I was about four years-old. It was1959,
and Palmar Sur was the capital of all the farms.
I was born in the clinic of the Yunai in Palmar Sur, after the great full, on November 26 of 1955. I am from Osa, a southerner.
My parents came to the south looking for work. My father was a muleteer and banana worker; my mother was housemaid for a manager.
I was raised in the quadrant of Finca 3 Vieja, later this would become Finca 1. The house where I grew up was grey-color two floors; grey meant “we were banana workers.” At groundfloor were the living room and the kitchen; back then it was a stove burner. We had no electricity or gas; I remember the firewood we used was from red mangrove, very good quality firewood. I remember it because my father went to the pier of Cortés searching for this wood, which was brought by the wood cutters from Boca Brava. (Don Modesto Lara)
Life for “children of banana plantations” was not very comfortable, it was very simple. In the quadrant as the housing center was called, was the soccer plaza in the middle, surrounded by the houses; you could watch the friendly soccer matches from the second floor. Today everything is desolate and the houses have been demolished. I can remember some of the families who used to live in those houses: don Rubén Montero, don Leonel, don Quino, Bolívar Rojas (foreman), Chanito (musician), don Sixto Venegas, Sabitas, Bellito, Macho Zelaya, Pedro Sánchez, don Luis Carvajal and I regret not remembering the others. There was some kind of shrine to San Martín de Porres; the irrigation plant was a little further. The commissariat was a kind of supermarket; children gathered there every afternoon to watch TV.
How pretty was the school at Finca 3! Today it’s a barn where the mules of Palma Tica sleep. With its poppy fences and red flowers, mango trees, mountain apple and oranges; its main entrance built with tiles, and beautiful tropical almond trees offering their shade; the school teacher doña Virginia, very hard to teach but so affectionate with the students.
I don’t remember much about my classmates. The days were very long; we played in front of the house with a piece of football; they built us carts with the oatmeal cans’ lids and we played for hours with them. Another entertainment was watching adults’ soccer matches on the afternoons.
Mornings in the south of Costa Rica the sky is very blue and the sun very bright. You could see the vultures circling in the South’s blue skies.
Around the sports plaza were mango trees, African palms and coconut palms (pipas), which were cut when aerial fumigation stared. It was a grey winter morning, and from the balcony of our house we could see banana workers climbing and cutting their leaves and later their trunk; landscape for this banana child changed. The mango trees were in bloom I remember their scent; after that tender mangos with salt, but these mangos were fumigated by the Yunai’s airplanes just as they did with us. This was the other face of Yunai. The nights were dark and full of stars; there was no electricity back then. One day a crew from Yunai came invading our house; they started placing cables, from which hanged a light bulb and to our surprise, there was “light.”
People came every day in the bikes selling bread, meat, milk and clothes. A lady by the name of Doña Chavela Gómez along with her grandson, a blonde kid were in charge of dairy products; he and her grandmother sold milk, cheese and curdled milk. A man we called Chamorro, sold bread; the one selling meat was Manuel (Pachuco). There also was a boy called Luis Villachica he was the other milkman he was the son of Cachiro.
My brother also sold milk, he rode a motorcycle. My brother grew up with another family because my mother was single; she was an employee for one of the company’s managers; she had ta brother and when my sister was about to be born and this man who could not have a family, and seeing my mother’s situation he used to tell her every day to give him her child and one day she gave him up! They went to La Palma to live, which was town near to Palmar Sur. There was no Inter American highway those days; the roads we travelled belonged to the Yunai.
Stormy nights full of lightning were not my favorite because when thunderbolts stroke on the tubes of the soccer field’s frame it was quite impressive watching so many sparkles. The locomotive was a monster throwing fire and smoke, it made us shiver. For those years (1959) I was about four years-old, Palmar Sur was the capital of all the farms, the Church, the medical dispensary, the commissariat where I tasted my first ice cream; there were many toys hanging from the ceiling; Yunai’s central offices, the American zone where the chiefs lived, was where the airport was, the central school and the American zone itself, at the same time was the golf field.