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Racializing the Nicaraguan Refugee in Costa Rica Tapestries: Interwoven voices of local and global identities Volume 8 Issue 1 Resisting Borders: Rethinking the Limits Article 5 of American Studies 2019 Borders Manifest: Racializing the Nicaraguan Refugee in Costa Rica Theodore B. Twidwell Macalester College, [email protected] Keywords: North America, South-South migration, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, racialization, borders, migration, whiteness, April 19th movement, border construction, Central America Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/tapestries Recommended Citation Twidwell, Theodore B. (2019) "Borders Manifest: Racializing the Nicaraguan Refugee in Costa Rica," Tapestries: Interwoven voices of local and global identities: Vol. 8 : Iss. 1 , Article 5. Available at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/tapestries/vol8/iss1/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the American Studies Department at DigitalCommons@Macalester College. It has been accepted for inclusion in Tapestries: Interwoven voices of local and global identities by an authorized editor of DigitalCommons@Macalester College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Borders Manifest: The Evolving Racialization of Costa Rica’s Nicaraguan Other within a Continental Context Theodore Bennett Twidwell protests, largely student-led and located Introduction on university campuses, were met with “I’ll say this again to Daniel violent repression by the government’s Ortega:” begins Lesly Antonio Mayorga police forces. Within days, the protests in an article for ​The ​Tico Times​, “I am not evolved from an outcry against specific afraid of you. I am not afraid of you, you social security reforms to an outcry more dog, and I will never be afraid of you. And broadly against Ortega and the if they gave me a gun to go and kill you, I corruption, violence, and repression his would do it.” Mayorga speaks from a government has engendered since his refugee camp in northern Costa Rica to ascension in 2006 (Awadalla). Within a Alejandro Zúñiga and Alexander Villegas, week, the violence against protestors reporters for the English-language Costa turned mortal, and the state-sponsored Rican newspaper. As Zúñiga and Villegas paramilitary group ​la juventud sandinista1 explain, two refugee camps have sprung ramped up its active participation in the up along Costa Rica’s borders as repression (Gonzalez). Student protestors, Nicaraguans like Mayorga flee now joined by their mothers and fathers, state-sanctioned violence in their home by ​campesinos2, began creating country. strongholds, tearing up the patchwork Since late April, a quasi-civil war brick streets and using the rubble to has evolved within the Central American construct barricades (Phillips). Entire nation of Nicaragua. Daniel Ortega, the cities, such as the sprawling urbanity of president-dictator of the country, Masaya, a city one hour south of the announced in April that the government capital, declared their independence from would be instituting social security the Ortega government, electing a reforms which would increase the amount municipal government to manage their Nicaraguans pay in taxes, while drastically needs, a civil city-wide rebellion spurred decreasing the pension and benefits one by the resistance in Monimbó, the city’s would receive once eligible for social indigenous neighborhood (Anderson0. security. These reforms, coupled with the Most of these strongholds, including government’s slow response to a fire in a Masaya, have fallen to government and nature reserve in southeastern Nicaragua earlier in the same month, sparked a wave 1 The Sandinista Youth (The Sandinista political ​ of protests throughout the country. The party is the political party of Ortega) 2 Peasant farmers, someone from the countryside ​ 1 paramilitary forces (“Nicaragua violence. In late October, in another Forces…”). The protests and unrest article for ​The ​Tico Time​s, Zúñiga and continue, but more clandestinely Villegas expand on this number, (Awadalla). As of late November and the informing that, since May of 2018, 23,000 writing of this piece, over 300 people have newly arrived Nicaraguans have applied been killed in the violence (Matalon), with for asylum, in this number not counting some claiming a death toll as high as 500, those Nicaraguans already present in noting there are further over 1,000 people Costa Rica before the violence began. still missing, or intentionally disappeared Most recently, George Rodríguez (Awadalla). More than 2,000 individuals reported for ​El Periodico CR ​that la have been arrested over the months of Comisión Interamericana de Derechos unrest, with between 200-400 activists Humanos3 (CIDH) has counted that over and protestors remaining