From Calero Island to the “Dirt Road”

The boundary dispute between the Nicaraguan and Costa Rican governments has recurred throughout both nations’ republican era. The most recent such conflict flared up in October 2010. And it is still burning. Here is essential data for understanding what happened during these past two years.

Carlos Sandoval García

The dredging of Nicaragua’s San Juan River, whose southern bank forms the border with Costa Rica, got underway in October 2010 and went on into 2011. It gave rise to yet another dispute between the two countries over how to determine the precise border that was first heard by the Organization of American States (OAS), but it escalated into a formal complaint now being processed by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.

The same dispute dates back to 2005

The Nicaraguan government has insisted that the dredging conveys the country’s sovereignty over the river. For its part, the Costa Rican government has charged that the dredging is causing environmental damage and changing the course of the river, threatening to convert a strip of Costa Rican territory known as Calero Island into Nicaraguan territory. Nicaraguan authorities deny that the dredging is producing the environmental damage claimed by their Costa Rican counterparts and have argued that the layout of a canal called Harbor Head, facilitated by the dredging, will return the river to its natural course, changed over the years by accumulated sedimentation.

The environmental damage assessment and determination of the river’s course, as well as the interpretation of treaties and other rulings signed by both States, have been the source of many disputes over the years. In 2005 the Costa Rican government filed suit with the ICJ for navigation rights on the river, but the case was dismissed in 2009. The next year the Costa Rican government again filed suit with the ICJ, this time regarding the dredging. The ICJ gave its initial ruling in March 2011. In turn, the road the Costa Rican government built this past year along the river bank led Nicaragua to sue Costa Rica in both the Central American Court of Justice and the ICJ.

In short, between 2005 and 2011 the International Court of Justice has heard three cases concerning aspects of the same geography. If nothing else, this shows the difficulties of a bi-national dialogue despite initiatives taken by the foreign ministries of both countries between 2003 and 2007 with the support of international cooperation.

“Closing ranks” is no alternative

An analysis of this boundary dispute raises at least two theoretical-methodological challenges. The theoretical one consists of transcending social sciences’ identification with the interests associated with the State and societies of which they are part. In any analysis of border conflicts, what is called “methodological nationalism” emerges with particular force, often preventing the understanding, for example, that nationality narratives are created on both sides of a border that even opposing each other share a number of rhetorical resources: a sense of uniqueness, founding myths, socio-spatial references and certain foods, to mention just a few. The challenge seems to be how to convert national identity, or “us,” into “another for oneself.” The second challenge is to understand this recent conflict in its historical perspective, since if anything has characterized it, it is its recurrence throughout the republican era. It’s thus about not reproducing the social sciences’ past refuge in the present.

Transcending both methodological nationalism and the immediacy of the social sciences is part of a search for other vocabularies for thinking and trying to understand these events and other similar ones. This isn’t an easy task because the elites and society in general, both in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, don’t know what the other country thinks about the river and its significance in constituting the nation-State. For example, it ignores the fact that the river doesn’t just divide but also unites border communities and thousands of bi-national families, or the thousands of Costa Rican children and teenagers of Nicaraguan fathers or mothers.

It’s essential not to assume that “closing ranks,” a phrase both governments frequently use in this conflict, is a real alternative. Another language is required, a third space, probably that of a bi-national citizenship “from below,” to help us understand each other and ourselves. We need to make a contribution in that direction, and to do that we must not lose sight of the fact that nations are often embraced as unique and perennial even though academic debate insists on their historical and socially constructed character.

Latin America’s priority
was to draw up borders

Identifying borders was one of the priorities of Latin American States during the 19th century and even the 20th and the disputes between the new States often reflected the interests and influence of imperial powers. In the case of Costa Rica and Nicaragua, the presence of British, American and even French interests regarding the possibility of constructing a canal across Central America using the San Juan River is crucial to understanding both the dynamics of the disputes and the ways agreements have been reached.

