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

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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” is used rather than arriving in Costa Rica, the border they “Latino” to affirm the complexity of gender present in this and all racialized groups (Steinmetz).

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confront is racial. White-racialized6 Costa settlership. In the Americas, whiteness Ricans are placed on one-side of an operates through the process of imagined social border; Nicaraguans, settler-colonization, in which indigenous conceptualized as non-white, are placed populations are displaced by those on the other. institutions and peoples conceived of as A white-racialized identity, which white, and thus superior. La Paperson, in would grant such privilege and power, is his book ​A Third University is Possible​, contextual. Whiteness is vastly different expands on and clarifies this concept when from region to region, from country to he writes: country; whiteness is greatly different in The ‘settler’ is a site of Costa Rica from whiteness in the United exception from which States. Those classified as white in Costa whiteness emerges. Rica can be entirely European in ancestry, Whiteness is property; it is the right to have rights; it is but are usually any individuals descended the legal human; the from a mixture of European colonizers, anthropocentric normal is enslaved africans and their free written in its image. Not all descendants, and the peoples indigenous settlers at all time enjoy the to Costa Rica. These individuals are full privileges available to the mestizo​, or of mixed-ancestry, and are ‘settler’; rather, settler considered white (Carlos supremacy is constructed Sandoval-García). and maintained by a number Whiteness itself is not an individual of technologies: citizenship, identity, but rather a part in a system of private property, civil and criminal innocence, privilege and oppression. Steve Martinot, normative settler sexuality, in his book ​The Machinery of Whiteness: and so on. Studies in the Structure of Racialization​, describes whiteness in the following Essentially, there is no intrinsic state of manner, “White racialized identity is not a whiteness based on genealogy or heritage. psychological identity. It does not answer Whiteness, instead, is produced and the question, ‘Who am I?’ Instead, it created through access and familiarity to concerns what one is in a social institutions, and thus wealth and power. It framework or system of social is a person’s position on the categorizations. It encompasses one’s white-racialized side of a border that ethical possibilities, that is, what is grants one such access and familiarity, and permissible socially” (43). Whiteness in it is through these institutions that the Americas is further inherently privilege and power are born. Institutions, connected to colonization and statuses of as Martinot elaborates, determine what ethical possibilities exist for different 6 Not all Costa Ricans are racialized as white racialized groups, and maintain the 4

technologies Paperson speaks of, which in Ricans, as Martinot explains, “whiteness turn moderate whiteness. In the case of and white society can constitute the creation of a foreign other, as with themselves only by racializing, by Nicaraguans in Costa Rica, this is often dehumanizing and dominating other done through the creation of a people they define as non-white for that geopolitical national border. National purpose” (66). A racial border is necessary borders are used to define territories for for whiteness, for the maintenance of nation-states, and, often, determine who power and privilege designated to specific receives citizenship in which country. The populations, and as Nicaraguans search for otherness of Nicaraguans as perceived by safety in Costa Rica, they will be Costa Rica has been created and confronted with the process of maintained by the border between the racialization which creates this border. two countries (Sandoval-García). The Those racialized as Nicaraguan in Costa transgression across this border is Rica are also ​mestizo​, as indigenous, Asian, characterized by Costa Rica as a Arab, and black Nicaraguan nationals face transgression against the nation, and it is a different form of racialization in Costa the maintenance of this border that allows Rica (Sandoval-García). How, then, is this it to other Nicaraguans both within and Nicaraguan ​mestizo ​population socially outside of Costa Rica’s territories differentiated from the Costa Rican (Sandoval-García). In this way, it is easy to mestizo ​population? How is the border see how the national borders of between the two constructed? And how is nation-states, such as the one which the current refugee crisis affecting the delineates Nicaragua from Costa Rica, are process of racialization? often inherently connected to the borders The study of racialization, and, of race within countries. thus, the study of race and ethnicity, is an To place two peoples on different important aspect of contemporary sides of a racial border is not a natural, scholarship emerging from the field of intrinsic occurrence: rather it is a American Studies. American Studies purposeful and meticulous process. This concerns itself with the interdisciplinary process is known as racialization and is a study of American culture, politics, and process of “social differentiation” by which literature. As Jay Mechling puts it, populations are constructed as racially American Studies “seeks the connections different (Martinot). Nicaraguans have between cultural systems and between only been considered non-white in Costa texts.” Those in American Studies can Rica so long as they have been racialized have a variety of specializations, from as non-white. The constructed folklorists to queer theorists to students of non-whiteness of Nicaraguans is what culture and media. American Studies has allows for the construction of a long been a field that embraces evolution, white-racialized identity for ​mestizo ​Costa and, recently, this evolution has been

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expanding the scope of the field beyond The issue maintained a focus on Latinx the nation-state of the United States. As and Latin American scholarship, acting as Macarena Gómez-Barris and Licia an issue dedicated in its entirety to Fiol-Matta elaborate in the introduction redeveloping notions of American Studies. for the 2012 issue of ​The American Examinations of the Nicaragua-Costa Quarterly​, the official publication for the Rica border engage in a similar process by American Studies Association7, an providing a focus on South-South Association meeting in Puerto Rico in relations, eschewing, in some manner “the 2011 has opened up conversations about familiar North–South axis of hegemonic what American Studies can be, power.” The scholarship in ​Las Américas​, conversations spurred by the work and and all American Studies scholarship with activism of Latinx and Latin American a focus on Latin America, call for an American Studies scholars. Gómez-Barris American Studies that examines and Fiol-Matta write: “transhemispheric” relations between the The conference site of Puerto Rico nations and people of the Western opened up tangible and proximate locales Hemisphere; the American Hemisphere and contexts of South–South dialogues, (Gómez-Barris and Fiol-Matta). The palpable in the encounter between geotemporal configurations that did not Nicaraguan refugee crisis in Costa Rica easily nestle into the familiar North–South will be positioned within a continental axis of hegemonic power. The context, connecting the experiences of participation at the meeting and refugees and migrants across the North geographic nexus by more than four thousand, mostly US-based scholars American continent. It is my hope that stretched the meaning of American studies this study continues to follow in this within the hemisphere. tradition, and can ask us what it is American Studies can be. The conference allowed members of the My own positioning within the American Studies Association to grapple continent is important in understanding with the breadth and grasp of American the context and subjectivity from which Studies scholarship, challenging members this study comes. I am racialized as white to question what it is American Studies in both Costa Rica and Nicaragua, as well can encapsulate, based in critiques of a as my home country of the United States, focus on a solely US-based ​americanidad​, a nation within which I was born into or Americanness. The 2012 issue of ​The citizenship. My own capability to navigate American Quarterly ​was renamed ​Las and cross borders is facilitated by my Américas Quarterly, ​or The Americas citizenship and racialized identity. I Quarterly​, for this reason, to allow a studied in both Nicaragua and Costa Rica grander conceptualization of “America”. as the unrest in Nicaragua broke-out and the refugee crisis was initiated: my ability 7 The official organization for academics within to leave Nicaragua for Costa Rica, and the field of American Studies 6

