A Clash of Values in Costa Rica

March 2, 2018

When I first arrived in Costa Rica, I was amazed by the brightly colored flags flying from all the cars and people honking their horns and making noise in the streets. This atmosphere of excitement wasn’t about a soccer game or a religious festival, though—it was election day. On the way home from the airport, I saw at least six different political parties and candidates represented by flags, signs, and T-shirts. That evening, I went with my host mom to the polls to watch the process in action. We drove to the local elementary school, where we were escorted by a 10-year-old “election guide” to the right classroom, and my host mom took her paper ballots, marked them, and turned them in to the proper boxes as election monitors watched over the process. She was voting for both president and diputados, or representatives to Costa Rica’s one-house congress, since all positions are elected at once every four years. After returning home, we watched the results roll in on TV: the diputados were split between many parties, while the presidential race showed a shocking early lead for Fabricio Alvarado, a conservative evangelical musician, while the other 12 presidential candidates vied for second with varying degrees of success.

In Costa Rica, the presidential candidate with the most votes wins if they have over 40 percent of votes. However, if no candidate surpasses this threshold, as occurred this year, the top two candidates move on to the second round of elections. Fabricio Alvarado will face off against Carlos Alvarado in the second round, held on the first Sunday in April, which happens to be Easter. Since Costa Rica is a Catholic country, it will certainly affect who votes and how the election is run. This is not the only unprecedented part of the election this year: it is only the third time a second round election has been held in the country’s history, and the results were surprisingly close, with four candidates receiving between 16 percent and 25 percent of the vote each. Additionally, neither candidate who advanced was expected to do well in any poll leading up to the election, and neither Fabricio nor Carlos represents the traditionally dominant parties in Costa Rica. 

The advance of Fabricio Alvarado is the most surprising part of the elections for most of the Costa Ricans I have talked to. No one in the capital can figure out who voted for him, since his success seems to have been a surprise to everyone. Fabricio receives most of his support from evangelical Christians in rural areas, although the national religion of Costa Rica is Roman Catholicism. He draws on his idea of evangelical Christian values with many of his political positions. He believes that sex education should be entirely taken out of schools and Costa Rica should withdraw from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in order to protest same-sex marriage. He received much of his support after the court unveiled its ruling in favor of the legalization of same-sex marriage. Fabricio promotes family values and his idea of a traditional family. However, while many of his values may be traditional, they are changing as Costa Rica does. This is why people in the big cities cannot understand Fabricio’s appeal.

Meanwhile, Carlos Alvarado also receives much of his support from religious Costa Ricans, mainly Roman Catholics. The values he represents, however, are focused more on diversity and inclusion than tradition. He and his party stand for government and economic reform and restructuring, as well as in favor of LGBTQ+ rights. In fact, the decision of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights may be what propelled both candidates to victory, since neither of them had risen above 8 percent in any previous poll. While Fabricio’s support came from those with conservative and traditional values and opponents of same-sex marriage, Carlos is very popular with a younger and more liberal demographic. The new values of Costa Rica, which still coexist easily with religious and Roman Catholic support, rose in favor of Carlos Alvarado. In this way, the second-round election on April 1 will in many ways be a clash of values, between inclusivity and a closed society, between diversity and the idea of a traditional family. With Costa Rica’s traditional image of a welcoming tropical paradise for everyone to visit at stake, I can’t help but hope the more open Alvarado wins the presidency.

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