We are so convinced that we live in the Switzerland of the Americas that many do not want change or NAFTA. We live such a pure life, that there is no shortage of those who have no interest in competition, legitimate self-improvement, the search for wealth, abundance and prosperity. There is such a collective egoceguera in certain sectors, that we continually hear people say that there is nothing like Costa Rica in the world, and there are not few who manage to go on a trip, to confess that in three days of being away there is nothing like the gallo pinto or the tamale.
Over the years, one generation after another, the idea that we are all equal has been consolidated, as indeed it should be, but it is not. However, many of us forget that there are people who fail and others who win, there are people who serve and others who are served, that there are differences and that, although in the eyes of God we are all sinners, economic prosperity will never be a natural product, but the consequence of a personal effort focused on abundance.
It seems that we Ticos are self-condemned to the idea that the roads are a collection of holes, and that they will remain that way, as well as to the common and most comfortable mediocrity. It is as if we had no right to success, collective prosperity and personal improvement. On the scale of selfishness, I suppose we are well ranked as I suppose we are on the scale of conformism. Not in vain, we are among the 20 happiest countries on the planet, as a reflection of the docile acceptance that floods us for so much calamity pending a sustainable solution.
We live in a Costa Rica numbed by its third world idiosyncrasy, heir to paternalistic socialism and its legacy of useless ICEs, paralyzing unions and governments that are inoperative because they are unmanageable. With the potential of one or two other countries in Latin America, with an enviable social and intellectual capital, with an incalculable wealth in our biodiversity, Costa Rica continues with its slow and clumsy little step, as if the world was going to condone it with some special privilege and without any punishment.
I anxiously await the time of the referendum on the FTA, in the hope that we will throw a shovelful of dirt on the backward sectors, those who fear change, those who are terrified of risk and those who are content with the way things are. I hope to discover a new country, freed from mental ties and finally with a legitimate opportunity to change, even if the referendum can only be a slight change of direction, which is often enough.
In the meantime, it is up to us to pinch our Tico existence, our companies, departments, institutions, to get out of the disastrous numbness that stops, sinks and buries. And in a few weeks, as we do with good things, Costa Ricans will say yes to the FTA.
