The area mushroom dwellings, where Luis lives, stretches for miles and miles towards the south and west of the capital. I have contacted this truck driver to find out something about his way of life before setting off with him on a routine journey to the border that divides Nicaragua and Costa Rica. He phones to ask me to be punctual because he wants to attend a neighborhood meeting afterwards. “We’ve found fecal coliforms in the water of these houses and want to complain to the municipality,” he explains. “But don’t worry – now we’re cooking with the bottled water from the supermarket.” Luis’ neighbors have noticed that the rivers and water sources are becoming increasingly dirty and polluted. “I can still remember when you could catch fish in the rivers of San Jose,” I tell him, recalling the good old days when the city had fewer than half a million inhabitants. “Now the only thing you can fish out is the corpse of some drug-dealer or coliforms from thousands of squatters and slums,” Luis replies.
There are several large housing projects on the city’s south side: parts of Desamparados and Pavas; Paso Ancho, San Sebastian, and of course, the eleven densely populated Hatillos. This sprawling district of San Jose began to develop back in the 1970’s, thanks to housing plans drawn up by the National Housing and Urban Planning Institute (INVU), when the government was forced to accommodate the growing tide of rural migrants who began to inundate the cities, attracted by industrialization and the growth of the state apparatus, which in turn saturated us with bureaucrats. The President of Costa Rica at that time opposed birth control and roundly condemned family planning programs as a weapon of Yankee imperialism. This deluded politician believed that developed countries had an interest in maintaining Third World countries subjugated, as if strength lay in numbers. Nowadays he is involved in eco-tourism and complains of how the poor pollute his country and spoil the hotel of his dreams.
The Catholic Church formed part of the alliance against population control. Catholicism has long been a staunch opponent of recreational sex and family planning. In one sense we could say that it does so on the basis of biblical interpretations. But the Church has always been ready to do things differently when it suits it. The Bible strictly forbids usury. Before the fifteenth century, it was sin to lend money and charge interest. Now the Vatican controls hundreds of banks. Like Costa Rican politicians – all good Catholics, to be sure – the Catholic Church dreams of numbers. It wants more and more Catholics. It is what is known as Christian demographic terrorism: “natural” growth.
Prosperity and the demands of an entrepreneurial and inefficient, corrupt state, did not necessarily reach everyone. And so, the area on the fringes of the city ended up with a name that is still uttered with a certain air of contempt: the southern districts”, though their inhabitants are not dispossessed but form a large part of Costa Rica’s once thriving middle-class. Here you find everything: office workers, bank clerks, secretaries, university students and truck drivers…like Luis.
Luis moved to Hatillo 8 from his native town of Alajuela, when his job – first as a chauffeur for a company in San Jose and later as a truck driver – enabled him to buy a home for his family – or his future family – because at the time there was just him and his wife. “I married very young because that’s what all men were supposed to do,” he says with a certain nostalgia. “The church puts the idea into your head that you should do it early to settle down and because it’s a divine mandate”, he confesses doubtfully. “Also, I wanted to leave home because my father was authoritarian and…had a preference for my sisters,” he adds in a low voice.
Luis and his wife Katia are fervent Catholics. He believes that God in is heaven and sees everything. When he can, Luis attends Sunday mass with his wife. “For me, hearing the word of God and the priest’s sermon is like food for the soul,” he confesses. “When I’m sad and tired of things I turn to Him.” Luis tells us that his wife is even more devout. She is a faithful follower of the Virgin Mary, from whom she seeks “spiritual guidance”. So much so, that she implores the Virgin to help her country’s rivers and flora. “She’s convinced that the fecal coliforms were put these by the devil to remind us that we have strayed from God’s path.” Katia watches all religious programs on the various national TV channels. “I’m a fan of Father Minor”, she says proudly. “He’s rather effeminate, but he has a great heart. He himself told us that we should fight for clean water and that we shouldn’t be taken in by government officials.”