thus avoid the escalating violence, was in to develop is inherently entangled with stark contrast to the relative ability of most these same relations. Nicaraguans. I boarded a plane to San José, Costa Rica on a one-way ticket; Creating a Race: The Delineation of conversely, our study abroad program’s Mestizo ​Nicaraguans and Costa Ricans student coordinator, a Nicaraguan The constitution of a South-South woman, was forced to purchase a return relation can be examined in the ticket before being allowed entrance into racialization of the Nicaraguan other in Costa Rica by the Costa Rican Costa Rica. These South-South relations government; and Lesly Antonio Mayorga are defined by their interactions between describes for ​The ​Tico Times escaping countries of the Global South, such as paramilitaries through the tropical Costa Rica and Nicaragua, countries rainforests of Nicaragua’s mountains, which have been traditionally crossing the border on foot. It can be seen “economically disadvantaged”, or “spaces here how race and nationality, often and peoples negatively impacted by conflated, exist in reference to the borders contemporary capitalist globalization” of nation-states, and vice versa. In Costa (Garland Mahler). I look, then, to how Rica, I directly saw the ways in which these neighboring and coexisting peoples Nicaraguans are treated as an other in the of the Global South have been racialized as country, particularly in contrast to my distinct and unique races by the Costa own social positioning as a white Rican nation-state, and four of the main estadounidense8 ​student, treated often as a methods employed in this process: skin tourist, a position that holds much power color/phenotypic difference, language use, in Costa Rica due to the nation’s criminality and dependence, and spatiality. economic dependence on tourism (Dyer). The methods of racialization I will discuss Bordered Skin: The Phenotype of Race here are methods I witnessed, and in this Phenotype, a term for the physical way my own lived experience in the expression of one’s genes, and race are country directly shapes the study itself. hopelessly intertwined. As Cynthia This study is with no doubt colored by Feliciano explains in her research study my own relations to borders as informed “Shades of Race: How Phenotype and by my social, political, and economic Observer Characteristics Shape Racial positioning within a continental context, Classification”, the categorization of and any discussion I create of borders and individuals into distinct racial groups is the racialization of a Nicaraguan other in often accomplished by the perception of Costa Rica as the refugee crisis continues physical characteristics, such as hair type and eye shape, but most clearly skin color. In this study, she found that, within the 8 ​ One who resides within or has citizenship in the US, this is clearest within the racialization United States 7

of black populations. Darker skin has used to demarcate ​mestizo Nicaraguans become, in the United States’s national and ​mestizo ​Costa Ricans: phenotype and imagining, inherently connected with physical characteristics, primarily, skin blackness. Phenotype, unlike many other color. modes of racialization, does not require For any student of race, it is blatant any interaction between two people that phenotype is much too permutable beyond sight, which has made it such an and vague to accurately racialize an entire insidious tool for racialization. One must population of people. This is a particularly only see another to racialize another. salient difficulty in the racialization of Phenotype has become a method for the Nicaraguans within Costa Rica, for, again, instant recognition, or perceived despite the respective constructed recognition, of the race of others. brownness and whiteness of these peoples This racialization based within in Costa Rica, the two populations share perceived differences in the expression of much of the same genealogy. There is physical characteristics is palpably present some validity to Costa Rican claims that in the social delineation between ​mestizo mestizo Nicaraguans have, on average, Costa Ricans and ​mestizo ​Nicaraguans. darker-skin than ​mestizo Costa Ricans. As Mestizo ​Costa Ricans and Nicaraguans can Sandoval-García elaborates, there was be said to truthfully share much of the generally less ​mestizaje​, or racial mixing, same genealogical ancestry, that of the in the mountainous country of Costa Rica Spanish European colonizer, enslaved and during the early processes of colonization free Africans, and indigenous populations when compared to the ​mestizajes ​in other of the region. However, whiteness in Central American countries, such as Costa Rica has still become connected to Nicaragua. However, this generalized the phenotype and, thus, skin color of its assumption of perceived skin color of populations. As Carlos Sandoval-García mestizo ​Nicaraguans and Costa Ricans elaborates, the Costa Rican national does little to elucidate the inherent imagination assumes that ​mestizo Costa complexity and nuance present in Ricans are the lightest-skinned inhabitants phenotypic racialization. In her study of their country. This light-skinned-ness “Constructions of Difference and Deficit, has been attributed to the state of being A Case Study: Nicaraguan Families and Costa Rican; to be Costa Rican is to be Children on the Margins in Costa Rica”, light-skinned. Nicaraguans, conversely, Victoria Purcell-Gates, a US researcher, are not seen as having the same examines the ability of complexion as Costa Ricans. Nicaraguan-descendant children to Sandoval-García writes of Costa Rican navigate public schooling systems in Costa imaginations of Nicaraguans, “the Rica. To do this she observes three classes Nicaraguan other is defined by dark-skin.” at different schools throughout the urban Here, we see the manifestation of a tool region of San José. In these classrooms, she

