Express Hostages

I am so lucky to have been born in the western world. My seatmate on the plane from the Dominican Republic was a businessman from El Salvador who was telling me about express hostage taking. It seems they have taken hostage taking to new levels in El Salvador. They take you hostage and make you visit the bank machine on a daily basis to take out your maximum. When your bank account is empty, they let you go. So, kidnapping takes many forms in El Salvador, express or regular where you end up getting shot if you family does not pay!
He went on to describe the areas of the city he would never drive or walk in and the first question he asked me was how secure Canada was. At first, I did not understand the question. How secure? Was he talking about terrorists? That is when he started to explain to me about his country and the problems they were having.

When I think about it, I might be naïve, but I travel and walk anywhere in Toronto day or night and have no fear of people breaking into my house. Now I am not naïve enough to believe bad things will not happen to me, but I believe they are the exception rather than the rule. It seems in El Salvador they are the rule. When I asked him why, his hypothesis included the break up of the family ( when I asked him what the biggest export was of El Salvador he said people) so when he talked about the break up of the family he talked about parents leaving their children with grandparents or other care givers as they go and find work other countries.. He talked about the lack of education, the impossibility of the poor to ever become the middle class because of all of the government road blocks and the gang effect. For example, if you were to open a small business in town, you would have to pay off the Mafia or you would be killed or your store burned down.

In the Dominican, I had my first pedicure and manicure on the beach. When the women finished, she handed me her card which showed her as the owner of a beauty salon in Santo Domingo. I asked her what she was doing in Puerto Plata and she told me it was impossible to run a business in Santo Domingo because the thugs run you out of town! The same story I heard from my seat mate. In other words, you have to pay the bank for the loan, the thugs so you do not get beaten up and finally you may have some money left over to buy some product to sell. If you are lucky, you may even make a little bit of money but as to changing economic classes, not a chance!

Frankly, it is the same situation in Costa Rica. When I left the house one day after eating breakfast on the balcony, I shut the door but forgot to put the bar on the sliding door. My landlords gave me hell and asked if I wanted to be robbed? Apparently theft in Costa Rica is basically one of opportunity. If they see an opportunity like an open door they will take it, according to my boss. Tell that to the bulky phys ed teacher that works in the gym at night. Apparently, three armed robbers came into the gym, pointed two guns at him, one at his head and one at his chest, tied him up and took all of the TV’s etc. in the gym. It took him a half an hour to get out of the rope they tied him in. So much for crimes of opportunity!

I am writing this on the plane to Costa Rica and clearly the story is the same here as in the Dominican. Children unable to get an education, the poor getting poorer and the divide between rich and poor growing with greater disparity between the north and south or the developed world and the developing world and obviously increasing violence. Hardly a surprise.

Clearly the problems we face are complex and far be it for me to suggest solutions to problems so monumental they are almost absurd. In my own simple way, I know we have to eliminate poverty and one of the surest ways of doing this is to make sure everyone gets a free education! Have you heard this from me before?
Clearly living in the world we are living in the 'south' is not sustenable. By the way, I never heard anyone in Thailand or anywhere in Asia tell me not to walk in certain areas and so on. Was it because I did not understand the language or is there a whole different culture and dynamic in Asia? A great thesis topic for some sociologist.