The couple bought one of those houses that form part of the great housing conglomerate built by the INVU in the area of the Hatillos. To reach their house, I had to cross a part of the “Circumvalacion” or “Beltway”, the four-lane highway that borders the city of San Jose. This road took twenty years to complete, after the prosperity of Costa Rica’s industrial boom turned to crisis. I wonder how a relatively small road could take so long to build. The bus driver who has visited Miami with a travel club tells me that larger roads have been built over there in less than a month. “When they finally finished this beltway, it wasn’t any use. The city had grown ten times,” he recalls with exasperation. “With all that money they spent, we could have built a road to Mars and back.”
The “Periferica” – the bus service that plies the route along the beltway – pulls in at the bus stop. I get off and head for Luis’ house. I have been given an address that is typical of this country: “From where the El Pez meat store used to be, 50 meters north and 300 meters south.” “Luis, how will I know where the meat store was if it’s no longer there?” I inquire. “Don’t worry,” he reassures me, “everyone in the neighborhood knows. Just ask when you get there.” Costa Rica is famous for its peculiar way of navigating around the city. Some foreigners despair when they are given directions from buildings that were demolished twenty years ago. Others become exasperated when they discover that the streets have no numbers, and when they do have them, nobody knows them. “It’s impossible to get your bearings in this city,” an American friend once remarked. “It’s built in such a way that nobody can meet.”
From the highway I walk down the roads inside the Hatillos, a labyrinth of asphalt that traverses an equally labyrinthine tangle of houses and buildings. It occurs to me that one must live here to avoid getting lost. Going from one street to the next, from one apartment block to another, I was supposed to find a place that no longer exists. “Excuse me ma’am, can you tell me where the El Pez meat store used to be?” I ask a little old lady. I feel sure she will remember. “Yes, young man, it’s three blocks from where the old fire station used to be, by the public telephones.”
One of the characteristics associated with Latin masculinity is that men cannot ask directions. It is a shameful admission of ignorance and vulnerability. It is preferable to get lost for hours than to accept ignorance for a moment. However, I prefer to call Luis and ask him to meet me. After all, it’s his fault for giving me such absurd directions. I decide to call Luis from a public phone so he can collect me. “Where are you?” His voice betrays a certain degree of irritation at my uselessness. “I’m at the public phone that’s three blocks from the old fire station, near the old meat store.”
My guide finally arrives. He is a young, good-looking man. I particularly notice his eyes because they are light brown, similar to the color of a cup of the famous „aguadulce’ (sugar-water). Though he carries a pack of cigarettes, his large white teeth are unstained by nicotine. His arms are muscular and strong, capable of loading who knows how many tons of cargo. His nose is broad and slightly upturned. His hair is black, the color of the river near his house that is a possible breeding ground for coliforms.
“Pleased to meet you,” I say, as we shake hands. “The pleasure is mine”, he replies with a warm smile. Luis looks me up and down. He appears to be a diffident man who wants to know with whom he will be traveling to the border. Though I understand his interest, I feel somewhat uncomfortable under his gaze. I always hated tests at school, fearing that sometime the teacher might punish me. “Did I pass the test?” I ask, in response to his scrutiny. “What test?” he replies.
He leads me to his house. “I didn’t expect such a young writer,” he says. “I imagined someone fat and bald.” “Well, I didn’t imagine that you’d be such an athlete. I thought you’d be pot-bellied and embittered.” “Who says I’m not embittered?” he snaps back. “It doesn’t seem likely with that smile of yours,” I argue. “Can you judge someone just by a single smile?” Luis is right. Things have gone badly for me for judging people by their smile. Showing your teeth is such an old trick that nobody should be fooled by it. Luis says that in his business, people believe that smiling at strangers is something we inherited from the apes, who do it to avoid being attacked.
