The dual society

Coming back from Medellin, in Colombia there’s obviously a lot of problems, a lot of crime. But there’s also this attitude of like, this is our history. This is our drug cartel problem. This is our poverty problem. This is our gang violence problem. And there’s a kind of ownership where they’re very analytical and critical inwards about their history and the kind of community they want to build. And they don’t really think too much about what the outsiders are thinking or what outsiders are doing here when they’re trying to build this community. Even when they created communa 13, which runs on tourism, they don’t resent the tourists, they have a lot of solidarity and pride about the story of themselves, through murals and fridge magnets and screen printed tshirts, as survivors of violence, and how they present themselves to the world.

 I see the total opposite of that in Costa Rica. The dominating culture is hospitality to foreigners, which is taught in schools and also enforced socially and at work. And there’s just this constant looking towards the other, looking towards the foreigner and anticipating their needs. I don’t see a lot of introspection in general. Instead of an introspection culture there is a performance culture. I’ve been trying to explore this situation from a different angle. I want to do something strange and hypothetically, expect the worst from people. And in my mind, because of the packaged commodified image of Costa Rica, in my mind I had this idea that it’s a very upper class country compared to the rest of Latin America. A strong middle class, Silicon Valley of Latin America with the software engineers in San Jose. Better social care than a lot of places in Latin America, all of which might be true in many other parts of the country, probably. In Nosara, however, specifically, there’s too much of a gap between the rich and the poor. So more than any other place I’ve seen in the whole country, there exists so much tension. And I mean, in other really, really gentrified towns, It almost feels like the locals left or they gave up. Like in Santa Teresa or Tamarindo. like those towns are basically America at this point. 

But I think in Nosara, there’s enough locals and enough foreigners that the tension feels really extreme. And I think one of the first times I came to Nosara, I started thinking about Brazil a lot. And Brazil is like that country where it has the most extreme wealth gap in the world and obviously the most crime. And it’s an extremely dangerous country. And it’s something that you can kind of feel in the energy of it where there’s a lot of bitter and violent desire and tension between the rich and the poor. Obviously, if you’re very poor and you’re very desperate and all you see is people who are very rich and also very cold and uncaring in their own way, there’s a lot of psychological violence and actual violence on both sides. So I could probably pull up some statistics, but I’m sure it’s extremely high wealth gap in Nosara. And this is all contributing to the social climate here.

 I’ve been thinking about how maybe I should look at re-evaluate my idea of what life or what Tico’s might actually be like in general beyond the image that they’ve created. And particularly in Nosara, I’ve made almost no local friends compared to anywhere else in the country where I meet genuine people all the time. Locals in Costa Rica in general are great. My Airbnb hostess from San Jose checked with me if I arrived in Nosara well. After I already wrote her review. Even after she tried to sell me her crochet handbags, I felt her hospitality was genuine.

Analyzing the local groups here, I know that there are some of the more high ranking locals that own businesses, spend most of their time socializing with foreigners, that seem to reject their own tico-ness the way JLo has given up learning Spanish. I think there’s ones that have just turned to crime, if not in an overly violent or criminal way but in their anti-social, cynical and predatory way that they operate socially. Somewhere in between are a majority group that is caught between giving up much of their values in any direction but also feeling caged in my social expectation and lack of support. 

We can explore the way all these factors come together. Like if you’re taught to be hospitable in school, what if that hospitality training isn’t just creating people who become resigned when it comes to their own self-efficacy? But actually in a place where there’s already so much tension and lack of that community structure, it’s actually a perfect place to train basically psychopaths, people who are extremely good at manipulating others to survive. Extremely good at presenting themselves as hospitable or kind or gentle. When they can actually, underneath, express the full range of whatever violent and antisocial impulses that exists in a regular impoverished neighborhood. Imagine Brazil, with its indifferent elite, militarized neighbourhoods, organized crime, explicit violence, the resentment of the working class, but presented in a polished and palatable hospitality, which is perfectly what psychopathy would look like. This is a very broad cultural pattern that’s appearing in Nosara. Hospitality training doesn’t soften negative attitudes, it professionalizes them. Not only towards the foreigner, but becomes a way of relating even to each other. The mask becomes fused with identity. 

And what I’m also seeing is… Anyone who tries to improve the situation, anyone who tries to escape the system and maybe have a more decent life, be a more morally decent person, is persecuted to the point where they cannot function. I had a friend who gave up alcohol and in Latino culture, that’s one of the dominant traits that make you a man in machismo, even though alcohol consumption actually was enforced by colonists to keep the labor force from rebelling and questioning itself and keep them very weak and just keep them at a level of basic animal labor. And for giving up alcohol, he was extremely ostracized by his friends and family, bullied severely. I had another friend who came from Canada and he just happens to be a very honest person who expects other people to be honest as well. And he had a lot of problems when he was trying to construct a house. He was screwed over by the contractors. They took his money and when he tried to retaliate, they actually came to his house with the machete and threatened him with his life and threatened him to the point where he’s afraid of taking any further legal action. He was simply trying to do business along his moral expectations. 

And I’ve experienced this as well, breaking a lot of the habits that men see with women when I act more independently or I act against the social role basically also have been threatened with my life. And I think a couple of other things were when I talk to people, local people about certain topics that seem like it should be okay to talk about because of the very open, hospitable, modern social climate. They almost make you feel like I’m still in Canada. I feel like everything is peaceful and perfect. So why not? Why can’t we talk about this? Whenever I talk about those things, people get very scared and they shut down immediately. And so I’m starting to understand that this psychological climate, this specific culture is policed internally.

 It’s very similar to the way women work within the patriarchy. In a lot of ways, it’s men policing women, but the majority of the time, it’s women policing other women. It’s mothers policing daughters. And so what I see is the majority of the oppression that’s happening in Nosara specifically because of the wealth gap is through internal coercion, internal rules and fear for consequences that is unspoken. And it’s even more high. Then you have Nicaraguans coming in from the border who add to the wealth gap and contribute to social problems but also become a racial scapegoat as an excuse for all local behaviour. The housekeeper at my house is from Nicaragua, he’s the first man I met in Nosara that didn’t sexualize me. The first man in 5 years.

 I’ll add even two more factors. One is that because it’s a decently enough local community, everything runs on social currency. So who you know is how you get your job and things like that. So it’s even more important for your livelihood, for your actual economic survival that you follow these rules. And then second, the police are extremely weak. It’s weak in all of Costa Rica because there’s no army. But the police here, they’re basically non-existent. They can never help you in any form of emergency because without a permit from Nicoya, they’re never going to be able to take action. I’ve seen this happen a couple of times. So you don’t have any actual legal force. All you have is the social force, which is policed by psychopathic individuals who have become psychopathic because of necessity and growing up learning that their only tool to deal with the unlivable conditions around them, to deal with the rage against very rich foreigners and things like that. The only method they have to survive any of this is with their hospitality, with their mask, with their social presentation. Simply the threat of violence or social exclusion is sufficient to police the behavior of its members. 

It’s a dual society where the locals are actively trying not to become erased culturally like they are in Santa Teresa or Tamarindo, and yet the biggest challenge is erasure from within, psychologically and culturally, by its own members.