[Deported? Say it ain’t so!]
It was a cool morning in April 2000 in San Jose, Costa Rica, when I had my run-in with the Costa Rican Police, aptly named: FUERZA PUBLICA (Public Force).
I was sitting in Parque Morazon, waiting on Bar Soda Morazon to open at seven in the morning. I had just gotten to San Jose from Manuel Antonio and I was living in The Gran Hotel Imperial down on the bad side of town so I had meandered my way east towards the park to have breakfast. I had a late-afternoon English class to teach out in Sabana Park. I was hungry and up early and looking a little scruffy because I wasn’t in the mood to take a cold shower and get dressed so long before class. I wasn’t sure what time it was because I had quit wearing a watch when I left the United States. When I got to Soda Morazon, it was closed. I stopped somebody on the street to inquire about the time and it was about 6:45am. Now comes the good part.
The option that I elected to take was to walk across to Parque Morazon and have a seat on a bench and wait. So there I was, looking a little scruffy because I was unshaven and dressed in a flannel shirt and jeans. I was sitting there mulling over my day and yawning and then I feel a tapping on my shoulder with a stick. I turn around and it’s, you guessed it, a proud member of the Fuerza Publica.
I have never been a big fan of authority nor of the police anywhere nor at anytime. But, Costa Rica is different because the police, for the most part, just leave you alone and go about their business, especially when you look like a Tico and speak Spanish with a Costa Rican accent. I felt a spark of fear because I had been in Costa Rica WELL over my allotted three-month visa, but I was playing it cool. A common question from the police is to ask you to show your papers. By law, you should be carrying them or a copy of them at all times. When I lived in Manuel Antonio, I hardly ever even saw the police, much less carried my identification with me. For an American, you can enter Costa Rica with a passport or with a government-issued ID and a certified copy of your birth certificate. I had done the latter. So, at this particular time, I was carrying my drivers’ license and I showed it to the officer. I knew what he was thinking: Here I have caught a Nicaraguan with a stolen ID. Oh boy, brownie points for me.
Costa Ricans have an extreme prejudice against Nicaraguans because after Hurricane Mitch, which devastated Nicaragua, there was an influx of Nicaraguans, mostly illegal, to Costa Rica. Ticos blame them for crime and for taking jobs from Ticos. Now, I am of a darker complexion, with features that are more of an indigenous people like the Incas or the Aztecs rather than Europeans. In reality, I am of Mexican descent and usually people in Central America ask me if I am from Peru or Colombia rather than from Nicaragua.
However, at this point the cop’s assumption was based more on my dress rather than my facial features. Heretofore, our conversation had been completely in Spanish, but now I broke off into English: “C’mon Buford Pusser, quit sweating me and leave me be.”
He didn’t speak a lick of English, which I knew already. Now, the Fuerza Publica look frightening � if you let them frighten you. The majority of them wear Kevlar vests and have nine millimeters and dress all in black. I’m talking, they look like they are headed to a riot. So, Roscoe P. Coltrane gets on his horn and calls me in and he sends for the paddy wagon. If you are ever in San Jose, you will see the white vans rolling around through the city with FUERZA PUBLICA painted on the side. So, they came, and I was “shackled from head to toe, rolling on the grey goose,” as Snoop Dogg says. The back of those vans fits about four people comfortably. By the time we got to the destination, they had crammed ten people in the back. About halfway there, they let me sit up front because by this time, they had been convinced that indeed I was an American and the moron that had had me arrested was just wasting their time.
Jail in Costa Rica, Central America isn’t as bad as you might expect. I was taken to the local sub-station and questioned. What they really wanted was for me to produce some cash and for them to move on. BUT, I had about C1.000 on me for breakfast and that was it, so that wasn’t a go. (An aside: if you do get picked by the cops, then they want about C5.000. Don’t screw up the curve for everybody else by giving them $100 or something stupid like that.)
Fast forward four hours: I had been pacing my cell with my cellmate, some drunk guy. And, they came down to get me out. The leader of the sub-station handed me all of my stuff back and sent me in the paddy wagon to the Special Immigration Police. At this point, I was through cooperating. I felt like Sylvester Stallone in First Blood: “All I wanted was something to eat.”
I got to the Special Immigration Police outpost and they questioned me and I was playing the “Me no habla Spanish” game. They were getting pissed and I was already pissed because I figured if they were going to throw me out of the country, then let’s get started.
Now they load me into the personal car of the guy that was trying to question me, and they take me out to THE REAL IMMIGRATION OFFICE. Then came more interrogation, all in Spanish. “Nope, boys, I don’t speak a lick. Sorry.” Finally, the guys says, “When I am in your country I speak English, and when you are in mine, then speak Spanish.” So, I thought, when in doubt, lie and deny the truth. In situations like this there are three rules to remember: DENY, DENY, DENY. And remember them in that order.
Finally they got so frustrated with me that they brought in some guy that half-assed spoke English, and they tracked all of the incoming records since like January of 1999 and, finally, they found me. The jig was up.
So, I am in the confined waiting room with six Nicaraguans, all of whom had been there before. I heard one guy say that he’d been there six times. We waited. They fed us lunch. The Immigration Office closes at four and so promptly at 3:45pm, they started calling out names. Mine was last. They handed me a letter which said: You have five days from 3pm today to leave the country or your entry to Costa Rica may be restricted for a period of ten years. Then, they let me out the door. I had to laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of the whole situation. I thought, “Here I have broken your laws, sullied your women, drunk your beer, urinated in your public places, and more or less lived in a drunken debauchery so profane that I constantly devise ways to take over your country and rule with an iron fist… and you people can’t even take the time and the money to take me to the runway of the airport and put me on the plane and watch me fly away in utter shame.”
I was feeling like a modern-day Viking.