Costa Rica

Pura Vida

Do you ever wonder what happend to the left-wing Europeans who went to help the Sandanista revolution during the civil war in Nicaragua? Well, that mean, those who didn´t die, but those who just disapeared. 

And who were they? Those "soldiers", having so much red blod in their veins that they felt called, to help their communist comrades on the other side of the world, fighting the most bloody war against the liberalism in Central America. 

I´ll tel you about one of them. 

His story starts with one of the most notorious terror organisation in Germany: The Red Army Faction, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang. Do you know them? With a Marxist-Lenin ideology their motive was armed resistance to reach a proletarian revolution and they won massive support from the anti-imperialism and pro socialist groups around the world during the cold war - especially during the Vietnam war. 

Well, most of the group got prissoned - and this is where our guy comes into the picture. Cause who wants to defend a terror group who had 34 deaths, a lot of these second hand targets, and hundreds of bombing on their accusation list. And what if you got accused of being a part of their gang if you defended them? Who then would defend them in court?  - Our guy - a lawyer and a captain from Freiburg.

30-40 times he was accused of helping the Baader-Meinhof gang as a lawyer, and he was even accused of helping the members to escape from prison. "That couldn´t be posible" he tells "the security was to good. I was searched by Interpool for 10 years and when they just thought they got me, I escaped out of the country". 

He went to Nicaragua and started helping the Sandinistas. He trained the green barricades in using weapons in the north of Nicaragua. He was there when Ortega and the Sandinistas gathered and when Carlos Mejía Godoy sang "Nicaragua Nicaraguita" in managua in april 1983 to symbolize the hope for peace in Nicaragua.  

I meet him on the Carribean coast of Costa Rica as the owner of an organic lodge. Wolfgang is his name, but he ask me to call him Wolle. Each morning he goes for a small walk down to the beach in his bachyard followed by his small dog Cookie. Here he runs a small distance and stands for a moment to glimpse over the Carribean sea. Most of the day he spends in front of the computer playing chess. His wife is a 20 years younger afro-dancer and he has 5 kids in all. "The oldest turned his back on me when he went into banking in the capital San José. Now he´s building his second house" Wolle tells me, "but at least he gave me some grand children. And he did save my life back then, it was because of my son, at that time he was only one year old, that I gave up the revolution and found my way to Costa Rica". This was 35 years ago.  

3 weeks in Costa Rica is over and tomorrow I take off from paradise Costa Rica and head for Nicaragua.

Pura Vida