Independent study in Costa Rica, Latin America
Summer 1977 UofAla
Business/ Commerce in Costa Rica 3rd world manufacturing
Stonebear Tracks Oddysey ROF= Ring of Fire Costa Rica 1977
Costa Rica was the destination. Wasn't sure what it would be like... just sterotypical illusions of Latin America... actually an image of Mexico to Brazil and Argentina. I knew the geographical maps but what actually went on there - what life was really like - I was woefully uninformed.
After talking to the Dean of the business school and got clearance for independent study credit,... I would actually get a grade and quality points to travel/ journey to Costa Rica for the Summer of 1977 and when back write a paper on business and commerce.
The flight down landed in Belize, San Salvador/ El Salvador (a couple of soldiers that looked like something right out of the Che' and Fidel era walked around the plane and boarding terminal with AK-47 rifles), Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Managua, guatemala (which had gun pits... artillery and anti-aircraft guns around the airport),... then on to Costa Rica. Excuse the poor quality pix, it was overcast/ rain/ poor visability .
The flight down landed in Belize, San Salvador/ El Salvador (a couple of soldiers that looked like something right out of the Che' and Fidel era walked around the plane and boarding terminal with AK-47 rifles), Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Managua, guatemala (which had gun pits... artillery and anti-aircraft guns around the airport),... then on to Costa Rica. Excuse the poor quality pix, it was overcast/ rain/ poor visability .
I got off the TACA airlines DC9 at Juan Santamaria International airport, San Jose, Costa Rica and was looking at the beautiful mural of costa Rican history while waiting for my shoulder bag. The only Spanish I knew was "Si" = yes, and Unos, Dos, and Tres. By the time I came back home to Tuscaloosa, Alabama my Spanglish was fairly good. Not fluent,... but I got around pretty good and went ALL over Costa Rica and saw Latina America as a backpacker vagabond with the locals; the only real way to travel and learn the local culture.
Wall mural at San Jose, Costa Rica airport terminal lobby.
David and Donna Little at "Rancho Minimo" = Little ranch
Through my business mentors, David and Donna Little, retired USAF Ex-Pats, I met and was fortunate to spend a couple of days tagging along with US Ex-Patriot Gary R. West, independent businessman and real entreprenuer. This was really good as Gary was a real hustler. He'd studied at The Thunderbird School in Arizona and after spending time around Gary wondered if I should apply for an MBA there when back home after graduation.
Gary West understood business, Latin America, and doing buisiness in Latin America; three different mindsets required for success. Gary knew raw materials, mom and pop Latin America manufacturing, industrial manufacturing of procuring and processing materials, marketing and retailing in the US and Latin America and he knew how to put it all together... how to tie the parts together, connect the dots, make the sales calls, develop the contacts and markets... It was an education... I learned more in a couple days with Gary than I did in a couple years of college business school.
Gary was also the author of the travel book "Passport to Central America" which was a neat travel description of all the Central American countries, but it was also a neatly tucked in advertising tip guide. Everywhere we went, all the business owners knew Gary and welcomed him in and offered him anything about their business. I didn't see him pay for a dinner; he was comped first class because he had steered so many tourists and travellers to the businesses. ... All the Ticos did well when Gary wholesaled their products or got tourist advertising for them.
Gary had a business philosophy he described as "pincho bollos"... you had to "pinch their balls" to ask for... and get The Order! Gary was a go getter.
Mom and pop textile loom manufacturing
One of the stops Gary made was about 20 miles outside of San Jose at what looked like an average Costa Rican farm house/ coffee plantation house/ modest masonry/ plaster house lanscaped with beautiful indigenous plants like vivid color bouganvilla vines, palm genus plants, banana trees growing wild, and what looked like a barn type old building out back. After greeting the owner, Gary spoke in Spanish, we walked around back and this was a small mom and pop primitive loom manufacturing rugs/ house mats.
You can see a couple of campasino workers using the most rudimentary primitive loom, under a ramshackle shed tin roof, open air... this is just the side of the barn, coverd shed part of the barn. Dirt floor - no floor. Some chickens walking around nearby. This was a manufacturing small industry. You see the long stringer cords of the loom with a peasant worker campesina lady? .... in the background on the left is Garys assistant, and Gary R. West on the right. Notice the kid playing?
You see these kids and think they are there playing? .... they are pressed into some work of spinning the cords onto the bolts to be used on the loom.
They might pay this lady a dollar or 2 per day... the kids labor is just thrown in for nada. They are helping Mom... It's just less she has to do in a day.
And of course there are no saftey standards or union rules of safety. If a worker got a hand cut off,... they just go home because they can't operate the loom anymore. A pension? Healthcare insurance? ?Are you kidding??? There's absolutely no such thing for Tico peasant workers. Not in Costa Rica but in Latin America union organizing and "socialist" land reform movements -- organized protests that wanted plantation owners with tens of thousands of acres to grant/ allow peasants to have a couple of their "own" acres of land to grow and sell what they could in the free market and make the $$ for themseves. These protests in Latin America were met with right wing authortarian death squads.
This is what "free trade" treaties are about. US workers that have decent jobs with health care, pensions, and vacations compete with peasant labor with NO benefits. There is a reason these Latin American countries are refered to as "banana republics" and would change governments/ presidents/ leaders in the middle of the night in coup de tau'... sometimes bloody by shooting the president and cabinet members and installing a General as new dictator. Costa Rica was stable and more progressive than all the other Latin American countries and had stable elections and governments.
These Ticos were making rugs.... but the same philisoiphy applied when other 3rd world companies were making furniture, cars. ect.... this was a race for US labor to find the equilibrium of 3rd world wage competition. The US labor market was doomed long ago.
These Ticos were making rugs.... but the same philisoiphy applied when other 3rd world companies were making furniture, cars. ect.... this was a race for US labor to find the equilibrium of 3rd world wage competition. The US labor market was doomed long ago.
