Ticos: A People of Contradictions

Ticos are a mysterious people. Just when I think that I’ve got them pinned down, they surprise me with new behavior. I am finishing my second year in country, and am yet to fully understand them. I try not to make generalizations about Ticos, but have found it to be impossible. When an individual is integrated so completely into a culture, one cannot help but pick up on patterns. As I begin to close my service here in Costa Rica, I have found Ticos to have a fantastic culture. However, it is one riddled with contradictions that have made Ticos difficult to understand.

The most prominent contradiction that I have observed relates to the way women are treated in Tico culture. Having seen the detrimental effects of the “machista” way of life on women here, I have grown to appreciate the equal opportunities women are granted in the United States. The machista culture instills in the minds of young girls and women the idea that they are not deserving of all the educational, professional and cultural opportunities that males are entitled to. I know that this is not unique to Latino culture, or that of any other country. However, it is difficult for me to see my brightest female students hindered by teenage pregnancy, abusive male figureheads and a status quo that expects them to stay in the home.

I discovered the detrimental effects of sexism in Tico life early on in my service, and let it embitter me. I resented Ticos for being so shortsighted and obtuse in their perspective. But then I began to notice a glaring difference between a public, macro treatment of women, and the private, micro attitude that I had initially observed. What first caught my attention was the large amount of professional women that I work with. Granted, I am working in institutions of education and social work; however, I saw that women were not only included in the workplace, they oftentimes ran it. I noticed that the directors of most of the schools in the area were women. The director of the Puntarenas PANI office is a woman, as are most of her subordinates. What really piqued my attention took place this past June, when a woman named Laura Chinchilla won the leading party’s primary to become the current frontrunner for next month’s presidential elections. If trends continue, the next Tico president will be a woman! How does that happen in a culture that has been traditionally machista?

The only sense that I have been able to make of such a discrepancy is that I have been living in the most impoverished population of Costa Rica. When I meet wealthier families in Escazu, I don’t see teenage pregnancy or stay at home wives. So is wealth the golden ticket? Does the amount of opportunity for women increase with the size of the family bank account?

In short, yes. In my opinion (and I do not think that I am the first to say it), the more money one’s family has, the higher their level of education. With education comes open mindedness and a pattern of planning. This means that a teenage girl knows to use condoms, because her parents have spoken with her about them. This means that a young girl will do her homework because her father in helping her because he has the time to, and wants her to live a life of continued wealth. Don’t get me wrong, there are outliers: wealthy denigrated women and poor empowered ones. However, my observation has been that the poorer the population, the less opportunity there is for girls and women.




The strangest contradictions that I observe in Tico culture stem from the Catholic Church. For all intents and purposes, Ticos are Catholic. It is the proud national religion; most people go to church on Sundays with great joy and enthusiasm. What has made me scratch my head is that Catholicism is so ingrained in the culture, yet much behavior of Ticos does not reflect Catholic values. For example, it is illegal to get an abortion in Costa Rica. This is a clear reflection of the Catholic way of life on Tico public policy. However, prostitution is legal here. Not only is it legal, but it is unregulated. I may be wrong, but I think that such a policy stands in stark contrast to Catholic values. I am yet to understand the thought process that brought such a contradiction to be.

I once had a hilarious conversation with a fellow teacher at the school. She was hosting an American student studying abroad in Puntarenas. Having observed the study abroad students, she snapped her fingers and said to me “los estudiantes gringos son muy PROMISCUOUS!” She told me of how she had seen the study abroad students dancing in the bars and having sex on the beach. She snapped her fingers again when she told me about the giant bulk box of condoms she had found in her guest’s room. I told her that it was true, American college students do like their casual sex. I told her though that after college, we Americans usually calm down a bit and eventually start families. She furrowed her brow and said “huh! You Americans have a lot of sex, then get married, then have children. Us Ticos, we do it the other way around!” I laughed until I got stitches in my sides.

