Costa Rica Fails to Deliver Indigenous Lands
By Wesley Levise
“I don’t know if you know: I was the one who killed him.”[1] This was the shocking public confession of Juan Valera Rojas regarding the murder of Yehry Rivera, an indigenous leader of the Brörán de Térraba in Costa Rica.[2] This was the second murder of an indigenous leader in a year.[3] Sergio Rojas, the most prominent indigenous leader in Costa Rica’s recent history, was murdered in his home in March of 2019.[4] His murder has never been solved.[5] So, fortunately, Valera’s confession ensured Rivera’s murder would not similarly go unsolved.[6] However, his confession also had a different and unsettling effect; it drew supportive cheers from some in the community.[7]
Valera claimed self-defense, arguing that he murdered Rivera to prevent him from burning down Valera’s home.[8] His defense was unsuccessful, and in 2023, a court sentenced him to twenty-two years in prison.[9] Still, his defense narrative resonated with many in the community due to a 1977 law and the central government’s failure to enforce it.[10] The 1977 Indigenous Law established twenty-four territories “exclusive for the indigenous communities that inhabit them.”[11] When it was enacted, it provided a chance to save the eight threatened indigenous communities after years of being prohibited to speak indigenous languages and practice indigenous religions and rituals.[12] Unfortunately, the law lacked any mechanism for enforcement.[13]
Now, forty-six years later, only two of these territories have been restored to indigenous ownership.[14] Pablo Sibar of the Brörán described the government’s inaction as a form of violence against indigenous communities: “It has been the violence of making us invisible, silencing us.”[15] Due to government inaction, many indigenous communities feel they have no choice but to enforce the 1977 law themselves.[16] Asdrubal Rivera of Terraba explained: “We realized that if we continued to wait for the government, we’d die waiting like our elders… Sometimes there is no alternative.”[17] Indigenous activists, refusing to wait any longer for government action, have found an unfavorable solution; they have resorted to forcefully evicting non-indigenous landowners.[18] This has resulted in physical violence and the burning down of non-indigenous homes when landowners refuse to leave.[19] Unsurprisingly, these forceful evictions have created racial tension and resentment throughout the nation.[20] This tension has led to death threats to indigenous people across the country and the murders of Sergio Rojas and Yehry Rivera.[21]
Not only did the law fail to transfer the occupancy of land to indigenous communities and properly compensate non-indigenous citizens for their land, it also failed to establish the core issue of who is indigenous and who is not.[22] As Judge Jean Carlo Cespedes of Buenos Aires explains, “[t]he central question in land rights is whether or not a person is indigenous.”[23] However, whether someone is indigenous or not is not always clear.[24] Individuals create complications by having financial goals at odds with their indigenous status.[25] Daniella Genaro, President of the Association for Integral Development (ADI) of Terraba, explained that “[t]here are nonindigenous people claiming to be indigenous, so that they can lay claim to land. Conversely, there are indigenous people claiming to be nonindigenous, so they can sell the land they live on.”[26]
Mount Arenal in Costa Rica is home to the indigenous Maleku tribe. Image courtesy of BelaMarie via pixabay.com.
Even more troubling is that determinations of heritage are left to individual indigenous communities, which are each overseen by the local ADI.[27] The data collected by the ADI is not public, which causes some concern that power is being wrongfully consolidated amongst a few privileged families.[28] As Marbeju Vargas of Terraba stated: “These families alone receive money for infrastructure projects, without accountability. They are the ones who benefit from land reclamations. Things get done for these families’ benefit, not for the community. They will say that they’re defending our land, culture and rights, but it’[s] all a lie.”[29]
The cheers following Valera’s murder confession were a clear sign to the Costa Rican government that there is a dangerous divide amongst their citizens.[30] This divide is causing people to support the murder of indigenous leaders.[31] As news of this violence spreads, the international community is growing concerned that Costa Rica is failing to protect its indigenous population.[32] These pressures will likely continue as only 2.4% of the population, or a little over 100,000 people, recognize themselves as indigenous in a nation becoming increasingly more diverse.[33] These pressures do not come without legal consequence either.[34] Costa Rica has adopted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and ratified the ILO Convention 169, both of which obligate the nation to protect its indigenous population.[35]
Indigenous citizens do not want to forcefully take land.[36] They are simply concerned that the government will never help them get access to the land set aside for them in 1977.[37] As indigenous activist Lesner Figueroa argued, “[i]f the State did its job, which is to comply with the law, I am sure that there would be no violence.”[38] So until the central government steps in to settle the land issue stemming from its 1977 Indigenous Law, these land reclamation attempts will likely continue. They will be seen as both a form activism and extremism, and future violence will be met again with both anger and applause.
