Costa Rica, An Unusual Country in Central America Brasilito, Costa Rica. A week of medical education in a tropical paradise has brought me and forty of my colleagues from Toledo, Ohio to Costa Rica for a week of medical education and sight seeing.
Every winter, for over twenty years, the Academy of Medicine of Toledo has organized medical seminars south of the border. In case you are smiling or snickering about the so-called rich doctors having free vacations in the guise of medical education, read on. It takes the better part of a year to develop a high quality seminar. A comprehensive list of subjects is selected and qualified speakers are engaged who except for a token honorarium, pay their own way just as others attending the conference. Soft money from pharmaceutical companies or other sources is neither solicited nor accepted. The seminar starts at 7:30 every morning and lasts through the early afternoon. And there is still time left to explore and enjoy the country.
Costa Rica is a wonderfully strange country located just north of the Panama and south of Nicaragua in Central America. With a population of about 5 million this West Virginia-size country is the most stable and democratic in the American hemisphere. It spends a quarter of its budget on education and has the highest literacy rate, 93%, in Americas. By setting aside a fourth of its land as wild life refuge, it has become a heaven for eco-tourists. This also includes swaths of private land that has been taken out of agriculture and allowed to turn into rain forest. The owners are compensated for not cultivating their land by the government and some ecology-minded international agencies. Almost fifty years ago the country adopted a new constitution that disbanded its armed forces. It took a dictator, now considered the founding father of modern Costa Rica, to accomplish that unprecedented feat. Jose Figueres commonly known as Don Pepe was a revolutionary who launched a popular uprising against the corrupt regime of Rafael Angel Calderon and with the help of the army took over the country. Costa Rica has not suffered from turning into a pacifist country. There are no insurrections and no guerillas fighting the government from mountainous hideouts. One can travel at will even in the remote areas without any fear. The money they spent on maintaining the armed forces is now part of the expenditure on education. (Is there a lesson for the two saber-rattling nuclear neighbors in the Indian subcontinent?)
In a hemisphere full of regional conflicts, Costa Rica has managed to remain neutral and has helped defuse many such conflicts. In 1987 Oscar Arias, the then president of the country received the Nobel Prize for his peace efforts. The Ticos, as the Costa Ricans call themselves, are kind people who dispense their hospitality in a low-octane charming demeanor.
One cannot escape, however, the universally pervasive American influence here. From the ubiquitous Coca-Cola to Alka-Seltzer, the country is awash with American products. Even in the countryside the billboards announce the presence of Budget Rent-a-Car, Papa Johns pizza, Burger King and Pennzoil. Though I did not see in some of the small towns I visited, there have to be some golden arches somewhere. If Alka-Seltzer and Papa Johns have made it to this corner of the world, could the Big Mac and Colonel Sanders be too far behind?
But despite the billboards and the abundance of Americana the countryside is still very Latino and very pristine and idyllic. Lush green fields of sugar cane and fruit orchards are interspersed with tiny villages of brightly painted cinder-block small homes with small gardens and farm animals. And there are always some people whiling away the time in the piazza in the center of the village. Life is un-hurried and slow and it is enjoyable to be in a slow lane for a change.
In case you are wondering if there are any beaches in Costa Rica, with the Pacific on its west and the Caribbean Sea on its east, the country has more shoreline than the state of California. But I refrained from writing about the beaches. Beautiful beaches attract beautiful people and some of these beautiful sun-worshipers are in the habit of meditating in the nude. This time last year I was in Saint Martin where on the French side of that island the uninhibited people are in the habit of splashing around in their birthday suits. Based on my exciting observations, I faxed my breathlessly hand-written column to the Blade. My editors were not amused and killed it - first such indignity I have suffered as an op-ed columnist. They said it was a bit too risqué for a family newspaper. I thought they were just jealous. So, no more graphic descriptions of beach scenes from here. Adios, nos vemos luego. (Goodbye, until we meet again.)
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