The avenues in the Hatillos are pedestrian thoroughfares, closed to traffic, that lead to buildings and the homes of the people who live in the southern districts. In the INVU housing plans, these avenues were designed to provide a “breathing space” a green area, for the future residents, to compensate a little for the overcrowding and the monotonous architecture characteristic of Costa Rica’s mass urbanization in the 1970s. Despite these good intentions, the streets are filled with garbage and discarded items. Big Mac boxes are tossed alongside Burger King wrappers that once contained cherry pies. A few feet away are half a dozen empty beer cans. A wooden chair with just two legs lies abandoned nearby. All kinds of papers are scattered everywhere. The neighborhood is half-housing project, half garbage dump.
Without Luis, I would have gotten lost, so similar are the rows of avenues and their buildings: modular structures, one exactly like another. There is a succession of two-storied houses with doors facing the avenue, two windows on the first floor and two on the second, metal bars, electricity meters, and a tangle of electricity and TV cables that dangle above the heads of passers-by. However, it is the metal bars that capture my attention. Like an urban jail, every house, store and school is protected by bars. You cannot even have the windows wide open. Costa Ricans are locked up in their own homes. “We don’t need an army because we have one inside,” Luis tells me. He is right. This trucker seems more like a Third World philosopher than a driver, accustomed to struggling with the more immediate problems of poverty.
“Overcrowding is similar to being shut inside a jail”, I think to myself. Here neighbors live on top of each other. “I can hear people’s farts three doors down,” says Luis. “I hardly need to tell you that the whole neighborhood is party to arguments and sex”. Luis tells me that every time he and his wife have sex, the next day Ana, his neighbor and friend, says to his wife, “Don’t tell me, I know all about it! How was it?” The same is true of domestic violence. “Marielos, who lives on the other side, gets beaten at least once a month, and we have to listen to the screams and kicks.” According to Luis, life in the Hatillos is communal. People are so much on top of each other that they are practically suffocating. I am interested to know how people protect their intimacy. “They act dumb”, Luis explains. “But, who says dumb people don’t notice what’s going on?” I ask. “And who says they do?” he replies. This question interests me because I believe that one way we Latinos cope with material constraints is by pretending that we do not see or know what is happening beyond our fence. As Luis says, “we see people’s faces, but we don’t know what’s in their hearts.”
We finally reach the avenue where Luis lives. As we enter, I realize that official attempts to give local residents a “breathing space” have failed. The avenue remains a pedestrian thoroughfare with hardly a tree or plant in sight, the walls of buildings rising up on either side, preventing the sun’s rays from reaching the ground. “Here you plant a little tree and by the next day it’s gone,” says Luis, explaining the reasons for the empty spaces. “And how did the few remaining trees avoid the thieves?” I ask. “Perhaps they were smarter and sprouted roots in every direction, instead of concentrating them in one place, fighting to stay upright without condemning themselves to a single place”, he answers. I sense that the driver is referring to the local flora.
I can almost see inside each of the houses. Their windows face directly onto the sidewalk where we are walking, and we are only separated from the interior by the light net curtains that are an essential part of the décor of most Costa Rican middle-class homes. I can see televisions turned on and hear the shouts and conversations inside each house. I imagine what it must be like at night, when the noise of the city subsides. These mushroom dwellings, in which the government decided to house the rural masses and the growing workforce, may offer their residents many things, but certainly not intimacy. “Ana, get me a beer!” a male voice from a living room yells. The woman is in the kitchen, surrounded by a cacophony of screaming children and surely cannot hear. “Goddamn bitch! Are you deaf or what?” says the voice.
At last we arrive at Luis’ house, his spot on the avenue, in a modular “apartment” building, as he calls it, his place in the world. Like the rest of the houses, the building has two floors. On the lower floor, the large space that serves as living and dining room is filled with modular furniture and innumerable ceramic and glass ornaments that Luis’ wife has placed everywhere. The room is dominated by a large color TV that imposes its glare, and the evening news is on. “Fecal coliforms have been discovered at the Presidential House”, says the TV anchorwoman. “The President was taken ill and has cancelled a Cabinet meeting.”
Adjoining this room is the kitchen, with a small table and a small door leading to a rear patio crisscrossed with washing lines and a few plants. The bathroom is next to the stairs that lead to the second floor.
