‘Gold-Plated’ Refugee Camp Fails to Fulfill Hope in Costa Rica : Farm Project a ‘Model of What Cannot Be Done’

Some diplomats call this the “gold-plated refugee camp.” It has been one of the most expensive in the world in terms of cost per refugee.

It is also the oldest, and perhaps the most disappointing, of a growing number of refugee camps in Costa Rica.

The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has spent about $2.7 million on the Los Angeles camp project since it began five years ago, a spokesman said.

The goal was to establish a model farm where nearly 500 refugees from the guerrilla war in rural El Salvador could live in dignity and pay their own way by working the land. U.N. officials had hoped that the experiment would serve as a model for “durable solutions” to the burgeoning refugee problems of Central America.

However, the project has been a failure, serving only “as a model of what cannot be done,” said Hilda Porras, director of Costa Rica’s National Commission for Refugees.

Los Angeles camp opened in July, 1980, early in the civil war that still rages across El Salvador. Most of the people who have been brought to the camp asked for asylum at the Costa Rican Embassy in San Salvador.

450-Acre Development

The United Nations bought 450 acres of ranch land in the rugged green hills of northern Costa Rica, near the town of Liberia. It invested in a network of roads through the property, comfortable prefabricated houses, an elementary school, a chapel and sturdy facilities for raising chickens, pigs and rabbits.

Equipment included a tractor, a truck and two jeeps with hired drivers. Helping to run the camp were an administrator, two agronomists, a social worker, a bookkeeper and a cook.

The refugees were given three hot meals a day, clothing and pocket money. Doctors and dentists called frequently, and the Costa Rican government provided three teachers for the school.

“They had many, many benefits,” Danilo Zamora, the camp’s current administrator, told a visitor. “Everything was very abundant.”

At first, the Costa Rican Red Cross ran the camp under an agreement with the United Nations, which paid the bills. When the Red Cross gave up, a government welfare agency took over for a while under a similar agreement.

Zamora, a Costa Rican agronomist hired by the U.N. agency, came to the camp last October. He said he found that refugee morale was low, that little work was being done, that the farm was in a state of disrepair and that it was producing practically nothing.

Simply Walked Away

Many of the refugees have simply walked away from the project to fend for themselves. Ten families, including some of the best workers, moved to a refugee project operated by the Catholic Church 75 miles away.

Now, there are about 250 refugees at Los Angeles. Most are women and children; 40 of the children were born in Costa Rica.

About the time that Zamora became administrator, many of the refugees’ benefits were cut. No longer are there hot meals and walking-around money.

“There were very strong reactions,” Zamora said. “The refugees were really upset. They wanted to go on strike.”

50 Cents an Hour

Families now do their own cooking. Those who work on the farm earn about 50 cents an hour and pay for their own food and supplies. Single mothers who do not work are given rations.

Zamora said that one of the farm’s problems has always been a high proportion of families headed by single women who contribute little to production. Today, such “dependent” families account for 148 of the camp’s 250 refugees.

Many families have been given small plots of land so that they may cultivate gardens. They may eat or sell what they produce, usually corn and beans.

For the first time, Los Angeles camp is producing significant amounts of food--chicken, pork, beef, milk, eggs, corn and beans--but the place is still far from being self-sufficient. The U.N. subsidy in the first six months of 1985 was $60,000, more than $1,200 a family.

Low Morale

Morale in the camp continues to skid. Refugees complain about the reduction in benefits and the level of the new wages.

“They pay a salary, but it’s too low; it’s barely enough to eat on,” said Jose Antonio Zabal, 64. “It was better when they gave us everything.”

Zabal and some other men were sitting around the camp store on a cool afternoon recently, killing time with conversation. Juan Rivas, 38, said with a note of bitterness that the refugees have no television, no record player. Beer and liquor are prohibited.

“There’s no way to have a little fun here,” Rivas said. “We talk, like we’re doing now, and we wait for night so we can to go to bed.”

He said the refugees would be happier and work harder if they were in charge of their community.

‘Like Master and Servant’

“Here they tell you what to do.” he said. “It’s like master and servant. It has always been that way. A lot of money has been invested here, and it has been invested badly because they didn’t know how to analyze what was needed.’

A spokesman for the U.N. agency, Colon Bermudez, said the agency is planning to convert the camp into a cooperative farm to be run by the refugees. It will be another attempt to find “durable solutions” for Central America’s refugee problems, and Costa Rica, flooded with refugees from the region’s turbulence, desperately needs durable solutions.

The National Commission on Refugees said there are more than 30,000 officially registered refugees in Costa Rica, including 6,000 from El Salvador and 21,000 from Nicaragua.

The flow from El Salvador has all but stopped, but as many as 1,000 Nicaraguans a month are coming in and asking for refuge. Most of them are herded into crowded and underfunded camps, where Spartan conditions and unending tedium make the Los Angeles camp seem like the refuge of a privileged elite.