So how did she do it?
Photo of Maria Dolores Guerra Romero (Lolita aka Lola) Cedula # 4-138-645 and her two adopted daughters sitting in my bar, Cocktails In Boquete.
I can't say I wasn't warned. Repeatedly. But sometimes one's choices are limited and experience is a harsh mistress. Two years of running legitimate businesses in Costa Rica taught me well that if you don't have the backing of the right people, officially in or out of the government -in all iterations- it means near certain failure. Egos need to be stroked, respect has to be paid and cash has to find its way to where it needs to go.
When my girlfriend and I first came to Boquete in January of 2007 we tried that route, and after renting and moving into a place we sought a meeting with the mayor, or alcalde. This was the guy that had the final veto over whether or not we would be granted a patente, or operating permit, or so we were told by our landlord. After three weeks of arranging meetings and sitting and waiting we were told there was a problem.
We forced our landlord to accompany us to the next meeting when he was told that unless major structural changes were made to the building we would not be allowed to open. It was clear that our landlord had been aware of this at an earlier time.
This experience pointed to a typical play made by a certain type of folk: hook the gringo into a lease, let him make a substantial investment, then in order not to lose what he'd already spent, force him into making improvements to the property itself thereby increasing its value to the property owner. Of course that's just the beginning.
Now that the game was out in the open we were able to break the lease without having spent anything except for the lost rent and time. We needed a new place, and having annoyed the mayor's office, a new idea. That's when we met Lolita, a person that not only despised the mayor but our current landlord as well. She was a local institution with many friends on the police force and offered to rent us a better place at the same price (a poke in the eye to our landlord) and further allow us to operate our business under her own patente (a poke in the eye to the mayor).
Here's where the decision gets made. Having identified the warring parties and a portion of the local political structure one needs to choose sides- and take the consequences. I found Lolita's rustic wild-west attitude amusing (she has a habit of wandering around waving a long barrel revolver) and my girlfriend hit it off with her immediately (there are different brands of crazy). I was to be given free reign to do whatever I wanted to do, the only required improvement was that as my building was a free standing structure there needed to be a physical connection between it and the building next door (which housed Lolita's mini super and cantina). This would provide the legal fig leaf for the patente.
Thus begins the story as we, or- here is the important part- my girlfriend signed the lease on April first. This signature became the basis of Lolita's ultimate legal maneuver to have me thrown out on my ass. She denied knowing who I was, never mind having had done business with me (even as a local cop- who I had lent power tools to and knew quite well- stood there in front of my bar locking me out). She claimed that the legal leaseholder had abandoned the place and moved back to Costa Rica with her husband, though said leaseholder had cooked Lolita dinner about a week and a half before. For good measure she threw in a denuncia against me for assault, though I only found out about that the following day.
More next week.