Piña!

Pineapple Cup around Leslie´s Piña

 Colada.

           In Costa Rica, pineapple is served and eaten many different ways. People eat it for breakfast, lunch, dinner, as a raw sliced fruit, cooked in pastries, used in jam, etc., many different ways. There are also many different types of pineapple sold, be it whole, sliced, canned, in pastries, etc. This is interesting because it is very similar to how pineapple is sold in the States, but in Costa Rica, pineapple is eaten much more frequently than in the United States.
           

When discussing pineapple with a couple of Costa Ricans (my tica family and my Spanish teacher), I found that the pineapple is Costa Ricas new banana. This is because pineapple exports are becoming more important to other countries and thus increasing the importance of pineapples to Costa Rica. In the past, other countries could produce pineapples, but as of currently, fungus and disease have overrun most places (like Hawaii) and Costa Rica has taken the burden of producing the pineapple. Like the banana, pineapple has carried with it the stereotypes of the native people that originally grew it; they both have sexual connotations and innuendos, and they display the exotic, savage stereotypes as well. Even in current day, companies use the images associated with banana and pineapple to make their own products more marketable.

 Many places in Costa Rica (and presumably in the United States) use fruit to accent drinks, to the right is a picture of a pineapple slice being used as an accent on a ¨Mai Tai¨ in Los Lagos, La Arenal, Costa Rica. At Arenal, there were also jellies made out of pineapple, salad dressings made out of pineapple, sauces made with pineapple, etc. Through these experiences and through our readings, we have all witnessed the executive placement of the pineapple within Costa Rica and throughout tourism/business. Wherever we visit, we can see that pineapples are used to symbolize hospitality, status, and the tropics. By seeing paintings of pineapples hung in hotels and the strategic placement of pineapples used in other decorations in tourist spots, we see that the pineapples crown symbolizes the power of given business and their desire to please.

          Another aspect of the pineapple in Costa Rica is the urban and rural sales of the pineapple; where both are fairly equal in price and quality. This shows that, yet again, Costa Rican produce is local and is from the ¨small farmers¨ because otherwise these pineapples would be exported and they would be priced much higher than they are. This shows that the pineapple is following in a similar path to the banana, which helps to support the rising importance of the pineapple to Costa Rica (since we have previously explored why bananas were/are important to Costa Rica).