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Its scenery, and the profusion of its natural wonders, are not the only reasons to think of Costa Rica as “almost heaven.”
I happened to be in Costa Rica when Jose Figueres Ferrer died, or I may never have heard his remarkable story, or ever have grasped the dimensions of the near-miracle he wrought in his country. Spoiler alert: if you are among the vast majority of sophisticates who today find cynicism an appealing substitute for thought and effort, don’t read any further. This story could be dangerous to your sneer.
In 1948, Costa Rica was just another one of your garden-variety Central American banana republics. Its army spent most of its time beating up on its citizens, its government was incompetent, the people miserable. Rebellion ensued. Ho hum. But it soon became apparent that this was not your grandfather’s rebellion. It was Jose Figueres Ferrer’s rebellion. Its first shots were fired on March 11, 1948. On April 11, the government gave up and on April 24 Ferrer’s forces entered the capital of San Jose.
Most accounts I have read of the conflict refer to it as the bloodiest chapter in Costa Rica’s history. About 2,000 people were killed, a thousand fewer than died on the 9/11 attacks in the United States. Apparently Costa Rica’s history wasn’t very bloody. And in the spring of 1948 it took a sharp turn away from the normal course of its own history, and that of every other Central American country, indeed just about every country in the world.
According to the accounts I heard and read on the occasion of his death, Ferrer upon the capitulation of the government marched his victorious army to the national army headquarters in San José, assembled them, and disbanded them. Forever. Armies, he said, were used not to defend the people but to subjugate them, and Costa Rica did not need one. To this day, it does not have one. Think of it — a country sandwiched by Nicaragua and Panama, existing and prospering without an army.
On the day of his triumph, the story goes, Ferrer pledged that the money previously spent on the army would now go for education and health care, and he decreed that the citadel that had housed the army would henceforth be a university. Whether all this drama occurred on a single day or not does not detract from the sense of astonishment that it did, in fact, happen, that any revolution ever turned out that way. And there’s more: after 18 months of hammering together a new constitution embodying his reforms, Ferrer and the other members of his junta voluntarily resigned, Ferrer to run successfully for president under the new constitution.
A half century later, as I drove the Inter-American Highway in Costa Rica, I could see everywhere the fruits of the magnificent tree that Don Pepe — as Ferrer was called — had planted. It seemed as though every other vehicle I saw was a white Public Health Service van, and every few miles I passed another school. (One of them brought tears to my eyes; a large sign on the roof proclaimed it to be the “Escuela John F. Kennedy.”) This was during the presidency of Oscar Arias, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his tireless efforts to spread the peace of Costa Rica to the rest of Central America.
When I crossed the northern border into Nicaragua, the roadside schools vanished and the vehicles were almost all military jeeps with mounted machine guns.
I had reason to reflect on all this last month when Costa Rica inaugurated a new president, a 38-year-old journalist named Carlos Alvarado, who in his inaugural address committed Costa Rica to “the titanic and beautiful task of abolishing the use of fossil fuels in our economy to make way for the use of clean and renewable energies.”
He was not talking about electricity generation, for the simple reason that Costa Rica already generates more than 99 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources. No, what Alvarado now proposes to do is ban the use of fossil fuels for transportation. And his proposal, admittedly a long and difficult process, faces no significant opposition from his countrymen.
Don Pepe’s revolution, it would seem, is ongoing.
So tell me again, you smiling cynics, how human nature and the nature of the world do not permit humans to act, let alone govern themselves, in ethical or sustainable ways. I have two words for you. Costa Rica.
Good stuff, as always. However, a few cautionary observations might be in order, even at the risk of acting the grinch.
First, Costa Rica is a rather small nation, and so more managable than the mega-states that inevitably crash of their own dead weight. Scale is an embedded problem where expanding human organization is concerned. Second, location is important. Costa Rica can’t take on its cantankerous northern neighbor, and the little slip of land to the south is strictly off limits – the canal, of course. Also, Costa Rica has no neighbors that would profit from agression against it. Any such shenanigans would bring down hellfire and damnation from everyone from the U.N. to the fat-cat yathing partiers who fawn over the little paradise. Even the Donald might throw a shit-fit and lob a few bombs into Nicaragua should those fuckers get any fancy ideas
In the final analysis, though, it always comes down to what human groups typically do when left to their own devices. In his pop-anthropology classic ‘The Naked Ape’ (1968) Desmond Morris recognizes this fact by proposing that no self-respecting Martian Anrhropologist would study the Samoans, Aborigines or African Bushmen in order to determine the general trajectory of Human group behavior. He would see such tribes as marginal – not representative of the mainstream of the species, and would head to Munich, Baltimore or Koyto for his research.*
I’ve never been to Costa Rica, but alas, rather than a beacon of sanity in the human nightmare, it may simply be the exception that proves the rule.
