I wasn't Alone

Morning. Fuck, I have so much in my mind, so many fucking stupid concerns that I would rather run away from everything and everybody and lock myself away in a cave, deep in a mountain surrounded by a haunted forrest, so that nobody reaches me. Yes, this fucking shit about the trip, which should be something that makes me happy, is making me UNHAPPY. It pisses me off and I HATE having so much pressure on me.

Anyway, I breath in deep, smile when I want to kill, brew my ink-like coffee and cook my oatmeal. I chat with my dear friend and co-worker, Marie-Julie, and to my surprise, she tells me about this e-mail sent by a philosophy teacher of the UCR about the same problem, with the same conclusions I just posted here: Thanks to the CAFTA, Education is going down the toilet. The dear teacher, being a philosophy teacher, ignored the economical impact on the copy-stores, that will see reduced they workload and their clientelle. Indeed, bye- bye education, hello mysery. There will be no sense in giving scholarships to students when they won't be able to pay the books, and lets be honest, most classes at the university do not use only one book. How many will be willing to pay up to $50 for a book of which you'll only need one chapter? And sorry, but in here $50 is quite a hefty amount, you don't just put in your wallet and spend on cookies.

No, this "education" thing will be reserved only for the paying people, for the rich people, and after so many private universities springing up everywhere, we all know what's the motto of those universities: "You pay, you pass". Sure, sure, some people flunk there too, but still, the level of education is so poor, the quality of many of the teachers is so ridiculously low, that even if you pass, you really know nothing. Well, the few students that could have gotten a decent education, that have been selected by their grades, their results in tests, that have earned scholarships for excelling their subjects will be long gone.

Explain to me what's the brilliant future full of opportunities for a nation with no educated peopulation. Why's so good to defend the copyrights, while at the same time giving up to the US the copyright over every single technological innovation, research and development done by Costa Ricans? What kinds of jobs will be created when you can't sell our labor force as "specialized" because no kid has the money to go to the university, and yet, the uneducated sphere isn't cheap enough to compete with the Indian, Nicaraguan, Chinese labor force?

And on top of all that, an FTA with China is on the shore. What about our old mom&pops stores? What about the micro, small and medium enterprises we have tried so hard to help get on their feet, because our governments have been unable, for years, to create decent, dignifying jobs for the population?

The crisis has come just in time, so everything can be blamed on it, not on what really is to blame: the incompetence, the blind greed and corruption that leads people to enforce an illegal presidency and extort and rob a country of what little has left. A president who is the first to break the laws.