A joint effort between government officials and a non-profit organization resulted in the rush construction of homes for 38 families who had been judicially evicted from a farm in southern Costa Rica.

The families benefited by this action were evicted after a lengthy, Kafkaesque round of agrarian court hearings, whereby the plaintiffs were two banana cultivation enterprises of dubious corporate standing as determined by the Agrarian Court of Corredores, which serves the Osa Peninsula.

The respondent families were squatters that attempted to appeal to government the right to keep the land they had been cultivating for years in light of the conspicuous absence of the landowner; alas, the case escalated to the Contentious Administrative Tribunal, a high court where truly nebulous civil cases become even more complicated and worthy of philosophical treatises.

Legislators from the Frente Amplio (Broad Front) political party interceded in favor of the farming families and got the attention of the Executive Branch. No one seemed to understand the case, and there were hopes that the families would get to spend Christmas at the farm where they have been squatting and cultivating for years. A prima facie petition was filed on the basis that the Agrarian Court was baffled by the Gordian title declarations presented by the plaintiffs; nonetheless the Contentious Administrative Tribunal was somehow able to decrypt the matter and ruled against the squatters.

The TECHO Foundation and staff members from the Office of the Executive Branch joined forces and hurried to allocate funding in excess of $150,000 for the purpose of acquiring land through the Rural Development Institute, a public-private consortium that can purchase land flexibly and without having to go through the Orwellian process of eminent domain in Costa Rica.

With prefabricated materials and the help of 144 evicted squatters working over a few days, 38 temporary homes were completed before Christmas Eve. The government contracted residential developers to quickly install basic utilities such as electricity, drinking water, indoor plumbing, and a waste disposal route. By the morning of December 24th, the squatters were settling in and getting ready to prepare simple Christmas dinners that probably tasted like pure heavenly glory after a close call with homelessness.

According to a press release by the Presidential Office, the Executive Branch never moved to disobey the eviction ruling by the court (they probably would not have been able to decipher it anyway). The actions by the government were in favor of the families; just a matter of looking out for their human rights in Costa Rica, particularly during the holidays.