*I paraphrase Morris broadly – I’ve no intention of digging out my copy.
IMHO — and the H stands for humble —
1) ethical behavior is what it is regardless of scale. A person acting ethically in an interaction between two people is ethical, whether or not you think the behavior could be scaled up to an entire population; and
2) exceptions to the rule do not prove the rule, they call it into question.
OK, ‘rule’ may be too strong. But the historical precedents are numerous. All I’m saying is that Costa Rica, like Switzerland, New Zealand and a few others, is the beneficiary of atypical circumstances. Otherwise, we would have to conclude that the Costa Ricans, etal, represent some superior human sub-species.
Also, cultural fossil that I am, I don’t know what IMHO means.
IMHO = In My Humble Opinion
Do Costa Ricans eschew the ideology of growth completely? Are they fully disconnected from the stupid global economy thing? And is everything they need for their survival obtained strictly locally? And are they using their resources in a fully sustainable manner?
If the answer to all the above is yes, then Costa Rica does seem like a wonderful beacon of hope to me. There’s just one concern left: when TSHTF for the rest of the world, won’t the starving hordes of Panama and Nicaragua be pouring into this Central American Shangri-la, and once that happens will she be able to provide a haven for them, or will she also be overwhelmed?
“Are they fully disconnected from the stupid global economy thing?”
Last I checked it was a tourist hotspot in the region and my cousin worked there for 3 years in one of their “free trade zones” for US multinationals. So no.
Optimism about human nature is laudable, except when it requires wilful ignorance to assert itself. This is especially so when it must be premissed upon the affairs of great masses of people categorised into ideologies, nations etc.
Not sure what you have in mind when speaking of ‘wilful ignorance’ and being ‘premissed upon the affairs of great masses of people categorised into ideologies, nations etc’. Perchance you mean that we humans are really no smarter than yeast; that once we discover a sufficiently large stock of resources (such as cheap fossil fuels) we will inevitably go on consuming and multiplying until we reach overshoot and a crash ensues; and that it would constitute ‘wilful ignorance’ to think we could behave otherwise.
If that’s what you were thinking (correct me if I’m mistaken on this), then I’d argue it’s at least open to dispute. Many people didn’t like what the Industrial Revolution (more like Industrial Retrogression) brought at first. The word ‘Luddite’ wasn’t an invention of fantasy writers. Nor did the many peoples of the nonwestern world like or benefit much from this gospel of industrial ‘progress’ brought to them by the Western colonialists. This gospel of ‘progress’ always benefited for the most part only a small bunch of people, by whose relentless pushing alone did their sorry ideology become so widely accepted today.
And don’t tell me you’ve been tracking me all the way from Our Finite World??
Your question seems to boil down to whether I think humans are dominated by lust and desire and don’t think much beyond the objects/time windows of the same. Most of us are like that, and when the environment is suitable (as in Costa Rica) we can make it work and restrain ourselves somewhat. But it doesn’t follow from this that we will go extinct when BAU vanishes, or that human nature is an unchangeable thing-in-itself.
I’ve read your comments on Gail’s site, and if you’ve read mine you are probably aware of my opposition to the views of the more nihilistic and conceited denizens.
Also, wtf? You really suspect me of *stalking* you? This is probably the first time we are conversing. Anyway, take it easy.
As I’ve said, I allowed for the possibility that I could have misunderstood you (which it turned out I have on certain counts — thanks for correcting me).
*I* certainly don’t think we’ll go extinct when BAU comes to an end, or that we’re so set in our ways we can’t change. Good to know you agree on these two points. :)
I do not mean to propose Costa Rica as a solution to our current predicament, a beacon of hope as you say, but as an example of good (not perfect) behavior in a world behaving badly. It’s when people tell me that after the crash (which is inevitable) the remnants of humanity will not possibly be able to put together a rational, sustainable society because of their basic nature — that’s when I think of Costa Rica.
Your point and those of the commenters are both valid.
They reflect human behavior left to its own devices along the full spectrum of possible land and resource constraint.
The cynicism comes from the fact that with all the knowledge accumulated since WW2, we haven’t gotten around to FORMALLY explaining the predicament to the general population. There was a conversation started in the 60’s and 70’s ….but ensuing puppet politicians of the western world somehow came to believe that science and technology was like a Piñata you could endlessly keep on hitting to endlessly obtain more this, better that…with no strings attached.