This link between inter-State conflicts and imperial geopolitics is manifested by the Cañas-Jérez Treaty (1858), negotiated with help from Felix Belly, a Frenchman interested in promoting a contract for building the canal, after the two countries nearly went to war; the Cleveland Award (1888), named for then-US President Grover Cleveland (1885-1889); and the five awards of September 30, 1897, December 20, 1897, March 22, 1898, July 26, 1899 and March 10, 1900, arbitrated by a commission whose head, E.P. Alexander, was appointed by his friend President Cleveland. While imperial interests in the river lessened once the canal was finally built in Panama, inter-State disputes have persisted to the present day.

The river and the canal/
the river and the “others”

During the transition between the 19th and 20th centuries, difficulties encountered by Nicaragua’s Liberal elites in legitimizing a nation-State project, an experience repeated during the Sandinista Revolution, turned the river into a nationality reference that was probably only comparable to the importance of the figure of poet Rubén Darío. Successive initiatives to build a canal, mentioned during the government of Enrique Bolaños (2002-2007), and again by Daniel Ortega in 2012, confirm how the dream of that canal has taken root in Nicaragua, at least in the speeches of the country’s political elite.

Reference to the river doesn’t occupy the same centrality in Costa Rica, but there’s no doubt that the Nicaraguan State and society are an “other” around which the meaning of Costa Rican national identity has been represented. In the 20th century the triumphant political forces in Costa Rica’s 1948 civil war and Nicaragua’s Somoza dictatorship were mutually hostile. Somoza García, the first head of that family dynasty, supported the invasion organized after the Civil War by the defeated forces. In 1954, José Figueres Ferrer sympathized with a coup attempt against Somoza. In turn, Somoza gave his support to another invasion of Costa Rica in 1955.

In Costa Rica, the initial support for the FSLN’s struggle against the Somoza dictatorship soon gave way to presenting the Sandinista Revolution as a communist threat. With Violeta Chamorro’s triumph in 1990, the threat began to be more intensely associated with Nicaraguan immigrants, who are consistently portrayed as criminal even though the massive migration grown has tapered off in recent years.

The 2005 decision was
about navigation rights

The most immediate precursor of the current conflict was the dispute over navigation rights on the river, which went to the International Court of Justice at The Hague in 2005, at the Costa Rican government’s initiative.

The Court announced its decision on July 13, 2009, reiterating that the Costa Rican State has the right to free navigation on the Río San Juan, including for both commercial reasons and tourism, in which case people do not require visas or tourist cards issued by the Nicaraguan State. It also ruled that police boats of the Costa Rican State do not have navigation rights, except to carry out personnel rotation. The judgment further stipulates that the Nicaraguan State has the right to issue travel authorization documents for boats and to require boats to stop to check that the passengers are carrying identity documents.

It was a balanced verdict: it confirms Nicaraguan sovereignty on the river while authorizing free commercial navigation for Costa Rica.

Rottweilers become
symbols of sovereignty

A background event not linked to the boundary dispute itself, but one that has had a lasting impact on the Costa Rican social self-image, was the death of the Nicaraguan immigrant Natividad Canda Mairena when he entered a privately owned lot in Costa Rica at night in November 2005. He was torn to pieces in a fierce attack by two Rottweiler dogs under the impassive gaze of eight police officers who didn’t even attempt to help him. Days later, in a xenophobic escalation the like of which had not been seen for years, a Costa Rican took José Ariel Silva’s life and injured two other Nicaraguans during an argument over Canda’s death.

Although the policemen were brought to trial and ultimately acquitted of their responsibility by omission in September 2012, Canda’s tragic death was recorded in the Costa Rican social imaginary in association with the Rottweilers, which have since become symbols to represent the defense of the nation and Costa Rican territory. They featured again in the new border dispute sparked in 2010.

