It was small news announcement in Costa Rica, which told of how a 22-year-old indigenous woman accused of homicide had been granted a pardon for humanitarian reasons. During the following weeks, updates on the story grew in size and scope, often sensationalistic. Each version of the story highlighted different unsavory elements related to the case, yet they all coincided in underscoring the importance of one particular detail. The indigenous murderer had learned to learned to speak and read Spanish. The stories spoke of her enormous capacity for learning, stressing that in two years she was able to master all the skills taught during elementary school. This led me to question
the notion of what liberty means for a poor, indigenous woman who lives in a country that only recently began to recognize her ethnic group (the ngöbe) as legitimate Costa Rican citizens. I then realized that, for her, being locked up
meant many things, among them: not to experience hunger, and in fact, to eat three meals a day; to have access to potable water; to benefit from basic sanitation services; to have a bed to call her own; to receive medical services and to be granted the opportunity of education. She even got the chance to experience the joys of self-sufficiency by working in the prison’s arts and crafts workshop and, in this way, earning money to send back to her family.
The woman in question is among the most vulnerable, whereas I can count myself among the most privileged. I understand each and every one of her actions because I am a woman wich, in almost all circumstances, makes one’s position precarious, even to point of putting one’s own citizenship in question. How could a woman feel more human in a prison system that is so flawed? What must her reality be like? Her feeling of marginality runs so deep
that she feels better locked up. And does this marginality come from her gender, her class, or from her combined?