The Inconvenient Truth
It’s a funny thing about the truth – if it’s not convenient then sometimes it’s not worth exploring.
I’m in the news business – it’s what I do. My job is to know what is happening in Costa Rica. So I see plenty and along with that comes the good and the bad.
Understanding Costa Rica is often 9/10ths of the battle. However once you have a grasp of how things run here…well the possibilities are endless.
Landing here in 2005 I thought of Costa Rica like so many before, and after me – Costa Rica is the land of opportunity. Trouble is…opportunity is a 2-way street for both positives and negatives.
Opportunity isn’t finicky. It’s not biased at all – in fact, opportunity, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
But what is the truth about opportunity in Costa Rica?
The truth of the matter is – for many it’s a new start. A place where you can become anyone you want. The skies the limit.
Many expats move here to escape…what exactly…well that varies from person to person. However the one common denominator amongst 99.9% of the expat community is, we’re all escaping something.
Me…what am I escaping? I escaped a life of perpetual stress and bureaucracy. Sure I simply brought some of that with me here and the fact that life in Costa Rica has it’s own plethora of bureaucracy. The fact is however, I felt a change would be nice. A chance to explore further, who I am.
Then there are others. Others who are not escaping in innocence. Those with walkin sized closets of skeletons. So much so that every time they open their mouths a bone slips out. These people represent the minority negative opportunists.
Let’s face it – Costa Rica is the kind of country where a used car salesman can pretend he’s former CIA. I mean who’s going to dispute it? Only someone with a vested interest is who. Even worse when that someone knows there way around a computer.
OIJ. It’s short for El Organismo de Investigación Judicial. Or in English: The Federal Investigation Organization. Essentially the FBI of Costa Rica.
Now normally, from what I hear, these guys know their stuff. Then there are those moments where you have to wonder.
Take for example the case of the Dubois’s.
In March of 2010, Gerard and Claude Dubois went missing. They found their car on the Naranjo River bridge just south of Quepos on the road to Dominical. After a year and a half of nothing (well they had 2 suspects whom they set free), the Costa Rican authorities (OIJ) concocted the lame excuse that the Dubois were not victims of foul play but rather they drowned in the 18cm of water of the river Naranjo and were swept out sea.
Ummmm….are we forgetting that there was a tremendous amount of evidence pointing in the direction of murder? Like the victims passports being found in a garbage bin near Jaco, some 75kms away. And their credit cards being charged between 12,000 and 15,000 euros between the time they went missing and April 7th.
Naaaa…that could mean anything right?
Needless to say the family has denounced this claim by the OIJ and even pleaded to France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy to put pressure on Costa Rica to actual do a proper investigation.
OIJ has since retracted that claim and finally swallowed their pride and asked for the public’s help. Of course this was only after the media had a field day with this.
Then again when you are “investigating” violent deaths at a rate of 2.7 a day – how can the ill-equipped authorities keep up? It’s for this reason many crimes go unpunished and inconvenient truths are swept under the carpet of bureaucracy while the surviving victims are left wondering “what really happened”.
The point is…if the truth isn’t “convenient” then it’s highly unlikely anyone will ever know it.
Short URL: http://www.costaricanewssite.com/?p=6115
Posted by 
