Acuanta

From rice and beansal gallopinto, from cumbia de salón to the Baile de la Polilla in Alajuela, Costa Rican culture is alive and well and its incessant movement is what Héctor Gamboa Goldenberg captures with astonished eyes and a keen ear.

These images and quatrains from the country of acuantá-“a while ago” in Creole slang-. are our family album. A beautiful tombola or Chicago wheel of Tico life that gives “…another complete turn of the earth…and everything continues, everything passes, and life in death is complete”, as Hector says in one of the rhymes that accompany the illustrations.

Anyone who doubts the vitality of Costa Rican popular culture in the 21st century can take solace in these endearing pages and see that there are many Costa Rican cultures, and that not all of them can be reduced to the expeditious pura vida. From the euphoria of swing to the nostalgia of the bolero, in Acuantá there is everything as in an apothecary: casados and slushies, shifts, masquerades and cimarronas and a people that proclaims in each of its acts its multicultural roots.

At the end of this journey through what is most ours, one of Héctor’s poems remains in our souls: “The future is distant and unknown, the past has not yet passed, there is only the only joy and it is not worth throwing it away (…) that utopia”. (Carlos Cortés)