On the second floor are the bedrooms. Luis and his wife have the larger room, though it looks small because of the large size of the bed. A wedding photo sits on the night table. The bride looks slender – she must have gained about 25 pounds since then. Luis looks happy in the photo. He hasn’t gained more than five pounds, but his smile has gone. The smile I saw when I first met him can barely be compared with the photo. A crucifix hangs above the bed. I can’t help but think how difficult it must be to have sex with that on top of you. On the other night table is a photo of the child who is asleep. He is a little four-year old boy, the image of his father. “People say we’re like two peas in a pod,” Luis says proudly.
The child’s room is tiny. However, it is ready to accommodate the second child that Luis and his wife plan to have… “a pair of kids, you know…” Several photos of football teams adorn the boy’s room. From an early age, males are inculcated with a love of sports and the appropriate colors: the room is painted blue.
Luis takes a photo album out of the closet. He wants to show me his photos. Before getting married, he was a football player. I look at his collection with interest: Luis arm in arm with a group of friends, with a joy that no longer appears in his light brown eyes. “Why did you stop playing?” I ask. “Since I got married I haven’t had time for sports. Even less now that I’m a driver,” he says sadly. He tells me that football was part of his golden years and that he misses those days. “But you’re still young with a future ahead of you,” I say to cheer him up, and I pat his shoulder. “Time kills everything,” he replies. “It’s not that it kills things, but it changes them,” I answer.
In the middle of this brief therapy, his wife Katia appears. She is a pretty woman, short with a warm smile and dignified bearing. She was born in Guanacaste, near the Nicaraguan border. However, she is white-skinned and looks Spanish. She tells me that her parents came from Valencia many years ago and stayed in the country. She met Luis eight years ago and fell madly in love with him. However, they have gone through some hard times. “The problem is that men are from Mars and women are from Venus,” she explains, letting me know that she reads popular psychology books. “Luis likes to go out with his friends and I want him to stay home.”
The trucker is uncomfortable with this confession. “It’s just that women are jealous and they don’t want you to go out with your friends,” he explains. “Don’t you have pals that you go out with?” he asks me. “Not many”, I reply. “I’m also married and I like to be home.” Luis shakes his head to indicate disagreement. “Don’t take her side because it’s me you’re going to travel with,” he says half-jokingly.
I prefer to withdraw from this domestic argument and not take sides before dinner. In truth, I don’t understand how men and women can live together being so different. I too have had ups and downs with my wife. The passion I felt when I met her and that made me want to have sex often is not there anymore. I imagine the same has happened to Luis. At first there is a total ecstasy at being with your partner. Then comes the headache. Soon the imagination begins to fly. You get an erection by recalling other women you’ve seen in the street, in a movie or on TV. Finally, even these images aren’t enough to turn us on.
Now Viagra emerges as our final salvation. Despite its effectiveness, I can’t tell my wife that at the age of thirty-something I need this pill, just as an alcoholic needs a drink. Each sexual encounter has a price in dollars that I must pay to the pharmacist. I should say the pharmacists because I go to different place to buy the pills so that no one will know exactly how much I need them.
Katia, who has been warned of my visit in advance, has spent several hours preparing food, so the meal is almost ready when we arrive. I take advantage of her absence to ask Luis if he has problems in his marriage. “Don’t you think you’re going too fast?” he asks uncomfortably. “You just got here and you’re already doing family therapy.” He is right. Perhaps my intention was to find out if he was going through the same phase as me in his relationship with his wife. I wanted to know if he had to think of other women to get an erection.
Men do not talk about their erections. We do not know how to teach ourselves the art of having them frequently, unfailingly. We ought to be able to ask our fathers and grandfathers about theirs. “When I met your grandmother, I had a formidable erection,” my grandfather might say. “However, since I got married it has shrunk, like the value of money,” he would admit with sincerity. My grandmother would then add nostalgically, “they don’t make them the way they used to. In the old days, they had real erections!”