The border dispute
becomes a national crusade

If border disputes have been a constant in the history of the relationship between Costa Rica and Nicaragua, what’s new in the conflict triggered by the dredging of the Río San Juan? One possible answer would be the intensity with which the dispute was linked to defense of the nation. Both governments rapidly escalated the rhetoric and actions, making the possibility of dialogue and negotiation very difficult. To this was added the media’s identification with their respective government’s position.

Social networks and other digital media, an expression of globalization that was not available on the previous occasions, overflowed with nationalist xenophobia. One of the elements that marked the escalation of the conflict was its definition as a security issue. Former Costa Rican Security Minister José María Tijerino maintained such a prominent position promoting this definition that the country’s Foreign Affairs Ministry was perceived as being less important, especially before the case was taken to the OAS.

Without doubt Tijerino’s statements and the deployment on the border of Costa Rican Civil Guard troops armed with military equipment clouded the panorama. On November 2, 2010, Tijerino said of the Nicaraguans posted there to carry out the dredging: “These gentlemen will be removed by reason or force, because we are supported by international law, by the mechanisms available to international law, which include the use of force.” His statements were circulated in Nicaragua and are cited in the so-called “White Paper” published by the Nicaraguan government titled “The truths that Costa Rica hides,” a 76-page document available in digital format, in which the Ortega government offers a series of considerations about the conflict.

The issue of drug trafficking in the area is of equal importance in the “White Paper.” The Costa Rican government made no statement on that matter until May 2011, when an agenda on security issues between the two governments was inaugurated. “The truths that Costa Rica hides” states that those who first denounced the dredging were members of a family, erroneously reported as Costa Rican but in fact Nicaraguan, that own the Aragón Farm are were associated with drug trafficking. According to the “White Paper,” the dredging was inhibiting their movement of drugs through the region.

Virulence in the media

The governments’ virulence was joined by media stridence. In Costa Rica, the REPRETEL group, which includes TV channels and radio stations, called for a march to which the population was invited to wear white. Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla endorsed the call. Soon REPRETEL was also calling on people to display flags on their house fronts and cars as a way to express their “condemnation” of the Nicaraguan government’s actions. As outlined critically in the Fusildechispas web site, they went from this “emotive cheer leading” to “reading editorials in their television news (6 and 11) and on their radio stations (Reloj and Monumental). And in the prime time edition of REPRETEL News, the news room appeared draped with the tricolor [flag]…. All that was missing were lanterns, jaggery and a clay-colored thrush [Costa Rica’s national bird].”

The REPRETEL group in Costa Rica and some Nicaraguan television channels in which Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo have shares were the most strident media on the two sides of the border. The Mexican investor Ángel González is one of the main shareholders in these channels in both countries, although being certain about media ownership is an enduring mystery.

“I don’t have a flag”

Despite the predominance of nationalist stridency, there were also efforts to subvert this heavy burden of hostility. In Costa Rica’s case, Andrea Aguilar published an article in the daily newspaper La Nación (November 16, 2010) titled “I don’t have a flag,” in which she wrote: “I don’t have a homeland. I have a world. And if to defend this world, if to defend human equality over nationality I have to put the red, white and blue to one side, then I’ll be the first to saw through the pole of any flag that would separate me from others who are equal to me. I’ve always liked being Costa Rican, but first and foremost, I’ve always liked being human.” By the next month that text had received 150 comments in La Nación’s digital edition.

Keep sovereignty or
keep the conflict?

There was similar virulence in Nicaragua, especially on the TV channels controlled by the Ortega-Murillo family. T-shirts with the slogan “The Río San Juan is Nica,” first promoted by the Arnoldo Alemán government years before, appeared once again. “The whole of Nicaragua is the Río San Juan” was a phrase taken from a song apropos of the conflict released by Dimensión Costeña, a well-known singing group from Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast.

