Costa Rica Blogs - Newsfeeds

by Rod Hughes

Former public security minister Fernando Berrocal stuck to his guns in a hard-hitting report to the Legislative Assembly yesterday, presenting 36 pages of testimony that declared the deep penetration of the Colombian FARC guerrilla-terrorist-narcotics trafficking organization deep into Costa Rica. But lawmakers are still waiting for concrete evidence, including the names of Costa Rican politicians Berrocal claims have been turned by FARC.

In early April, Berrocal said he expected Colombian officials to turn up connections between politicians here and FARC terrorists from captured guerrilla records, raising a miniature political tornado. But no such definitive information was forthcoming from the Colombian government. President Oscar Arias reacted to the Berrocal statement was if stung, alleging demogoguery, even going on TV nationawide to disavow it. By mid-April, Berrocal was out on his ear.

But his statements were taken seriously enough to cause lawmakers to name a temporary investigative committee to seek the truth. Before his impolitic declaration, Berrocal had built up a tremendous credibility, his police forces in cooperation with U.S. agencies netting record hauls of smuggled narcotics. His report to congress was awaited with some hope of clearing up the whole affair, including his abrupt dismissal from the President’s cabinet.

Committee chairwoman Mayi Antillon of National Liberation Party expressed disappointment with the Berrocal appearance. “He hasn’t given us proof of (Costa Rican) contacts,” she said. Berrocal is expected to return Monday and Tuesday to answer the 16 committee members’ questions and, if Antillon is any example, they will be direct ones.

A sample of Berrocal’s eloquence in testimony: “All the drugs that pass through Costa Rica come from FARC. In this region 80% of narcotics is from FARC. Now, if that isn’t penetration, I don’t know what is!”

Yes, but as they used to say in the old U.S. TV commercials, “Where’s the beef?”

by Rod Hughes

Only two days after President Oscar Arias told Latin American nations of his plan to boost aid to farmers in the face of a worsening world food crisis, the government announced that it would give 50,000 colones per month to the most poverty-stricken women in the country.

The aid will go to some 16,000 single mothers of under 12-year-old children. The move is part of the National Food Plan announced yesterday by Minister of the Presidency Rodrigo Arias, Minister of Agriculture Javier Flores and Finance Minister Guillermo Zuniga. The plan is to go hand-in-hand with the Arias plan to stimulate production of corn, rice and beans.

In identifying mothers most in need of aid to buy food for their families, the government will rely on the lists compiled by the Mixed Social Aid Institute (IMAS), the country’s main welfare agency. (Traditionally, IMAS is one of the most underfunded and overworked agencies in the government, with client caseloads of several hundred per social worker.)

by Rod Hughes

MANAGUA, Nicaragua– President Oscar Arias pledged his government to spend $70 million in agricultural stimulus in the face of the worsening world food price crisis. He told the summit of Latin American respresentatives that he would present his plan to Costa Rican Legislative Assembly within the next few hours with a special tax proposal.

The rapid rise in food prices may be worldwide, but Arias is especially sensitive to the effects of the petroleum/food crunch on the meager pocketbooks of the poor in this country. This double blow endangers gains in his struggle against poverty made in the first two years of his current administration. Under his new plan, small farmers would receive $15 million in technical aid immediately.

Added to this would be $22 million in credit to basic food raisers as well as for financing of equipment and machinery. Basic food crops such as corn has been weighing on Arias’s mind for some time. In his State of the Nation address to the Legislative Assembly early this month, he made an indirect swipe at U.S. President George W. Bush’s scheme to convert corn into ethanol fuel, a move that has hiked prices on that grain all over the world. Corn is a basic foodstuff in most Latin American countries.

The “Security and Alimentary Sovereignty” summit was convoked by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. Only five presidents are attending the meeting but 17 countries have sent official high level representatives. The speeches have taken on a leftist cast with “anti-imperialist” addresses from Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela and Nicaragua. Arias refused to sign a declaration against free trade–not surprising, considering his trade agreements with other countries including the U.S. and pending negotiations with the European Union and China.

By Rod Hughes

And other soccer tales. Two Alajuela stars spilled the beans on the Channel 7 TV sports section of the news program Telenoticias: Santos paid five million colones to the Alajuela club to beat Cartago in the final game of the regular season. They did handily, 2-0. For Santos, though,the money was wasted— Santos hoped to beat Liberia and avoid demotion to the Second Division, Santos only tied with the Guanacaste club. Bye-bye Santos.

