By Andrea Lobo
22 August 2018
On Saturday, August 18,
far-right and outright fascist groups carried out pogromist attacks against
Nicaraguan migrants in downtown San José, Costa Rica.
Hundred of thugs in groups of
dozens marched in several major parks and avenues armed with knives, bats and
Molotov cocktails. The actual number of those participating at any one place
was difficult to determine, given the hundreds of pedestrians and onlookers.
Some of the participants were threatening to “kill” and “burn” Nicaraguans. The
main target was Merced Park, known as a meeting place used by Nicaraguan
immigrants.
The Ministry of Security
reported that 44 people were arrested, 38 Costa Ricans and 6 Nicaraguans, while
16 knives, a baseball bat, and 8 Molotov cocktails were confiscated. The latter
were found in a suitcase left behind at Merced Park.
Some of those present were
wearing Nazi insignias, with the security minister describing the participants
as “soccer hooligans, Nazis and anarchists.” The Costa Rican detainees were
immediately freed after being booked at the police station, with a majority of
them reportedly having criminal records, while the Nicaraguans were held longer
to check their immigration status.
The police chief, Randall
Picado, described the scene at Merced Park: “People arrived, sang the national
anthem and waved a flag. But suddenly, a group of them began running around the
park, chanting xenophobic slogans against Nicaraguans. … Any Nicaraguan who
would look at them was assaulted.” The police intervention, however, was fully
planned and sought at most to mediate the violence against Nicaraguans, with
some of the cops participating in it.
“Since I have lived here [for
19 years], I’ve never had to live through such a humiliation. … They would tell
us, ‘Nicas, sons of this. Leave, murderers, thieves,’ and would then attack
us,” María Andrea García told La Nación. She added: “The police didn’t do
anything. On the contrary, they would hit the Nicaraguans and tell us: ‘You are
not in your country. Leave, dogs.’”
During the last few weeks, the
police have joined immigration officials in rounding up hundreds of undocumented
immigrants in these same parks for deportation procedures.
The government’s spokesperson,
Juan Carlos Mendoza, called the attacks “unprecedented in Costa Rican history.”
President Carlos Alvarado gave a national address on Sunday warning against “provocations
and calls of hatred.” However, he immediately boasted about new police-state
capabilities to “expedite deportation of people with unwanted profiles,”
claiming to “understand the worries of many Costa Ricans” about the threat to
“national security” supposedly presented by migrants.
Far from seeking to counter
the pogromist atmosphere, Alvarado has fomented “patriotic” chauvinism since
the electoral campaign, exploiting it to justify the ongoing build-up of the
police, immigration units and intelligence services, which in turn will be
aimed against all forms of social opposition. The next morning, Alvarado
announced the incorporation of 98 new officers to the migration police.
Thousands have shown interest
online in participating in an “anti-xenophobia” march on Saturday organized by
pro-refugee groups. The generalized opposition to anti-immigrant policies and
attacks among workers and youth—a 2016 poll show that only 10.6 percent
believed Nicaraguans “should not come; they generate problems”—needs to be
mobilized to actively defend immigrants from attacks and deportations at
workplaces and in communities.
On January 13, heavily armed
police and immigration officials broke up a peaceful picket of more than 100
workers protesting the arbitrary firing of 60 co-workers at a pineapple
plantation in Los Chiles. Several picketing Nicaraguan workers were arrested
for deportation proceedings.
Constituting about 8 percent
of the Costa Rican population, Nicaraguans are an integral part of the working
class in Costa Rica, which is bound to Nicaragua by innumerable family,
economic and cultural ties.
All attacks against Nicaraguan
workers by the Costa Rican and Nicaraguan states—both at the behest of the main
investor in the region, US imperialism—will be ultimately used to undermine
workers’ struggles in both countries. This raises the urgent need to
consciously unite workers entering into struggle across the national borders
under a socialist and internationalist program, which calls for tearing down
the dead weights of the nation-state system and capitalism.
