Costa Rica 2: Religion

According to a national survey conducted by University of Costa Rica in 2007, 75.5 percent of the population define themselves as Roman Catholics (44.9 percent are practicing, 25.6 percent are non-practicing), apart from it, Evangelical Protestant are 13.8 percent, Non-Religious are 11.3 percent.
      
"Catholic, Apostolic, and Romanic Religion is the official religion of the Republic"; it is specified in the Article 75 of the Costa Rican Constitution. On the other hand, the country also respects freedom of religion that is written in the same article. Since Catholic is recognised as a state religion by the constitution, it has a strong influence on politics and economy (University of Costa Rica, 2007, http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2008/108520.htm).

Aside from the dominant influence of Catholic church, Costa Rica also holds Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopal, Baptist and some other Protestant groups as well as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh-day Adventists. Regarding non Christian religion, there are Judaism, Islam, Taoism, Hare Krishna, Scientology, Tenrikyo as well as animism believed by indigenous people (University of Costa Rica, 2007, http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2008/108520.htm).

(Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Los Ángeles, in Cartago in November 2010)

Costa Rica 1: Language, Culture and Music

Costa Rica's primary language is Spanish. Aside from it, indigenous people speak their own languages such as "Bribri", "Maléku", "Cabécar" and Ngäbere languages. Some indigenous languages have several thousands speakers while others such as "Teribe" and "Boruca" have hundreds. Jamaican Patois of Creole-English is spoken in the Caribbean coast (Native Languages of the Americas website, 1998, http://www.native-languages.org/costarica.htm). 

    
Costa rica's culture is basically influenced by Spain and recent years by United States. The most typical and the most frequently used Costa Rican word could be "pura vida (pure life)". It was first used after the release of a Mexican movie titled "pura vida" , it is now widely used for greetings and farewell. This word best shows the spirit of Costa Ricans in presenting a "philosophy of strong community, perseverance, resilience in overcoming difficulties with good spirits, enjoying life slowly, and celebrating good fortune of magnitudes small and large alike" (National Motto, 1996,

http://www.costarica.com/culture/national-symbols/).

    

Regarding Costa Rican folk music, since Caribbean side has African descendent population, it also influences strongly on music. Likewise other part of Central America, marimba is popular and widely used in their traditional music. Pre-Colombian era also has an effect on traditional music in terms of "rare music scales", "certain ceremonial songs" and "ocarinas". In the Guanacaste region is the origin of these music. Ocarina is an ancient traditional instrument, and recent years, accordions and guitars are getting more used (Wikipedia, 2011). African influenced music is found in Atlantic coast. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_Costa_Rica)

 (Beautiful Quetzal in El Mirador de Quetzales in February 2011)

Internship 2: The target indigenous reserve "Quitirrisi"

My research area is the Quitirrisi reserve in Canton de Mora. 

I belong to el Cantonal Centre de Cultura de Mora (CCC) to do this research and internship since it is located in the same canton as the Quitirrisi reserve and the organisation includes indigenous culture and music in their project as well.

  

As the map below shows, there are 22 indigenous reserves in Costa Rica. And the reserve Quitirrisi is located near the capital San Jose (see No. 3). 

(From Horizontes Nature Tour Costa Rica http://www.horizontes.com/eng/hc_indigenous.php)

The name of the reserve: Quitirrisi

The name of the target group: Huetar   
Main Industry: Handicrafts with local plants.

Language: Spanish.

Land: 2,000 hectares in Canton de Mora, San José Province, central region was given in  1976.

People: mostly Huetar people together with other immigrants (also in neaby big city Puriscal). 400 children and young people, going to local-only school, foodball in mud land.

Problems: 

-Unemployment due to no industry around there. 

-Poor land to cultivate as well. 

-Many people migrate to the city to have stable life. Aside from that, many people travel to San Jose to work. 

-To maintain an oral history and pass the traditions of their indigenous ancestors to the new generations.

-Lands are not well constructed, for example landlides occurred in 2010.

Key People: community leaders and teachers in the community working hard to educate the children of Quitirrisí to respect and preserve their cultural traditions.