in these jails, 40,000 Nicaraguans have petitioned for now facing charges of terrorism from the asylum in Costa Rica since the beginning government (Franco). One protestor, of the violence. None of these numbers Gabriela, a student, describes for DW.com account for the Nicaraguans who have her detention by members of ​la juventud at fled to Costa Rica and do not intend on a protestor-constructed barricade as the petitioning for asylum. strongholds crumbled, “She tells how her Nicaraguans in Costa Rica, tormentors ordered her to leave Nicaragua arriving across the border in increasing if her life is dear to her. Gabriela doesn't numbers, encounter another form of want to and has now gone underground.” repression; that of racism. Carlos Not all Nicaraguans have decided Sandoval-García, in his book ​Threatening to stay in their country like Gabriela. Others: Nicaraguans and the Formation of Others, like Mayorga, chose to flee the National Identities in Costa Rica ​points to violence and repression by crossing the the idea that Costa Rica, through its southern border of their country into construction of a national identity, has Costa Rica. As Joshua Partlow quantifies imagined itself as white, as the whitest in a September article for ​The ​Washington country in Central America, and thus has Post​, since the beginning of civil unrest in imagined Nicaraguans as non-white. Nicaragua “more than 24,400 Nicaraguans Costa Rica is an ethnically diverse have expressed their intention to apply for country, with established and prospering asylum in Costa Rica, compared with 58 indigenous, Afro-descendant, and East asylum applications from January to and Southeast Asian populations (“Costa August 2017.” This number, he Rica Demographics Profile 2018”). In recognizes, includes many Nicaraguans order to assimilate this unignorable ethnic already living in Costa Rica who wished and cultural diversity with a national to legalize their residence in the country as 3 their nation of origin descended into ​The Inter-American Commission of Human Rights 2 identity which clings greatly to a between Costa Ricans and the perceived ​europeidad4, the Costa Rican Nicaraguans seeking safety and identity has been constructed in relation opportunity within the nation. to a foreign other: in this case, the Nicaraguans arriving in Costa Rica right Nicaraguan other, an other which, in the now face rising sentiments of nationalism, Costa Rican national imagination, is racism, and exclusion; in fact, it can be inherently less civilized, less educated; said, the racialization of Nicaraguans and more brown, more indigenous, more their placement on the othered side of an black. In fact, within Costa Rica, imagined racial border is becoming only Nicaraguans have been imagined as a more salient in Costa Rica as the refugee distinct race, and one inferior to white crisis continues. Costa Ricans (Sandoval-García). This same process can be seen in Towards a Methodology the United States. In his article “Inventing Borders, here, must be understood the Race: Latinos and the Racial as more than imaginary lines demarcating Pentagon”, Silvio Torres-Saillant describes the geography of political entities (such as how the US state has managed to the US and Mexico, Nicaragua and Costa categorize Latinxs5, of incredibly varying Rica) from one another. As Gloria ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and economic Anzaldúa elaborates in her diversity, as one singular race. This has groundbreaking book ​Borderlands: La been accomplished, he argues, by equating Frontera​, borders are further social nationality with race. This essentialization constructions which divide people along of nationality and race is important to lines of perceived difference, such as the recognize as Costa Rica has engaged in social construction of a border between similar process, homogenizing the sexes, men and women placed on Nicaraguans as a distinct and singular race opposing sides of an imaginary line from the peoples of Costa Rica based on delineating sexual characteristics. These their nation of origin, an origin on the borders can be racial, gendered, sexual, other side of Costa Rica’s northern border. abled; what they require is an imbalance With the new refugee crisis evolving on of power. One side of the border receives this border and within Costa Rica, the privileges and power within social influx of Nicaraguans into the nation has institutions and society writ large, while lead to steadily increasing tensions those on the other side, considered deviant or othered from the norm of the 4 Europeanness privileged side, do not receive this power 5 ​“Latinx” here is used to mean anyone of Latin and privilege. For Nicaraguans currently American descent living in the United States (Torres-Saillant). “Latinx”
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