Francisco lives in Villarreal, the next small town over from Tamarindo. He meets us at the little local bar (called a Soda) across from the town park, a big overgrown field of weeds and broken bottles where they erect a wooden stadium and have bullfights during the holiday season. Francisco likes this place because no one bothers him when he blows lines right on the bar. It’s filled with ranchers, American ex-patriots, and Columbians sitting in the shadows and smoking cigarettes and drinking cold beer with lime juice (michelada). It looks like the bar scene from Star Wars but there is nothing touristy about this place. Sad songs play on the loudspeaker and we sit on the stools outside and buy each other Flor de Cane drinks and eat free horse sausage bocas. We sit outside and watch ourselves because the Columbians are no fucking joke, especially when they are drinking, even worse than the Nicaraguans, and they carry guns. One wrong move, you look at the wrong girl, and all hell could break loose. But we’re cool because they see in our eyes that we know exactly where we are and who they are, and we always show respect. Francisco’s aunt owns a little hair salon in town, and sometimes he helps her out, but their real income has deeper roots. Francisco’s family is from Columbia and they’ve been here in town for 15 years, some of the first immigrants. They are connected. They’ve been stalwarts of the Columbian immigrant community for that long, and deeply entrenched in the comings and goings of their people, and therefore the narco trade by osmosis. Francisco is a really cool, mellow guy, who helps his aunt at her shop and shows no signs of opulence except for being particularly amped up at Voodoo Lounge on Wednesday nights. How is he involved?
They know when the boats come in, our mutual friend told me. Being a curious SOB, naturally I had questions – do they sell? How much? Do they make a lot of money? Why are they still living in a humble house in Villarreal? Is his whole family in the business?
Our mutual friend gave me a look that said in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t annoyed but there were certain things I didn’t need to know. They know when the boats come in, he said again, more slowly, and left me to figure the rest out.
Let me make this very clear – we will never win the War on Drugs because there is no war on drugs. One thing that you have to understand is that those who wage these “wars” have a vested financial interest in fighting the battle, not ending it. The United States likes creating conflicts and then selling them to the American people by creating a rabid fear of some enemy who is pure evil and then defending us. With these red, white, and blue Jihads come reelection and rubber stamping an insanely high budget of tax payer money, which gets funneled to their corporate cronies. We used to fight countries, but that doesn’t work anymore so we have to fight ideas – the war on Communism, the war on Terror, the war on Poverty, the war on Illiteracy (No Child Left Behind), and the war on drugs. The result is mountains of corporate profits for companies like Halliburton – I’m talking about multiples of billions – and the perpetuation, not the pacification, of conflict; in fact drug trafficking in Columbia and Afghanistan has increased since our involvement. It’s a matter of simple physics – we push and they push back. Not to get off track, but look at Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, and the most blatant fleecing of the American public since the Shake Weight hit the shelves: Iraq. Trillions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives lost later we are scratching our heads and saying “Now why were we there again?” Oops.
So what does this look like on the streets of Tamarindo? The tourists are stumbling around drunk and oblivious, filling places like Las Fiestas, Aqua, Monkey Bar, and Voodoo lounge every night. The Critters (a not so complimentary local term for the swarms of little cut up surfer dudes by day/drug peddlers by night) keep an eye on their fat wallets, working every angle to sell them bad stuff or short change them. The Lion King brings people in the back bathroom and gives them a big bump for free. They either buy on the spot or come back to him later when they’re inhibitions are a little more lubricated with alcohol, getting a quick gram bag for $20. By the time they do it and realize they got bait and switched with some crap that’s been stepped on they are piss drunk or too intimidated to start yelling at a huge Mayan-looking surfer on his home turf.
On the street every single Critter you pass holding a surfboard will hit you with an invitation for weed or coke subtle as a wrecking ball. Sit your butt in a taxi and before you can get the door closed they’re asking you if you need coke or chicas. Surf instructors, the old-time hookers who live up at Casa Crack, the new Dominicanas, Nicas, and Ticas chicas malas who just came in from San Jose for the weekend to make a quick buck, transvestite prostitutes, and even the waiter who comes out with traces of blow on his nose at our favorite Italian restaurant have their hand in the yay-yo game or can hook you up with one quick whistle to their friends. It plays out like a perfectly-orchestrated Broadway show complete with its own Manu Chao soundtrack and a shirtless kid juggling fire against the night pregnant with a full moon in the roundabout. It’s so prevalent that our driver on a recent trip to an eco lodge in the nearby mountains was smoking weed out of a bong in his backpack, snorted a line of coke off a key, and washing it down with a thermos of vodka and grapefruit juice. It was 8:30am on a Wednesday.
The food chain goes as high as Sollum, the Belgian real estate developer who owns most of the hotels and land in town – as you drive around the pastures on the way to Liberia everything with a red-tipped fence post is his. His fortune was built on gun running.