(Also refer http://www.worldconnect-us.org/blog/tag/environment/)

Quitirrisí is a rural community located in Canton de Mora, San José Province, central region. Its name comes from two well-known trees in the area; Quitirrí, that blooms once a year in the mountains of this community, and Risi, equally common in the local flora.

In this region, 1,500 different groups settled with various socio-cultural features, some are farmers and others are recognised as the descendants of indigenous or native peoples. Especially the huetares, one of the indigenous groups established in the region long before the arrival and the process of conquest by Spain.
     
Quitirrisí is legally recognized by the Costa Rican government as an indigenous territory, where a group of people claiming that their origin is Huetar. The main and their traditional industry is making handicrafts with local plants. The indigenous language was left to speak for two centuries, the result of the process of Western domination; particularly, the Spanish conquest, which used a variety of mechanisms to disrupt and fragment the world of Huetar culture.
     
Today, it is recognised that the effort of some of its inhabitants reclaiming the roots of their culture as Huetar; obviously, it seeks for coexistance with patterns and elements of Western society in Costa Rica. In some mountains, plants and animals keep names linked to the Huetar language still such as names of ancient chieftains.      

1976 is remembered as a turning point because the indigenous territory was created by the government. It was then the territory of 2,000 hectares was assigned to the people of this cultural group. But the land was actually deforested and eroded.

Although this area has been exclusively for use of indigenous peoples, it is also inhabited by immigrants from other regions of central Mexico. Especially in the canton of Mora and Puriscal, those immigrants have a strong presence in central rural culture of Costa Rica. Regarding the minority population, it is estimated that about 400 children and young people that live in this community, scattered in different neighborhoods distant from each other. They congregate especially near "local-only" school. For school-age population, they practice football in a "mud pasture".
     
Quitirrisí is a humble community but the large number of population are facing being poor, since there is no opportunities for being employed in the area. The poor condition of the land prevents from having sustainable agricultural for those people. A little care with the social policies conducted by the government could offer real alternatives for local growth. The current situation unless it changes, a high instability for the people will last and at the end that promotes those people to migrate to the city or at least commute every day to work from distant and unstable area of indigenous people.
(http://aderhac.org/areas_historia_q.html)

Internship 1. The aim of the internship.

As some of last entries mentioned, I am currently working on indigenous music for the awareness of their human rights through music.

In many countries, similar trend is occurring especially when young generations are moving out from their own village to urban areas to look for better life opportunities. In this process, traditional music is not just loosing the ones who inherit and convey to generations to enerations, moreover disrespecting their own culture because people tend to admire urbanised" rather than their own traditional one without thinking. 

     

As known, music is not the only subject that this phenomena is affecting, but development in general encompasses the same tendency because this term "development" is believed to be free marketisation and urbanisation. There, problem of "framing" is located, we all are blindly perceiving these elements as criteria of development; however, marketisation and urbanisation cannot be the only solutions; particularly for those of who were born in remote areas where it has a fascinating cultural heritage. They do not always have to sacrifice their culture in the name of "development" if there is a way to change the mindset of current trends in terms of development and to realise encouraging and empowering with what already exists such as traditional culture often found in remote areas. That can also be the means of development. 

  

Another problem can be found where minority's human rights are marginalised by the majority in the name of development. To tackle this issue, many county legislated law regarding protection of indigenous people; thus, repossessing tangible heritage such as regaining their traditional domains which were taken by majorities are being completed little by litte. However, the protection of intangible cultural heritage is not widely observed and is not often treated equally as other aspects.  

  

In this light, there needs to be implemented the system for minorities to protect intangible cultural heritage not to be victimised by the current trend of development as in marketisation, urbanisation as well as human rights issues. My internship will focus on establishing the system mentioned above through promoting "intangible cultural heritage"of indigenous group of people. 

    

In order to work towards the given issues, following can be focal points;  

1. To foster mindset of respecting indigenous people's culture as a right to possess and to nurture in order not to be marginalised;

2. To find the way to raise indigenous people's income;

3. To encourage younger generations to easily inherit and convey to next generations;

    and

4. To diffuse information and situation it domestically and internationally to further expand

    respect for their human rights.

