Costa Rica is bilingual. It translates between the Pan-American Latino world and the broader Western sphere — especially the United States. Unlike many of its neighbors, Costa Rica has no army, and it rarely experiences political unrest that disrupts everyday life. With its strong middle class, reliable institutions, and social infrastructure, it is quiet, peaceful, and relatively affluent. For this reason, it is often called “the Switzerland of Latin America.”
But there is a catch. Because the hyper-vigilant culture will not allow anyone to stop suffering so simply. Its cousins and neighbours punish the Costa Rican identity for its exit from suffering and poverty. Through shared language and food, traditions, values, music and movies, they remind Costa Ricans: you’re one of us. And if you think you’re too good for us then we will erase you.
On a personal level, individual citizens experience a deep existential conundrum. It is a question of navigating social mobility when culture is coded at every class level. The lower classes romanticize suffering. Identity is shared collectively and to step out of the script of suffering, to choose the modest cheerfulness associated with financial stability, is to threaten the erasure of one’s identity, simply because Latino culture does not make room for the individual to stand alone. In the West, emotion and identity is negotiated in private. One can move from rags to riches without enormous trauma to their core identity. Latinos must bargain for their freedom and win it socially. The individual stands without knowing he has his own legs. He assumes his legs belong to his father or brother.
Costa Rica faces a problem more complex than the neat ethical box of survival. It is a question of who to become after the crisis has passed, what values matter? They instinctively reject the arrogant individualism of America. Sometimes they look to Asia or the Netherlands or Germany or others for inspiration. But mostly they are on their own, because Latino culture is unique and there is no one clear answer.
It is a question that demands a resolution. To enroll in the tragic aesthetic and chaos of impoverished Latin America is suicide. Costa Rica is sometimes criticized for not having a culture. That criticism comes from other countries still trapped in their pain. It has a culture of emergence and becoming, like the careful measured blooming of summer flowers. It is a culture of philosophy of the heart.
What is remarkable is their curated immunity to the pressure of erasure during their becoming. This is something expats take advantage of. They come to open yoga studios and breath healing workshops and to journal and orchestrate their corporate exit. But the colonial wound lives on here, when Ticos themselves don’t always believe they deserve the same psychological protection through transformation that they so willingly offer foreigners in their infinite hospitality.
The hardest challenge to integrate is individualism. Ticos resist this like a child resists exiting the womb and screams at the cold, dry hospital air. Even without embracing the full individualism of the West, some of its values must be integrated in order to move into the global reality. There is a trauma of separation and isolation, perhaps from its brothers and sisters. Geopolitical lines drawn arbitrarily over tribal kingdoms. Without an army, they are exposed like a fish in an ocean. They must always respond with fluidity, kindness, and grace. The burden to prove their morality is on them each time they are asked: what would a world with no violence look like? They themselves often question if they are real, and not just a dream. This is the honour and curse of carrying the torch to the temple. Of representing something greater than itself.
Ticos train themselves with the discipline of soldiers. They work, earn, practice, and learn. Then finally, exhausted, they ask: what is it all for? For the strength to bear the weight of caring.
SUBLIME COURAGE 
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