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makes the intentional choice to attempt to believed “that part of the reason for her use Costa Rican stereotypes to determine good experiences from working in Costa which students in the classes are Rica was related to her ‘whiteness’ – that Nicaraguan, relying mostly on the skin is, her pale skin colour made her look color differences she was told by Costa more Costa Rican than Nicaraguan, Rican contacts would be a dead giveaway which meant that she did not have to of national origin. As she explains in her endure as much xenophobia as other paper, this inevitably fails, and when she Nicaraguans.” In this way, we can see that asks the teachers of the respective skin color mediates the discrimination and classrooms to confirm who in the class is institutional barriers Nicaraguans face in of Nicaraguan descent, she finds that all Costa Rica as described by Fouratt, and the children with darker skin were in fact determines who gets to be considered Costa Rican. She explains further, “There “white” in the country through, as was a range of skin tones among the Martinot describes it, “ease and familiarity children in all three classes, from blond within institutions”, which Rosa had and blue eyed to quite dark. It turned out respectively more of than many of her that the blond child was Nicaraguan as Nicaraguan peers due to her skin color. was the brown-haired one with the Narratives of skin color and phenotype, freckles.” This is but one example of how infinitely complex and nuanced, are used generalizations based on perceived as a tool of racialization whose express phenotype tend to be shortsighted; race is purpose, despite its varying level of much more complicated than the color of success, is to divide Nicaraguans and one’s skin, and individual phenotypic Costa Ricans into distinct racial categories. presentation can fly brazenly in the face of Nicaraguans currently fleeing violence in stereotype. their country will cross a geopolitical This does not mean, however, that border into Costa Rica and be confronted skin-color and, accordingly, perceived by this phenotypic stereotype; their ability race, does not play a significant role in the to access institutions, as with Rosa, will be racialization of Nicaraguans in Costa Rica. in part determined by the color of their In her 2017 article “The rise of skin. anti-immigrant attitudes, violence and nationalism in Costa Rica”, Caitlin Fouratt ¿Cómo estás tú? or ​¿Cómo está’ vo’?​: An explains the barriers Nicaraguans face in Accented Border access to healthcare, education, and legal Language has oft been a marker status in Nicaragua. Cecilia Gustafson, in which moderates the racialization of a her research “‘For a better life’… A study population. As Anne Hudley writes in her on migration and health in Nicaragua”, study “Language and Racialization”, illuminates the story of Rosa, a “Language is a fundamental characteristic Nicaraguan migrant in Costa Rica. Rosa on which race is determined and

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characterized.” The human experience is further has different patterns of predicated on our interactions with one conjugation than Spanish that uses ​tú another, in our capacity to communicate (​tuteo Spanish). In this way, the words and care for one another. By rendering Nicaraguans use to refer to those close to another culture’s method of them, for whom the informal singular communication as lesser, as undesirable, is second-person would be appropriate, to render the people themselves as lesser, becomes a linguistic marker of their as undesirable. How, then, have racialized identity in Costa Rica. Nicaraguans been racialized along a Further, as Carlos Ovando and linguistic line within Costa Rica, given Steve Locke explain in their article mestizo Nicaraguans and ​mestizo Costa “Finding and Reading Road Signs in Ricans both primarily speak Spanish? Ethnographic Research: Studying the In their study “Jokes About Language and Stories of the Unwelcome Nicaraguans: Symbolic Barriers, Social Stranger”, Nicaraguans are noted in Costa Control Mechanisms, and Identity Rica for their tendency to drop the “s” Constructors” Karen Masís and Laura from the end of many words, a practice Paniagua note that Costa Rican jokes that is considered non-standard Spanish in about Nicaraguans are pervasive in their Costa Rica. Accent, coupled with the use mockery of a Nicaraguan way of of voseo Spanish, can make strikingly speaking, “imitating the accent attributed different manners of speech. Nicaraguans to the Nicaraguan other” and often are further noted in Costa Rica for having “highlighting the use of certain words, a distinct vocabulary. As Ovando and expressions, or crutches to emphasize the Locke describe, “Nicaraguan vocabulary is otherness [of Nicaraguans]” (294). As this very colorful and words such as jodido suggests, there are words and grammatical (screwed up) and verga (slang for male concepts which Nicaraguans use that genitalia) are commonly used by the Costa Ricans do not. For example, and Nicaraguan immigrant” (244), in most blatantly, in most Spanish dialects contradiction to a perceived Costa Rican throughout the world, the word ​tú is used Spanish vocabulary. By alienating these as the informal singular second-person linguistic differences in grammar, pronoun, but in Nicaragua, as with vocabulary, and accent in an otherwise various other countries like Argentina, the shared tongue, language becomes another somewhat antiquated ​vos has remained the tool in the racialization of Nicaraguans in primary word for this pronoun (Ovando Costa Rica. & Locke). Costa Rican Spanish, a Spanish The racialization of Nicaraguans which used to use primarily ​vos​, has been along a linguistic border inherently locks changing, and more often now makes use Nicaraguans out of Costa Rican of ​tú (Michnowicz, Despain, & Gorham). institutions. Fouratt describes the fear Spanish that uses ​vos (​voseo Spanish) many Nicaraguans have of speaking in

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public, terrified their accent may reveal be faced with this linguistic border based their racialized identity and place them in on their accent. At a closer age to Evert, the danger of discrimination and these students may be able to adapt to this xenophobia. Nicaraguans, explain Ovando border, and learn quickly to code-switch and Locke, often attempt to change their in order to navigate Costa Rican accent, to traverse this linguistic border, in institutions. However, Ovando and Locke order to access better jobs or succeed in speak of many other Nicaraguans in Costa school; to create a greater ease in their Rica, those who refuse to change their navigation of Costa Rican institutions. accent due to their pride in their national This linguistic border becomes once more origin. It is possibly that many in this new a method for moderating whiteness in the wave of refugees, characterized by activists country, deciding who within the nation of all ages, who are fleeing their country may navigate the country’s institutions as after fighting tooth and nail to change it, a white individual. may not adapt their accent to transgress As Ovando and Locke illuminate, this linguistic border; rather, many may the age at which a Nicaraguan arrives in continue to hold dearly to their Costa Rica greatly impacts the degree to Nicaraguan identity and claim pride in which one adapts to a Costa Rican accent. their existence on one side of this accented Sandra, a student who arrived in Costa border. Borders are not always Rica at the age of nine, described having transgressed; when faced with a linguistic so fully assimilated to a Costa Rican accent border, many Nicaraguans in Costa Rica that she could no longer recall her choose to find pride and empowerment in Nicaraguan one. Conversely, Evert, who that which racializes them as an “other”, arrived in Costa Rica at the age of 14 and finding strength in the accent and dialect now owns his own construction of their heritage. company, speaks of code-switching between the two accents when needed, Narratives of Criminality and Dependence using a Costa Rican accent at work with La Paperson, in defining the his clients and a Nicaraguan accent with maintenance of white/settler supremacy, his friends. Vastly over-represented in the mentions as an explicit technology of Nicaraguan refugees arriving currently in racialization “crime and criminal Costa Rica are college students, as it was innocence”. In Costa Rica, this technology on university campuses that protests of criminalization, the process of against the Nicaraguan dictator began, it associating crime and deviance with a was student action that galvanized and population in popular narrative and sparked the social insurrection; and, thus, institutions, is vibrantly blatant. Carlos it is students who are targeted by the Sandoval-García explains, “the government’s acts of terror (Awadalla). Nicaraguan community as a whole is These students arriving in Costa Rica will blamed for the rise of criminality” in Costa

