Independence Day

September 16^th, 2012

“Bajo el límpido azul de tu cielo ¡vivan siempre el trabajo y la paz!

These are the last lines of the Costa Rican national anthem, a song I must have heard three times a day for the past  two weeks, and for those of you who are curious, I will save you the time of pasting the lyric into a translator:

“Under the unsullied blue of your sky, may labor and peace ever live”

Ask anyone who has lived in Costa Rica to describe Ticos and I bet that 'proud' will be one of the first words out of their mouth.  Its true.  Most of the pride is justified; Costa Ricans have a lot to be proud of: gorgeous white sand beaches, magnificent waterfalls cascading into turquoise pools, virgin rain forests protected by an unbelievable number of National Parks and Refuges, and, of course, some of the best surfing in the world.  Not only is it a country graced by nature, the small country is rich with culture that has been shaped by a very unique history, but I don't really like history so I'm not going to go into that.  The important part is that for many years they were the forgotten stepsister of the Spanish empire, and on September 15^th, they were declared free.  Now, the entire first half of September is devoted to celebrating Costa Rica's independence, a small but proud country. 

Everyday this month, we have “Acto Civico” at school, which was basically just an assembly.  The PE area (a concrete floor sheltered by a tall tin roof)  was transformed into a stage  adorned in red white and blue, where they started by carrying out the Costa Rican flag and the flag of Guanacaste, before playing the nation anthems.  I couldn't help but notice the considerable increase of enthusiasm while the students and teachers sang the anthem of Guanacaste after the anthem of Costa Rica.  In my short time here I have come to understand that Guanacaste dreams of becoming an independent nation, but  its merely that, a dream.  Costa Ricans are peaceful, shown by their lack of army, and will generally do anything just to avoid confrontations. Guanacastecos are no exception, and declaring independence would not be “pura vida.”  The rest of the celebrations were rather boring and lasted about an hour and a half.  Teachers spoke and students read aloud but unfortunately I understood very little while they were speaking so I can't say much about what they were presenting.

The two days leading up to it are kind of like their own holidays.  The 13^th is Día de la Antorcha, and the 14^th is something to do with Faroles.  We were all supposed to go up to Nicaragua as a school to meet the torch on the 13^th and then run it down to Belen, but unfortunately the earthquake kinda ruined most of the festivities.  I guess that some of the schools in Filidelfia got hit pretty hard and some of the them were still being fixed so they couldn't go, and since they weren't going we couldn't go either.   There seemed to be a lot of holes in this logic to me, and maybe it was just the holes in what I can understand, but I don't think so.  Instead, we just hung out at school and watched as the torch went past.  It was still pretty cool though, quite a procession.  It began with ambulances, fire trucks, and police cars all with their sirens blasting.  Then a huge group of kids with their faces painted with flags ran carrying the torch.  Next came a mob of bikers decked out head to toe in red, white and blue, and finally just a bunch of random cars who felt riding behind the torch.  But these cars were decked out!  They were covered in flags and had huge speakers strapped to the roofs blasting music.  You could still hear the “parade” long after it had past and disappeared out of sight.

On Friday night my brother and I drove down to Santa Ana, the little town I live outside of, where a crowd of people had gathered on the soccer field.  It was a pretty small pack as we started walking around the town, but the farther we walked the more people joined, and in no time at all our small group had grown to over 500 people.  Our journey led us around the soccer field, into one of the barrios and around the dirt roads in there, up past my house, and onto a little dirt road that wound its way through the cow fields and eventually looped its way back to the soccer field.  All of the kids had made little paper lanterns which supplied us with all the light we needed and made the parade look spectacular, but by the end most of the candles had tipped over and the lanterns were completely on fire making the whole thing even more crazy!  Everything was incredibly loud.  I mean I knew that Ticos were loud, but this was unbelievable.  Basically anything ythey had around the house that could make loud noises, they had brought.  People were banging on everything from actual drums, to just random pots and pans; there were even a few girls with xylophones.  Add in the kazoos and whistles, and you had quite a ruckus!  On top of that, they were all yelling and shouting and singing!  I may be partially deaf now, but everyone had so much energy and that made it so much fun! 

Saturday was supposed to be the big, important day that all of this was leading up to.  There was going to be a big something, though what I didn't understand.  We had been practicing marching for almost a month, but I guess they felt like it was still to soon after the earthquake and postponed it until November 30^th so I guess I'll just have to wait to solve that mystery.