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Monument to Catholic Zionist To
Go Up in Coronado
Workers have begun returning a
monument to Latin American
Catholicism’s leading Zionist
advocate to a prominent location
in Coronado, almost a year after
it was removed for restoration.
The work on the monument of
Father Benjamin Nunez, that has
been slowed by rains from recent
hurricanes, ends months of
debate over what to do with the
statue to a key figure in recent
Costa Rican history.
Nunez served as priest of this
dairy town-cum-suburb near the
capital of San José, in between
stints as Costa Rica’s
ambassador to the United Nations
and its ambassador to Israel.
He also was a founding member of
the Partido Liberación Nacional
(PLN) and played a key role in
getting Costa Rica in 1982 to
become the first country to
place its Israel embassy in
Jerusalem.
The country’s main synagogue,
the 2,500-member Orthodox
Israeli-Zionist Center, donated
the us$20,000 monument in 1999,
five years after Nunez died at
79, though none of the
synagogue’s members are believed
to live full time in town. A
street in Jerusalem bears
Nunez’s name, and dirt flown in
from Jerusalem was used to bury
him.
The monument was removed from
its pedestal across the street
from the church in November
2004. It languished for several
months in a municipal warehouse
while politicians wrangled over
its future.
Citing fear of vandalism, Mayor
Rolando Mendez had wanted to
move the monument to the
fenced-in gardens of the town
church, where the priest is
buried. But community activists,
the Nunez family and members of
the synagogue who selected the
site in the main square balked
at the idea.
The restoration work was paid
for by the municipality and will
include the addition of a small
reflecting pool around the
monument, which Mendez hopes
will deter potential vandals.
Mendez denies politics have
played a role in the
controversy, but he is
Coronado’s first mayor from the
Social Christian Unity Party,
the National Liberation Party’s
main historic rival, and he
hopes his party wins a majority
in town council elections
scheduled for February.
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