Vesuvius

Vesuvius, are you a ghost, or the symbols of light, or a fantasy host?
- Sufjan Stevens

The immaculate and classically forsaken Costa Rican heartland, lost amid those chanting mermaids from the past, has reconquered its place in our small-town politics. But, where is the heartland in Costa Rica? Is it by the coastline, or is it in our overwhelmed and neglected suburbs?

No. In our country, the definition of heartland runs deep inside the veins of our doctrinal vision of society. The heartland is not even an ideology: it is that thread that ties the affluent and conservative suburbs around western San José, the more intra-urbanized and impoverished boroughs on the Central Valley and the rural and completely peripheral neighborhoods along our coasts. It is a state of mind, which transcends all socioeconomic patterns and that underscores the still deeply-rooted Latin American social conservatism, especially in a country as ours, where the “evangelical effect” in politics was growing slowly but steadily. This sentimental notion of a past that is slipping away from our fingertips and into oblivion –which is, without a doubt, completely false, as this “past” is actually the present– was on the works behind the scenes for quite some time now, and there is a great deal of blame to toss around to harvest even more division and anger among our already confused electorate.

Can we blame the “evangelical effect” for the results on February the 4th? Well, at the very least, not exclusively. This impasse in our politics can be attributed to the political nature of the evangelical right and its success in attracting support from their believers and translating it into votes, c’est-à-dire political gains. However, this fact cannot explain why the regularly policy-centered catholic majority began to dilute its support from traditional politics (not to be confused with traditional parties) and lean into the realm of faith-based and faith-driven political rhetoric. This fact, as ironic as it sounds, has been an unintended consequence of what I call the “evangelicalization” of the Latin American Catholic Church. This phenomenon is based on the attitude taken by the Catholic Church, notably in Costa Rica, which seeks to copy evangelical tactics to keep their followers around and stop the bleeding out of parishioners. These tactics are way more introvert than what the spirit of the Second Vatican Council would suggest, and this comparison has been laid out taking into account the relative conservative nature of this Council.

On one hand, this position from the Catholic Church officials was predictable due to the astounding success of evangelicalism in several Latin American countries as Brazil and El Salvador. As the Brazilian example indicates, their success has not only helped them in maintaining and rapidly increasing their following, but the evangelical movement has created the religious right-wing political force to enter Congress. Furthermore, the Catholic Church was losing its parishioners to the diverse group of evangelical churches, which tried to engage and insert in a more effective way their message and create a more solid rapport between the religious leaders and the people. This is also why the Catholic Church began to be involved with evangelical initiatives, as the “Marches for the Family” or adopting the nefarious and ill-conceived “Gender Ideology”, which has no scientific grounds but still achieves the goal of aligning all of their followers behind one clear message.

On the other hand, this succession of events evolved into the unintended consequences that the Catholic Church did not foresee: the growth of these new evangelical political parties –with the validation of the Catholic Church as they had already approved their message–, and being dragged into the center of the faith-based right-wing policy debate made by evangelicals to which they now have identified as their allies. The Costa Rican Catholic Church is, most of the time, reticent of getting involved in politics. This time, however, they have shamelessly stole the ol’ evangelical playbook and completely sidelined the economic message of the Church’s Social Doctrine, in order to try and, once and for all, light up the conservative fibers that constitute our heartland: social positions on contraception, abortion, marriage equality, and sexual education in the public system. Now, the Catholic Church is as responsible for the definitive intrusion of religious doctrine in our political system as the evangelical leaders.

Consequently, we are at the footsteps of electing our first religious leader as President of the Republic, but even if Carlos Alvarado is elected President, the damage is already done: our Congress has been filled with christian fundamentalists in this very urgent times of fiscal emergency, economic inaction and overall threats to our social welfare system. This election, I fear, will inevitably drag us into the ugly cultural wars, which threatens to deepen our political polarization in detriment of a continuing construction of our social cohesion. Another scenario could be that, as most seats of the evangelical party will be filled with people with no experience at all in politics, they will be easily wooed by the traditional parties –aka Liberación Nacional– in exchange of a social conservative agenda, which would still be a leap back even for a country as conservative as ours.

Finally, I must acknowledge that there are other factors that should be taken in account to fully explain this situation: widespread corruption in the past several governments, weak candidates, irresponsible and uncritical media, misinformation, growing criminality and an overall lack of debate about socioeconomics. However, as Restauración Nacional’s support erupted after the opinion from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, it is evident that this support was driven by dogmatic believes and not by a critically-thought decision. Right now, we are fighting a ghost, which some will find solace in defeating, even when it doesn’t exist at all. It’s a ghost that lives in our social bubble, but it is just a fantasy, despite of all the threats that Fabricio Alvarado has launched to destroy it.