everyone having to walk around it, it is fine inside. There was also gloom and condolences for my lost articles. and I appreciated the fact that everyone did care about the theft. I worry that to some degree they may think of it as a reflection upon themselves or their country, but I don't know this. If they do then that in itself would be a crime. Because I feel they are very good, honest people, who do care about how the world can be.

My bike in the living room now, its never had it so good

When one comes to Costa Rica, for all its beauty and charm, there is a side of it that just can't be ignored, and has a profound effect on just about every aspect of life here. People live their lives of course, but just a little more careful then I'm use to. For me having come from the north woods of Michigan and a town of a few thousand to Central America is an adjustment to say the least.