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Rica. This criminalization of Nicaraguans situations that have entrapped Nicaragua has its roots in the history of both nations. in this cycle of state-repression and Costa Rica has been likened since the revolution. Nicaragua has been historically mid-to-late 1800’s as a “Central American destabilized by the frequent imperial Switzerland”, a country with little violent actions of the United States since the political strife and little involvement in the Central American territory’s conception as wars of other nations. The mythos of a a nation. From 1856 to 1857, Nicaragua peaceful Costa Rica has been bolstered by was ruled by William Walker, an the country’s decision to eliminate their American mercenary who reinstated military in the fifties, a choice that remains slavery in the nation as an attempt to in effect today (Sandoval-García). annex the territory as a part of the US. Conversely, Nicaragua has long been The country was further occupied by US involved in a history of struggle marines from 1909-1924 and 1925-1933 characterized by violent revolution, in order to stop Nicaraguan attempts to oppressive dictatorship, and imperial build a canal through the country that meddling. Nicaragua’s history of strife is would economically vitalize the region exemplified in the Sandinista revolution of but compete with the US-controlled canal the 1960’s and 70’s which ousted a in Panamá. The Somoza dictatorship, dictatorship that had dominated the nation which controlled Nicaragua with an iron for over forty years. The following fist from 1933 until 1979, was installed by US-supported counter-revolution the US. The US further funded a war decimated the countryside and left tens of against the democratically elected thousands dead (Walker). As Nicaraguans Sandinista party from 1982-1990 through fled this violence, the specter of this what has become popularly known as the history of revolution followed them into Iran-Contra scandal. This war eventually Costa Rica. The Costa Rican national diluted support for the Sandinistas, imagination has positioned this history not resulting in the 1990 election of a broad as a result of geopolitical and imperial coalition party unified by meddling from influences, but rather as something the US (Walker). Conversely, Costa Rica inherent to the Nicaraguan people. Any has been able to fend off US intervention refugees arriving in Costa Rica were for the past 70 years, despite several feared to be bringing this presumed attempts at coups and assassinations on the disposition for revolution and violence part of the CIA. In fact, it can be said that into the country, and it is this historical it is the United State’s history of narrative which has helped to racialize the intervention in Nicaragua that has resulted Nicaraguan other as violent, as inherently in its instability, while Costa Rica has been criminal (Sandoval-García). able to remain stable from a lack of this This narrative, is, of course, lacking intervention, thus creating the power in its understanding of the political dynamic and migration patterns seen

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today (Burdo). The Costa Rican national regardless of one’s actual legal status, as imagination, however, has constructed a Nicaraguan one will be racialized as a narrative wherein this instability and noncitizen; citizenship itself a technology violence is inherent to the nation of Paperson mentions in the technologies of Nicaragua and its people; a people that is whiteness and settler supremacy, as ability naturally, ​racially violent and to claim citizenship is a necessity in revolutionary, and, thus, criminal. Seen as navigating many institutions of the state. political threats, it has long been the fear These conceptions of the Nicaraguan that Nicaraguans will bring their other as illegal and violent by default lead perceived penchant for violence and to the racialization of Nicaraguans as revolution to Costa Rica and undo its criminals and threats to a Costa Rican way status quo (Fouratt “‘Those…’”). of life, and continue to present obstacles in In this way, as Caitlin Fouratt the ability of Nicaraguans to access explains in her 2014 study “‘Those who institutions in the country. come to do harm’: The Framings of Connected quite intimately to the Immigration Problems in Costa Rican criminalization of Nicaraguans, Immigration Law”, Nicaraguans and their Nicaraguans in Costa Rica are presumed immigration to Costa Rica have been to be overwhelming the nation’s social constructed as a national security threat. services (Fouratt “‘Those…’”). The The narrative becomes one of the violent argument follows as this: Nicaraguans, Nicaraguan revolutionary, arriving to hailing from a much poorer country than destroy the peaceful, capitalist governing Costa Ricans, arrive in the country in of Costa Rica. This immigration itself numbers which overwhelm educational, becomes criminalized, she explains. medical and other social services. This Characterized often as “illegal” narrative is codified even more immigration, the transgression of aggressively through conceptualizations of Nicaraguans into Costa Rica is perceived Nicaraguans as poor, a construction as in and of itself an illegal act, one which created through an essentialization of the aids in “[eroding] respect for authority” in economic problems that the country is Costa Rica. As all Nicaraguans in Costa known for (Sandoval-García) as one of Rica are either migrants or the poorest country in the Western descendants of migrants, this label of Hemisphere (Anderson). Nicaraguans are “illegal”, whether an individual racialized as naturally poor and criminal, immigrated through proper institutions or which creates the common narrative that was even born within the country, Fouratt elaborates; Nicaraguans come not becomes an aspect in the racialization of only to take advantage of social services, Nicaraguans (Fouratt “‘Those…’”). In this but to abuse them, to steal from them. way, the citizenship of Nicaraguans in This racialized narrative makes it difficult Costa Rica is constantly in negotiation; for Nicaraguans in Costa Rica to access