Because of their opposition to the Ortega government, the two Nicaraguan national newspapers offered the possibility of
a critical perspective independent of nationalist rhetoric and loyalties. The person who best condensed such a perspective was Sandinista Renovation Movement leader Dora María Téllez. In an interview published in El Nuevo Diario on November 13, 2010, she said: “I’m going to tell you this in the following terms even though it might be very risky: If I were the Nicaraguan government I would withdraw our soldiers from the area, not because I don’t accept that they have sovereignty there, but because I accept that their presence is a source of conflict. Placing the soldiers 15 meters farther inland doesn’t take Nicaraguan sovereignty away from me, but it does take away the conflict… and from Nicaragua’s point of view, we’re the ones most interested in avoiding conflict without giving up sovereignty. Maintaining sovereignty doesn’t necessarily mean maintaining conflict. Those who believe sovereignty is only maintained by conflict are the ones with the vision of neighborhood thugs.” The title of this interview was “This conflict is a bit artificial.” It could be said that artificiality has been present on both sides of the border.

Ortega’s three laws

In an M&R survey conducted in Nicaragua between November 27 and December 6, 2010, during the highpoint of the conflict, 95.6% of the population surveyed felt that both nations “must prioritize a relationship of cooperation over conflict.” Somewhat contradicting this, however, a majority backed President Ortega’s handling of the conflict. There was a Sandinista/non-Sandinista split with regard to demilitarizing the area: while Sandinistas felt that doing so would endanger sovereignty, non-Sandinistas didn’t perceive this risk. Something similar was happening in Costa Rica.

In the context of the conflict, President Ortega sent three bills to the National Assembly in December for fast-track approval: the Law of Defense of the Republic of Nicaragua, the National Security Law of the Republic of Nicaragua and the Law on the Legal System of the Borders. The justification of the first reads: “Due to our country’s geographic position and the geopolitical considerations of other nations, Nicaragua has been directly affected throughout its history by the emergence and development of various conflicts. Nicaragua has been subject to constant claims and even foreign armed interventions in our homeland.”

In essence, these laws give the President discretionary authority and justify the Army’s subordination to the executive branch under certain conditions. Thus, in addition to helping legitimize the Ortega’s controversial nomination for reelection, debated since late 2009, the border conflict also gave him justification for long-range institutional change.

The rise and fall of Laura Chinchilla

The border conflict had taken shape six months after President Laura Chinchilla began her administration in Costa Rica. She won with 46.8 % of the valid votes, 5.9% more than Óscar Arias had obtained in the 2006 elections. The gap between Chinchilla and Ottón Solís, the Citizen’s Action Party candidate who came in second, is the highest between first and second place since the presidential elections of 1953 and 1982.

Nonetheless, she was soon swamped by an array of intra-party conflicts (the attempt to increase the legislators’ wage; the appointment of the foreign minister; and the early candidacy of Rodrigo Arias Sánchez, former President Arias’ brother, among others. Those conflicts within her own party, as well as a series of lawsuits and social mobilizations, the fight against open-pit mining in Crucitas, the shortcomings of the motorway construction to Caldera, the resistance to privatization of the docks in Limón and protests by both university students and street vendors, turned the first few months of her administration into a scenario that was hard to decipher. These disputes have continued up to the present time, both within her Cabinet and with sectors of the ruling party as well as the opposition.

In July 2010, only months after taking office, a Unimer poll showed that 74% of the Costa Ricans surveyed believed that President Chinchilla had the necessary qualities to lead the country, but by March 2011, acceptance of her leadership had dropped to 58%. In response to the question “What is Chinchilla’s main achievement,” 46% of the 366 people who replied listed her satisfactory handling of the conflict for Calero Island, as the border conflict is usually called in Costa Rica.

After May 2011, only 14% of the people questioned believed that the President was leading the government well. By that time the conflict had ceased being an issue in the media and the inauguration of the new National Stadium, built with the support of the government of the Republic of China, an event in which the President obtained the greatest public exposure possible, was old news.

