In the United States, as President Barack Obama and his family celebrated the birthday of civil rights activist and champion of social justice Martin Luther King, Jr. at his new memorial in Washington D.C., thousands of protesters associated with the Occupy Wall Street movement planned demonstrations in cities across the country. The Occupy movement, which came to the world’s attention in September 2011 when protesters took over Zuccotti Park near Wall Street, has drawn some parallels to the civil rights movements of the 1960s led by MLK. What most of the sympathizers of Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and its different chapters don’t know is that Francisco Guerrero, a Costa Rican blogger and film producer, was instrumental in getting the movement started.

The history of the OWS movement dates back to July of last year, and it has been well-documented by news media agency Reuters. It all began with the fundamental idea posited by Canadian watchdog organization and anti-consumerist organization AdBusters and its seminal blog post and now-famous Twitter hashtag #OccupyWallStreet. On that historic post, AdBusters laid out the foundation of OWS by taking inspiration from the events of Tahrir Square in Egypt, where protesters camped out until a revolution toppled the despotic regime of Hosni Mubarak, and from the acampadas in Spain -citizens who were fed up with what they see as a failure of an inept government to protect them in times of economic crisis.

The AdBusters proposal was a series of gatherings, both physical and virtual, of like-minded people who would then come up with a strategy to bring awareness to what they call the “greatest corrupter of our democracy: Wall Street, the financial Gomorrah of America”. Reuters commissioned social media analysis firm SocialFlow to track the activity that followed that initial post. Nothing happened for about a week. Enter Francisco Guerrero in San Jose and the Tweet that got the ball rolling:

I’d rather make history than read about it

On that Tweet, Francisco included a link to “Wake Up From Your Slumber”, an aptly-named blog that sympathized with OWS. Francisco’s Tweet was re-Tweeted four times, and the rest is history. Francisco is a filmmaker with an interest in 3D animation and CGI -a burgeoning industry in Costa Rica- and judging by his own blog, he is just the type of person who believes that democratic and social systems must be actively defended. To see what was going on in the mind of Francisco when he sent the game-changing Tweet referenced above, one only needs to dig into the July 2011 archive of his blog: Francisco pondered what Costa Rica would be like if people allowed La Caja to fail due to bureaucratic mismanagement. He also reminded his blog readers about a letter written by national treasure Carmen Lyra to a powerful politician about her concerns over the attempts of the government to discredit the good work of La Caja.

Just like in the days when MLK rallied up people to stand up against poverty and inequality, the Occupy movement has galvanized Americans who are concerned about income disparity, the gap between the super-rich and everyone else, the lack of social welfare programs (like La Caja in our country), and other vital issues.

A few weeks after Francisco’s Tweet, OWS protesters began camping out in Zuccotti Park, a place that experienced civil unrest and detentions before spreading to other cities in the United States and Europe. OWS has taken place in 950 cities, but it has been less than conspicuous in Costa Rica despite the distinction of Francisco’s Tweet. There was a flurry of OWS-like activity in November 2011, with protests and marches conducted by cab drivers, La Caja employees, motorcycle owners, and truckers. There certainly has been solidarity shown by Ticos towards the 99% of Americans that OWS represents, but the situation here is different. There is no Wall Street here (the Bolsa Nacional de Valores hardly counts), and the middle class is expanding rather than contracting. Like other countries in Latin America, Costa Rica is enjoying mild prosperity while the industrialized world is still dealing with the aftermath of the global financial crisis.

Still, there are many Ticos who think that OWS should extend here, if anything for its strong democratic underpinnings. Costa Rica has a long history of mostly peaceful civil disobedience. The OWS strategy of camping out was effectively employed by protesters against the Crucitas mining project. Protests against the unpopular Fiscal Reform plan, which were announced here, ended up in Constitutional Hall with a freeze of the proposed legislation. Yet there are others who think that issues such as the rising deficit, the uncertain viability of La Caja, the rise in consumer prices, and the Fiscal Reform plan are grounds for further OWS-like strategies.

According to reports on the intellectual publication Revista Amauta, several activist groups are becoming organized in Costa Rica, but they aren’t necessarily meeting out in parks or public plazas. They aren’t picketing outside of the National Assembly, at least not yet. They are conducting digital gatherings, thanks to the affinity that Ticos have shown toward social media and to the empowerment that online tools bring to the democratic process. Some of these movements are affiliated with the Tico chapter of Anonymous, and many of them choose to cautiously support civil movements from their place in the digital underground. While there should not be any worries about censorship or governmental spying on the citizenry in Costa Rica, the protests against the Crucitas mining project saw their share of infiltration attempts and media jamming by shadowy groups.

Martin Luther King Jr. fought for the people’s right to live a decent life, safe from falling into abject poverty and free from oppression. Many of the rights that MLK fought for have been enjoyed in Costa Rica for many years, and thus it is no surprise that Ticos like Francisco Guerrero would lend their solidarity to a movement like OWS.

Photo credit: Wikipedia