>to what extent did the US, the emerging global capitalist class, and their
>IMF and World Bank influence the Costa Rican elites in this direction? was
>this linked to the creation of a standing army in Costa Rica?
>
>inquiring minds want to know...
>
>Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
In 1989, Costa Rica owed 4 billion dollars to imperialist banks. In
exchange for a "Brady Plan" that would re-schedule payments through the
IMF, Oscar Arias helped the United States force concessions from the
Sandinistas. At the time Costa Rica was often held up as an alternative to
Nicaraguan "communism", but its growing integration into global markets
have lowered living standards and wreaked havoc with the rain forests.
===
The Toronto, April 29, 2000, Saturday, Edition 1
SORDID CHILD SEX TRADE BOOMS IN COSTA RICA
By Glenn Garvin
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica - The two little girls, arms folded across their
chests to ward off the unseasonable chill of the night, eye the pair of
tall gringos speculatively, then offer tentative smiles.
''You look like you might be looking for something," says one. ''You look
like you might want to buy something."
''Like what?" says the man asked, glancing around the deserted downtown
street.
''Like us," the girl says.
Both kids dissolved in giggles. Then the older one looks up, her face
solemn. ''Thirty dollars for my little sister, 15 for me," she says.
Meet Stephanie, 12, and Ivette, 13, two members of a fast-growing Costa
Rican work force: child prostitutes. The country that prides itself as
Latin America's most stable democracy and the inventor of ecotourism is
becoming the hemisphere's best-known playground for pedophiles.
Every night, as many as 2,000 underage prostitutes walk the streets of San
Jose or cater to more affluent clients behind the walls of stately homes
converted into brothels in the city's best neighbourhoods, according to an
organization that deals with the problem at an international level.
Other children take off their clothes to pose for lewd pictures that will
be passed around the Internet - which, until last year, wasn't even a crime
in Costa Rica.
The problem has been developing for years. The World Congress Against
Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, in 1996, and the United Nations
Human Rights Committee, last year, both issues reports on it.
Now, the boom is being fed by tough new laws in the United States that
target pedophiles; a crackdown in Asia, the traditional child sex
capital of the world; and the Internet, which has made it easier for
pedophiles to swap information.
''I know, I know - the image of Costa Rica is that we're very
well-educated, very refined, with close-knit families, little poverty,
hardly any illiteracy, no crime, the Switzerland of Central America," says
a bitter Magda Ramirez de Castro, a counsellor who works with child
prostitutes.
''All that is a myth. Maybe it was true 10 years ago, but it's not now."
Costa Rica is finding it hard to support the welfare state it built when
foreign aid rolled in as regularly as the tide. The result is increasing
poverty (more than 27 per cent of the population) and disintegrating
families (41 per cent of all children are born to single mothers).
Prostitution is legal here, but the minimum age is 18. Sexual contact of
any kind with a child under 15 is illegal. Nevertheless, Costa Rica's
commerce in juvenile sex is blatant and out of control. Anyone with eyes
can see it - from the teenage hookers who scurry around the lobby of the
downtown Holiday Inn, conferring with bellboys about likely customers, to
the taxi drivers who seemingly know the address of every brothel in town.
''It's not just that the government is not trying hard enough to solve this
problem," snaps Lilliam Gomez, Costa Rica's chief sex crimes prosecutor.
''Parts of the government are actually promoting this. We have
advertisements for escort services in our own tourist brochures. Escort
services! For God's sake! What are we doing here?"
Stephanie and Ivette are part of a group of about two dozen kids - half of
them boys - who can be found on a downtown street corner almost every night.
Ivette was bundled up in a jacket, but Stephanie was dressed like a tiny
doll version of a hooker, in red hot pants and a halter top.
The girls say they've been working as prostitutes for a year, since they
were 11 and 12.
Even then, they weren't the youngest on the corner. That would be
9-year-old Iliana, who left home after being repeatedly sexually molested
by an uncle.
Ivette and Stephanie view their work matter-of-factly. Ivette says she's
been with ''a ton" of men in the past year.
''Am I happy? Well, the men are happy afterwards. Me, I just do it for the
money, to help my parents."
Asked what kind of jobs her parents have, she replies softly: ''Me."
Both still live at home. In other Latin American countries, child
prostitution is practised mainly by street kids. In Costa Rica, the
overwhelming majority of the children go home to their families, according
to a U.N. study in 1999.
Most of the child prostitutes begin before their 12th birthday and 82 per
cent were sexually abused at home before turning to prostitution, according
to the United Nations.
Louis Proyect
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