Planned or not, the conflict around the Río San Juan had buttressed President Chinchilla politically, since it focused tensions outward at a juncture in which the main political frictions and conflicts were within the governing party. She was even undercut by former President Arias, a member of her own party, who said with more than a hint of gender stereotyping: “Laura Chinchilla is honest, but she’s not firm; she’s gelatinous, soft and ungrateful.”

“The most serious affront”

On April 11, Costa Rica commemorates the mid-19th century Battle of Rivas, when Costa Rican troops led by Juan Santamaría defeated the filibusters from the pro-slavery US south led by William Walker in Nicaragua. In the 2011 celebrations President Chinchilla said in her speech: “The irony of history is that from the same country where Juan Santamaría gave his life in its defense, new filibuster boots recently arrived to abuse us! Our hero did not die so that the most serious affront to our sovereignty we have experienced in our history might come from the same country he defended with his sacrifice.”

Despite criticisms by several political actors and sectors of the President’s likening of the current conflict to the Battle of Rivas, she did not seem to register the risks she was running. She ignored Nicaragua’s celebration of the Battle of San Jacinto on September 14, a similar event in which the filibusters were defeated.

Defining Nicaragua
as “the enemy”

Several members of President Chinchilla’s Cabinet expressed similar considerations that sparked adverse reactions. A few months before leaving his post as foreign minister, René Castro concluded: “To be a pacifist is in the Costa Rican soul, but external forces are obliging us to reconsider historical postures.” That statement continued to provoke responses in the digital edition of La Nación a year later, in January 2012, by then totaling 154.

Castro even suggested that the Costa Rican police corps might be made similar to the Carabineros (Police) in Chile, even though they gained an unforgettable reputation for brutality at the time of Pinochet’s coup. And when President Chinchilla suggested that a “national security tax” would be necessary, Castro piped up to clarify that “the original idea was mine.”

Enrique Castillo, who replaced Castro as foreign minister, and from whom a less confrontational strategy might have been expected, said in his initial statements to the press: “I think we have to consider the Nicaraguan government as an enemy as long as they continue to usurp.” Daisy Corrales, Costa Rica’s new heallth minister, displayed a similar attitude on her very first day in office. She declared to the media that care given to migrants, understood to be Nicaraguan, is one of the factors that explains the Costa Rican Social Security Fund’s financial difficulties, possibly one of the Chinchilla administration’s most complex issues during 2011. One of the few topics on which her Cabinet and Corrales seem to share a vision is in converting the border conflict with the Nicaraguan government into a matter of “national security.”

“Don’t aggravate the dispute”

Just as happened ten years ago, the conflict over the dredging of the Río San Juan took the dispute once again to the ICJ. The thesis argued by Costa Rica, according to the Court, is “its right to assert its sovereignty over the whole of Portillos Island and the Colorado River [an offshoot of the San Juan] and, on the other hand, its right to protect the environment in those areas in which it is sovereign.”

For its part Nicaragua alleges that “it has sovereignty title over the northern part of Portillos Island, that is to say, the wetlands area of some three square kilometers between the right bank of the disputed creek, the right bank of the Río San Juan to its mouth in the Caribbean Sea and Harbor Head lagoon (hereafter referred to as ‘disputed territory’) and argues that the dredging of the San Juan, over which it has sovereignty, only has a negligible impact on the flow of the Colorado river, over which Costa Rica has sovereignty.”

The Costa Rican government is asking Nicaragua “(1) not to station troops or any other staff, (2) not to undertake the construction or expansion of a channel, (3) not to cut down trees or remove vegetation or soil and (4) not to unload sediment.”

The ICJ first responded to these allegations and the Costa Rican government’s request for precautionary measures in March 2011 by requesting that “the parties refrain from sending to or maintaining in the disputed territory, including the creek, any staff, be it civilian, police or security; it authorizes Costa Rica, in certain special circumstances, to dispatch civilian personnel responsible for protecting the environment; and orders the parties not to aggravate or extend the dispute before the Court or hinder its resolution.”

