Why the Banished King Should Be Let Back into Pavones
By Justice Mendez
In June 2005, Costa Rica’s Director General of Immigration Marco Badilla exiled Daniel Fowlie from Costa Rica for purposes of public safety on the basis of reports that Fowlie’s brief return to Pavones after his release from prison caused public fear and disorder in the region.i However, many Pavones locals strongly disapprove of this ban, disapproval which leads us to wonder whether Immigration has creditable justification for maintaining Fowlie’s exile despite locals’ cry for his return.
All relevant facts recommend that Immigration should allow the beloved builder of Pavones back into paradise for three incontrovertible reasons: first, the exile has no factual justification on four separate counts; second, Fowlie (therefore) has a right to return in order to defend his land from thievery; and third and most importantly, Fowlie’s return would significantly benefit Pavones and its people by ensuring improvements that the Golfito municipality has proven itself incapable of implementing. In reality, a ban meant to prevent fear and disorder in the region has succeeded merely to protect Pavones land thieves from fearing the disruption of their thievery by Fowlie’s return.
The exile lacks justification because it’s based exclusively on fictions at every level. Even the source of the complaints on which the government bases their exile remains dubious. Written complaints of Fowlie’s return (which claim that the same Fowlie who brought cocaine, prostitutes, and counterfeit money to Costa Rica had returned inciting regional violence) were actually given a fictitious attorney author, one whose name does not appear in records of the law school he purportedly attended. Why, then, do newspapers and government officials continue to trust untrustworthy reports, which were most likely disseminated by the very land thieves interested in keeping out of Pavones Fowlie and his legal right to the land they acquired illegally?
On the second count of the ban’s bogus justification, the caricature of Pavones’s builder king as a kingpin constitutes pure sensationalism because it’s unwarranted by the facts of Fowlie’s marijuana conspiracy charges, particularly the fact that the only hard evidence of marijuana in Fowlie’s case was an ounce found on Dan’s ranch in California, when not he but many other tenants lived on the ranch.
Yet, Costa Rican newspapers, apparently less intenerated in facts that stories, continue to encourage wildly imaginative parodies of Fowlie and ignore what the indigenous people of Pavones know and think about Pavones’s builder. Natives of Pavones, besides insisting that nothing remotely suggested illegal drug or prostitution activities led by Dan at Pavones, will inform you that Fowlie gave them all jobs; built their roads, schools, and hospitals; strongly disapproved of any drug presence on the beach; and greatly improved their land and quality of life. On all accounts, Dan was a real friend to the Costa Rican people.
Third (regarding the ban’s missing justification), contrary to fictional reports, all actual evidence demonstrates that Dan’s visit to Pavones was “muy tranquillo,” as the local police comment in police reports during Dan’s return. Fowlie, convinced that the land thieves would harm his efforts to reacquire his land by planting contraband on him, hired an unarmed Costa Rican drug-enforcement agent to accompany him at all times during his return, and this agent also testifies to Fowlie’s good behavior. The only specific allegation of violence during Fowlie’s visit is that Fowlie threatened one of Chico Gomez’s “children”—not the best fabrication because the “child” in question was Bierno, who stood 6’3 and weighed about 225 pounds in his thirties.ii Though many know Fowlie for his bravado, the video tape of, and the eyewitness accounts of, the encounter—in which Gomez’s son had actually stopped in his car to invite Dan to his father’s house for a meeting—all suggest the opposite of baseless allegations of threats and violence. During this visit, only the people who had acquired parts of Danny Land illegally (most of them gringos) were unhappy to see Fowlie in Pavones. The indigenous people, who had become family to Fowlie in former years, embraced him.
Fourth, Fowlie insists that his exile is unjustified because it exhibits government corruption with close connections between Pavones land thieves to high-ranking government officials. Though the facts of Fowlie’s accusations warrant further exploration, the government’s ongoing decision to trust the fabrications of court-recognized land thieves over hard evidence and the testimonies of Costa Rican police reports, a drug enforcement official, and local eyewitness certainly demands explanation.