After I caught my breath, I realized that she wasn’t kidding. Most Ticos do have sex and children out of wedlock. Most couples that I know don’t even get married, they simply cohabitate, which eventually becomes a “Union Libre.” What puzzles me is that such a Catholic people could create such a pattern. Could it be that my American conception of Catholic law is different from the Tico paradigm? Is this okay by Tico Catholic standards? In a country that finds the church valuable enough to influence its laws, how is it that basic rules of marriage are sidestepped? I do not make judgment on the Tico family structure; I wonder why the contradiction exists.




Costa Rica is considered by the entire world to be an environmentally friendly nation. All foreigners who visit these shores expect Costa Rica to surpass the green initiatives of their countries. They expect recycling, clean air, clean water and the preservation of all of the wildlife that their native countries have already purged by their eco-unfriendly ways. For the most part, their expectations are met because they are usually escorted to the tourist villages that dot the Costa Rican map. They usually interact with Ticos who are in the tourism industry, and other tourists. What most visitors do not see is the average Tico town.

In the average Tico town, littering is not unusual or discouraged. I have seen people on the beaches of Puntarenas bring bags of trash from their homes, and heave them into the ocean. My town does not recycle. Following Tico tradition, many Ticos burn their trash. In the past, this was the only way to get rid of it. So even though my town gets trash pick-up twice a week, people still burn huge piles of plastic and chemicals, releasing untold amounts of carcinogens into the air.

I am not trying to tarnish the Ticos’ green reputation. They do have an unusually small carbon footprint and are successful conservationists. I just noticed that there is a discord between the policies of Costa Rica and the behavior of its people.

One of Costa Rica’s green policies is unrivaled in its dedication to preserve its unique biodiversity: its national park system. As I mentioned in a previous blog, about a quarter of all Costa Rican land is protected. The Costa Rican government is wise in protecting such land; it is this land that tourists fly thousands of miles to see. However, two trends are likely to threaten the protected and unprotected natural beauty of Costa Rica: development and population booms.

Costa Rica is a small country with a small population. About four million people live in Costa Rica and about three million of those live in the densely populated Central Valley. This means that Costa Rica can afford to devote a quarter of its land to preservation. When there are few people who depend on that land for farming or developing, fencing it off is easy. A fellow volunteer once asked me the million dollar question: what happens in a few years when the population doubles?

Costa Rica is a very different country now as opposed to twenty years ago. It is becoming developed and more crowded. Thousands of foreign expatriates live here and tens of thousands of tourists visit each year. In the past several years, the country has been infused with tourist money which it has used to develop itself. With new roads, new hotels and even new towns, more land is being cleared. The writing on the wall says that Costa Rica has only just begun to grow.

So if the population keeps growing at such an exponential rate, how long will Costa Rica be able to keep its eco-friendly stamp? I do not know. However, I do know that one simple product can alleviate the problem: the condom. Families here are huge. The size of the families here has little to do with the church or the country’s obsession with babies; it is the absence of family planning.

Planned pregnancies here are rare; most happen because of a lack of knowledge regarding contraception. This phenomenon can be changed via education. A case-in-point is the role of the condom in America. My generation may be the first to come to expect condom use. In college, if two people were having sex, it was assumed that they were using condoms or birth control pills. My parents’ generation was not the same way. The generation before? Forget about it.

I feel that when I teach condom use in my community, its benefits are twofold: protecting people from unwanted pregnancy and disease, and protecting the environment. If Costa Rica can plan pregnancies, it can remain a small country. If it can remain a small country, its natural beauty should remain safe. If the population continues to burgeon, who knows what will happen to the protected areas?

Ticos are full of contradictions. But what people are not? I am from a country that is “fighting war for peace.” France prides itself on its lack of dirty coal energy, yet has several of its nuclear plants on its border, upwind of Germany. So I guess Ticos are fairly normal in their culture of contradictions. I just thought that it may be a good idea to acknowledge them in order to learn from them.