Musing on Guns and army in Costa Rica
Some days ago as we were having lunch in a diner in San Jose, with the obligatory MTV blasting from the ever present family altar (TV), when suddenly the otherwise rather obnoxious but well known tune of some irrelevant boyband (you know, the usual with the 4 members over 25, I mean I was opposed to people calling me a boy when I was 15…) was interrupted by a newsflash from one of the side streets a couple of blocks away.
It was someone who was obviously doing something illegal and must have been threatening to whomever was around him, because in the end some person rushed him and literally threw him out of the shop and into the side of a nearby truck. No problem with that, good for the law and order I thought at that time. I turned around and proceeded with the, by the way rather good meal and didn’t think more of the episode until some minutes later when they showed the clip again from another angle this time with sound.
I heard 5 shots and couldn’t match this with the pictures I saw before! When I turned around and saw the situation from this new angle, it clearly showed (in slow motion of course…) that when that man was being thrown out, two persons standing close by in the crowd had drawn guns and were firing at him as he collided with the truck.
Ok, I mean if that is what the police does down here, I can live with
that, but these guys were not cops and they were NOT very proficient with the
pistols. From the angle they were holding the guns and the placing of the person
I would estimate that they had definitely killed the car and completely missed
the person. It also fits with the fact that the man could walk by himself
flanked by cops to the squad car. I may have to inform you here that it is only
in the movies and if you are Kurt Russel you walk away with 5 bullets in you…
This made think a bit about the state of security down here. Costa Rica has as the only country in the world (even the newest state of East Timor has one), no army. It was abolished in 1949 after a successful coup to ensure that the army wouldn’t take power again. Seen in a historical and economical perspective this has proven to be a wise decision since Costa Rica is the most stable nation in the Americas (south of USA…even though one wonders now:-) and has prospered economically from this. There are however some small problems.
One of the few genuine effects of having an army
in lesser-developed countries is to have a dumping ground for those who prefer
that somebody tell you what to do, while at the same time gaining respect and
authority (might makes right…). To put it bluntly, those who cannot do anything
else, ends up in the army as grunts (mostly). No offence anybody, I am sure
none of the person on this list who have done military service is of the
abovementioned kind. In Costa Rica they do not have this luxury and so these
people end up in the police force! This means that people do not have much
faith in the police in what regards abilities nor impartiality. And especially
not regarding corruption, as the most corrupt persons in Costa Rica is
supposedly the police (in Denmark it is the politicians like every other good
and decent country:-).
At the same time Costa Rica has suffered from the long war in Nicaragua by having about one million refugees in the country out of a population of five million. As many of you would know, this amount of refugees creates some kinds of fear, irrational, realistic or not. The effect is however very real and highly visual. Everywhere there are private guards, and in San Jose mostly of the armed kind. If these are supposed to instil a sense of security, they fail miserably. One of the guards we passed, about 160 cm, thin and insecure looking with a wondering look in his eyes, had a shotgun, a pistol, a shoulder belt with 8 extra shells for the shotgun, 2 extra magazines for the pistol, one radio and two mobile phones, a large police stick in his belt and a very impressively looking bowie knife (my sword is only slightly smaller…) along most of his right leg. The shotgun was with the safety off; the holster for the pistol was open and his finger was on the trigger guard of the gun. He was obviously dressed for war in one of the busiest roads in San Jose while guarding this high-risk shoe store (I kid you not!)
I was
scared shitless, not because of the assorted hardware, but because he so very
evidently did not have the faintest clue as how to use it! At the same time it
was tragic-comical. He cannot have weighed much more than 50 kilos, the recoil
from the shotgun would throw him on his bum!
Everywhere you see these persons and after
some asking, it became apparent that they are guarding against Nica’s
(Nicaraguans), otherwise the Nica’s are robbing all the stores. But all the
guards are Nica’s themselves… It seems like whole neighbourhoods are given the
opportunity to “benefit” from some kind of private guard. If they say no, then
lo and behold, thieves from everywhere will descent upon the neighbourhood and
soon private guards seems like a good idea. And then the thieves stop… If you
haven’t read Mario Puzo’s Mafia, this is the time to do it!
So, although the country as a whole is very
stable, it seems like there is a surge in the “wild west” atmosphere where it
is prudent to carry a gun at all times. Unfortunately this is in good standing
with the “Machismo” culture of the Latin Americas, but isn’t really
such a nice thing when you are a tourist from Europe (the Americans seem to be
indifferent!?).
Perhaps they would do better to train their
cops better and remove all those guns from the streets, ah well what do I
know:-)
Hmm, this reminds me of an episode Anna and I had on the central square (if such a place exists in San Jose…). We were waiting for Martin to show up, when this Costa Rican shows up and asks if we can help him with explanations to some American slang he has to explain to his class. With our natural tourist innocence and helpfulness we of course agreed to help him. The words/expressions he didn’t understand were: Flake, Snowcake and You Push My Buttons. The bells didn’t quite go of then, but the only slang I know of regarding Flake is for Hash, Snowcake is for various powders popular for inhalation (cocaine…) and the last one I know for double effect. To the opposite effect it means I like you, to same sex it means get the hell away. We conveyed the third meaning to him, as we weren’t sure about what he meant with the others. While we were talking to him, I noticed the guard had casually positioned himself rather close to me and then the penny dropped; he was off course trying to sell us something!! When he saw the guard he hurried of, and we spotted a very touristy person with a small earplug standing next to us.
Maybe we destroyed their setup? Off course, at that exact time I had to take my
medicine, and went of to McDonalds to buy a Coke. When I looked, I saw the
tourist had likewise developed a certain thirst, but he had disappeared when I
came out with my Penicillin (or whatever it is I have been eating) and Coke.
Drug are a big problem here, and the tourists have just started flooding San
Jose, so maybe we’ll see more of that during the next months.
Enough of that, the bottle of Whiskey is
still there, legacy of my tonsillitis from last week; even though it may taste
like liquid gold, I could imagine that it would tear all the way down with a
sore throat, the weather is still warm, we are still working and getting some
good results although the going is somewhat slower once you try to talk to the
ones in power
Jesper from the Wild Wild West (and
somewhat South…)