Bureaucracy

Little Costa Rica is big on government. Building on the reforms of the Calderonista era, successive administrations have created an impressive array of health, education, and social welfare programs plus steadily expanding state enterprises and regulatory bodies, all of which spell a massive expansion of the government bureaucracy. In 1949, the state employed only six percent of the working population; today the government pays the salaries of approximately 25%, or one in four employed people.

For the nation, this represents a huge financial burden. Public employees are the best paid, most secure, and most highly unionized and vocal workers, and the supposedly neutral bureaucracy has become the largest and most insatiable pressure group in the country. Public employees' repetitive demands for higher pay, shorter hours, and greater fringe benefits (backed up by the constant threat of strikes) are so voracious that they eat up a vast proportion of the government benefits intended for the poor. "The state," says one Tican, "is a cow with a thousand teats and everyone wants a teat to suck."

Unfortunately, Costa Rica's government employees have nurtured bureaucratic formality to the level of art. Corruption is part of the way things work, though to a lesser degree than in other Latin American countries. And travelers may find a lot of their time being tied up in interminable lines. The problem has given rise to despachantes, people who make a living from their patience and knowledge of the bureaucratic ropes: for a small fee they will wait in line and gather the necessary documents on your behalf. Travel agencies can usually arrange a trustworthy despachante.