I don't know why anyone in the Nicaraguan military would look at Google Maps anyway-they have their own precision military maps-but a Nicaraguan Commander named-I swear-Eden Pastora did so and must have come to the conclusion that the treaty forged more than a century ago in a peace deal mediated by President Grover Cleveland must have been some kind of illegitimate fraud. Having taken this dramatic leap of faith, albeit one based on the cutting edge hard science of Google technology, Pastora came to the conclusion that a territory long ceded by terms of the treaty to Costa Rica, by rights belonged to Nicaragua.
Commander Eden Pastora therefore entered the territory of roughly 1.7 miles, ordered the flag of Costa Rica removed and replaced with the flag of Nicaragua. As you might imagine, that didn't sit too well with Costa Rica, but what could they do? Nicaragua is a revolutionary, militarized society, while Costa Rica, Central America's oldest democracy, while prosperous and successful, is also at a slight disadvantage in that they have no standing military. Out of exasperation as much as desperation they turned for assistance to the OAS, an official of which attempted the first mediation between the two countries concerning the territory since 1897.
Nicaragua scoffed at them, told them in effect to go to hell.
It starts to sound like some kind of surreal play. Costa Rica is a little democracy with a prosperous market based economy, and its President-President Lauren Chinchilla (Yeah, really)-has stated she might take the matter to the UN Security Council. What else can she do? Nicaragua is aid dependent, so maybe they would have enough leverage to solve this problem without making it a bigger disaster than it already is, although I doubt it.
The crazy thing is, Pastora is laying the blame on Google Maps, which seems to be a tacit admission that he was wrong, but at the same time the OAS is still trying to "resolve the problem"-which seems to suggest the Nicaraguans have no intention of leaving or ceding the territory.
In fact, Nicaragua has stated the incursion was nothing more than "security officials conducting drug raid operations in the region", and further stated the OAS had no authority to resolve border disputes.
That sure sounds to me like they have every intention of keeping the territory. All this over 1.7 miles. Well, I guess they must have their reasons.
But whatever their reasons, you can blame Google for providing the impetus. Google's competitor Bing got it right.
