Vfctor Manuel & Heaven

Victor Manuel Aguilar Monge is a smiling, flashing-eyed Costa Rican youngster who knows where Heaven is. It is, he is sure, the U.S.-- the place that sends shining Buicks and glistening DC-35 to his native San Jose. When he was 15, Victor Manuel packed up, wrapped a piece of soap and a towel in his other blue shirt, and started for Heaven. Last week he told his strange story.

He moved pretty fast. Sometimes he got lifts, sharing the rear hump of a burro with a friendly peon or clinging to the bouncing tailboard of a truck. He walked a lot, too, and one by one he put the boundaries behind him--Nicaragua, Honduras, Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico. Six months after leaving San Jose, he was walking down the streets of San Antonio, Tex., gaping at the tall buildings, the glittering stream of automobiles. Then a cop picked him up.

For the first time, Victor Manuel learned that travelers are supposed to have passports and visas to cross borders. But people did not bother to explain things to him. They just locked him up in jail and wrote letters about him. In the end he was sent back to Mexico. There he served a jail term. Then the Mexicans persuaded Guatemala to take him back. In Guatemala he served another jail term.

Guatemala persuaded Salvador to take him.

Last week, Victor Manuel Aguilar Monge's trip to Heaven was all over. Just 2 1/2 years after the policeman stopped him in San Antonio, he walked into Costa Rica. Happily he trudged off for San Jose, to look for the U.S. consul.

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