Costa Rica is a fine experiment. But they are very well endowed to begin with.
Exquisite landscape, biodiversity and tropical climate are, fortunately for them, an asset that they can up to a point, share without loosing it themselves.
This enables them to obtain the hard currency they need to put a floor on the modesty of their living standards.
They also through in a little of this, for good measure:
[“Many foreign companies (manufacturing and services) operate in Costa Rica’s Free Trade Zones (FTZ) where they benefit from investment and tax incentives.[9] Well over half of that type of investment has come from the U.S.[77] According to the government, the zones supported over 82 thousand direct jobs and 43 thousand indirect jobs in 2015.[78] Companies with facilities in the America Free Zone in Heredia, for example, include Intel, Dell, HP, Bayer, Bosch, DHL, IBM and Okay Industries.”] — Wikipedia
Are they wise. So far, Yes.
No doubt they played well with the cards they’ve been dealt.
There are yet further examples besides Costa Rica. My favorite examples would be (premodern) China and ancient Egypt. Both drew upon their resource base in a way that enabled them to go on for thousands of years, all the while producing great art and culture (and little slavery and religious persecution). Then there are the natives of North America, whom you’ve written on.
The other amazing leader who comes to mind is Ataturk, who banned the hijab, separated mosque and state, gave women status, and secularized the country. He also set up education, created an alphabet, and tasked the Turkish army with overthrowing the government if it started to impose religious law . The history of what he did for that country is almost not believable.
We do throw up a few real leaders now and again.
While a noble cause, Costa Rica is not abolishing the use of fossil fuels, they are merely externalizing their use. I would ask anyone to find a solar panel that is not 100% dependent on fossil fuels from mining the ore and rare earth metals to delivering it to its destination. They are trading their dependency of one energy they do not have to another energy source that they do not have control of. I two sayings I like to trot out for feel good stories like Costa Rica: “Until you can build a solar panel with a solar panel, they are not sustainable.” and “Renewable and sustainable are not the same – to confuse the two is a costly mistake.”
Once again, the perfect is deployed to drive out the good. First of all, solar is a tiny component of Costa Rica’s energy matrix, which is something like 70-80% hydro. Secondly, I made no claim, nor am I aware of Costa Rica making any claim, of sustainability. Renewables are better than fossil fuels, and unlike the rest of the world, Costa Rica has acted seriously to reduce its carbon emissions. That may not be perfect, but in my book it’s damn good.
(I regret the delay in moderating your comment, there was a glitch in the software somewhere and I did not know you were here.)
Tom, I didn’t mean to imply you were suggesting solar panels were sustainable. My comment is two fold and I guess I should have elaborated more. Pumping resources (capital and land or surface area) into an energy source that also has a peak in it’s not too distant future is only going to kick the can down the road a bit further.
Second, the people on the “renewable but not sustainable tract” (a huge generalization I know) are looking for ways to keep on using the same amount of energy and live the same lifestyle that was worked out when there were 4 or so billion people on the planet. It’s not going to work with 7.5 billion and climbing with a predetermined amount of resources.
I guess the bottom line of what I’m trying to communicate, and I know you know this already is, instead of looking for ways to produce that 20 – 30% they need to replace fossil fuels, they could be investing their time, money, land, and effort into reducing down the amount of energy they consume so that the 80% of energy from hydro becomes 100% from hydro and drop the hype about abolishing fossil fuels.
I hope this was a better explanation of my take on the situation.
Good thought – ain’t gonna’ happen.
There are only two alternatives:
(1) Catabolic collapse* with the species reverting to Neolithic population levels and living standards [Jim Kunstler’s ‘World Made by Hand’ format will be transitional at best] or (2) The replacement of the biological human with an entirely artificial model based on AI and robotics. The upside being the elimination of death – a distinctly biological process – and a reduction in energy use overall – the machine uses energy more efficiently than the animal.
The writing has been on the wall for a long time: Frankenstein, Metropolis, Forbidden Planet, 2001; A Space Odesy (sp?) Her…there are countless other works by artists in various fields.
*John Michael Greer
Does the machine use energy more efficiently than the animal? I may be a simpleton but the robot constructed to perform all my functions would probably use orders of magnitude more energy than I.
You may well be! In fact, most of your ‘functions’ will no longer be needed. Think of your circulatory system alone – its massive caloric consumption and byzantine complexity. My god, man, your earthly temple is little more than a haphazardly evolved Rube Goldberg contraption of goo and gristle, and far too generalized to do anything in an efficient manner. The simple act of picking one’s nose involves the energizing of the whole frggin’ organism. Think about it.