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If the media reads this, so much the better. It needs to be pushed to the top of the public consciousness. Politicians focus on trivia and irrelevance while the country is undergoing a crisis of violent crime.
The year I first came there was a murder. One murder. The OIJ contracted with Spanish speaking homocide detectives from the US to guide them through the investigation and teach them how to investigate a murder. It had been so long since the last one that no one in OIJ really knew how to do the job.
On the laissez faire attitude: From my observation Costa Ricans have long been semi-pacifist, pretty nice people who live and let live. Don’t screw with them and they won’t screw with you. But if you screw with them they know how to fight back.
Crime in Costa Rica has historically been theft. But then again that is only a so-so crime because everyone steals! From the chorizo to every kind of fraud imaginable to just plain old shop lifting from the local pulperia, plain theft or theft by trick or device is just what you do. It is a way of life. But violence, except on the soccer field, was never tolerated.
But in the past 10 years or so, a different attitude has overtaken the nation. The political and business elite, like limousine liberals in the US, all live behind high walls in gate guarded homes or guarded communities. So violence did not impact them. But over the past few years even these people have come to learn the pains of violence -- up close and personal.
Perhaps you remember a former presidential candidate whose home was attacked, wife was beaten up and maid killed; ot that the brother of the current president was assaulted right outside the Legislative Assembly as were several other high ranking members of the government who have been assaulted and robbed.
Simply, the populace has become adjusted to violence just like most other nations. There are some grass roots attempts like Recoupermos la Paz but that has proven to be just a feel good organization where people mutually jerk one another off.
Based on the image that Costa Rica is the “Switzerland of the Americas†– has no army, loves peace and all of the other hyperbole about non-violence, the intelligencia has not come face-to-face with the fact that violence is here. The picture in their minds tells them something different: a Costa Rica of their youth. And certainly they have not come to grips with what are they going to do about rapidly accelerating crime. Costa Rica can no longer afford to coddle these little snots because they will shove it up the Hersey Highway just like the little critters are doing today.
In an attempt to divert attention from the real problems, politicians will focus on non-relevant or semi-relevant issues like wheel chair access at MPs. While that is very important if you are in a chair and have a woody, to the broad based populace who will never venture out of their home after dark for fear of violent crime, people who live behind barred windows with gated and barbed wire fences, who live in constant fear of being robbed or murdered - wheel chair access at the local rub joint is a really nice "feel-good" diversion. You don't have to face realities because you are busy jousting with windmills.
One particularly difficult issue is the judiciary which is constitutionally not accountable to anyone. Unlike many other nations, judges have to stand for “election†or affirmation by the voters; or where judges can be recalled or impeached. The judiciary in Costa Rica is bullet proof. They don’t make a lot of money but they are incredibly isolated, aloof and unaccountable to the voters or politicians.
The police are powerless and poorly led. The one guy who spoke up and said, hey there is something fishy going on here, was immediately fired. After the last revolution, the Constitution was written to de-nut the police so they have essentially no power, at least not the powers that most other nations give to local, state or national police forces. In other words, the system of criminal justice -- composed of POLICING > JUDICIAL > INCARCERATION is failing at all levels. Some of the failure is due to funding but much of it is structural.
The only way to change that is through a constitution convention. Don Oscar and several others have sought one. That is a huge step and could be very destabilizing. Investors don’t like unstable governments. On the other hand, if crime, particularly violent crime continues to speed out of control, the outcome will be an unstable populace, therefore and unstable government and not a good investment option.
. In the mean time, the citizenry will be put to the test: will they elect someone who will do something about crime or will they elect someone who will do the soft shoe, divert attention from real problems and allow crime to dig its claws more deeply into the soul of this nation.
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