Eight Little Known Facts About Costa Rica

The other day when I was writing about Jack Foley it made me interested in doing a little research on Costa Rica. I won’t tell you whether Jack makes it there in the end, but I will tell you something I learned. Some of you might laugh at my ignorance, but I am not afraid to acknowledge I still have plenty to learn.

The thing I discovered, and I am a bit embarrassed to admit it, was that Costa Rica is adjacent to Nicaragua on its northern border, and Panama to the south. The Panama part I knew, but the new thing was this. For some reason I had it lodged in my head that Honduras was to the south of Nicaragua, and El Salvador to its west. Wrong. So, the mental map in my head has been re-adjusted.

Alas…

So, let’s see what else we know and don’t know about Costa Rica. Note: There will not be a quiz at the end.

1. The name Costa Rica means “Rich Coast.”

2. There is no army in Costa Rica, since 1949.

3. 80% of the 4.5 million people in Costa Rica are Caucasian. Again, I did not know that. I assumed that with Mexico (where we lived for a year) being so pervasively Mestizo (mixed) that all of Latin America was as such. Honduras and El Salvador are 90% Mestizo, Panama 70% and Nicaragua 60%. Makes one wonder how Costa Rica’s pattern is so reversed. There's probably a story here.

4. According to the Happy Planet Index, Costa Rica is the “greenest” country in the world.

5. The current president of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias, won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end the civil wars that were creating so much instability in Central America in the 1980’s.

6. The country has an interesting religious stance. Roman Catholicism is the official state religion, but their 1949 Constitution guarantees freedom of religion. 70% of the population is Catholic, though about 45% practice their faith. Almost 14% are Evangelical Protestants.

7. The Economist ranks Costa Rica 35th worldwide in their Quality of Life Index, but the United Nations ranks the country 100th out of 126 for income equality, which means that Quality of Life might vary depending on who you ask. Average annual income is around $12,000 a year.

8. A key player in the reconstruction of Costa Rica as a stable force in the Central Americas was Jose Figueres Guzmin, who came to power in 1948 after a civil war. A “Junta Fundadora” was formed that held power for 18 months and implemented many reforms that helped the country economically and culturally, including
• abolishing the army (as a precaution against the militarism that has perennially thwarted or undercut democracy in Central America)

• enabled women and illiterates to vote
• put into effect basic welfare legislation
• nationalized banks
• outlawed the Communist Party
• directed the writing of their new constitution
• guaranteed public education for all
• gave citizenship to black immigrants' children
• established civil service to eliminate the spoils system in government.

Figueres was re-elected twice more to the presidency (once in the 50's and again in the 70's). In a 1981 interview he said, "In a short time, we decreed 834 reforms that completely changed the physiognomy of the country and brought a deeper and more human revolution than that of Cuba."

I've heard some nice things about Costa Rica lately. Now I know a little more than I did yesterday.

Primary source for these details: Wikipedia

Will Jack Foley Reach Costa Rica

Jack Foley, America's all time leading bank robber and ultimate Mr. Smooth, gets out of the pen and has a dream. Everyone thinks the first thing he will do is rob another bank. His ex-wife who meets him at the gate upon exit thinks so. Lou Adams -- FBI guy and wannabe author who is five hundred pages into a book about bank robbing, featuring Foley -- thinks he will, and has been tailing him since day one. But Foley insists his only dream is to go to Costa Rica.

The book is called Road Dogs. I'm three-fourths of the way through and at this point in the story we've met a whole slew of typically quirky Elmore Leonard characters, from Jack's buddy inside the prison named Cundo Rey (who keeps reminding Foley that they're "road dogs"), to Little Jimmy, Tiko, Dawn (Cundo's psychic babe who is apparently out to get his money) and a Hollywood actress whose late husband was apparently haunting her house.

Well, it's an enjoyable follow-up to Out of Sight, the original Jack Foley story which on celluloid starred George Clooney as Mr. Cool, Jack Foley, and Jennifer Lopez as the hot shot federal marshall Karen Sisco who ultimately put him behind bars, in her own way, of course.

