Casi en Guate: Snarling dogs plus metal equals security

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica -- The large German Sheppard snarling at me from behind the metal gate made me feel at home.

Recently, I took a stroll through a neighborhood near San Jose’s city center called Amon.

It’s a ritzy neighborhood.

Here, the architecture of houses was influenced by the French. For a while in the 1800’s, Costa Ricans were enamored with all things French.

Their red, white and blue? French inspired.

While the houses here are pretty, they don’t compare to the grand old colonial mansions found in Guatemala City.

That’s because the Spanish crown largely ignored Costa Rica during the colonial period. There wasn’t anything here worth killing Indians over or Indians to kill. Those grand mansions were not erected. Not enough gold or silver to fund them. The Spanish weren’t thinking eco-tourism back then.

Back in Amon, I noticed the extreme security methods Costa Ricans take to keep thieves out of their homes.

It’s the same in Guatemala.

Almost every house has heavy metal gates with sizeable locks.

Front doors are metal. Then those doors are protected by more metal.

It pays to be a welder here.

Barbed wire decorates the tops of concrete fences.

And guard dogs, ready to pounce on an outsider, snarl behind gates.

I make light of it, but it’s a phenomenon caused by fear.

Fear of everything you own taken from you.

Fear of your life being taken with a gun or a knife yielded by masked men lurking in the night.

The paper's staff photographer was robbed a gunpoint in the middle of the day -- in the middle of the street.

The other day, the news featured two young men stabbed, another shot dead and a girl found buried.

Violence here is not as bad as in Guatemela, where more than 15 people are killed every day on average. Of those crimes, 98 percent go unsolved.

About 10 percent of the almost four million Costa Ricans furnish a fire arm for self protection. Those are the registered guns.

There are about 6 murders per 100,000 people in the country. But those statistics are from 1998, and the people here say things are getting worse now.

Break-ins, muggings, and assaults are a reality in Costa Rica. And people protect themselves from them as best as they can. However they can.

That can mean buying a huge German Sheppard that will show its finely sharpened canines to any passerby.