Costa Rica 10

When I am visiting another country I always work at trying to get a sense of how people live, of who they are.  Here, in Monteverde, one gets a sense of different social classes, even if Costa Rica doesnt have a class system.  Today, while walking up the road to the cloud forest reserve entrance I saw a crew of men doing roadwork.  The first one refused to respond to my Spanish.  I have noticed at times while visiting Latin American countries that people with low education are less likely to either believe that a white person can even speak Spanish or to give us the time of day no matter how well we speak it.  They seem to take foreigners who are fluent in their language as a personal insult.  Fortunately, their kind seem pretty rare and most people seem willing and even eager to engage with a visitor in Spanish.  There were others working on the road, or taking a cigarette break. One of them was urinating on the side of the road, fortunately with his back facing the traffic.  I wonder if theyve ever heard of portapotties here.  Some of them had dark complexions, like Nicaraguans, and they could be some of the five hundred thousand Nicaraguans living and working in Costa Rica.  I wonder what kind of life they come home to at the end of the day.  Their living conditions, what they eat, what kind of support they have from friends or family, what they have to live and suffer through every day, what makes them smile and laugh. I wonder about the state of their mental health, given the stresses they have to live with.  There is of course racism in Costa Rica, as there is all over the world.  I have mentioned previously that some Costa Ricans still pride themselves for being the whitest people in Central America, even though it has been found that on average Costa Ricans have forty to sixty percent indigenous blood flowing in their veins,

Following a visit to the hummingbird gallery and the cafe near the cloud forest reserve I was walking back when the owner of the bed and breakfast where Im staying stopped to give me a ride.  He told me a bit about the history of Monteverde, of how in the seventies there were few motor vehicles and almost everyone got around on horseback.  He told me about some of the people who have immigrated here from all over Europe, only to become successful and well to do entrepreneurs, even pointing out the impressive modern mansion hugging the mountainside where live the owners of a local and very successful Italian restaurant.

Monteverde would clearly be different things to different people.  For the average tourist it is a place of natural beauty where they can get their nature fix for a couple of days before moving down to one of the beaches or elsewhere.  They are not likely to take much interest in the local people.  But the people are the land, just as the land is the people.  And I think that peple from privileged situations should think about these matters good and hard before going on vacation somewhere, perhaps to get the idea that the people living in the country they are visiting matter a little bit more than their bucket list.

It was a cab driver here who told me recently that he thanks the tourists who come here for opening his eyes to how beautiful his part of the world is.  I told him that I have had a similar experience in Vancouver, where I have lived all my life, just as the cab driver has spent his entire life in Monteverde.  I didnt even know that there was anything special or beautiful about Vancouver until I kept hearing from visitors the same thing over and over again, that I live in a beautiful part of the world.

I have already mentioned that foreign ownership, especially by North Americans has been pushing up land and other prices in this country, making life increasingly difficult for the people who call Costa Rica their home.  Everytime anyone wants to complain about foreign millionaires turning Vancouver into a giant Chinese laundry, or of Chinese only signs without English translation should give a thought or three of what white Americans and Canadians are doing here in Costa Rica.  Basically the same thing, not even trying to learn Spanish in some cases, and you wouldnt believe the number of English only signs I see here every day in this very special part of a small Spanish speaking country.  We really have no right to complain when we consider that we are just as bad and often worse when it comes to the economic colonization of other countries.

We all leave a footprint on this earth, and we are all responsible for what kind of footprint, how large, and how its going to impact future generations.