CHAPTER 44. PRESIDENT SUPPORTS
MY EXPULSION FROM NATIONAL
UNIVERSITY
After a year of returning, I applied to the Fulbright Foundation for a scholarship in the United States. I decided to pursue my master’s degree in political science at the University of Chicago; I eagerly anticipated the vibrant nightlife of big cities. I expected to go downtown and see thousands of people in the streets like in New York, but my first visit to the Loop made me realize my mistake: at 6 pm there wasn’t a soul in the center and the city looked like Berlin in 1945. I moved to Hyde Park; the university campus located in the South of the city. The University, surrounded by the poorest black ghettos in the United States, was like a bunker; it was not safe to walk at night and on every block, there was a white telephone to call for help. Rapes and murders of students were frequent, and the main social activity on campus was going to the library.
If the city was a disappointment and the University too conservative, the students were the worst. To com-pete, they would destroy books and articles on reserve, so the rest of us had no way to read them.
I wrote my thesis on the 48 Civil War in Costa Rica. Given that the academy perceived Figueres as a social democrat, my interpretation was that the man 156
was closer to fascism; the book was a resounding success in sales and still sells well today.
The criticism of this politician bothered him so much, or I spoke a truth that no one had dared, that he would make me pay years later.
In September 1979, I was informed that Columbia had accepted me as a fellow, and I had to return to the United States. I must admit that I chose to move to New York to be close to Ted. Since I would be leaving my position, I looked for someone that could replace me and the only interested person was a professor who came from Tulane, originally from Cartago.
The woman was unknown to me, but she acted affectionate and seemed to have a related title. Once my affairs were settled, I left for New York.
I hadn’t been able to settle in when the letters started arriving that the new director had allied herself, politically and romantically, with the dean, one of the left-wing South Americans. The two of them started a witch hunt, dismissing the professors who supported me. The worst part of the matter was that they started spreading the information that I was homosexual.
The definition of defamation was using information to discredit a person. It didn’t matter, as in the United States, whether it was false or true, but that there was malicious intent. My defense had to prove, then, that Tailandia had spoken to the professors about my homosexuality; the defendant, on the other 157
hand, had to deny it. The highest authorities were on the list of people supporting her.
The process was terrible. This professor used the lowest techniques; she distributed pamphlets at the University of Costa Rica stating that she was being
“unjustly” accused of saying that I was, and she emphasized it, homosexual. She sent threats to witnesses; she tried to intimidate the personnel who would testify against her and sent thugs to beat up the professors.
She had nothing of an academic; she acted like any street criminal.
I was alone. I had found a gay lawyer who was more in the closet than I was and whom the trial stirred up his own homophobia. The authorities were against me, and I felt like never before that gays needed to organize since, if a professor could make an entire university persecute a director because of his homosexuality, what could be expected from other institutions?
My friends advised me to withdraw the lawsuit.
“Jacob, you will never be able to work in Costa Rica again,” they said. “If you continue with this, they will charge you for being Jewish, for being gay, and for not supporting the left,” another professor warned me.
I won’t deny that I felt ashamed before, during, and after the process. It wasn’t easy to become the first public homosexual and the woman used her influences: she brought none other than former President Figueres to the trial. The politician, upset about my 158
book, decided to publicly support her: he entered the courtroom and gave her a kiss32.
Figueres’ appearance in court didn’t achieve its objective. I won the trial in the first instance, but due to a judge’s error, it would later be annulled. Tailandia would lose the election for director and would never hold a leadership position again. I returned to the United States to continue with my career.
However, I had taken off an important mask: my homosexuality was public knowledge. I won the first trial of a homosexual in court!
32 My book “The Hidden Face of the Costa Rican Civil War” became a huge best-seller. It was the first work to question the official version of the war. I stated that Figueres was closer to fascism than to social democracy and his intentions were dictatorial.