This is my pitch for browsing local bookstores, and letting them take us on a detour into what people are reading and talking about in a given place. While in San José, I picked up two of the most popular books on the shelves. The first is perhaps the most internationally renowned Costa Rican novel, published in 1968. The second is the bestseller of the moment, topping the charts at every store I walked into.
La Isla de los Hombres Solos (The Island of Lonely Men), by José León Sánchez
While I can’t speak about the cases I worked on at the Court this summer, some of the themes were quite similar to the story told in this autobiographical work. José León Sánchez recounts how he was accused of robbing the jewels from the 17th-century Basilica de los Ángeles in Cartago, Costa Rica at the age of 19, earning him the nickname “Monster of the Basilica”. The nature of the crime and its public visibility meant that he was hated and condemned well before his court date. He recounts how every lawyer in the country signed an agreement not to represent him. Essentially, he was left to defend himself without access to his own file, rendering a fair trial impossible. He was sentenced to life in prison, where he experienced brutal conditions, solitary confinement, torture and multiple escape attempts.
During his years in San Lucas Island prison, he taught himself to read and write and began what would eventually become this novel. He was later transferred to an agricultural penal colony, where he continued to write extensively until his release. After roughly thirty years in prison, Sánchez was acquitted and his conviction overturned. And yet, even after his name had been cleared, his application for compensation from the state was rejected in 2012.
The popularity of this book in Costa Rica – the host country of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which routinely deals with alleged violations of procedural guarantees, and of life, liberty and dignity – seemed noteworthy to me. As I mentioned in my earlier post, many Costa Ricans are familiar with the Court and its work. I found myself wondering whether that familiarity is partly caused and/or sustained by stories like this one, reminding people why institutions that hold states accountable matter.
From a personal perspective, reading this book while working on technical aspects of human rights cases was grounding. The Court’s language of procedure and admissibility can create distance, but this book served as a raw reminder of the lives behind cases and the individuals who wait years or even decades for their cases to be heard.
Vientos Alisios (Trade Winds), by Daniel Quirós
The second book tells a story about Costa Rica’s present. It is set in a modern-day beach town in the northern province of Guanacaste. Don Chepe, a Costa Rican who fought with the guerrilla during the next-door Nicaraguan revolution, returns to his hometown in Guanacaste, disillusioned and cynical. There, he must come to terms with how life has changed as a result of tourism and development.
When a biologist investigating the contamination of a rural water source disappears before he can share his research findings, foul play is suspected, and Don Chepe is enlisted to investigate. The novel unfolds as a thriller, exploring the cost to local communities of tourism, corruption, and environmental degradation.
With Costa Rica’s international reputation for ecotourism and wellness retreats, I was intrigued to consider what it means for such a novel to be at the top of the charts. While Costa Rica exports an image of pristine nature and sustainable tourism, its bestselling novel seems to dismantle this image.