My mother, always perceptive, would tell me that there is a link between the devaluation of money and men’s erections. “If a Latin man is forced to watch as his currency is inexorably devalued, year after year --currency that somehow represents the value of his country --don’t you think that this has repercussions on his erections? Wouldn’t the men themselves feel smaller and more devalued? My father would punch me and accuse me of being disrespectful: “How dare you ask me if I can get it up or not, disgusting brat. Don’t you know it shows a lack of respect to talk about the dead?”
As I digress, I realize that I would love to know more about Luis. Does he have erections as often as he did eight years ago when he met Katia? What does he think about when he has them? Are there different types of erections, some more intense than others? Is there a connection between the loss of his erection and his smile?
Food interrupts my thoughts. Several dishes are paraded before us, the traditional “gallo pinto” (typical Costa Rican rice and beans), cheese and tortillas and an enormous pot of steaming beef stew. The traditional meal contrasts with the beverage: Coca Cola. “You put on weight when you marry, but I’ve tried to keep in shape,” says Luis. Katia interrupts him, “Luis is vain. He knows he looks great, so he takes care of himself. But I get jealous that he’s better preserved than I am.” I look at Luis and have to admit that he looks better and even younger than Katia. “We women go to seed when we have kids,” she tells me with resignation.
The meal, I imagine, proceeds as usual. After briefly asking about my reasons for being there, Luis’ wife changes the subject of the conversation to issues of vital importance to her: first a recount of what was done and not done today. This is followed by a brief analysis of the problems facing the couple at this moment: the payments on the house that is still not their own, the monthly payments on the TV and the washing machine, the electricity, water and telephone bills, “regular expenses” money (i.e. food and things for the house). It is clear that the money is barely enough to get by on. The present economic situation in the country, with an annual inflation of 12% in 1999, is making life difficult for the working class. Katia tells me that before they could afford to eat more meat than now. “They even closed the neighborhood meat store because nobody had money to buy it,” she informs me, thereby explaining what happened to El Pez. Katia says her cousin who lives in the United States spends less on food. “This country is a rip-off. Everything costs three times as much as in more developed places,” she says with indignation. Luis adds his own thoughts:” If we had access to all the money that was lent to us (the country) and was stolen, we really would be the Switzerland of Central America.”
Luis’ wife then raises a subject that, I sense, has been discussed before: the possibility of her getting a job to help out with the household expenses. However, she receives a negative response, which again, I sense has been explained earlier: if she works, who will take care of the child? What is the point of earning extra money if it goes to pay someone to look after the kid?
Katia looks rather dejected. I imagine she was looking for something more than money: getting out of the house, doing other things and making new friends. However, Luis does not want to give in. “I was taught that a woman’s place is at home,” he admits. “I can’t accept her working with other men.” Katia passes the dish of gallo pinto and seems tempted to put it on his head like a hat. “But honey, don’t you think we’d live better?” she asks timidly. The trucker will not have his arm twisted. “No way! You’re not going to work while I earn my money.”
This stance is characteristic of machismo: to deny women their freedom. The truck driver is convinced that if his wife earns her own money, he will lose control over her. Guys know the importance of holding the purse strings. With these “we buy almost everything, even love.” He does not want to give his wife freedom of movement. As a trucker, he is well aware of the impact that travel has on people. When you leave your own community “you’re exposed to strange ideas”. Still less will he give her the freedom to socialize. In the world of flesh, he explains, “exposure to fresh meat is a general threat.”
Luis and I seem to share a similar problem. Apparently we do not drink much, do not engage in street brawls, do not use vulgar language and do not beat our wives. However we are men with “macho” attitudes: we are horrified at the changes in the roles we have learnt. Though we understand women’s desire for mobility, it is hard for us to accept it. Perhaps there is also a connection between shrinking erections and increased rigidity in our homes. We sense that if our women had the right to leave, they would do so. Perhaps not in search of larger erections, but precisely to escape from them. Somewhere in the corner of our minds we have realized the truth about the false orgasms and the frequent headaches.
