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October 2000

Flee from Fleet!
Recent mergers harm consumers.
by Shai Sachs

The Death of Winter
Global warming: scarier than you thought.
by Julia Silvis

Napster Got My Gnuts
The mp3 debate gets out of hand.
by Brad Hershbein

Talkin' $acrifice
Americans don't appreciate public service.
by Nikhil Jaikumar

Feelin' Important!
PERSPECTIVE's voter registration guide for Election 2000.
by the PERSPECTIVE staff

Introspective
Starvation Chic
by Liz Thornberry

Salmagundi

Scraps

Backpage
Scooterdo's (and don'ts)
by Julia Silvis

Like many a Harvard student, I spent my summer far from home - in Costa Rica, to be exact. By Latin American standards, Costa Rica is an extremely well-developed country. Intel recently opened a gigantic manufacturing center in the country’s Central Valley. The country’s large middle class shops at the mall and eats, at least occasionally, at McDonalds. Such development and Americanization can prove jarring to the American traveler seeking an exotic experience. As I walked down the streets of San Jose past Kentucky Fried Chicken and stores selling Titanic merchandise, I often felt I could be in any region of the world. And, even more often, I heard other travelers complaining about the sameness of the country, the bland modernity that distinguishes at least the more developed parts of Costa Rica from the exotic backwardness of some of its Central American neighbors, such as the dirt-poor rural Nicaraguan countryside.

I too bemoaned the American chain stores that seemed to be devouring the landscape, and cringed every time I saw a centro comercial looming over an otherwise picturesque neighborhood. But some of my fellow travelers, typically young backpackers or older Americans on a midlife-crisis-type journey, had a distaste that went beyond Americanization to encompass all modernization. They seemed to wish that, instead of the solid concrete-block houses we saw, Costa Ricans had the good taste to live in rickety shacks like "all those quaint little villages in Guatemala." Apparently sturdy houses don’t meet these travelers’ standards of authenticity. They expected Costa Ricans to sacrifice their living standards to preserve what these Americans perceived as their traditional culture.

This type of glorification of poverty can be blatant, as when travelers discuss traditional medicine in a tone which suggests that it’s a moral failing for non-Western cultures to stray so far from their culture that they use antibiotics. At other times, however, I caught myself falling into that line of thinking, and admiring a man on the side of the road, making the five mile walk to the nearest store. To be sure, walking rather than driving has objective benefits, primarily a noticeable lack of pollution. But I’m almost certain that man was walking, not because he wanted to, but because he couldn’t afford a car.

In fact, part of the appeal of travel to less-developed countries may sometimes lie in cultural differences that stem directly from poverty. One woman returned from Africa full of praise for the "simple life", saying "I want to, like, live in a mud hut in Kenya." Perhaps that’s a sincere wish, but the Kenyans who actually do live in mud huts probably don’t find the lack of running water quite as charming as the middle-class American who tours the country for two weeks before returning to the luxury of an air-conditioned house in the suburbs.

At the same time, however, I have trouble approving of all the supposed improvements made in developing countries. Modernization has its benefits, but also its price. In the cities in Costa Rica, I choked on smog caused by the proliferation of cars; I rafted down rivers whose water I couldn’t drink because it had been polluted by modern pesticides . Some of these problems might have been averted if traditional methods of transportation and farming hadn’t been displaced by their modernized versions. And I don’t think the influx of McDonalds really qualifies as an improvement in anyone’s standard of living. Across the globe, cultures are changing, and withering, due to the reality of globalization. Such large corporations, from Nike to the Gap aren’t just companies, they’re political powers, with enough resources to do pretty much whatever they like in many poorer countries.

Even when it comes to McDonalds, though, I don’t feel comfortable criticizing people in Costa Rica for abandoning their culture in favor of a bland, globalized substitute. I may think they’re making a bad choice, but why should I expect them to have any better taste than Americans? Mass-produced culture is crowding out traditions in Nebraska, too, but since people don’t travel to Nebraska hoping for a glimpse of "the exotic," they don’t complain so much when they encounter McDonalds instead of corn and bacon.

Back in Costa Rica, meanwhile, things are going pretty well. The economy, powered in large part by the Intel factory, is producing a steady increase in the average standard of living. In this solidly middle-class nation, most people do have sturdy houses and running water instead of quaint huts by mountain streams. Third-world groupies looking for the authentic Latin American experience won’t fulfill their fantasies of villages filled with illiterate (but picturesque!) women and barefoot children. But a uniquely Costa Rican culture remains. I saw hundreds of thousands of people walking from their homes, some hundreds of miles away, to pray to the country’s patron saint; I saw people dancing salsa till dawn at a local fair. The rise in Costa Rica’s standard of living hasn’t killed off its culture, just made it a little different from the exotic vision of a poor country that attracts so many American travelers, like the woman who complained that Costa Ricans dressed just like Americans, leaving me to wonder if she expected to find them wandering around in loincloths. If, on the other hand, we are looking for a cultural encounter, it is waiting for us in Costa Rica as much as in any other foreign country. If all we want to do is smile condescendingly at the "simple life," then we might as well stay home. Poverty may not be as quaint when it’s in the nearest inner city, but it’s just as authentic.

Questions? Comments? Please contact perspy@hcs.harvard.edu