By John McPhaul
The Agrarian Court of the II Judicial Circuit of San José, Costa Rica, recently revoked a sentence of Judge Jean Carlo Céspedes Mora of Buenos Aires of Puntarenas in which he ordered the eviction of Indigenous people who had recovered land within the Brörán Indigenous territory, according to website CulturaCR.net.
The judge had accepted a precautionary measure and ordered the eviction of the Brörán land activists from the Crun Shurin Estate, located in the Indigenous territory of Térraba, in the south part of the country.
The judgement is the latest development in the effort of Indigenous Peoples to recover land within their territory taken over by "white" landholders.
Last March, the leader of the Indigenous land reclamation movement, Sergio Rojas, was murdered in his village, a case which is still under investigation by Costa Rican authorities.
The new resolution rejected the injunction ordering the eviction, the latter requested by the five corporations that were usurping the land and are represented by Eladio Ramirez Gonzales.
Céspedes Mora has been widely questioned and denounced by Indigenous organizations that seek to recover land illegally occupied by farmers, for showing partiality in his decisions.
Among the allegations, is that the judge in question is married to a daughter of Luis Chinchilla, a non-Indigenous person who illegally occupies land in the Indigenous territories of Térraba and Boruca.
According to the information issued by several Indigenous organizations, “the judge in question is investigated both criminally and administratively and the irregularities reported have already been notified to the Judicial Inspection, as reported by the Attorney General's Office, through the FGR 298-2018 of June 5, 2019 .″
In addition, these organizations request that because of the “evident conflict of interests of which Céspedes Mora is a party, it is withdrawn from the knowledge of any cause related to the indigenous peoples; However, so far there is no response from the Judiciary on this requirement.”
----John McPhaul is a Costa Rican-American freelance writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