Luis seems weighed down by the conversation and while he listens to his wife’s arguments, a certain look of monotonous boredom appears to cross his face, just for a moment. His wife fails to convince him that she is not looking for sexual thrills or new emotions. Her desire is for more money to be able to save and send the child to a better school. She says that she is the one who goes shopping and who best knows that they are not making ends meet. “You don’t realize how expensive everything is because you don’t buy things,” she insists. However, her arguments fall on deaf ears. “And you don’t know how hard it is to work to keep your family and be told that it’s not enough,” retorts Luis.
While Katia makes coffee in the kitchen, I ask Luis, “Does my presence make you uncomfortable?” “Not at all,” he replies, “don’t you have the same arguments in your home?” The truth is that the subject of money – or the lack of it – is discussed daily. “But my case is different, “ I explain, “my wife works and I don’t make such a big deal out of it.” “Well, you don’t look too happy either,” he says. “You look so bored that it’s sad.” The conversation has turned heavy. I feel an urge to pound him and turn him into pulp. I feel angry because he has touched a raw nerve: for some time I’ve felt a great heaviness in my heart.
Suddenly, I hear the child crying upstairs, which seems to signal the end of the meal. Luis cannot conceal a grimace, though he immediately tries to cover it up. Katia hurries up the stairs and the two of us step outside for a while so that Luis can smoke a cigarette outdoors. We chat about inconsequential things, as the sound of dishes and running water emanates from inside the house. I can’t help thinking that this family ritual is repeated night after night, when Luis is at home and not on the road.
“Are you happy?” I ask the man, who is not expecting this type of question. He fixes me with a look. I’ve asked a question that was not in the questionnaire. “Are you studying truck drivers’ happiness?” he says ironically. I realize how inappropriate my question was. It popped out suddenly, without warning. I am curious to know why there is such an air of heaviness around this truck driver. But Luis says nothing. He gazes up and down, inhales on his cigarette and looks into the distance, which is blocked by a row of identical houses. “Don’t ask,” he replies after a few seconds.
But I ask anyway. However, he fires back: “If you tell me why you’re writing about truckers, I’ll tell you why I’m sad.” “I’m doing this because I work in Aids prevention”, I say automatically. “That’s not an answer. What do you want from truckers? That’s the question.”
I have no answer. I don’t know about truck drivers and have no idea what to expect from them, or why I’m here with Luis in the back yard of his house, asking questions that aren’t even in the guide. “The truth is, I don’t know”, I admit in all frankness. “I don’t know what I expect from doing a study on truckers.” “There you go again!” he exclaims, “the question wasn’t about the study but about the subjects. You don’t seem to know the difference between theory and men of flesh and blood.”
On the road, Luis tells me, things are different. Because even if he should take the same route, things are always in movement, they are always rapid and changing. Suddenly, as if wishing to change the subject, he comes out with a single phrase. “That’s life”. Perhaps he is really trying to tell me about “his” life. “I think you don’t know why you’re not happy,” I say. “And you don’t know what you’re looking for either,” he replies with arrogance.
It is time to go. Luis has to attend a neighborhood meeting to protest against fecal coliforms. He tells me that he is one of the main organizers of the committee because “I don’t want to end up eating shit in this place.” To console him, I remind him that even the President does so when he drinks water in his presidential office. Luis does not seem cheered by my optimistic remark. “The coliforms the President consumes are more refined than the ones we get around here.”
I say goodbye to Katia, who finishes washing the dishes without any male help. She replies sweetly, but with an anxious look. “Come over whenever you want”, she says at the doorway, “you know your way here”. “Yes”, I answer.
Luis gives me a firm handshake and we arrange to meet in a truck-yard in Heredia to set off on our journey to the border. “I hope you’ve learnt something about the way truckers live,” he says mockingly. “Don’t let the coliforms take over, Luis, they’re everywhere,” I answer, and say goodbye.