The ban also hinders Fowlie from effectively exercising his right to reclaim and defend his land. During Fowlie’s absence, much of his land was sold via falsified titles or illegal squatting. Though Fowlie has already successfully reclaim much of his land in Costa Rican courts, his inability to enter Costa Rica has slowed down the progress of his legal defense in his dozens of cases and made legal processes less transparent. If allowed back into Pavones, he could direct his defense team much more efficiently, efficiency the government persists to prevent for no good reason.
Besides lacking all justification and aiding illegal land thievery, the banishment of Fowlie prevents him from significantly benefiting the people and land of Pavones. Since Fowlie’s absence, the local economy, forests, roads, and public health and safety have suffered. When Dan ran the local economy, he employed over eighty percent of the local population. Currently, Fowlie is collaborating with Parque Pavones del Pacifico to preserve Pavones as a private park and, thereby, leave it largely development free. Parque Pavones also has plans for a community northeast of Pavones, Playa Manzanillo, a residential and commercial development that blends with the natural beauty of the environment and fosters the economic welfare of residents in the region.iii It’s hard to exaggerate the economic advantages this plan would provide Costa Rica’s South Pacific. It would provide jobs to all who presently lack them in the region, help youth who sell drugs for a living find better employment, and provide women with more economic opportunities than they currently share.
Parque Pavones also maintains the highest standards for conserving the forests and diverse aquatic life in the region. The collaborative agency between Fowlie and Parque Pavones has already saved Golfo Dulce, one of the most diverse biospheres in the world, from an environmental disaster. By preventing the implementation of a tuna-farming project by Granjas Atuneras de Golfito S.A., Parque Pavones’s political advocacy rescued from future peril dolphins, sea turtles, and more. Moreover, as Fowlie wins back his land and establishes it into private park, he will thereby preserve the emerald-green forests of Pavones from the deforestation of unplanned random construction.iv Hence, this collaborative agency is essential to restoring Pavones to an economically prosperous and environmentally sound region. By donating his land to Parque Pavones, Fowlie wants to help people experience Pavones as he first saw it: a place where monkey-light jungle meets magical sea.
Regarding transportation and public health and safety, the roads have remained in disrepair ever since Dan’s absence, though he would maintain them if he returned just as he did so in the seventies and eighties after building the roads. In those days, Dan also refused to allow drugs in the cantina, and he fired a bartender for selling marijuana. Today, however, cocaine pervades the cantina in plastic straws behind the ears of local drug dealers. There have also recently been cases of rape, stabbings, and theft in the area, all without much of a deterrent of imprisonment due to the lack of an adequate detention center. Locals regret Pavones’s local inability to hold suspected violators before trial dates. In contrast to the government’s lack of assistance with these problems, Dan plans on working with Parque Pavones to maintain legal order by training government-certified park rangers and by building an adequate detention facility. When Fowlie returns, he also intends to build an adequate sewer-treatment facility to eliminate the stench and toxicity of improperly managed raw sewage in Pavones. When Fowlie lived in Pavones, he had it looking beautiful and running beautifully, and he would do so again, given the opportunity.
Given the real possibility of these significant advantages for the region, it’s no wonder that Pavones locals call for Fowlie’s return. Contrary to the ludicrous myth that the locals view Fowlie as some God because he once threw money out an airplane over Pavones, locals really know Dan as a proven means to their prosperity and as one who can effectively contribute to the worthy cause of helping Pavones flourish once again.
i. A.M. Costa Rica staff. “Being Banned from here is a Surprise to Fowlie.” A.M. Costa Rica. Vol. 5, No. 112. 8 June 2005. Available at <http://www.amcostarica.com/060805.htm>.
ii. Tico Times staff. “Ex-Convict Returns to Claim Property.” The Tico Times. 10 June 2005. Reprinted from Explore Costa Rica.com. [Cited 1 February 2008]. Available at <http://www.explorecostarica.com/newsmanager/publish/printer_364.shtml>.
iii. Parque Pavones del Pacifico. [Internet]. [Cited 1 February 2008]. Available at <http://www.parquepavones.com/indexing.html>.
iv. Ibid.