[1] Ileana Fernandez, Murderer of Costa Rican Indigenous Leader Sentenced to 22 Years in Prison, TicoTimes, (Feb. 2, 2023), https://ticotimes.net/2023/02/02/murderer-of-costa-rican-indigenous-leader-sentenced-to-22-years-in-prison.
[2] Id.
[3] Raul Roman & Rafe H. Andrews, The Murder of Sergio Rojas, DAWNING, (May 2020), https://dawning.org/projects/the-murder-of-sergio-rojas/.
[4] Id.
[5] Id.
[6] Id.; Fernandez, supra note 1.
[7] Fernandez, supra note 1.
[8] Id.
[9] Id.
[10] Id.; Fred Pearce, Lauded as Green Model, Costa Rica Faces Unrest in Its Forests, YaleEnvironment360, (March 21, 2023), https://e360.yale.edu/features/costa-rica-deforestation-indigenous-lands.
[11] Pearce, supra note 10.
[12] Roman, supra note 3; Cultural Survival, Costa Rica Must Implement Land Rights for Indigenous Peoples in Wake of Leader’s Murder, CulturalSurvival, (April 23, 2019), https://www.culturalsurvival.org/news/costa-rica-must-implement-land-rights-indigenous-peoples-wake-leaders-murder.
[13] Roman, supra note 3.
[14] Id.; Pearce, supra note 10.
[15] Kimberly Brown, ‘We go in and take Indigenous lands back from cattle ranchers’: Q&A with activist Pablo Sibar, Mongabay, (Nov. 21, 2022), https://news.mongabay.com/2022/11/we-go-in-and-take-indigenous-land-back-from-cattle-ranchers-qa-with-activist-pablo-sibar/.
[16] Id.; Roman, supra note 3.
[17] Roman, supra note 3.
[18] Id.
[19] Id.; Brown, supra note 15; Pearce, supra note 10.
[20] Carlos Camacho-Nassar & Bettina Durocher, The Indigenous World 2022: Costa Rica, IWGIA (April 1, 2022) https://www.iwgia.org/en/costa-rica.html.
[21] Id; Roman, supra note 3; Cultural Survival, supra note 12; Brown, supra note 15.
[22] Roman, supra note 3.
[23] Id.
[24] Id.
[25] Id.
[26] Id.
[27] Id.
[28] Id.
[29] Id.
[30] Id.; Fernandez, supra note 1.
[31] See, Fernandez, supra note 1; Roman, supra note 3; Brown, supra note 15.
[32] Office of the High Commissioner, Towards more land access and greater protection for indigenous peoples in Costa Rica, UN Human Rights, (Dec. 7, 2021), https://www.ohchr.org/en/stories/2021/12/towards-more-land-access-and-greater-protection-indigenous-peoples-costa-rica.
[33] Id.; María Jesús Mora, Costa Rica Has Welcoming Policies for Migrants, but Nicaraguans Face Subtle Barriers, Migration Policy Institute, (Nov. 5, 2021), https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/costa-rica-nicaragua-migrants-subtle-barriers.
[34] Office of the High Commissioner, supra note 32.
[35] Camacho-Nassar, supra note 20.
[36] Pearce, supra note 10.
[37] Id.
[38] Id.