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social services; this lack of access and been swirling across social media familiarity within institutions, seen platforms such as Twitter and Facebook in through the lens of Martinot’s theories of recent months. Specifically, the article whiteness, is an integral aspect in the mentions a photo that claims to depict racialization of ​mestizo ​Nicaraguans as two young Nicaraguans burning a Costa non-white and ​mestizo ​Costa Ricans as Rican flag; the photo, it turns out, is from white. a 2016 punk rock concert, and actually Nicaraguans arriving now in Costa depicts two Costa Ricans. Nicaraguan Rica are fleeing another flare of violence refugees currently arriving in Costa Rica and dictatorial oppression; most of those will be confronted with criminalization fleeing are those most in danger, those and accusations of being dependent on who initiated and supported the protests Costa Rican social services, accusations and continue to advocate for dissent that will be emboldened by the violence against the government. These still plaguing their country of origin. Nicaraguans seeking safety are those most likely to be seen as riotous, as Precarios and Parque La Merced: The revolutionary and a danger to the Costa Spatiality of Race Rican nation-state based on the racial “The lived experience of race has a narratives in the country. Current news spatial dimension, and the lived experience and media in Costa Rica reporting on the of space has a racial dimension,” explains migration continues this process of George Lipsitz in his study “The racialization, confirming Costa Rican Racialization of Space and the preconceptions of Nicaraguan proclivities Spatialization of Race: Theorizing the for violence. ​The ​Tico Times ​articles Hidden Architecture of Landscape”. Race mentioned earlier, written by Alejandro and space are intertwined and construct Zúñiga and Alexander Villegas, only one another. As Lipsitz continues, “The provide quotes and stories from racial demography of the places where Nicaraguans like Mayorga who wish to people live, work, play, shop, and travel return to Nicaragua and fight. While this exposes them to a socially shared system of voice deserves to be heard, the exclusion and inclusion.” Space, in this overemphasis on Nicaraguans who wish way, becomes integral in the racialization to engage once more in war continues to of populations, for our positioning in a racialize Nicaraguans as genetically driven space determines what other spaces, and, to violence, continues to uplift narratives thus, institutions, we have access to. which criminalize the Nicaraguan other. Lipsitz posits a theory of race and As Almudena Barragán reported for the space in relation to blackness and Spanish newspaper ​El País in August of whiteness in the United States, looking to 2018, fake reports of Nicaraguans housing policies which segregated and initiating violence in Costa Rica have continue to segregate black United States

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residents. In Costa Rica, a similar-in-effect support and public services. The most process has taken place. ​Mestizo notorious ​precario​, La Carpio, is noted for Nicaraguans in Costa Rica live its geographic isolation on an island overwhelmingly in ​precarios9 (Camacho), formed by two rivers on the outskirts of neighborhoods characterized by poverty San José. Only one road provides access in and poor housing and infrastructure, and out of the neighborhood. The ​precario situated primarily around major urban is over fifty-percent Nicaraguan and is areas (Purcell-Gates), particularly San José, dominated by a large landfill (Rico). the capital city and most populous region Attempts to develop the ​precario ​have been in Costa Rica (“Biggest Cities in Costa stalled by bureaucracy and lack of Rica”). These ​precarios were originally governmental enthusiasm. As the squatter-communities of Nicaraguan pseudonym “Rico” reports in reference to immigrants arriving in the country in the these development projects for ​QCosta late 1900’s, particularly in the 1990’s Rica​, “public agencies responsible for (Rico). Unlike the policies of the United work ‘have done little to advance [the States, which segregated black populations development plans], noted for blocking through housing policy which plans and to roll back what progress has discriminated against black individuals and been made.’” These ​precarios in which through acts of white terrorism Nicaraguan immigrants often find discouraging black individuals from themselves living are purposefully moving into certain spaces (Lipsitz), a underdeveloped and under-resourced. study by Gilbert Brenes Camacho entitled Space, in this way, has become a way to “Segregación residencial de los relegate the Nicaraguan other to areas inmigrantes nicaragüenses en Costa Rica which lack institutional support and access en 2000”10 found that these communities to public services, further racializing have been created through immigrant Nicaraguans as non-white. networks which encourage migrant Other, non-residential spaces Nicaraguans to move into spaces where within Costa Rica have been likewise other Nicaraguans already live, likely racialized. The urban park Parque La motivated to do so in attempts to avoid Merced is of particular interest in recent xenophobia, live in areas that are months, an urban park in the center of San economically affordable, and create José (Mojica). As Sandoval-García support networks and places for cultural explains, the park “was formerly known as expression. the drunks’ park, a space in which These spaces wherein Nicaraguans marginalized people used to stay during live are denied access to institutional the daytime. The ‘drunks’ left it when the park was refurbished in the 1990’s”. The 9 shantytowns park, he continues, has become a place for 10 ​“Residential Segregation of Nicaraguan Nicaraguans to meet, conduct business, Immigrants in Costa Rica in 2000” 15

sell goods and food, and socialize. A 2006 as well as the creation of community and article for ​La Prensa​, a Nicaraguan sites of resilience. newspaper, reports that Nicaraguans The ramifications of racialization, began visiting the park during the 1980s, of course, still permeate these spaces. as thousands of Nicaraguans fled violence Parque La Merced dominated the Costa in the Contra War (Walker), because a Rican news throughout the month of Catholic church overlooking the park August, 2018. On August 18th, a group of allowed Nicaraguans to practice ​la approximately 400 Costa Ricans, waving purísima ​within its walls, a religious ritual Costa Rican flags and emblazoned in honoring the Catholic patroness of Costa Rica’s colors, descended on the Nicaragua, ​la Virgen de la Concepción​. The park. They carried molotov cocktails, park has been codified as a Nicaraguan baseball bats, knives, machetes, and other space, Costa Ricans often referring to it as improvised weapons, shouting “​Fuera “Managua11” (Sandoval-García) or “Little Nicas​!”12 (Partlow). Yamlek Mojica reports Nicaragua” (Mojica). Sandoval-García for the ​Tico Times ​that those who posits that the claiming of this park as a descended on the park could be heard Nicaraguan space is an act of yelling “We want Costa Rica free of “reterritorialization” for Nicaraguan bastards!” and “Let’s fly the flag for our immigrants looking to find and create a country and kill these Nicaraguans!”. space wherein their identities can be fully Fighting broke out between Nicaraguans embraced and supported. He further and those inciting the violence. argues that this “reterritorialization” in Fortunately, no one was gravely injured. Parque La Merced was only permitted by Over 40 of the attackers were arrested by Costa Rican institutions because of its police, and the park was closed for a day location in the center of the city, away and a half (Mojica). This vehement from the suburbs where the majority of xenophobic attack against the Nicaraguan business, leisure, and commerce are community in Costa Rica indicates the partaken in by middle-class white Costa importance of space in racialization. The Ricans; regardless, he notes, the park has park had been converted in recent months often been heavily policed. It can be seen into a base-camp of sorts for arriving here, though, that space for racially refugees, a place to receive food, drink, marginalized folk like Nicaraguan and support (Partlow). Many refugees immigrants in Costa Rica is more than an were actually using the park as a place to area one is relegated to in a process of sleep, and one Nicaraguan woman of racialization and can be as well a place for many years in Costa Rica expressed her the claiming and strengthening of identity distress for these individuals after the attack to ​The ​Tico Times​, “It hurts...that

