Beyond our Borders

Attending a Catholic College such as CCSJ is a way to open your eyes to international events and to cultures other than your own. All students at CCSJ, in fact, will take Global Studies courses as part of their general education curriculum. CCSJ annual learning trips to Guatemala and Canada are open to all students. Student groups such as Los Amigos and the Black Student Union promote the exploration of non-white cultures. With this in mind, I recently traveled to Costa Rica and Nicaragua. As the son of a Chilean mother and a father who was a Director of the Peace Corps in Honduras, I have been blessed with international influences from my infancy. After graduation from college, I taught English as a Second Language both in my mother’s native country and later in Spain. During this time period, I was also fortunate enough to be able to travel through Mexico and Central America. Most importantly, I learned Spanish through this process.


My knowledge of Spanish has allowed me to learn a great deal from the residents of the countries in Latin America in which I have traveled. One of these conversations follows. While walking the main street in the old center of Managua, Nicaragua during my recent trip, I came across a sort of improvised shantytown built in what was clearly meant to be a city park. I was curious as to how this had come about. I stopped to speak with the children of a family who lived in one of the “houses.” The shelter consisted of a tarp strung over wooden posts (tree branches) pounded into the ground (see the photo above). The kids did not know why they were there. When I asked about their sleeping arrangements, they explained that the 12 members of the family who inhabited the space all slept on the ground. “On the dirt?!” I asked. “No. On pieces of cardboard,” the older of the children explained to me. Further up the street, I came across an elderly woman who was washing clothes in a basin between two more of the temporary shelters. I asked her why the shantytown had been constructed in the park. She explained that the residents had built the shantytown in protest. It turns out that the shantytown residents had worked previously in the banana industry in Chinandega Department, Nicaragua whose production had caused the workers serious health problems. The factory had been run by an American-Nicaraguan consortium. The workers demanded from the consortium compensation for their health problems. The consortium refused, and the Nicaragua government did nothing to help the workers’ plight, according to the elderly woman. As a protest, the workers had moved to Managua and taken up residence in the park. I admired the will of the factory workers and their determination to attain justice. I wished the woman well.

There were a number of encouraging signs that the region is progressing in positive ways, as well. I visited San Juan del Sur Nicaragua on my trip, a town that I had visited back in the mid- 80’s. Two decades ago, San Juan del Sur was nearly a ghost town. There was a single hotel in San Juan del Sur at the time, despite the fact that the town was adjacent to a beautiful beach. Running a fever at the time, there were no antibiotics available in the pharmacy. San Juan del Sur is now a thriving beach town with plenty of tourists both from abroad and from within Nicaragua. Open air restaurants line the beach. Clearly, tourism has proved a boon to the local economy. It remains to be seen whether the town becomes overdeveloped and loses its local charm.

While in Costa Rica, I learned that there was a very strong support system for both health insurance and retirement in that country. The taxi driver who took me back to the airport on my last day in San Jose told me that even he had been required to contribute. As a result, he was planning on living a fairly comfortable retirement within a few years. I was very impressed that a “third world” country such as Costa Rica had peacefully gone about creating a health and retirement system that appeared to be serving its population in very positive ways.

Though my trip to Costa Rica-Nicaragua had lasted just 8 days, I felt immensely wiser upon returning to my position at CCSJ. You can learn a lot from people and places that are forgotten by the glamorizing effects of mass media. Education is indeed a lifelong experience.


CW