The fascist attackers on
Saturday frequently chanted “Free Costa Rica,” which corresponds, along with
the social-media accounts promoting the march, with the Free Costa Rica
Movement, a notorious fascist organization in Costa Rica. It formed as a
paramilitary group that carried out violent attacks against an upsurge of
worker and student demonstrations within Costa Rica throughout the 1970s and
1980s, along with xenophobic assaults against Nicaraguans within Costa Rica and
military support for the US-backed terrorist Contra forces.
After more than three decades
of anti-worker policies aimed at creating the most profitable conditions for
foreign and domestic capital, social inequality in Costa Rica has reached new
heights, with poverty levels above 20 percent and unemployment at 10.3 percent,
according to the Central Bank.
Social anger is growing
rapidly against the high unemployment; devastated state of public education,
health care, housing, and other social infrastructure; rampant corruption; and
record-levels of homicides and other indices of crime. In response, every
sector of the Costa Rican ruling establishment is scapegoating the ongoing wave
of immigrants seeking to escape the brutal repression and economic crisis in
Nicaragua.
The government has already
rejected more than 1,000 Nicaraguan refugee applications this year, citing
“criminal records.” This is part of a pernicious tendency. Costa Rica deported
549 Nicaraguans in 2017—before the current wave of migration—compared to 262 in
2016. Last year, 14,330 Nicaraguans were turned back at the border, compared to
6,754 in 2016.
As part of the deadly
crackdown carried out by the Daniel Ortega administration in Nicaragua against
demonstrations that began in mid-April protesting pension cuts, more than 2,000
Nicaraguans have been arrested “arbitrarily,” 480 of whom remain detained,
according to rights groups. The UN has denounced “collective detentions,” while
estimates of those killed vary between 317 and 448.
Several Facebook accounts are
calling for more anti-Nicaraguan “demonstrations” for the rest of August and
September. The largest of these right-wing groups, “Costa Rica Unida,” which
has more than 158,000 members, is managed by David Segura, a current legislator
of the evangelical National Restoration Party (PRN). Another key figure of this
far-right movement is Marvin Rojas Ramírez. On Friday, he posted a video
watched more than 100,000 times in which he describes receiving support and
feedback from high officials in state institutions. “We are a large group and
are getting organized,” he says, “we’ll be announcing dates and places to
meet.”
La Nación reported that a
“wave” of false stories were shared tens of thousands of times on social media
to stir up anti-immigrant sentiment ahead of Saturday’s march. However, the
efforts of La Nación and several media commentators to portray
the attacks as a result of “fake news” are aimed at channeling the
widespread revulsion felt by workers and youth against these xenophobic attacks
behind an equally ominous and authoritarian agenda.
On August 10, Facebook
suspended for 48 hours the page “For a new Costa Rican army,” which advocates
for building a paramilitary force to be deployed against Nicaraguan citizens.
It has more than 27,000 “likes” and expresses political support for the “Free
Costa Rica” fascists. Facebook’s actions constitute an outright attack against
freedom of expression and will be used by the government and the technology
corporations as a precedent to expand censorship against socialist and
left-wing outlets.
The growth in support for the
far right is chiefly the political responsibility of pseudo-left parties like
Frente Amplio and the trade unions, which have suppressed the class struggle
for decades and have now largely aligned themselves behind the Alvarado
administration. Consequently, in the February general elections, the
evangelical far right led by the PRN, which is adopting an increasingly open
anti-immigrant stance, became the main opposition in Congress and the only
significant political force that claims to battle the austerity and fiscal
packages being imposed.
Anti-immigrant sentiments are
similarly being fueled across Latin America as social catastrophes worldwide
continue to force millions to flee. For instance, about 1,200 Venezuelans were
forced to evacuate the Brazilian town of Pacaraima after hundreds attacked them
and burned their belongings and tents.
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