This Is the ‘South Park’ Episode the Costa Rican Government Considers ‘Trash’
South Park may have famously angered India, blamed Canada and found itself in a standoff with Mexico, but there’s yet another country that failed to find Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s beloved animated series funny: Costa Rica.
The cartoon’s off-screen beef with the Central American nation all began in 1999, with the Season Three premiere, “Rainforest Schmainforest.” Inspired by Parker’s less-than-fruitful vacation to the country at the behest of Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the episode took a very South Park (read: highly insensitive) approach at depicting the country.
“Oh my god, dude! Look at how dirty and crappy everything is!” Eric Cartman remarked upon pulling into the capitol of San Josè on a magic floating bus. After yelling at locals to “quit slacking off and get a job” — despite dunking on sex workers immediately thereafter — Cartman then took aim at the olfactory element of it all.
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“Oh my God, it smells like ass out here!” he yelped as he disembarked the bus, his mittens covering his nose.
The episode’s stank, however, would take about a decade to reach Costa Rica. In 2007, the nation’s tourism minister, Carlos Benavides denounced the installment — and its fans — in a recently-resurfaced conversation with Spanish magazine, 20 Minutos. “We should look at it as the trash that it is,” he explained, per an archived article from vivirlatino.com. “It’s a program of that nature on a network designed for people with a lowly upbringing and bad customs.”
The episode was reportedly redubbed in Latin America in 2011, but we can’t say Benavides’ read was entirely wrong. Tegridy farms Christmas snow, anyone?