11 12 The capital city of Nicaragua (The Editors of ​“Get out, Nicas!” (Nica is a colloquial Latin Encyclopaedia Britannica) American term for Nicaraguan) 16

young people came here to sleep because It must be understood that the they were running away from Daniel evolving Nicaraguan refugee crisis in Ortega and didn’t know anyone here. Costa Rica does not exist in isolation. This They haven’t showed up here anymore. crisis exists in conversation with migrant What happened to them? We don’t and refugee movements throughout the know” (Mojica). The park, historically a world, particularly throughout the safe haven for Nicaraguans fleeing continent of North America. Looking to violence in their home country, has borders, across which refugees and become a space of fear. Though migrants must flow, can provide insights Nicaraguans continue to frequent the into the ways in which nation-states are park, its assurance as a space of welcoming responding to these movements of has been lost, and refugees no longer feel peoples, how racialization and the safe sleeping within it. Rather than maintenance of borders are evolving and attacking a ​precario​, Costa Rican changing. Of particular interest in regards nationalists attacked this public space for to the movement of Central American what it represented, a manifestation of refugees and migrants emerge three Nicaraguanness in a public place, the borders: the Nicaragua-Costa Rica border, “reterritorialization” of a Nicargaun the Guatemala-México border, and the identity in the heart of their capital city. México-US border. These nationalists were emboldened by the racialization of Nicaraguan refugees as The Nicaragua-Costa Rica Border intrinsically violent, as a threat to Costa Along the Nicaragua-Costa Rica Rican nationhood, and chose to attack and border, understanding of space can once endanger a space codified as Nicaraguan. more be seen changing and adapting. The A notably Nicaraguan space, and one Costa Rican government, in response to heavily impacted by the current refugee the incredible increase in refugee arrivals crisis, it came to be seen as exemplary of in their country, have created two refugee the perceived “flood” (Masís and Paniagua) camps for those Nicaraguans arriving in of Nicaraguan immigration. As Lipsitz the nation. One is located near the stated, race is spatialized and space is northern border with Nicaragua, the other racialized, and here it can be seen how near the southern border with Panamá. Nicaraguan agency in the claiming of Together, according to Luis Antonio space can become racialized as an attack Hernandez for the ​Miami Herald​, the against Costa Rican nationhood. camps are capable of housing 2,000 people. This number accounts for just five Borders in Conversation: Placing the percent of the asylum applications the Nicaraguan Refugee Crisis in Costa Costa Rican government has received, but Rica in a Continental Context remains a significant number. The camps are modest, with 60 tents found in the

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northern camp near La Cruz, Costa Rica, The México-US border has for about 15 people per tent (Kahn). In similarly been militarized as the caravan this way, government response along has made its way to and camped out along Costa Rica’s borders is changing space by the border. As of November 27th, 5,000 the creation of refugee camps in these Central American refugees have made small towns near the borders of the nation. their way to Tijuana, México to attempt to apply for asylum in the US The Guatemala-México Border (Domonoske). As of November 30th, Within November of 2018, 2018, there are 5,600 deployed US troops upwards of 10,000 migrants and refugees along the border, there to halt the from Central America, primarily from entrance of these Central American Honduras, have crossed the refugees seeking asylum (Rodrigo). On Guatemala-México border in an attempt November 25th, 2018, refugees to reach the United States and petition for attempting to cross the border in protest asylum, fleeing instability and of the policies allowing only 40-100 gang-violence in their home countries refugees into the country per day were (Volpe and Semple). This “caravan” of attacked with tear-gas by US troops. 98 refugees, as it has been denoted, faced a refugees were arrested by Mexican police, terrifying militarization on the border of with approximately 42 arrested by US México and Guatemala. As explained in an police (Domonoske). This blatant article for ​The Independent​, when the militarization of the México-US border caravan reached a bridge spanning the follows a similar pattern to what occured river dividing Guatemala from México, at the Guatemalan border, but migrants they were faced by two walls of riot are seeing much less success in crossing police, a wall of Guatemalan police on the into the United States. Guatemalan side of the border and a wall of Mexican police on the other. The Connecting Border Crossings: A Continental refugees were forced to wait on the bridge Refugee Crisis for days in the sun, hoping to be let into Borders, both geopolitical and México. Some groups chose to jump into racial, have been created by nation-states the river below to attempt a crossing by to separate, to divide people who would swimming, only to be confronted by otherwise be considered neighbors. It is police on the other side. This then pressing that, rather than examining militarization of the border between borders as they desire to be examined, as Guatemala and México is another response accurately divisive technologies, borders by a government to the flow of refugees are analyzed in the transnational, over its border. transcontinental, transhemispheric lens American Studies presents, as so The México-US Border articulated in ​Las Américas Quarterly​; it is

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important to show how borders, against broadly unify a right-wing coalition party their very purpose, are connected. These to defeat the revolutionary party in the discussed movements of people across 1990 election. These complex politics led, borders in North America are not eventually, to the moral corruption of the unrelated processes. The current instability revolutionary party, the current party of of the Central American region of this the dictator-president, who changed the continent, specifically the countries of El constitution to win the 2006 election Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and (Walker). The party has only maintained Nicaragua, did not occur in a vacuum. In power with the embrace of US-friendly fact, it was their continental neighbor that neoliberal policies (Walters). The current sewed and spurred this instability for political crisis, and general political decades, if not centuries. instability within Nicaragua, is directly As mentioned, the United States linked to the actions of the United States. has had an expansive history of This pattern of destabilization imperialism within Nicaragua. From incited by US interventionism in the attempts at annexation, marine name of halting communism during the occupations, imposed puppet Cold War is just as palpable in the dictatorships, and proxy wars, the United so-called “Northern Triangle” countries of States has long led a crusade against the Central America: El Salvador, Honduras, sovereignty and stability of the and Guatemala. As Cole Kazdin explains Nicaraguan nation. This history of US in an article for ​Vice​, in 1954, the US interventionism is present throughout initiated a coup in Guatemala as the Central America. Of particular interest in democratically elected Guatemalan this history, US foreign policy during the government attempted to institute land Cold War is known to have decimated the reforms to halt the exploitation of region. indigenous Mayan workers, land reforms In Nicaragua, the Reagan which threatened the business interests of administration, stunned to see the US companies. This coup lead to a civil US-installed Somoza dictatorship ousted war in Guatemala that lasted from by a populist revolution, funded an illegal 1960-1996. US military personnel trained war against the democratically elected the Guatemalan army well into the ‘70’s in revolutionary socialist party, a war which what was, essentially, a genocide against destroyed much of the infrastructure of farm laborers and Mayan peoples. During the nation, killed hundreds of thousands, the same era, explains Kazdin, in El weakened the economy, and divided the Salvador, the US funneled billions of populace of the nation along ideological dollars into fighting a socialist revolution lines. Most importantly, this war led to the whose goal was to end the oppressive creation of complex party politics within policies of the El Salvadoran government. the nation after US personnel helped to Xochitl Sanchez of the Central American

