Costa Rica after the referendum

By Weekly Archive On Oct 23, 2007

It
will never be the same as before

A Costa
Rican political analyst said in an interview that the referendum on
the free-trade agreement (FTA) with the United States had become "the
best social alarm clock Costa Rica has had in the past 100 years."
He was right.

Although
the FTA was approved 51 percent for and 48 percent against, the
popular sectors remain mobilized to prevent its enactment, which is
to take place before February 2008. If it isn’t enacted then, the
accord — signed by George W. Bush and Oscar Arias — will become
void.

The
mobilization is due, among other reasons, to all the violations
committed by the government of Oscar Arias and the White House
spokesmen in previous days, when all political campaigns were
forbidden by law. Also, to the fact that many workers for foreign
companies were threatened with being fired if they didn’t vote in
favor of the FTA.

The
3-percent difference between those who approved and those who
rejected the FTA amounts to only 50,000 votes, while almost a million
Costa Ricans entitled to vote abstained (about 40 percent). Whether
or not such a narrow margin can change the fate and well-being of a
nation deserves a deeper analysis, especially if we consider the
tricks and threats used by the Costa Rican government and the White
House spokesmen.

As
journalist Rogelio Cedeño Castro stated in his article “A
nation installed in lies,” “… in the midst of a neoliberal
night that hasn’t ended, the people of Costa Rica have accomplished a
feat whose reach will be seen only in years to come: the organization
of patriotic committees throughout the national territory, as a
democratic, plural and creative demonstration of the best of the
Costa Rican people, as it faces patronage and neoliberal
dictatorship.”

In fact,
an important segment of the Costa Rican people, brought together by
the Patriotic Committees, prepares now to fight another battle: to
keep the legislature from approving the 13 articles that reform the
Constitution so the FTA may be enacted. The U.S. Congress does not
have to make any changes in its own Constitution.

It is
said that the political parties of the oligarchy, the main allies of
the transnational corporations, have enough votes in Parliament to
ratify the constitutional reforms. However, the opposition has
announced that it will boycott the sessions of Parliament by any
means at hand, so as to prevent ratification. In other words, there’s
a long road ahead. At least, that’s what it seems.

Another
variation, submitted by the leader of the Citizen Action Party, Ottón
Solís, is to allow the 13 constitutional amendments to be
approved, under the condition that “measures will be approved to
soften the impact of the FTA on the more vulnerable groups of
society,” that is, the peasants, the low-income workers and sick
people without Social Security, among others.

That
tactic is extremely dangerous, because many of the FTA’s clauses
oblige the Costa Rican government to open wide the doors to
agricultural and industrial products, as well as investments by U.S.
companies in most of the sectors of the economy, including the state
economy. The FTAs don’t contain many measures that “soften [their
negative] impact on the more vulnerable groups of society.”

In
reality, as I argued in a previous article about the FTAs (see "The
FTAs and Latin American integration"),
only the oligarchic sectors linked to transnational capital and the
exportation of agricultural products could be interested in a treaty
that substantially limits the maneuverability of the national
economy.

As
journalist Cedeño points out in his aforementioned article, in
the countries with FTAs with the United States, the presidents become
a kind of “majordomos of the transnationals,” because they
practically cannot make any decision that affects the foreign
interests, especially U.S. interests.

The
effects of the FTAs on underdeveloped economies are well known. The
example most mentioned is Mexico, but there are others, such as
Chile, where wealth has polarized, the number of poor and marginal
people has increased (about 3 million in a population of 12 million),
and the ancestral land of the Mapuches is being seized with the
apparent consent of the government.

In
Mexico, in addition to the fact that the basic branches of the
economy (except oil) have fallen into the hands of transnationals,
the social effects of the FTA have been disastrous. Forty percent of
the population, or more than 40 million people, live in poverty, more
than 14 million of them in destitution. (Mexico’s FTA was the first
one to be enacted in Latin America, in January 1994.)

The
exodus from the countryside to the cities has been massive in recent
years and no end is in sight. That is one of the causes of the
increase in the number of Mexicans who try to enter the United States
illegally.

So far,
and for a great many years, Costa Rica has been the most stable
nation in Central America, with standards of living, social security,
education and health care that are much superior than its neighbors’.
Despite several neoliberal measures of privatization applied in
recent years, many of those achievements remain standing, although
not with the same effectiveness as before.

It
remains to be seen what will happen if the constitutional reforms
that would allow the enactment of the FTA are finally approved. The
small and midsize businesses are very worried by the impact that the
importation of subsidized
agricultural and industrial products from the U.S. will have.

Industrial
workers, especially textile workers, fear losing their jobs and the
social benefits they have enjoyed for more than 50 years. Several
organizations representing farm workers have expressed their total
opposition to any changes that endanger their already low standards
of living. They are the people most endangered by the application of
the FTA.

But
there are other, lesser-known aspects of the treaty that will also
affect most Costa Ricans. Among them is the disappearance of the
so-called generic medicines manufactured in Costa Rica, whose cost is
lower than those manufactured in the U.S. According to the FTA,
transnational pharmaceutical laboratories will have access to their
Costa Rican markets and their patents may not be used by third
parties.

Another
clause of the FTA (a bit macabre) authorizes the exportation of human
organs for transplant in the United States. Regardless of the
established regulations, the sale of human organs can generate — as
it has in other Latin American countries — criminal and absolutely
inhuman activities.

Several
observers agree that most Costa Ricans, after 50 years of a
relatively comfortable standard of living and enjoying a cultural
level higher than its neighbors’, could impede the application of the
FTA, in case they stand to lose the benefits they have enjoyed until
now.

I don’t
know if that is wishful thinking. The truth is that, after the FTA
was approved in the referendum of Oct. 7, the Patriotic Committees
remain active. They have not fallen apart and continue to act as a
team. On the other hand, Costa Rica has maintained relatively
democratic traditions for about 60 years.

If the
administration of Oscar Arias, or any other in the future, should
apply repressive measures (as might happen), the reaction of
important sectors of the Costa Rican people could be unpredictable.

Reportedly,
Costa Rica has no army, but it does have a repressive military
organization called the Civil Guard. That institution has little to
envy the armies of Latin America, which are used to repress the
people, along with the police, also trained in repressive methods.

To dare
talk about the future, though it be immediate, is always a risky
exercise. What can be predicted (and with a narrow margin of error)
is that, after the campaign against the FTA, Costa Rica will never be
the same. The "social alarm clock" rang, and the people
have mobilized. Time will tell.