www.CostaRicaTicas.com

This is the older article referenced in today's AM Costa Rica:
http://www.amcostarica.com/043007.htm

I accidentally created a new thread when I really just wanted to add this post to this thread:
http://www.costaricaticas.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=30370

Country just sets itself up for one crisis after another
By Garland M. Baker
Special to A.M. Costa Rica
30 abril 2007

The rule of thumb in Costa Rica is when you cannot plan — or do not plan — panic.

This malady is part of the culture. People in the campo, the rural areas, learn this from childhood. Parents instruct K*ds sent to the pulperia, the corner mom and pop grocery, to buy one egg for breakfast. Not two, one for breakfast and one for lunch, or three, one for breakfast, one for lunch and one for dinner. Just one. One for breakfast.

Why, because the parents were not taught to plan and organize by their parents, so they do not teach their K*ds to do so.

What happens? The K*ds grow up into adults and this happens:

The country gets a Registro Nacional that has collapsed for the past month. It has been literally impossible to use online. This is an entity, that is in theory, the cornerstone of public records in Costa Rica.

Very poor, if any, planning went into designing the system in the first place. The day it came online — some years back — the organization’s computers could not handle the daily traffic. Today it is a disaster. Crooks use this fact to their advantage everyday. Fraud is rampant. Good people just twiddle their thumbs.

Now in a panic Registro workers are trying to fix the ills of years applying band aid solutions to the problems, and nothing works.

Speaking of band aid solutions to real problems: Now there is insufficient electricity. There is no money to harness the power of Costa Rica’s rich thermal power resources, at least according to the local news reports.

It appears no one has converted plans to action. No one in power has interpreted correctly usage requirements or population growth. A union for the professionals at the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad said in a full page ad Sunday that the power shortage was not its fault. The Sindicato de Ingenieros y Professionales said they have been warning of shortages for two years.

Now the country is in a panic, rationing electric power. Some people have it, and some people do not. Everyday it is a roulette wheel decision as to who gets it and who does not.

President Óscar Arias Sánchez is going to save the day with an executive decree to buy new oil burning electric plants for $150 million dollars. This sure reeks of a panic solution to a panic problem.

Ops, forgot to mention cellular phones. When Millicom International Cellular S.A. set up an adequate cell phone system in Costa Rica in 1989 and people started to use it widely, panic mode struck fast. Costa Rica worked quickly to quash the license and take over the system with predictable results.

These are only three of a multitude of examples.

Everyone has his or her own list, most starting right a home. How many times does one hear living in Costa Rica, the last of this or the last of that was used until the moment it is all gone.

Add a little graft to the no-planning, no-organization recipe, and what does one get?

A great way to make money. The reason, because there is never anyone to blame, nothing worked anyway.

A company in México sold the Registro its computer system by winning a bid during the presidency of one of those presidents currently on the hot seat facing a corruption investigation.

The U.S.-based Millicom set up the first cellular telephone system in Central America in Costa Rica, and without even a “thanks” was booted out of the country in May 1995. The company had to stop its operations because the Sala IV found that its activities with cell telephones was contrary to the Costa Rican Constitution that gives the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad a telephone monopoly.

This which made room for one of the biggest frauds to the public involving almost every level of government. Former president Miguel Ángel Rodríguez is still under investigation for his role, if any, in a kicback on a contract to a French telephone company. Agents of the French firm have been indicted in the United States.

Of course, a lot of people say that when things go wrong and panic sets in, its just part of living in Costa Rica.

_________________
"All them women gonna make me,
teach 'em what they don't know how..." TMIB

All very true, but at least the Tico's are consistent. They do everything in life in the same manner that they drive a car. And that is with total disregard for what may or will happen next. Yet, in between crisis and tradgedy, they are the happiest people on earth.

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My life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out and loudly proclaiming...." MAN....WHAT A RIDE!!!!"

Garland Baker's observations regarding Tico culture are reasonably accurate when he sticks to observing how things are, but when he gets into the 'why' of it, I think he's out of his depth. Coming from a first-world country it is not hard to find faults. I assume he has also found some virtues or he wouldn't be living here. His 'analysis' of 'why' Costa Rica isn't more like the USA seems pretty superficial to me.

He seems to want to blame mothers for the perceived lack of 'progress' here. For some reason he doesn't mention the drive-by fathers, who impregnate and run with incredible frequency. He also seems not to have noticed the self-perpetuating class system here, where only the offspring of the wealthy can afford to pay for the education required to get anything but a minimum wage job. He ignores the high birth rate here, which outruns any amount of jobs that can reasonably be created. He can call Ticos dishonest but even the Villalobos brothers can't hold a candle to Michael Milkin, Ken Lay and Bernie Madoff. To what extent is the crime in Costa Rica augmented by the illegal drug trade aimed at North American consumers? If he thinks all Costa Rica's problems are due to overly protective mothers... well, maybe that's worth a barroom discussion, but it's not serious social analysis.

It is comfortable to make simple judgments about another culture and hold yourself and your native country up as the ideal to which the lowly locals should aspire. I don't say that the Tico way of doing things has no room for improvement. I do say that Garland Baker's explanation of why things are as they are is simplistic and basically useless.

_________________
"The only normal people are those you don't know very well." Joe Ancis

Yeah, they should just follow our lead here in the good ole USA...

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I believe in moderation in everything except excess.
I phuck 'em just to see the look on their face.
Klatu, berata, nicto.

I agree with you 100% Bilko. You hit the nail right on the head brother.

Yeah, Borrow, Borrow, Borrow.

_________________
"You can only keep a secret between two people if the other one is dead." Ben Franklin

If you are hungry and only have enough money for one egg, some pasta, salsa tomate, and cilantor then get the egg, pasta, spoon of tomato sauce, and some spices. On the way hopefully you find some fruit and some gas to cook with.

Brother Greengo seems to agree with the article.

As for me, while the observations of how things are seem accurate in the article, I don't know enough Ticos & don't have enough direct observations to comment on why things are this way.

_________________
"All them women gonna make me,
teach 'em what they don't know how..." TMIB

And I hope it never changes.

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* These are the "Good Ole Days". Enjoy Them.

* RENT but, "Don't Buy a Home in Costa Rica" until you have lived here for THREE years.

walked all the way to a drugstore to take a "glorious saturday morning shit"

Personally I walk all the way to colonial to take a shit upstairs in those clean bathrooms its relaxing compared to the DR..I call it my glorious afternoon shit..Damn Im giving good secrets away...Someone at colonial read the mcdonalds handbook of clean washrooms

most i'll do at the DR bathroom is squeeze the lemon....definately not the place to drop a duece

Note to self...DO NOT shake Lemonsquirtface's hand in the Del Rey

_________________
Why settle for just one woman when you can enjoy them all?