In this first resolution, there is a warning in the Court’s emphasis on preventing an escalation of the conflict. Rather than a triumph, something both governments congratulated themselves on, it is a first step that may possibly only be supported by an agenda for development in which a bilateral and regional perspective becomes crucial because, with or without conflict, the poorest municipalities of both States are located on the two sides of that border and have an interdependent relationship of different scales and dimensions.

Development: The great missing link

As the ICJ’s final ruling would have to be decided on the merits of the case brought by Costa Rica, representatives of both governments met for the first time a month after that initial resolution. The meeting was to have been headed by their respective foreign ministers, but in the end only deputy ministers participated, thus revealing the prevailing tensions and difficulties. In general, there was no preparation in order to agree on the terms of the encounter. It could have started in a third country and gone on to move closer to the disputed area. Because they went the other way they even had to cut the wire fence on Costa Rica’s northern border that separates the territories of both States to hold the meeting.

Security and drug trafficking issues made up the agenda, with the word development absent from the meeting. The main conclusion was to continue the talks in Guatemala, with the participation of both countries’ deputy security ministers. Ironically, when tensions similarly escalated between the two governments in 1886, a meeting was also convened in Guatemala, but on that occasion it was at least the foreign ministers who attended.

Along with the dearth of content there were no conditions to bring other actors into a more plural negotiating table. The only easing of tension resulted from agreeing to the dialogue and from the debate among decision-makers and professionals in the media, since they are often the ones who most encourage the conflict.

It might be equally important to invite the business sector, which in practical terms profits from the interdependence between the two States in terms of labor force and export trade, both because Central America is the second destination of Costa Rican exports and because Nicaragua has no port on the Caribbean side and thus must export from Costa Rica’s Puerto Limón. During the weeks of greatest tension, the possibility that diplomatic ties between Costa Rica and Nicaragua could be severed was unofficially mentioned, but an important Costa Rica-based company apparently dissuaded the Chinchilla government from taking this measure.

The most crucial period of the crisis and the conflict showed the lack of civic and academic initiatives able to transcend the confrontational rhetoric on both sides of the border. In late 2010, the rector of the University of Costa Rica, Yamileth González García, invited her counterparts from universities in Nicaragua to a meeting in Costa Rica in order to contribute to a negotiated solution. While it was an important initiative, it did not crystallize into a sustained effort.

The controversial highway

In March, 2011, President Chinchilla and her minister of the presidency issued an emergency decree in the official journal La Gaceta setting out exceptional conditions for the construction of a 170-kilometer highway along the stretch of the Río San Juan that serves as a boundary between Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

With an initial investment of $40 million, a project was set in motion that has sparked criticism among environmental groups in both countries. The main criticism revolves around the fact that the emergency decree exempted the Costa Rican government from conducting environmental impact studies and other kinds of prior studies.

It has been pointed out that the road’s proximity to the river bank poses at least two concerns. One is that the road is built on an inalienable strip, i.e. land not suitable for construction, since all such works must be built a certain number of meters away from the river, especially when it is an international river whose sovereignty belongs to the neighboring country, as in this case. The other reservation mentioned frequently is that in the event of flooding produced by sedimentation processes and poor watershed management, extensive damage could occur in a very fragile area with a wealth of biodiversity.

On December 22, 2011, the Nicaraguan government filed suit against the State of Costa Rica in the International Court in The Hague, making it the third case filed in less than seven years. The main considerations put forward by Nicaragua relate to the environmental damage caused by the construction of this road. For its part, the Costa Rican government has reiterated that the road will join historically isolated communities to population centers, thus improving their quality of life. While this is a reasonable goal, a doubt remains as to whether the road’s proximity to the river can be justified.

