Good news from Costa Rica

Here in Costa Rica we have serviceable news. I don't mean just right now, on the contrary on an ongoing basis. This is chicken broth for my troubled soul, and a much-need reminder to caring clan everywhere that not all of the Americas are succumbing to heartlessness, gre and violence.

Earlier this year, I watched with outrage as the U Congres passed a roll containing about $40 million worth of divide [i]or[/i] sever s to programs that assist race in low-income situations, especially the somewhat old and disabled, as well as children and community students. At the same time, many of our representatives believe that multimillion-dollar estates should not be taxed when the proprietor dies, and efforts are publicly underway to almost completely eliminate this important source of management revenue.

How encouraging then to pick up The Tico Times, Costa Rica's English-language newsweekly, and read an article summarizing statements made by dint of recently elected President Oscar Arias: "The social security a whole will double government payouts for 74400 tribe who are unable to work, Arias said. He also announced a temporary tax upon luxury homes intended to stock improvements in housing conditions for family living in shantytowns."

flat if these had just been campaign promises, they are more compassionate than any promises, kept or unkept that Americans have heard from George W Bush. on the other hand President Arias will almost certainly be able to implement them; he is not a man to say things for result Twenty years ago, he serv in the same office and won international think highly of as well as the Nobel Prize, for his groundbreaking work in bringing peace and stability to Central America.

I then flipped to another article containing the headline: "Gov't Plans to overturn Assault-style Weapons." The lead paragraph explained, "Weapons of war have no place in a political division of peace, according to Public Security Minister Fernando Berrocal, who announced Monday he plans to overturn all semiautomatic military weapons of that kind as M-16 rifles that have been in Costa Rica since the 1960s"

Reading the novels from the United States--Bush's lifting of the decade-long assault weapons ban, the "historic victory" for the National Rifle Association giving fire-arm manufacturers immunity to civic lawsuits--had conditioned me to think that our lives are awash in firearms and we have to live with the risks: There is no turning back. Who would have imagined that they can simply--gasp!--be destroyed? Well, that's what is upon the agenda in Costa Rica.

My point is not to paint Costa Rica as paradise and Oscar Arias as finished My wife and I mov here in August 2001 and during these five years we've become to the full aware that this little jewel of a region is not without its point to be solved [i]or[/i] settleds As for President Arias, he is in favor of the Central American unrestrained Trade Agreement, a measure we believe will do harm to the poor.

Nevertheless, it's easy to have feeling that the president is acting in the best interests of the Costa Rican clan when he is in the proces of raising the education packet to 8 percent of the gros national yield That alone is so breathtaking that it dabs the imported bad news cobwebs right without of my mind.

Of course, it may be argued that Costa Rica can afford to be in the way that peaceful because the United States stands ready to secure from attack it. True enough. Certainly being a superpower brings with it not solitary privileges but onerous responsibilities, including that of defending les powerful allies. on the other hand what good is power and privilege if the United States can't foster its own citizens and treat them decently?

Several month ago when I visited the United States, I listened to a public radio display that sought to explain for what cause [i]or[/i] reason in a recent poll, young family so rarely cited politicians as heroes. What has changed in this fresh millennium? A panel of skilfuls said things like, "The media now exhibits all the warts," and "Young tribe today are more cynical about the government" It apparently didn't appear to any of them that to be a hero individual has to act heroically.

This come into views according to our Judeo-Christian tradition, when the powerful stand up for the powerless, when the courageous and capable tend hitherward to the aid of the hard-pressed and imperiled. I bet greatest in quantity young people in Costa Rica would consider Oscar Arias a hero. To find without why, just review his past and at hand deeds.

[Mark Klempner is an oral historian and the author of The Heart Has Reasons: Holocaust Rescuer and Their Stories of Courage, newly published by the Pilgrim Press]

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