Wanchope or Wanchoap-ay?

During qualifying matches for the 1998 World Cup, I had an argument with some friends about how to pronounce the last name of Costa Rican forward Paulo Wanchope. They said that since Wanchope (who just signed with the Chicago Fire) was from a Spanish-speaking country, the e at the end of his last name had to be pronounced. I claimed it was silent, but I couldn’t explain why. It was only when I went to Costa Rica in 1997 that I came to understand the reason why the e is indeed silent. The reason has everything to do with the history of the Central American country.

Paulo Wanchope (photo: AP / Deutsche Welle)

Wanchope’s name is, I would find out, not “native” Costa Rican (in the sense that it was brought over by the country’s original colonizers, the Spanish; actual native Costa Ricans are relatively few in number at this point, having been largely wiped out by Spanish invaders). It came from England across the Atlantic to Jamaica and finally through the Caribbean before ending up in Costa Rica. Wanchope’s last name parallels his own family history, with only one major step missing: that which brought his ancestors as slaves from Africa to Jamaica.

Paulo Wanchope is, of course, black. He is the descendant of African slaves brought to that Caribbean island when it was a British colony. Slavery existed for hundreds of years in Jamaica before it was finally abolished in 1834.

Meanwhile, in Costa Rica, there were slaves, although in much smaller numbers. The first slaves were brought to Costa Rica by Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century. Like in Mexico, the African population in Costa Rica began as a very small minority. Slavery was abolished in Costa Rica in 1824, although the website InfoCostaRica.com suggests that “by the time of the Independence of Costa Rica from Spain (1821), slavery was a disintegrating institution.”

The middle of the 19th century saw a worldwide coffee boom. Costa Rica soon took advantage of this spike in prices and established itself as a main exporter of the commodity. In 1870, Costa Rica’s government made the decision to build a railroad from so-called Central Valley to the Caribbean city of Limón. This railroad was to carry coffee from the farms to the port city, from where it would be shipped abroad.

Railroad building is a notoriously difficult endeavor and backers often bring in foreign workers for the task (see the Transcontinental Railroad). Such was the case in Costa Rica, where newly freed slaves from Jamaica were brought in to clear the forest and build the tracks which would connect Costa Rican coffee farms to the world market. (And really, if you haven’t tried Costa Rican coffee, I highly recommend it).

One of Costa Rica’s most famous brands of coffee, Cafe Britt (photo: cafebritt.com)

Subsequent influxes of Jamaicans would help Costa Rica develop its other major cash crop, bananas. Under the auspices of the notorious United Fruit Company (backer of much mischief in Latin America; see Steven Kinzer’s book Overthrow), Jamaicans were brought in to work banana plantations on the in the Caribbean region of Costa Rica.

Many immigrants don’t start out on their journey intending to immigrate. That may well have been the case with the Jamaicans brought to Costa Rica in the late 19th century, but many of them did end up staying in the country. The Caribbean port city of Limon and the surrounding province are today around 50% Afro-Caribbean, largely the descendants of the railroad workers and banana plantation workers. Many black Costa Ricans have also moved to larger cities throughout the country, and their total population is around 125,000 (in a country of 4.5 million).

Blacks in Costa Rica have a status not that different from that of their counterparts here in the US. Poverty, unemployment, violence, and many other measures of quality of life are all higher among the Afro-Caribbean population. Racism remains a fact of life (when I told people there I was going to Limón nearly every one told me to “be careful”).

Yet despite this, the Afro-Caribbean population has developed a culture all its own. It is in many ways a combination of African, Jamaican, and Costa Rican influence. Rice and beans, a typical Costa Rican dish, is given a Caribbean flavor with the addition of coconut; it is Wanchope’s favorite food. On the Caribbean coast, one hears people speak a patois that combines English, Spanish, and surely some other influences, for I speak the first two languages and yet struggled to understand this mixture.

Boys playing soccer on a Limón street (photo: Eric Wheater / canada.com)

Back to Paulo Wanchope and the question of how his name is pronounced. The striker, born in 1976 in the Central Valley city of Heredia, is the descendant of blacks brought to Costa Rica from Jamaica. Along with his skin color, Wanchope’s last name is the major clue as to his family’s past. It is an Anglo name, given to his family’s descendants while in Jamaica and carried across the Caribbean to Costa Rica.

Many black Costa Ricans have similar last names. Current national team coach Hernán Medford and players Jervis Drummond, Harold Wallace, and Steven Bryce are all examples of Afro-Caribbeans with decidedly Anglo last names. (Costa Rica is not the only country with a black players whose ancestors hail from Jamaica; see Honduras’s Carlos Pavón and Guatemala’s Freddy Thompson).

New LA Galaxy signing David Beckham, I mean Carlos Alberto Pavón Plummer (photo: AP / Medio Tiempo)

So, in the end, I won the argument (not that I’m bragging) about how Paulo Wanchope’s last name is pronounced. But it’s not the end of the story. Wanchope’s nickname is Chope, with the e pronounced. Why, I can’t quite say, but perhaps just because Costa Ricans like the sound of it (go ahead, say it out loud, it sounds like “Choap-ay”).

Back when he was a defender for the US national team, Eddie Pope routinely had his last name mangled by Costa Rican commentators, who pronounced what should have been a e. In a country with such a large black population, and so many Anglo last names, you’d think commentators would figure out that the final e is often silent in English. But maybe they just liked saying “Poap-ay.”

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 28th, 2007 at 6:18 pm and is filed under Africa, Caribbean, Ethnicity/Race, Europe, History, Immigration, Latin America. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.