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and Jay Brodell of the A.M. Costa Rica staff Up the flank of a mountain to the south of San José in a place where no tourist ever sees they are mourning the death of a little girl. They really don’t know for sure that she is dead, but death is the general speculation. And the mourning really isn’t that deep, a reflection on a place that is not yet or maybe never will be a community. It was here in an approximation of Hell on earth that a little girl vanished Wednesday. Some people may have seen an abduction. No one took any action. It is healthier if you just don’t pay too close attention to what is going on in this place. The place is Los Guidos de Desamparados, and the little girl is Jessica Valverde Pineda. She still is missing, and the residents in this rough place are speculating just when she died and by whose hand. Odelia Vindas Campos runs the little store, a "pulpería" to where the girl walked Wednesday with the hopes of buying a treat. The woman has given different accounts to the police. She spoke with a reporter Tuesday in the small, clean and tidy home and store. Tuesday she said that last Monday and last Tuesday a woman was lurking about suspiciously and so was a dark-skinned man with long hair. On both days the suspicious persons were around between 10 a.m. and noon, she said. Three other persons have said they saw such a man on Wednesday holding the hand of the girl who was perhaps struggling to get free. No one intervened. A variation on this story has the man talking on the public telephone as he kept hold of the child. A third variation places the couple in a white car. A fourth variation is that no one saw anything and that those who said they did have perhaps been influenced by reports in the Spanish-language press. If no one called police, that brings up topics that are more properly in the realm of sociology. As it stands, Los Guidos is a non-community where there is no personal security, there are no controls on what people do and there are continual sales of drugs. Police raided a drug sales outlet more than a week ago. The local police station is about a kilometer (little more than half a mile) from the place where the girl vanished. Daniel Ruíz is a sociologist with the University of Costa Rica. He knows the area well. In addition to a professional interest, his sister runs a school there where a few of the |
estimated 120,000 persons from 20,000
families try to learn English to get better jobs.
The people in the settlement have no roots, Ruíz agrees, because they have come from Nicaragua, southern Costa Rica, Guanacaste or other places that provide immigration to the Central Valley. Not all the area has vital utilities services, and the roads are mostly gravel with large potholes. There is no solidarity, no religious center, no sports center, Ruíz noted. This is what is called a "marginal" settlement, one without recourses. A nearby creek, a trickle, is full of garbage and human wastes. The residents cling on to life just as precariously as the houses cling to the side of a hill below a coffee plantation. Because of their varied backgrounds and origins the settlement has not developed that feeling of community that might have protected the girl, said the sociologist. The police agree. Alexander Piedra Mora of the local Fuerza Publica encouraged a woman reporter to flee the area for her own safety. He agreed that the people need to develop more of a community and to depend on police action by filing complaints and by naming names. Nobody said they saw anything when the girl vanished either because they didn't or because of the tradition of silence that permeates the area, he said. Another theory of what happened to the girl prompted mob action Friday night. A Costa Rican resident who is suspected of inviting willing underaged girls into his home was targeted by neighbors as someone who might have taken the girl. They attacked him, and police had to intervene and put him in protective custody. Yet on Tuesday police had not obtained the appropriate paperwork to inspect the man’s dwelling to see if evidence existed as to what happened to Jessica. Some policemen were in front of the house but the presence of investigators has diminished dramatically since the weekend, in part because police have carried the search to other areas, including Jericó, La Capri and Higuito to the south. At the home of the girl, her mother, Jessenia Pineda, tries to remain calm. She still has four youngsters to take care of and she is pregnant. The home has a dirt floor. Ms. Pineda told a reporter that the family has no enemies. No one would take the child as vengeance. But she wants any abductor to know that there is no chance of ransom. The family has no money. She said she is afraid that unscrupulous individuals will try to extort money from her and others with the promise of returning the child safely. Meanwhile, as a result of the chaos caused by the disappearance, her husband lost his job. The family moved to this area from Guanacaste, she said. |
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Some offers of help are beginning to roll in at the Costa Rican Humanitarian Foundation where director Gail Nystrom has taken in a group of street children under her roof. But the foundation, featured in a news story Tuesday, still needs some basic items at its sprawling Ciudad Colon location. Tops on the list is a television set to allow the youngsters to relax. However, they will have to restrict their viewing and face a test the next day on the contents of the news shows they watch, said Ms. Nystrom. Because the youngsters still are sleeping on mattresses on the floor, she is hoping for beds, even bunk beds. A portable tape/CD player would give the youngsters some music. And Ms. Nystrom said she needs a new wireless telephone to replace the inoperable one she has now. Any money donated will be subject to strict accounting and reporting,
she said. Cash is needed to enhance the lives of the youngsters. For example,
five volunteers and seven
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youngsters went to Puntarenas Sunday for an outing. Ms. Nystrom notes that even a quick trip to the ice cream store runs upwards of 3,000 colons ($8.65) because of the number of hungry mouths involved. A visit to the local swimming pool costs 300 colons (85 cents). The youngsters, some of whom who have spent up to eight years on the streets, have been living at the foundation for several months because Ms. Nystrom could not stand to see them living on the streets any longer. Tuesday there were seven youngsters at the shelter, from 12 to 19, all working on finishing their schooling. Contact information for the foundation includes Ms. Nystrom’s e-mail:
gnystrom@racsa.co.cr
and the foundation telephone number: (506) 249-1516.
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