Food Journal Week 7

Once upon a time in Costa Rica, coffee could be compared politically to the position of the banking industry in the U.S. today. Lest many politicians preferred to lose the financial support they’ve gained for reelection purposes, they would best consult with captains of the industry of finance, who seem to strive to be one of the most obvious of special interest groups, before deciding on their legislative stances. From our recent reading, The Latin American Coffee Commodity Chain: Brazil and Costa Rica, it is clear that the influence of producers, exactly how repressed they are by the government or how manipulated the government is by them, cannot by written off. In Costa Rica, the idea of an industry and its leaders manipulating the course of political events is not new. José María Castro Madriz, mid-nineteenth century president of Costa Rica, is just one example of a leader who was pressured to leave office in a time of coffee commodity crisis by the industry’s leaders. President Mora Porras who earned much of his wealth from coffee cultivation conveniently replaced Madriz.  This trend is not limited to this time period or coffee alone. In The Ticos, we learned that “it was easier to get a loan for cattle than for a house” in the early 1970s. This cannot be considered politically benign; some with a commodity interest were able to influence those in power with the ability to finance it. My abuelo tico confirms the power of that easy credit over his home culture of Guanacaste when he tells me that cows are just as important as coffee for his country. The Ticos also shows the growing internal change of the Costa Rican labor economy, one moving toward a “service” sector focus. The role of coffee as Costa Rica’s deliverer from the country’s relative economic inexistence near the end of colonial times is perhaps what allowed it to remain as fundamental for as long as it did, still near the top of all exports. Nonetheless, its real economic consequence has been trumped by other export commodities and ever-modernizing societal changes that take the value of family farming further and further from the realm of the realistic. External market pressures from other producing nations and coffee-sponsoring governments fuel these changes. How coffee remains culturally embedded is best observed in the home. As different pressures change its structural economic position, such changes can never erase the structural role of coffee in the formation of Costa Rica itself. The embrace of coffee as a symbol of national history, as what’s called a “common project” in Costa Rica: A Global Studies Handbook, remains even with urban sprawl and domineering producers like Brazil.

Examining Costa Rican “public” coffee culture was difficult. It differed greatly from the convenience demanding, rushed, more routine-based atmosphere found in the States. It also differed in content; I did not observe groups or individuals ever drinking coffee only. In all of the small shops I visited, coffee (or a perky, decorative drink with coffee hidden somewhere in the bottom) was always accompanied by something substantial to eat. One shop, in Barrio Dent, called Kasasana was unique for its trendy interior design and the number of young people eating lunch there at the time I visited. I asked the waiter, a young guy, whether or not he enjoyed working there and if he thought running a shop like that is easy in Costa Rica because of the coffee culture. He told me it was difficulty to keep customers coming back and that they tried to create the “coolest” environment possible so that people would use the shop as a place to hangout. This suggests a lack of the ordinary to me. In the States, most consumers use coffee shops daily and develop regularity with their visits based on convenience. There is usually nothing special, or “I only do that on Friday’s to treat myself”, involved. Visiting a “coffee shop”, if they may be called that here, appears to be a kind of delicacy. The people visiting these shops probably have a sense of their own privilege; I would feel that way in their shoes considering the relative socioeconomic dynamic here. I cannot decide whether or not the tican youth favors a contradictory coffee culture to that of their grandparents. Relatives of my family, young and old, visit and enjoy coffee and talk in the living room very often. According to my grandparents, they really don’t have a coherent perception of “coffee” houses as a place to go for a cup of good java; they can’t relate with the idea. What this means for younger ticans, I do not know. For me, it’s more important now to realize just how unnecessary a lot of my own coffee culture habits are. I do not need a brand name on my cup to bask in the flavor of my coffee, not to mention the value of my company. I can’t wait to enjoy a cup in my house, with my parents, without strangers sitting all around or the latest pop-music hit shrieking in the background.