In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Preface I n 1993, I spent a year working in the public schools of a banana plantation in Costa Rica. At that time, I had just defended a master's thesis on the Latin American Church — but had never been to Latin America. By that time, I could translate Church documents from Spanish to English —but could barely converse in the language. And so, in part to remedy some of the deficiencies in my practical education and in part to collaborate personally in a movement for social justice, I idealistically joined a volunteer program and headed off to Costa Rica. My assignment was to teach English and environmental education in Río Frío, a cluster of plantation settlements carved out of the rainforest a couple of hours north of San José. Based on what I had heard and read about the country, I was somewhat relieved that it was actually Costa Rica to which I was travelling. Costa Rica, as many had told me, was a peaceful and tranquil oasis in Latin America. I was not likely to be abducted, as development workers had been in Colombia; I was not going to witness the extreme and widespread poverty of a Nicaragua or an El Salvador. Indeed, my very first trip into Río Frío seemed to reinforce my preconceptions . As I bounced along in the bus (certainly noticing the río but failing to understand how anything in these steamy lowlands could earn the adjective frío), I was greeted by a series of brightly coloured billboards. As I passed each new settlement, I read a message that was some variation of “Welcome to Farm 6: We are solidaristas, producing and exporting as we work in peace and harmony.” At that time, I did not know who or what solidaristas were, and I suppose I was a bit suspicious about the cheerful Dole company logos with their rays of sunshine bursting forth beside the slogans. Overall, however , I was naively reassured by those signs and their declarations. Soon after, I witnessed the difficult living conditions the solidaristas (members of a certain labour organization) often endured on the plantations : the planes flying overhead and dropping yellow clouds of pesticides that floated far beyond their intended targets, the crime, the prostitution, the diseases among workers. Many of my students were the children of plantation workers and, as I got to know them and their families, I saw at first hand the poverty and exploitation that are part of agribusiness and a banana-oriented economy. This was clearly another Costa Rica: another side to the presumably pacific and prosperous nation that many refer to as the “Central American Switzerland.” xiii 00_sawchuk_front_mat.qxd 2004/09/16 15:55 PM Page xiii When I came back to Canada and was talking to people about where I had been, I found that it was quite difficult to divest them of the same myths about Costa Rica's stability and affluence. When I returned to university and doctoral work, moreover, I found that few North American scholars were interested in analyzing Costa Rica. This included those fascinated by the subject of religion and politics; with few exceptions, they too had ignored the country. A sizeable gap in the literature on the Latin American Church had thereby developed, presumably because scholars viewed Costa Rica as lacking significant socio-economic hardship, or as having very little in the way of progressive Church programming and activism. My doctoral studies and, eventually, this book grew out of such experiences and my desire to dispel these misconceptions. Subsequent research trips —days spent in archives in the capital city instead of schools on the plantation, hours passed in conversation with priests and labour activists instead of students and parents—confirmed that there is more to the Costa Rican story than many people suspect. What follows, therefore, is an account written to reveal how and why many of the myths about Costa Rica are quite false. An account of Church and state, priests and politics, and bishops and banana workers, it is written with the hope that those who are working to bring true peace and prosperity to the nation will one day succeed in their quest. Preface xiv 00_sawchuk_front_mat.qxd 2004/09/16 15:55 PM Page xiv ...

Share