HARRY TRUMAN LIBRARY Papers of NATHANIEL DAVIS www Despatch no. 69, February 16, 1949 American Embassy, San José, Costa Rica UNCLASSIFIED Enclosure no. DIARIE February 8, 1949.
Lovise and I, accompanied by don Porfirio Gongora, lort San Jose at 30 in a pruit Company plane for Buenos Alres about 40 minutes by air to the southeast. had never been to Buenos Aires before bat had heard about it a great deal during the revolution and had pictured it in my mind as a town sinilar to San Isidro. Actually, Buenos Aires consists of a rather rough landing field, a small pond covered with green lime, and a collection of about half a dosen thatched huts. It is in the conter of a treologs, hot plain whose soil is fertile but which 18 sadly deficient in water except during the rainy season, At the airfield we met the other members of the party who had preceded us. These were Hr, and Mrs. Stone, a Sr.
Parra, don José Maria a. Irs. Margarita Macaya, and two officials or the local school district when came to know only by their first names. don Jorge and don Bolivar. Mrs. Stone, Congora, chiavarre and Arturo Tinoco (who joined us in the evening at Salitra) are four of the five members of the Costa Rican Indian Affaire Commission (Junta de Protecaion de los Hasas Aboriganes. They were makias trip through the ladian couatry DO Inspeat school and other activities carried on under tho control of the Commission and had invited the rest of us to go along. Sr. Parra is a Chilean who has been engaged by the Costa rican Ministry of Education as a technical advisor. He presented quite a sight. Diaregarding the hont he dressed in the costume worn in the country dlatricts in the south of Chile where the weather gets quite cold. He wore a heavy woolen muilt complete with veat, a heavy wide brimed folt hat, leather leggings up to the thigh, a rad anah, and a gaily striped poncho throw over the shoulder. His costume was the aub act of a certain amount of good natured foking while he was with us and much marriment after he left us.
Cuides were waiting for us with mules. Our baggage was loaded on pack mules and taken direct to Salitre.
We mounted other mules and rode for four hours first across the plain and then after fording a wide riverbelly doop to the horses through forest to the email settlement of Ujarraa. The aettlement oona ists of a achool house, a house for the school master and his family, a small store, and a large denon atration vogetable garden. But it is the center of a small Indian population living in laolated huta in the hilla. The Indians around Ujarras speak their own language, Cabocar, and only one or two whom we net had any Spanish at all.
Among the latter was the chief of the local tribe who progented us with a large ba aket of oranges. Instruotion in the UNCLASSIFIED