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Resource Center so plainly puts it in the article, “The United States is complicit in Borders as Racialization: A Geopolitical creating the rampant and bloody gang Border Meets a Racial Border violence, dire poverty, displacement and The migration patterns of refugees migration from El Salvador.” The country are, as noted, being met with varying of Honduras was used as a base of responses along the borders of receiving operation for the US during these nations, from the militarization of the interventions (Kazdin), supported by the Guatemala-México and México-US US-installed dictatorship of Policarpo Paz borders, and the refugee camps along the Garcia (Zunes). The United States further Nicaragua-Costa Rica border. Looking to expressed support for a military coup in these border responses allows a unique Honduras against democratically elected understanding of the processes of leftist leader Manuel Zelaya in 2009, a racialization occuring in the receiving coup instigated by a military junta lead by countries. These actions are implicated a man trained in the US Army training greatly in the process of creating a racial program School of Americas. The US other; in fact, it can be said, border actions “played an important role in preventing are directly manifesting this racial other. Zelaya’s return to office and the junta Within México, Central American consolidating its power in the face of migrants arriving in the country are massive nonviolent protests” (Zunes). The facing rising sentiments of xenophobia. repression on the part of this junta has Many Central American migrants arriving resulted in soaring murder rates, now the in México decide to stay in the country, highest in the world, and has instigated rather than push on to the United States, the mass migration from the state that is particularly settling in the southern border currently being seen (Zunes). state of Chiapas. As Lindsey Carte explains A more traditional examination in her study “Everyday Restriction: along this North-South axis of power is Central American Women and the State incredibly important in contextualizing in the Mexico-Guatemala Border City of the migration patterns present in the Tapachula”, Central American migrants in continent. These migrations are the country are consistently locked out of connected through the common institutional access. She relays the story of denominator of US interventionism. A a Honduran mother, Raquel, attempting continental understanding of migration to secure birthright citizenship for her and borders must recognize how these Mexican-born daughter. The bureaucratic migrations are so interwoven; the official tasked with helping her did not instability present in Central America has give her daughter this citizenship, been instigated by its continental North assuming, as Raquel says, that her American neighbor, the United States of daughter of Honduran ancestry had America. crossed the border with her mother and

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thus was not in the country legally. In Rican nationalists descended on Parque La Tijuana, local residents recently staged a Merced. protest against the migrants arriving in The US’s militarization of the their city. As Yesica Fisch and Amy México-US border engages in a similar Guthrie explain in an article for process. As Victor Rios explains in his Spokesman​, on November 18th, 2018, book ​Human Targets: Schools, Police, and Tijuanan residents took to the streets, the Criminalization of Latino Youth​, demonstrating against those currently Latinxs in the United States are seen waiting and applying for asylum in the inherently as criminals, inherently as US. The residents cited fears of criminals illegal, just as Central Americans in arriving in their community with the México and Nicaraguans in Costa Rica are migrants, anxious they will bring the perceived. One can look simply to the violence of their home countries with current president’s comments on Latinx them. This perceived inherent illegality populations to see this, as he refers to Latin and criminal nature of Central American American immigrants as “Drug dealers, migrants in México mirrors the same criminals, rapists” (“‘Drug Dealers…’”). narratives present in Costa Rica in regards The deployment of troops and police to Nicaraguan refugees and is bolstered by along the border, and the firing of tear gas actions of the Mexican state along their at those attempting to cross, positions southern border with Guatemala. By Central Americans (racialized in the militarizing the border with the context of the US as “Latinx” deployment of riot police ahead of the [Torres-Saillant]) as inherently criminal, a caravan, the Mexican state continued to population only the army can control. reify narratives which criminalize the The images emerging from these Central American other in their country. confrontations reiterate what images The state sent the message to its people emerging from the border of Guatemala that Central Americans are people to be and México did for Mexican citizens: the feared, violent criminals who can only be intrinsic criminality of Central American controlled by riot police, and the images immigrants. Once more, actions along the of Central Americans trying to find a way border act to racialize a population and past these police only emphasize this create a Central American, or Latinx, conceptualization, and give rise to the other. ways of thinking which birthed the Refugee camps along Costa Rica’s xenophobic protest in Tijuana. The borders do much the same. They confirm border policies of this state continue the stereotypes outlined by Fouratt, that racialization of a Central American other Nicaraguans arriving in the country will in México. The Tijuana protest itself took take advantage of Costa Rican services and place exactly three months after Costa become dependent on the state. Rather than settling Nicaraguans within the

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country, the Costa Rican government Rica employ a variety of methods to chooses to isolate 2,000 Nicaraguans away distinguish and racialize populations they from urban centers, away from possible wish to other, such as phenotypic and jobs and work (Kahn), making them linguistic difference, criminalization, and inherently dependent on the Costa Rican spatiality. This allows for the construction state, confirming this narrative of the of national racial imaginings which permit dependent Nicaraguan other. These the exclusion of non-white racialized camps, located far from San José, prevent peoples from institutional access and Nicaraguans from accessing institutions familiarity as well as the necessary such as healthcare and education, as well identification of racialized others in order as legal institutions. It is necessary to reach to exclude them from this access. Actions San José to apply for asylum in Costa Rica, against migrants attempting to cross and Nicaraguans in these camps, unless geopolitical borders are excused and they can pull together the money for a bus explained through these racialized ticket, cannot reach the city, and thus imaginings of the other, and these actions apply for asylum (Kahn), locking them in along the geopolitical border then inform a perpetual ambiguous legal state. Once and support the maintenance of a racial more, Nicaraguans are not to be seen as border and thus racialized imaginings. In citizens in Costa Rica, are de facto illegal. this way, geopolitical borders and racial This border action confirms detrimental borders construct one another and narratives of Nicaraguans which continue maintain constant communication in their to place them on one side of a racialized perpetuation of whiteness. With the border. This is the creation of race. continued migrations of Central The deployment of troops and riot Americans both North and South in police on the México-US and the search of safety, it is possible to see racial Guatemala-México borders, the borders being constructed in real time by construction of tent-city refugee camps the actions of governments on their on Costa Rica’s borders, all of these actions geopolitical borders. Nicaraguan refugees are a part of a continental racialization currently arriving in Costa Rica will face a project which others the migrant, the long-established racialization process as it refugee, the transitory. Geopolitical incorporates them and adapts to their borders construct whiteness through presence. The responses of governments exclusion in the access to nation-states and to current refugee movements across the thus the institutions of a nation-state; México-US, Guatemala-México, and racial borders allow the construction of Nicaragua-Costa Rica borders on this whiteness in relation to a racialized other continent ​are the process of racialization, within the territory of the state, which and as migration continues and limits access to institutions for the nation-states act upon their national racialized other. Nation-states like Costa