Whatever the official ruling from FEDEFUT will be on the, shall we say, unique arrangement of bribing a club to help you avoid the cellar, it is bound to raise eyebrows. Of course if Santos had paid the club to lose, it would have raised an outcry that would have echoed throughout the rest of the century. But to Alajuela stopper Harold Wallace it was merely an “incentive” to win and to his teammate Pablo Herrera it was a “clean negotiation. Ummm…

But the Alajuela club directorate reacted like Pontius Pilate scrubbing his hands. In Guapiles, the Santos hierarchy also pleaded surpise. According to the daily paper La Nación, to receive such incentives to win carries no penalty.

UPDATE: Friday’s La Nacion published an interview with Guapiles businessman Mario Villaplana who admits he gave the Alajuela club a bribe to beat Cartago but now says he repents the gesture—especially since it did his beloved Santos no good at all. He said it was in a light-hearted spirit that he told the Alajuela players (in typical Tico diminuitive style) “Here, take this itty-bitty present from someone who loves his itty-bitty team and doesn’t want to see it drop into the Second Division.”

Villaplana says he paid up last Tuesday, the day after the telecast in which two Alajuela plaers revealed the “little gift.” The Guapiles loyalist said he visited the Alajuela players before the Sunday closing game and presented his proposal. He said they laughed and told him they would play to win, anyway, since they wanted to nail down their first place in the overall standings.

Meanwhile, the finish of the regular 2007-8 season claimed its first casualty. A disappointed Liberia directorate fired Colombian head coach Carlos Restrepo after the Guanacaste province club’s lackluster showing this year, in which Liberia won five, lost five and tied six. An unidentified source told La Nación that the directors are considering two Costa Rican and two foreign candidates to fill Restrepos’s shoes.

And finally, former Saprissa star Alvaro Saborío is having a fine time with the Swiss soccer club FC Sion, racking up 32 goals in two seasons, 17 of them this year alone. He ranks number three in Swiss league scorers and ranks with Paulo Cesar Wanchope’s best season when he played for Derby Country (England) in 1997-98 and not far behind Ronald Gómez for Crete in the Greek league in the 1999-2000 season. (FYI: Remember Shirley Cruz, the young lady who went with Olympique of Lyon in the French feminine league? Well, she has 10.

by Rod Hughes

Costa Rican Olympic qualifier Mario Montoya from the San Jose suburb of Uruca began swimming young in order to conquer his asthma. But the treatment has led him to be only the fifth qualifier so far for the Costa Rican Olympic team

The 18-year-old Montoya marked up his qualifying time in the 200-meter freestyle in the Copa Latin in San Marino. He holds the 200 freestyle national record, plus one in the 50-meter backstroke. He has competed in 15 countries, including in three world championship meets.

At least he will go to China in August, if the split in the National Olympic Committee is healed by then. Jorge Nery Carvajal, the embattled president, is still holding on to his post against the majority of sports federations that have wanted him long gone since January. The jury is still out.

by Rod Hughes

It is a sign of the Arias Administration’s lukewarm relations with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez that the government is treating an offer of $100 million in economic aid as if it were a Trojan horse. But the most enthusiasm Costa Rican ambassador to Nicaragua Antonio Tacsan will allow himself is that he will “listen” to the Venezuelan offer.

Arias is expected in Managua early this morning and will meet with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro at a summit meeting in Managua, Nicaragua, where economics will be the main topic. Chavez himself will not attend due to illness, according to the news service Agence France Presse. But presidents of Central America, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage are expected to be at the Crown Hotel to discuss, among other topics, the worldwide crisis of rising food prices.

Relations between Arias and Chavez were not the best even before Arias took office in 2006. The Venezuelan urged Costa Ricans to reject the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), in which Arias had a great deal of political capital invested. The two president have engaged in long-range verbal sniping but lately the tone has lowered.

by Rod Hughes

Fact check: Presidents, when reviewing past accomplishments, tend to paint with a wide, rosy brush. But many times the press picks up a gilded lily but this time it was the Comptroller General’s Office that blew the whistle on one statement of President Oscar Arias’s State of the National address to the Legislative Assembly May 2.

The government does not devote 6% of the gross national product to education as the president stated and as law stipulates. This is no shame to the Arias Administration—no government has mustered a budget that devotes this amount to education since the law was passed making it a Constitutional article. In fact, the government gave 5% last year, according to the Comptroller General’s accounting. And even then, the Ministry of Education has only spent 4.75% of it.

Spokespersons for the ministry explain that it takes time to go through the legal hoops necessary to solicit bids for a new classroom or even a new school. So the funds sit in the bank until construction begins. Still, something seems wrong with the system when classroom roofs leak and children have no desk or other learning tools.

