In the book “Limón Blues”, Ana Cristina Rossi shows the effort that
people from a low context culture make to get a decent position inside a high
context culture, and the struggles that those immigrants suffer when getting into
a new country. In a high context culture, as seen in class, the non-verbal
message is more important than the verbal message. They tend to be facesaving cultures, where group harmony and personal honor are more important
than being direct. Costa Rica has been known as a high context culture
because of fitting perfectly in all those cultural patterns. On the other hand, in
low context cultures like US and Jamaica, people are very direct, monochromic
and very individualistic. Costa Rica constantly has struggles against United
States because of their different cultural behavior. As an example, Nation
argues, “Keith has imagination, he is daring, and he knows how to obtain and
work with money. Costa Ricans do not know how to do that” (37); immigrants
perceive Costa Ricans personality features and laziness and use it to obtain
economic benefits, meanwhile Keith being a US citizen and coming from a low
context culture, take advantage of the situation.
In addition, Costa Ricans have a relax sense of time and their favorite
phrase is “I will do it later”. One character from the text who exemplifies this
cultural feature is Escobar. Leiva describes this character as a “governor
incapable of ruling the place, and a governor who pampers and spoils the
citizens” (19). Escobar argues that people in Limon are different and they work
better without his intervention. Of course, as Edward T. Hall purposes, people
from low context cultures are very direct and rule themselves trough out
unspoken rules (20). This issue becomes evident since these two people from a
high context culture, Escobar and Leiva, do not understand how these
immigrants work individually and get a great result from their tasks. Limon as of
1904 was populated by people of all around the world; for example, Jamaicans,
Americans, Antilleans, Chinese people, and other African American people.
Inhabitants from all those low context cultures found Costa Rica as a paradise,
but it was just up to the moment that they realize that they were a low context
culture inside a high context culture and that they had to fight for their rights.
In Costa Rica, face saving has being an essential feature to survive, and
Costa Ricans practice this characteristic. However, when the immigrants
wanted to present complaints, they had to go through thousands of papers,
lines and procedures to obtain for answer that they did not exist in Costa Rica.
When they found out this situation, they started fighting for their rights, lands
and a decent position in Costa Rican society. Nevertheless, a lazy politician,
Cleto Gonzalez Víquez, appears promising land and shelter, but as always
those promises never came true and they decided to fight.
The great majority of these immigrants visualized Costa Rica as
paradise. In this place people could come and work in railways or for the United
Fruit Company, later on they could take a piece of land and plant bananas or
cacao and sell their harvest to the United or other businessmen. However, as
time goes by, these immigrants realized that Keith was the “uncrowned king of
Costa Rica” (37); and unjust and oppressive violent acts against Limon´s
citizens start happening. Costa Rican authorities allowed Keith to govern Limón,
and they even help him to exploit his workers placing them in room that did not
have water or a restroom. As a way to express the workers´ dissatisfaction, Mr.
Woods started printing a newspaper; however his intentions failed and soon the
printing shop shut down. After this, two new newspapers circulated “The Limon
Times and El Correo del Atlántico” (34); however, the second one was
exclusive for Costa Ricans and African American people were never mentioned
as if they did not exist. After suffering tortures from their foremen, African
American people decided to form a union called “Artisan and Labourers Union
of Costa Rica” (68). Gutzmore, who was the founder, sent letters to the United
and they as a resolution decided to fire all Jamaicans and hire St. Kitts to
substitute them. Nonetheless, people from the United Fruit Company and Costa
Rican police officers started to massacre people who belonged to the Artisan
and Labourers Union, including St. Kitts.
In brief, even if people try to prepare themselves to get into a new
country, it is harder to fit in the new culture if the person belongs to a different
context as in the case of the inhabitants of Limon in 1904 and Costa Ricans.
However, when the people’s rights are violated and workers are subjugated to
infrahuman conditions, people should forget if they are white or African
Americans, and fight together for human rights and diversity.
Works Cited
Jiménez, Adriana, ed. Intercultural Communication Course Anthology. San
José: San Pedro de Montes de Oca, 2009.
Rossi, Anacristina. Limón Blues. San José: Santillana S.A., 2002.