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borders to slow it, this racialization will one into Costa Rica, leaving Nicaragua only be fortified. after months of study within the nation; the protests had erupted, the violence had Concluding: Beyond Borders escalated, and before a breath could be The taxi driver was lost before we drawn we were boarding a plane, gone to knew where we were. From our vantage finish the semester in a different country. point in the car, parked momentarily on Conversation in the house rose and the top of a hill, we could see the tin roofs fell with the ebbing of a tide, various of San José stretching to the ends of the voices competing for space over swapped Central Valley. Our state of misdirection, stories. Humidity clung to me like a however, as stories of this nature so often blanket, sweat beading down my back, go, was but temporary, and soon, faster and I chuckled at Kyle’s words, my friend, than we remembered being lost, we were seated from where he was on the floor, there. Zoilamérica Narváez welcomed us cradling the dog. Politics stole in and out into her house warmly as the taxi pulled of conversation a thief, laughter gone in away, her dog yapping excitedly at our its wake: did we discuss the evolving feet. Already present in the white, violence in Nicaragua? Did the graciously sunlit living room were her whisperings of refugees slipping across the friends, two young gay men from border, as of yet unquantified as anything Honduras, having arrived in Costa Rica more than rumor, slink from conversation fleeing the political violence so frequently to conversation? Did any recognition of targeting LGBT people in the Northern our own luck, lifted from the country as Triangle country. An older woman was protests bloomed and flowered within also present, another friend and a local of Managua, León, Matagalpa, Bluefields, ​el Costa Rica; a woman I supposed of few campo​, Rivas, did this specter of our guilt words, she smiled as we entered. raise its head? Unsure, I only remember Zoilamérica informed us, quite excitedly, the voices of the two young men that her friend would be cooking us a discussing their hurried, frantic flights traditional Costa Rican dish, and from farther North, Honduras but a motioned for us to find somewhere to sit. glimmer in their eyes, a stumbled word in Soon, the other members of our study their stories. Zoilamérica had met them abroad group arrived in their taxis, and the through her work at Comunidad process of welcome, of introduction, of Casabierta13, an LGBT rights organization sitting repeated itself, the dog growing in Costa Rica. Between moments of swift, ever more excited before all of us, raunchy humor and sage advice, she twenty-one in total with the inclusion of herself alluded to her own story, of her our student coordinators, had finally made own flight. She left Nicaragua behind in their way to house. Weeks earlier, we had arrived a group, twenty-one stumbling as 13 ​Directly translated, Open-house Community 23

the grasp of her mother, of her step-father; personalities, some insisting on union and the daughter of the Vice President Rosario some on disintegration, and that this Murillo and step-daughter of Daniel person with multiple personalities was Ortega, the ruling dictatorial couple, furthermore a person whose skin appeared Zoilamérica fled to Costa Rica after to be dissolving as they swam in a soup of revealing the years of abuse she faced at other people whose skins were likewise the hands of her step-father. Beyond a dissolving” (158). fierce dedication to activism, to Despite a geopolitical national continuing to denounce her family’s grip border intended to limit one’s mobility, on power, it is Zoilamérica’s laugh, which despite a racial border intended to relegate rings like a clap of thunder at several miles one to a state of inaccess and exclusion, distance, that is most notable; a charisma Nicaraguans have made and continue to and open-heart that seems to encompass make resilient and thriving communities hungrily all those in her sight. within Costa Rica, just as other Central Borders wish to divide, to separate, Americans have done and continue to do to create unbridgeable chasms that leave in México, in the United States; borders us isolated from one another: To put it are melting, and the choices of individuals lightly, they are often successful. The to maintain their Nicaraguan accent, the violence present along the borders of the reterritorialization of a Nicaraguan North American continent is despicable, identity in Parque La Merced, are proof and racial borders do much to maintain that borders are not fated, that they can be internal division within nation-states. But resisted and fought against. Nation-states borders are not fixed. They can be are recognizing this, are responding with changed, can be fought against, can be the increased militarization of borders and destroyed. In this era of mass migrations, rising nationalist sentiments in a world brought ever closer through (Rachman)(Duara); however, migrations, processes of globalization, this truth is undeterred, continue. Borders are even more salient. As changing as the flow of people, ideas, and Dominican-American author Julia Alvarez products across them increases, something rights in her essay “Doña Aída, With Your that is ever so palpable on this North Permission,” “We’re a mobile world; American continent; in this moment in a borders are melting; nationalities are on house in San José, Costa Rica. It was the the move, often for devastating reasons.” organization Comunidad Casabierta that Pakistani and British author Mohsin helped bring Zoilamérica’s friends from Hamid characterizes the melting borders Honduras and secure them asylum, it was of nation-states in the face of migration in Costa Rica which opened its arms to his novel ​Exit West​, “Reading the news at Zoilamérica as she fled both the violence the time one was tempted to conclude that of her nation and her family, and it was the nation was like a person with multiple Zoilamérica who opened her home to

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nineteen ​estadounidense ​students who felt lost in a brand new city, the friends they had made in Nicaragua left in danger most of them could not comprehend. Borders, geopolitical and racial, construct one another; and if they are constructed, so can they be deconstructed. I leave you with this image, of this transnational meeting of souls in one house on one hot day in the largest city of a small country on the continent of North America. We sat, nineteen ​estadounidense students of varying ethnic and racialized identities, three Nicaraguan activists in the form of Zoilamérica Narváez and the program’s student coordinators, a grinning and accomplished Costa Rican cook, and two young Honduran activists, all smiling, the smell of lime, of pork, of untold stories perfuming our shared air. Borders, both racial and geographic, are not destiny; how do we imagine a continent beyond them?

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