This is not the first time the Comptrollers have protested that the government has not met their constitutional quota. Just one year ago, Rocio Aguilar presented a case of unconstitutionality to the court. Naturally, the Arias Administration has come in for harsh criticism from the opposition party Citizen Action (PAC). Perhaps it merely proves that it is easy for lawmakers to set a goal for another branch of government.

by Rod Hughes

Apparently, Mother Nature is throwing curves at Costa Rican meteorologists. Weathermen predicted that rains would begin earlier this year, in April instead of May. And they did, for about three or four days in mid-April. Then the sun came out and stayed out.

The first to feel the drought were the beans. Rice and beans are as important to the Central American diet as bread is to, say, Italians or French diners. Now, the banana crop begins to feel thirsty. Lack of water does not kill the plant as it does beans but the all-important flowers that herald the coming of a stalk (racimo in Spanish) do not mature and the mother plant sends up no shoots, hoarding its precious moisture.

To the weekend tropical gardener this is hardly worth more than a casual comment but for plantation owners it is a serious matter. During the first four months of this year, banana growers have lost an estimated four million boxes valued at a total of $26 million. (Each 18.45-kilo box brings in $6.45.)

The loss amounts to 12% of the 34 million boxes that farming companies had envisioned for the first four months of the year, based on last year’s production. And that 12% is simply the average. Some areas have had only slight losses while in the Limon area, it is a 45% deficit and in cantons such as Pococi, losses reach 35%. (Nearly all the nation’s bananas are exported from the Caribbean area and the losses hit hard in traditionally some of the poorest zones in the country.)

by Rod Hughes

A brief news story published by the Associated Press today confirms the unheralded death in Cuba five months ago of once-infamous financier Robert Vesco. From 1972 to 1978, the controversial Vesco kept the political scene in Costa Rica in a turmoil and made the country synonymous with “refuge from the law.”

The Vesco saga began when he took over International Overseas Services, an international, Swiss-based investment company, from founder Bernard Cornfeld. Promising that he would get the troubled company reorganized and on track, he allegedly stripped the subsidiary companies, selling their assets and absconded with a fortune estimated at $220 million.

Sought by both French investors and the U.S. Justice Dept., Vesco was invited into Costa Rica by then-President Jose Figueres who managed to push through a law prohibiting extradition to the United States of fugitive lawbreakers. The so-called Vesco law was repealed after Vesco left the country upon the election of President Rodrigo Carazo who had made Vesco a dominant campaign issue by promising to expell the fugitive.

Vesco did not maintain a low profile and granted interviews freely to La Nacion, the country’s leading daily and a foe of the fugitive’s sojourn here. The Tico Times had several interviews in which he blandly parried the probing questions of reporter Steve Schmidt. During that decade a book on Vesco entitled “Vesco Buys Himself a Little Republic” came out and one syndicated editorial cartoonist suggested that a fine tax shelter might be “a bungalow in Costa Rica.”

Figueres’ successor in the presidency, Daniel Oduber, did his best to honor his predecessor’s promises to Vesco but finally asked for Vesco to leave. No date was set and it took Carazo’s election to finally cause his departure to the Caribbean and finally to Cuba, where Fidel Castro welcomed him with open arms. This turned into open hands and it is thought that when the Communist dictator had drained what was left of Vesco’s wealth, Castro tired of him.

Whatever the situation, Cuban authorities arrested Vesco on murky charges and threw him in prison where he sank out of public sight. Cuban authorities limited themselves to record that Vesco died Nov. 23, 2007, of lung cancer and was buried in a modest subterranean vault of gray and black granite the day after. He was nearing his 72nd birthday.

by Rod Hughes

New regulations on Costa Rica’s 48 casinos may cause those businesses to lay off 3,000 employees over the next several months, Jorge Hidalgo, vicepresident of the Costa Rica Casino Association told the daily paper La Nacion.

Most telling of the four decrees and one directive issued by the government confines casinos to an eight-hour (6 p.m. to 2 a,m,) schedule. Many work around the clock. The newspaper gave another example of the draconian measures to go into effect: That in hotels with fewer than 60 rooms, the casino should not have direct access to the street and may not give free drinks to the casino’s customers.

Melania Corrales of Gamblers Anonymous would like to see the rules stricter to keep younger players from getting the gambling bug. But, then, Costa Rica has always had a love/hate relationship with gambling. While most Catholics do not consider it an issue, in the past Evangelical lawmakers have tried their best to all but eliminate it from the country. The tourism industry, especially hoteliers of course, do not agree.

The result of all this tugging and hauling has been the imposition of a stiffer tax on blackjack (tute) tables some years ago and a tangled web of decrees, many defying any logic at all. Back in the days before a structural reform eliminated the office of provincial governors, those personages were charged with administering a gambling law that even lawyers said defied any attempt at interpretation. Most governors simply ignored them. Since then, a patchwork quilt of decrees has tried to fill the gap.