Study again in exile: Nicaraguans who break through in the classrooms of Costa Rica | América Futura

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Katherine Ramírez felt “exhausted, mentally and physically” when he weighed whether or not to enroll in a career in Costa Rica to finally obtain his degree title. “Starting a race for the third time is not easy,” says the 26 -year -old Nicaraguan, originally from the department of Estelí. The repression of students and the closure of universities that broke out in Nicaragua after the 2018 social outbreak forced her to leave her studies of international relations and political science; First at the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua, at the headquarters of Estelí, and later at the Paulo Freire University, in Managua. In 2022, when the persecution came through threats to the door of his house, Ramírez crossed the border.

The repression of the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo has taken about 300,000 Nicaraguans to seek refuge in Costa Rica, according to the United Nations. Of these, the International Human Rights Network (Ridhe) estimates that some 20,000 were students who, like Ramírez, were forced to abandon their academic training. In order to attend them, RIDHE opened the emergency education program in 2022. Since then, the scholarships they grant have allowed 300 displaced people to enroll races in Costa Rica.

Three years after his arrival in the country, Ramírez is close to finishing his degree in international relations at the International University of the Americas, in San José. At the same time, he works at the Foundation without limits, a political research center. It was “a difficult process,” he says sitting in a San José coffee. “Studying in Costa Rica is quite expensive and I had to deal with bureaucracy and explain why I didn’t have my apostilled notes. Universities are not informed and do not understand that Nicaragua is a country where you woke up today and took your nationality.”

When he started the way to resume his career, he ruled out public universities because his work and other responsibilities prevented him from dedicating himself full time. Although private centers adapted more to their situation, the accounts did not come out. Therefore, he applied to the Ridhe program, whose help includes financial support and advice for legal processes, as well as psychosocial and pedagogical care for students. “Although many flee in search of protection, which are often closed borders, hostile migratory systems and societies little prepared to host with dignity,” he says by video call from Brussels, Elektra Lagos, director of that network.

In Central America, he says, the situation of the displaced is aggravated due to “institutional weakness and the lack of comprehensive public policies that guarantee basic rights to migrants.” Likewise, Lagos emphasizes how this population, both from Nicaragua and other countries, faces “discrimination, violence, exploitation and oblivion” in its new homes.

Beyond the economic

Since 2022, Ridhe has an office in San José. Marta Castillo, her coordinator, tells how they have adapted to the situation. “With private institutions we had some kind of flexibility. Some managed to validate subjects or curricula, but with the public it was not so simple,” he explains. The latter have more complex admission and registration exams that led some young people benefiting from Ridhe to “start from scratch.”

“Several students who were arriving at Costa Rica did it without documents or notes. At the beginning, it was very complex because many had been erased their academic file. Others did have notes, but, if the university had closed, they had absolutely nothing to be able to validate,” adds Castillo.

For Ramírez, psychological accompaniment was “one of the most important things” of the program. “For me it was very hard to face that all those years of my life were worth nothing here and that what I had studied in Nicaragua did not matter.” In Costa Rica, he also found “xenophobic attitudes” by classmates, teachers and administrative. “It shows that they treat you differently and it is something that I felt in college at some times,” he says.

Program psychologists follow up students to address this type of experience, who add to the trauma of political persecution and forced migration. “They have available a team of psychologists who can attend immediately and who do incredible job,” says Ramírez.

Like her, Douglas Peña, 22 years old and originally from Matagalpa, crashed in front of discrimination upon arriving at Costa Rica. “Everything was very rare because it is getting used to a society with a sometimes xenophobic culture. People tell you that you talk weird, ask you where you are and remember you that you are not from here,” says the beneficiary of help also.

He arrived in Costa Rica in December 2019, when he had not finished school yet. His family decided to send him to live with his paternal grandmother to this country after receiving threats from a Sandinista mob. In 2020, he graduated from school, but he could not pay for a private university and access to the public was difficult: the only identity document he had was the refuge applicant.

With the Ridhe scholarship, Peña was able to enroll in the psychology career at the Central University, a private institution in San José, where he now attends his second year. He claims to feel “grateful in spite of everything,” but emphasizes that his lack of identity document remains an obstacle that prevents him, among other things, to get a job.

The program continues to grow

Although the emergency education program is financed with European cooperation and contributions of “private donors”, the director of the Ridhe explains that they face “many difficulties” with the USAID aid cut by the United States, something that has put more pressure on non -American agencies. “There were many funds that were destined to the Crisis of Nicaragua and several organizations that were working on the field have had to close,” Lagos warns. “The consequences of this in the long term will be catastrophic.”

Despite the complex panorama, the program continues to attend to migrants. In 2024, they expanded to benefit women with technical training scholarships to help them get a job. According to Castillo, about 200 have received subsidies for courses such as food manipulation, bakery or sewing. One of them is Marlene González, 37, and originally from the Bueyes dock, in the Nicaraguan Caribbean, who is taking a cutting and clothing course of Haute Couture that he wanted to do many years ago, but could not afford. He now enhances specializing to give his children 4 and 14 years old a better life.

Both branches of the program have the same objective: to create opportunities for migrants in danger of social and economic exclusion in a country that, despite being a shelter for hundreds of thousands of displaced people, does not always treat them with dignity. “There is still a mentality that Nicaraguan people come here to do two things: clean or build the Costa Rican houses,” says Ramírez. For her, obtaining her title is an act of resistance against a dictatorship, on the one hand, and against a xenophobic society, on the other. “It makes me think a lot about the ability to resist that we have Nicaraguans,” he reflects.