What's new about Azur Indian?

Since last October, we have been struggling to seek for how to shift our music project for the setting of aid recipient county such as Costa Rica due to re-location of the project from Japan to there and re-transformation of the its schemes.

And finally we reached a point where we found our focus shifting towards protecting minority's rights through form of art.

From the perspective of peace studies and development, there are still many issues regarding abuse of human rights. Minorities such as foreign-descendant group and indigenous group can be the victims of its abuse of rights in many cases. Most of the times, their rights are vulnerable and put aside, that has to always depend on the decision made by majorities. Thus, in order to make their livelihood better, there needs from legislation by the authority to grass-root support or raising awareness by ordinal majority citizens.

To tackle this given issue, our focus will be set towards protection of indigenous intangible cultural asset: music in order to raise awareness on this issue. It needs both top down and bottom up strategy, and since we are doing grass-root activity, we will take bottom up task in this regard.

In order to make an intangible asset visible and preserve it, it first needs a way to be seen as a tangible way like transcription of their music in order to
1. preserve
2. disseminate to generation to generation as well as other entities or individuals who are willing to be involved to play their music.
Therefore, first we will work on transcription then disseminate it to general citizens through our performance as well as the means of social media.

We will keep updating in this blog, so please check it out!
 
Currently, I (Midori) am back in Manila to continue the rest of the courses for master's degree.

I will come back to Costa Rica in the beginning of July then start internship working for above indigenous issues through music.

I am looking forward to seeing you all again in Costa Rica!

Pura vida para todos!

Entry : Midori

Thank you very much for coming to our charity concert 31 March, 2011

Thank you very much for all coming to our Charity concert held on the 31st March. Supported by Nelly and Club Union, we successfully conducted a concert with don Oscar.

The programme was divided into two parts; the first part was classical music and the second part was full of tango with don Oscar.

As for the first part, it was enjoyable as usual to play especially both of Antarqui and I are more and more used to play these pieces. I feel that we are getting more capable to insert our own understanding to the performance.

As for the second part, it was a new fresh experiment in terms of playing tango with someone else! Don Oscar is a distinguish bandounion player. We had a lot to learn from him from tango perspective of playing music.

(Bandounion and Cello duet)

This charity concert was initially to raise fund for kids victims of violence in Costa Rica; however Japan was affected by catastrophic disaster recently, we also asked audiences to support Japan.

(The performance with don Oscar was really new to us. I fell in love with Tango!)

Thanks to all the warm support, we collected extra US$200 to donate to a grass root support group "Oga for Aid" that is helping people in isolated areas in Miyagi prefecture, Japan where I (Midori) come from. See this : https://www.facebook.com/#!/OGAFORAID

I just hope that we can rebuild our country as soon as possible as well as caring for psychologically affected victims. I hope Azur Indian will have a chance to perform for those people in the near future.

(Just before the concert started...are we both nervous a bit??)

The concert was truly enjoyable to have our friends and family. Some people started dancing, some started crying for nostalgie, some fell in love with tango!

Thank you again for all to share this memorable moment with us!
We hope to see you all in near future!

Thank you all for coming!

University for Peace Model UN Closing Ceremony 5 March, 2011

Three-day Model UN was held at University for Peace. During these days, we acted as if we were in a real UN committee. I myself was a bloger, so I was attending 5 conferences (Security Council, UN Women, Peace Building, Environment, Human Rights) taking pictures and writing articles.

At the end of 3-day, Azur Indian was given a chance to play music at the closing ceremony to congratulate our success and participants' effort. Thanks for UPMUNC committee to have given us a chance!

This time we played with a violinist Sara Ford (IPS student) for the second time (see entry  "University for Peace 30th Anniversary" which was the first time to play with Sara and Azur Indian) played various kind of music, from classic to Costa Rican ones.

Applause for everyone who participated in UPMUNC! And great thanks for the committee!