Costa Rican farmer handed 22 years for murder of Indigenous land defender

A Costa Rican court has sentenced a man to 22 years behind bars for the murder of an Indigenous land rights defender in 2020, in a case which stoked decades-old tensions between native communities and farmers over disputed territory.

Yehry Rivera, a leader of the Brörán people, was shot from behind and killed by farmer Juan Varela during a land conflict in the Terraba community, 80 miles (130 km) south-east of the capital San Jose in Puntarenas province.

Rivera, 45, was murdered in February 2020 after being surrounded by a mob of armed non-Indigenous locals amid a spate of violence against Indigenous activists trying to reclaim their ancestral territory.

“I was the one who killed him,” Varela said to cheers and applause at a community meeting last August – comments that were recorded and used as evidence in the trial.

Costa Rica, an eco-tourism hub with 5 million inhabitants, is considered Central America’s most equitable and law-abiding country. But in recent years, the Bribri and Brörán people have been subject to a string of violent attacks, racist harassment and trumped-up retaliatory lawsuits linked to disputes over ancestral lands.

Costa Rica has eight indigenous ethnic groups who represent approximately 2.4% of the total population. In 1977, legislation granted land ownership to Indigenous communities with historical ties to 24 legally recognised territories.

But the law has never been implemented.

As a result, the Bribri and Brörán people in the Puntarenas province have in recent years taken matters into their own hands, retaking possession of some land through unauthorized occupations.

Despite some success, most of the territories remain occupied by non-Indigenous families and farmers, who also claim ownership of the lands that in some cases have been farmed by their families for generations.

The judges in the Rivera case ruled that Varela, who claimed to have Indigenous blood, did not act in self-defence, as argued by his lawyers. Varela can appeal the sentence.

The ruling represents the first sign of justice for Indigenous communities after more than 40 years of occupation by non-Indigenous Costa Ricans, which has led to “systematic violence” by some farmers, the United Nations has said.

Rivera was killed just two weeks after Mainor Ortiz Delgado, 29, a leader of the Bribri indigenous people in neighbouring Salitre, was wounded in a gun attack, and less than a year after Sergio Rojas Ortiz, 59, was shot dead. Both cases remain unsolved.