to move up and down
El Cupolog
Pan-american Transmissions : The Road to Tierra Del Fuego
The Business Man
San Telmo, Buenos Aires - © Diego Cupolo 2012
Striped Tie, Striped Suit
La Paz, Bolivia - © Diego Cupolo 2012
Street Art in La Paz III
La Paz, Bolivia - © Diego Cupolo 2012
Burger Business
There was a spare street cart with a built-in deep-fryer sitting in the kitchen – doing nothing other than housing 600 cockroaches – so Angelica decided to put it to use.
She started a hamburger business.
It was to be her first 100 percent self-owned, self-managed enterprise and she was nervous. Shaking. As sweat dripped from her forehead, Ania and I helped chop the vegetables, peel the potatoes, and carry the cooking supplies.
When everything was ready, Angelica claimed a street corner, lit the gas flame and started selling burgers with fries at $2 a piece. It worked instantly. The drunks surrounded her street cart, drooling and impatient, because nothing costs less than $5 in the luxury resort desert oasis that is Huacachina.
She sold out the first night. Ania made her schannzy sign the second night and she sold out again.
It was a success for everyone …
… except her husband. He told her to stop the hamburger business.
“People talk too much in this town,” he said. “I don’t want everyone seeing you out on the street selling fried junk food.”
Apparently, he didn’t like the idea of his woman making money. I couldn’t understand it at first so I asked around and people simply said, “you know how Latin men are.”
Angelica stopped the hamburger business as quick as she started it. Just a day earlier she had told us she wanted to work the streets every night. She enjoyed it. But now the street cart sat in the kitchen again, its fresh grease nourishing new colonies of cockroaches. Angelica couldn’t question her husband.
“He has diabetes,” she said. “He gets upset easily. I don’t want to do anything that could disturb his condition.”
And that was that. With the short-lived hamburger business, Ania and I realized why we were such a welcome distraction in a household of muffled misery.
We figured it was best to get out of the way so we told Angelica we’d be leaving soon. She looked at us in shock. Tears started forming in her eyes and she yelled:
“But you can’t leave!”
We cooked her a nice pasta bolognese and left the next day.
Huacachina, Peru - © Diego Cupolo 2012
Never seen so many suits look so crooked
Quito, Ecuador - © Diego Cupolo 2012
Money Man
Quito, Ecuador - © Diego Cupolo 2012
Arepas Calientes
Cities are for money and it was time to make some.
Everyone in Hostal Miami earned their rent from the streets. They were stop light artists, musicians, artesanos and they made well above Panama’s minimum wage - a pitiful $1.61 an hour. (It ain’t cheap to live there either.)
For this reason, and many others, Ania and I gave up our job hunt and our hopes of staying in Panama City and started selling arepas in the streets. It was something to do while we waited for a cheap cargo boat to Colombia.
It also paid better than a “real job.”
The Venezuelan corn patties were stuffed with pollo asado and sold for a dollar each. We tripled our money every time we hit the streets.
People loved them. Mostly locals though. Tourists seemed skeptical and ignored us.
Our small business venture was a success …
… until it started causing problems back at Hostal Miami. There was one half-broken stove for 25 people and another couple was running an empanada business out of the same kitchen.
They viewed us as competition.
The guy was a macho, Argentine pretty boy and his girlfriend looked like a prostitute - a skinny, bleach blonde Italian with breast implants. She was 35 and changed mini-skirts at least seven times a day.
Her cleavage: always prominent.
An unexpected find in a place like Hostal Miami.
I ignored them. I simply made more arepas and the tensions grew inside Hostal Miami.
It was a good lesson in capitalism. Two profiting parties using public resources, fighting over them, and pushing everyone else out of the kitchen in the process.
In the end, the money wasn’t worth the trouble. Ania and I sold our last arepas and went into the feather business.
One must cook with love, not greed.
Casco Viejo, Panama City - © Diego Cupolo 2011
Barbershop Highway
Panama City, Panama - © Diego Cupolo 2011
Salud Dinero Amor
Panama City, Panama - © Diego Cupolo 2011
Fumigation Nation
A large number of sterile men inhabit Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast.
Locals say it’s the fumigation. Small yellow planes fly over the massive banana plantations and spray pesticides into the air.
Most field laborers live next to the plantations and inhale the chemicals. A farmer told me the fruit companies pay off anyone that becomes sterile …
… and, after a century of pure profit, Chiquita Banana is still known for terribly low wages.
Side Note: The blue bags are supposed to protect the bananas, but they’re full of holes.
Limón Province, Costa Rica - © Diego Cupolo 2011
Banana Republics
Puerto Limón: birthplace of the United Fruit Company - present-day Chiquita Banana.
The story’s a bit long and complicated, but basically, an American tycoon was hired to build a railroad between San Jose and Limón and he planted banana trees along the tracks to feed his workers. When the railroad opened, it was running at a loss and the owner desperately started shipping the track-side bananas to New Orleans to recoup some of his investment.
People up north loved them.
He saw it as a business opportunity. He vastly expanded his banana fields (bribing government officials in the process), and joined other fruit merchants to form the United Fruit Company. For many years, his only competitor was the Standard Fruit Company - present-day Dole.
The United Fruit Company became the largest employer in Central America. El Pulpo (the octopus), as locals called it, owned most of the land, transportation, and communication infrastructure in the Costa Rican lowlands. The United Fruit Company also became known for heavily influencing regional politics in its favor - hence the term “Banana Republics” - and promoting waves of cheap migrant laborers from Jamaica, changing Costa Rica’s ethnic complexion and provoking racial tensions.
Today, Limón still bares its Afro-Caribbean roots. Big black mamas with crazy hair, reggae beats and jerk chicken can be found at every street corner. Interestingly, the Costa Rican government did not recognize Afro-Caribbean people as citizens and restricted their movement outside the Limón province until 1948.
As a result of this travel ban, the Afro-Caribbean population became firmly established in the region and remained on the east coast even after it was legally permitted to move about the country.
Who would’ve thought a foreign banana company could change so much in a peaceful democratic nation?
Puerto Limón, Costa Rica - © Diego Cupolo 2011
Caribbean Fung
Asians seemed to own most of the establishments in Puerto Limón. Restaurants, bars, grocery stores, hotels and sex hotels. They sat behind counters and counted money while the locals worked.
When we asked them a question, they ignored us - every single time.
Puerto Limón, Costa Rica - © Diego Cupolo 2011
School Bus Hostel
A Dutch couple parked their school bus in front of the place we were staying in Granada. They looked like they lived in the bus so Ania and I went over to investigate.
It turned out they were running a “Bus Hostel” at $10 a night. They had five bunk beds and a full kitchen. Not bad.
© Diego Cupolo 2011
