This week’s blog was quite interesting, bringing alarge number of things that I saw and talked about with my family. I’m going to start by talking about the billboards that I paid heightened attention to this week. So the first thing that I noticed was on the shops that I see when I walk around the city, which admittedly is a limited scope, but it was tremendously interesting to be sure. The first thing that I noticed was how Wi-Fi is a big part of most café’s and sit down restaurants. I have not gone in to see if the Wi-Fi is free, because the signs often do not say if it is or not. In the United States Wi-Fi is advertised, but only mildly and when it is it is specified as being free. This same phenomenon held true in Monetverde where the first café that I saw had “Wi-Fi” in big letters on the billboard outside.
There is much to be said about the billboards in Costa Rica, but I want to focus on one more thing that I saw that was not so much a billboard, but it is related. When we were coming back from Monteverde, I looked and saw what I am almost entirely positive was a Dos Pinos plant. On the front of it was a neon sign that portrayed who I can only assume was the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus. I could not find a picture and my iPod touch camera was not up to the challenge, but the mere seeing it brought something to my attention: Religiosity is hugely important in Costa Rican advertisement. I started to notice it more and more frequently as we continued back to our homes. Here, aligning your products with religion means that you are a good company, that God has blessed them and by buying their products you are supporting a good Christian organization. This ties into a whole, much larger, aspect of Tican culture, the impact of religion. It is huge, more than we even in the south have, at least on a completely commercial level. All around I saw signs that proclaimed Jesus as the Lord and that we should believe in him. Granted, I don’t really understand that much Spanish, so it could have been saying something contrary, but I am fairly certain that this is not true. I think that this is important to Tican’s, and the advertisement scheme here.
On to what I talked about with my parents!! I will try and keep this brief, but not skimp on too much. So I asked my mom and dad what they thought was weird food. They said that people eating insects is weird, and that in Mexico it is not uncommon for people to eat ants and crickets. They were clearly disgusted by this, which I found interesting, though to be honest I can relate. They also told me about a Dominican Republic food tradition, eating the nose and cheek of a pig. This was not the interesting part of the conversation though. This came with the second question, if I may paraphrase, regarding the implications of foods. My mom and dad were silent for a long time, muttered a few things to each other in Spanish, and asked me if I could ask them when I got back from Monteverde. I said sure, but we began to just talk and the answer got teased out in a sense. We talked about how in most comics, if there was to be a rich, powerful man, he was almost drawn as a large, fat man. On the contrary, a poor, weak person is portrayed as a skinny figure. This shows a connection between the ability to get food and the status of a person.
My dad told me that of course this wasn’t a universal truth, which I believe is a good stipulation to have. Stipulations aside, this sort of understanding of food equaling wealth and status is not an uncommon one. In some sense it is still very prevalent in our culture. This part caused me to reflect a little bit more than normal though. This idea of food equaling power, while still certainly existent, is something that I associate with the past. Beauty is something that is hard to obtain, and in the past, so much food that you were fat was hard to obtain, so a larger figure is more appealing, or was to past generations. Look at pictures of women painted throughout history, they are not the super skinny models that supposedly epitomize beauty today. Doses this mean that Costa Rica is still being affected by a longer process to dominate agricultureacross all demographics? I am not sure, but it I think it is an interesting thing to think about.
This is the picture that I got from a café next to the Gym near my house. It showcases the Wi-Fi affection that I was talking about.
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