Nicaraguan environmental groups filed their own suit in the Central American Court of Justice (CCJ). The CCJ issued an order to suspend the work, but the Costa Rican Sate does not recognize its jurisdiction in the case.

During 2012 it emerged that the contractors recruited by the Costa Rican National Highway Commission (CONAVI) had given gifts to commission officials. It was also revealed that some of the companies contracted to do the construction did not do the work for which they were hired. The Costa Rican Public Ministry is currently investigating these reports. It was also leaked that there was no design for the road, which is as long as the distance between the capital city of San José and Puerto Limón. There was also suspected smuggling of the timber felled for the construction.

The “nationalist” dirt road

In its entirety, this project has been the Chinchilla administration’s largest economic investment, the one the President seems to have chosen to leave her stamp on the country. Appropriating the symbolism of the 1856 war against the filibusters, she named the project “Route 1856 Juan Rafael Mora Porras.” Together with the search for a stamp, the reference to the 1856 war seems to have been a strategy for projecting the numerous difficulties she has experienced onto an “external enemy” classified as a “threat.”

Despite that gambit, the many irregularities detected in the construction of the road seem to have turned this external threat into a new internal conflict. Once again nationalist rhetoric is responsible for an enormous waste of public resources and doesn’t resolve the conflict that has accompanied President Chinchilla’s government.

Regardless of the nationalist stamp she has attempted to foist on the country, “Route 1856” is still known in Costa Rica as “the dirt road.” And while it was being opened, many Nicaraguan children were preparing to start the 2012 school year in Costa Rican educational institutions. The Nicaraguan State has historically been unable to create decent living conditions for border communities, making the disputes around border sovereignty much more important in the capital cities of both countries than in the disputed territories.

Negative consequences

One of the main consequences of this border conflict has been the assumption that conflicts between governments equal disputes between societies, a gross simplification that calls for “closing ranks” to demonstrate “our condemnation.” It legitimized the image that xenophobia is widespread and that solidarity, respect and bi-national families, among the many manifestations of connections, don’t exist. But it’s not true: even during the weeks of greatest tension, life in the border communities barely changed. Thousands of families have relatives on both sides of the border and, at least in Costa Rica, the conflict escalated more in the center of the country than on the border itself.

In this context, particularly toward the end of the year when thousands of Nicaraguans living in Costa Rica travel home to share the holidays with relatives, fear took hold of thousands of people in December 2010. Deciding whether to travel or not and the fear of being deported were frequent subjects during that month. The Costa Rica government took its time in appointing a new ambassador to Nicaragua, a delay to which must be added Costa Rica’s minimal involvement in regional integration bodies such as the Central American Integration System or the Presidential Summits, of which President Chinchilla had only attended one out of four as of February 2012.

The urgent bi-national agenda

In general terms, the Chinchilla government’s foreign policy has lacked strategic initiatives, especially in response to the international economic crisis, which unquestionably entails a reduction in international cooperation and a corresponding shift in priorities toward regional projects.

The border conflict has been a major setback to the efforts of civil society organizations to strengthen intercultural policies. Hostility and xenophobia make it very hard to recognize the many forms of interdependence between the two societies, both in the border regions and in the relationship between the Nicaraguan migrant community and Costa Rican society. Initiatives to promote rights will have to wait for better times. Nor is the international scenario the most favorable for promoting and legitimizing a bi-national agenda. The omnipresent issue of insecurity becomes a sort of interpretive frame for the conflict, within which the challenges of the border regions are reduced to drug trafficking and organized crime. Unmet needs such as education, health, jobs and road networks don’t appear on governmental agendas. Even more unfavorably, those agendas don’t favor citizen initiatives to bring other priorities to a collaborative discussion with a leading role for the communities in whose name a sovereignty that does nothing for their wellbeing is being claimed.

Carlos Sandoval García is a professor at the University of Costa Rica (UCR). This article was originally published in No. 38 of the UCR’s 2012 Yearbook of Central American Studies. It was edited by envío.

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