I was introduced to Leonard's books through St. Paul Pioneer Press columnist Joe Soucheray over lunch at a writer's conference at Mankato State in the mid-1980's. Elmore Leonard is evidently one my favorite writers because I must have read twenty, and maybe thirty, of his books, several of them multiple times. And it's quite remarkable how long he's been cranking them out, how many have become Hollywood films and how fun they are to read. Some, like Hombre (Paul Newman) and Mr. Majestyk (Charles Bronson) were decent films but never could hold a candle to the subtle pleasure of the written words as Leonard assembled them.

It's fun to see how many of the same places and themes keep emerging in fresh new ways: Cuba, Florida, Detroit, Hollywood, bank robbers and showdowns... So it leaves me asking myself, why does Jack Foley keep saying he wants to go to Costa Rica?

An interesting feature of the story is how everyone seems to want Jack to be their "partner" in some grand scheme, though you are never sure where those schemes are going. Foley is one cool guy though, keeping his options open as he lets them play out. At this point in the story vultures are circling and... well, let's see who's dreams ultimately come true.

Recommendation: Read Out of Sight first and get to know Elmore Leonard's style as well as the central character in this sequel. The books may offend some who are squeamish about language and violence, so they may not be recommended for all. Enjoy!

Propaganda Revisited

The word propaganda is actually a Latin word that was originally introduced in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV in response to the global rise of Protestantism. He formed an “Office for the Propagation of the Faith” to oversee Catholic mission efforts in the New World. (“Congregatio de propaganda fide”) It is interesting that global forces and fears were the impetus behind these propaganda efforts, much like modern times.

During World War I propaganda became a secret weapon of our own government to turn public opinion against the Germans in order to prepare our nation for war. Before the war the word propaganda was so insignificant that it didn’t even have an entry in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica. During the war it was little understood how much the media served as mouthpiece for the propaganda machinery that demonized “the Huns” and portrayed the Germans as Prussian barbarians.

In 1928 Edward Bernays, in a book titled Propaganda, argued that propaganda was a good thing, a useful tool for the ruling elite because the masses needed to be moved. They were sheep too dumb to know what was best for them without guidance. The government and the media should work together to create an appetite for the right goods, services, leaders. It was a positive, not a perjorative.

Within months of publication of this landmark manual the word was already getting a bad reputation. George Creel, in another book, revealed that our own U.S. Office of War Information had heavy-handedly practiced the art of public manipulation to seed the war effort. When the public learned they had been hoodwinked, manipulated by falsehood and innuendo, lies, exaggeration and half-truths, … well, the word had to be replaced by more positive terminology.

The new term is Public Relations. And what PR professionals practice is called “spin.”

The problem is, no one knows anymore what is true and what is spin. Hence we live in an era of disillusionment and distrust.

During World War I it was said that Germans always lie, Americans always tell the truth. When later Americans learned their country told them half truths and outright lies, it was a bitter pill to swallow.

Bernays used his book as a stepping stone to advance his own career as a publicist. He ultimately achieved the stature he desired, becoming a mouthpiece for Big Tobacco for a spell as well as for General Electric in what amounted to helping it achieve a “stranglehold on America’s electric power” in “the largest peacetime propaganda drive in peacetime history.” (M.C.Miller)

His crowning achievement was the work he did in Latin America during the 1950s on behalf of the United Fruit Company wherein he paved the way for the CIA overthrow of the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz. To our shame as a nation, we did not dig into the motivations of UFC or the underlying truths behind what was really going on there in Guatemala, or Costa Rica. The resulting damage to U.S. credibility in the region lingered for decades.

In the Viet Nam era, we find similar tactics. And post 9/11… well, who knows where the truth goes when you have all these think tanks and spin doctors ever so busy weaving words into mesmerizing pinwheel spells and snapdragon daisywheels of distraction.

Words can serve as a conveyor of truth, but in a world where they so often veil and betray truth how does one know? How can one be sure? The imperative is learning how to hear, how to listen, how to weigh the value of what is spoken and written... how to separate the darkness from the light and give order to the chaos. In short, how to discern.