Is it dangerous? Yes and no. But yes. Let me put it to you like this – I would feel perfectly safe bringing a family down here. You can easily avoid trouble by not being in the wrong places at the wrong times with the wrong people. As a general rule just don’t get involved with the coke scene and you won’t be hacked up by a coke dealer. They certainly don’t have school board shootings and Walmart massacres down here. If you get it you probably deserved it or you were playing the wrong game, so it’s more a mass de-hypnosis of our perception that we are safe and protected in the US. Most of the tourists here, including the older couples and families, are oblivious to the game behind the game, and see Tamarindo as an eco-paradise with glassy-eyed brown people who always seem to be happy. But then you step out of the fancy display case and get into the real world.
When you OD they never list the cause of death as ingesting enough Devil’s dandruff to make Al Pacino in Scar Face jealous. The official story is that you had a heart attack, or slipped and fell and hit your head (yeah right – slipped and fell into a pile of coke), or sometimes people just disappear. They don’t even need an official story when a local dealer or runner gets killed. The cab driver, the hooker, the Critter, don’t want to deal with it so they just dump the body in the ocean and it’s never seen again. The nearest hospital is an hour away anyways so it’s a wrap once you OD. If the ambulance does get to you within 45 minutes they forgot to recharge the defibulators.
A Canadian was seen wandering around at 6am with blood coming from his head and died shortly after. He was partying at the afterhours spot with the wrong people. Two tourists pissed off the wrong Critters and got beaten up and knifed outside Aqua. An American girl who owns the surf shop near Witch’s Rock has been missing for a month. Critters are shooting at each other on the beach and end up in prison for 6 years. A tourist goes missing and is found weeks later in the trunk of a car chopped up by a machete. The security guards at Las Fiestas rough up a dealer who wanted to get in but hadn’t paid them off. Last month the body of a prostitute was found down by the river on Sollum land. Her stomach was cut open and gutted, presumably to remove the coke she had swallowed to transport, and her hands were cut off, presumably to send a message that she shouldn’t try to steal from the wrong people.
Our friend Diana, a very pretty Tica with short hair from San Jose, sells jewelry on the street outside the Daria hotel. She hides her stash of stunningly beautiful necklaces in a baby carriage covered with blankets. Like a crack dealer on the corner, she can’t keep her product on her in case the cops come and raid. No one is permitted to work on the street so she catches the tourists’ attention with a few choice pieces laid out on a blanket, but then directs them to a nearby café to ask them more about what they are looking for and take out the bulk of her necklaces and bracelets. Her rent for a one bedroom apartment for her and her son is only $300 per month, but there are months when business is slow and she has trouble putting food on the table. When she first came to Tamarindo she had a run in with a few dealers who were pressuring her to sell coke for them to her customers. She blew up on them and yelled at them in public. They sat and listened, stone faced, until she scurried away, frightened at how they would react. The next day she went to them and apologized and begged for them not to kill her. Now they are all cool, and the dealers even look out for her son and take him to the Super Compro to buy him groceries when she can’t make it. Locals got local back. The problem is that many newcomers and ex-patriots don’t live long enough to earn local status. One 6 year resident, who is a gringo, advised me to party during the day and stay the fuck out of Las Fiestas.
When it happens it happens fast. A tourist may outweigh a Critter by 50 lbs and bench a lot more than him at 24 Hour Fitness, but the locals roll about 17 deep and they move like lightening, punching and kicking and stomping out their anger and frustration on an unsuspecting drunk gringo. But this time it’s about territory and the Lion King is roaring. I see him by the front door, charging another young Tico dealer who is smoking a cigarette with a thunderclap of adrenaline and 180 beats-per-minute pure chemical fury. I don’t know what he said, who he sold too, or what wrong girl he was hitting on, but the result is like fuegos artificiales – fireworks. Lion King slams into him, sending him flying back into the wall like a folding newspaper, and mercilessly reins down punches and kicks. It only lasts a few seconds until the other dealer can react, scrambling away, disoriented and bloodied. He grabs two empty beer bottles and they start to swing and dance. Everyone in the crowd screams and starts ducking and running. I guess fights with beer bottles down here are like drive-by shootings in the US – the wrong people always get hit and when they connect there are glass shards flying everywhere. I think I screamed like a bitch and hid behind a 90 lbs Chinese girl from New Jersey.
When it was over we got the hell out. Adrenaline was still in the air like an upturned wasps' nest. Once we were safely near the car Pistol Pete, Junior Gong, Reilly, and myself bought $1 shiskabobs from a vendor grilling them right there on the street. They’re a delicious late night snack, with chicken, beef, and onions perfectly roasted over coals and wrapped in a tortilla. As I approached the car a blond girl who had an Adam’s Apple the size of Lawrence Taylor's accosted me. He/She pretended to want to sex me up and started grabbing for my man-junk, the other hand conveniently reaching for my wallet to pickpocket me. I pushed the shit out of Shim and barked “No me joda!” The blond man in a black dress slinked back into the shadows of the moonlight. I looked down to mourn my shishkabob fallen to the ground, still steaming as ants swarmed. God dammit. I turned and headed back to the grill and whistled for one more. It’s just another night in the jungle, and big boy gotta eat.
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