Leaders from Spain, South America and Costa Rica concluded a meeting of the Montevideo Circle Saturday in San José by recapping the topics of education, development and free-trade discussed during their two-day encounter.

“Promoting education to improve access to knowledge and build Latin America as more competitive in the global market” was the theme of the meeting, attended by prominent democratic leaders including Costa Rican President Oscar Arias and the ex-Presidents of Spain, Felipe González; Uruguay, Julio María Sanguinetti; Colombia, Belisario Betancourt; Brazil, Enrique Cardoso; and Chile, Ricardo Lagos; among other Latin American political figures, according to a statement from Casa Presidencial.

Latin America has a great challenge of both taking advantage of the global “revolution” and providing its citizens better education, González said.

Arias agreed countries must not neglect social areas when working toward economic development, which he called “the most effective of any other method of eradicating poverty,” the statement said.

“Only if we open ourselves up can we achieve the fundamental challenge of Latin American democracies: bearing fruit for our citizens, improving the quality of life for individuals and producing results in the daily lives of our populations,” Arias said during the meeting’s opening Friday.

Improving the distribution of wealth to help disenfranchised sectors was another challenge the leaders discussed, mentioning job creation, infrastructure improvements and investment in technology as ways to achieve this goal.

The Montevideo Circle was created by Sanguinetti in 1996 to unite politicians, intellectuals and international leaders from Latin America to talk about the challenges facing the region, according to the wire service ACAN-EFE.

In an unprecedented show of cooperation between central and local governments – at least in recent memory – the administration of President Oscar Arias is promising the country’s mayors-elect funding that’s been withheld for years, increased communication, and, if the Legislative Assembly plays along, legal reforms to give local governments more power.

                                              –The Tico Times

Tourists on their way to beaches, volcanoes, national parks and other popular Costa Rican attractions will have new road signs to help them find their destinations, thanks to a joint project by the Costa Rican Tourism Institute (ICT) and the Ministry of Public Works and Transport.

The ¢300 million ($582,524) project will put 1,300 new signs along national roads to point drivers to service stations, airports, ports, ferries, beaches, national parks and other frequently visited spots. Part of these funds will be used by ICT to buy materials for the signs, and MOPT will use the rest to design and install them.

The new signs indicating hotels, parks, surf breaks and other attractions will be brown to help distinguish them from the often-outdated green signs now decorating the countries highways. Others, in blue, will assist tourists in locating hospitals, airports, and ferry and bus terminals.

These signs will comply with Central American norms and will indicate the direction, route number and distance to each location indicated. MOPT will also work with ICT to take down signs that contradict the new signs, the statement said

During a press conference yesterday, Tourism Minister Carlos Benavides said the project is absolutely essential to a country so dependent on tourism.

“No longer can we have tourists getting lost on their way to our beaches and parks. People who visit this country must be able to get to their destinations safely, and on their own,” Benavides said.

The new signs will be posted throughout the northwestern Guanacaste province, along the Pacific coast, from San José to the Caribbean port city of Limón and around the Caribbean province, according to a statement from ICT and MOPT.

Two prominent Citizen Action Party (PAC) politicians, faction head Elizabeth Fonseca and leader Ottón Solís, are scheduled to arrive today to Washington D.C. for a five-day visit aimed at promoting Costa Rica’s development model of “solidarity” rather than the controversial Central American Free-Trade Agreement with the United States (CAFTA), according to a statement released yesterday by the party.

Residents of the northwestern Guanacaste province no longer have to make the long trip to San José to request passports – as of Friday, they can do so from the province’s capital of Liberia, according to a statement from the Public Security Ministry.

Groups opposed to the Central American Free-Trade Agreement with the United States (CAFTA) announced yesterday that they haven’t given up their fight against the controversial pact and are planning a protest Feb. 26 to urge leaders to renegotiate it.

President Oscar Arias’ administration should “take advantage of this occasion to sit down at the table and renegotiate the several negative aspects CAFTA has for Costa Ricans,” said Albino Vargas, secretary general of the National Association of Public and Private Employees (ANEP), during a press conference yesterday.

The United States has recently renegotiated trade pacts with South American countries, Vargas argued, so reworking parts of CAFTA should also be considered a possibility.

Foreign Trade Minister Marco Vinicio Ruiz said the United States was able to renegotiate agreements with Peru and Colombia because they had not been ratified by any country’s legislature. The situation with CAFTA is different, he said, since the U.S. legislature has approved it, and it has gone into effect in other Central American signatory countries.

At the upcoming march, CAFTA opponents plan to meet at various points downtown before converging on the Legislative Assembly.

Costa Rica is the only signatory country that has not ratified CAFTA. Discussion of the pact on the assembly floor is expected to begin next month. -ACAN-EFE

By Katherine Stanley
Tico Times Staff

The 81 mayors set to take office Feb. 5 converged on Casa Presidencial in Zapote, southeast of San José, yesterday to meet with President Oscar Arias and most of his Cabinet at the first-ever National and Local Government Coordination Meeting.

Rodrigo Arias, the President’s brother and spokesman, told the assembled authorities that he hopes the encounter, as well as individual meetings between administration officials and each mayor, will become an annual tradition.

“During this administration, you’ll always find an attentive ear” at Casa Presidencial, he said.

Carlos Luis Marín, mayor-elect of Liberia, in the northwestern province of Guanacaste, told The Tico Times the gathering seemed well worth the trip.

“Although we’re local governments, we depend on central institutions,” he said, adding that he hoped to firm up plans with the Labor Ministry to create an employment directory that would connect new businesses arriving in the booming province, where multinational corporations and hotels set up shop each year, to local entrepreneurs who can meet their needs.

During the event, a series of speakers including the ministers of Public Works and Transport, Housing, Tourism, Public Security, Justice, Planning, the Environment and Energy, and Foreign Trade were called on to outline their plans for the next four years, focusing on the areas where local and central authorities will need to coordinate.

The deterioration of municipal roadways was, unsurprisingly, a top priority. Transport Minister Karla González said she plans to work with the new mayors, elected Dec. 3, to maintain 2,700 km of local roads, improve 325 km, build 56 bridges and rebuild 16 this year.

She admitted that while fixing potholes is necessary until more profound improvements can take place, most of the country’s roads are fundamentally flawed and must be rebuilt.

“We’re throwing asphalt into a pothole of waste,” she said. “That’s true.”

19/1/7

The New Year’s Eve party was a success. Lot’s of people, food, dancing, and even some drinking. We didn’t go to the party in Coyolito, although I did drive Rafa’s family up there. There have been no parties since then, although we did go to a Rosario del Nino party last night at Jose’s, but that is religious, and doesn’t count.

Last year, Zaida and Jose took a few English lessons. Then everyone got busy, and the lessons stopped. This year my neighbour, Joaquin, asked if I would teach two of his children. Tatiana, 14, and Diego, 12, have been coming for two weeks now. Zaida came back, too, and remembers quite a bit from last year. Tatiana and Diego have learned a bit in school, and are quite quick on the uptake. It is a lot of fun teaching people who are smart, and eager to learn.

I would just like to air a complaint. I thought it was a personal complaint, but my new English students all agree with me, and I would like to make their complaint public. Languages don’t make sense. They seem to be written for language teachers. We don’t need to conjugate verbs. We could use the infinitive for all forms of all tenses. We use it for most of the present tense in English, and it makes verbs easier for Spanish speakers, who change it for almost every pronoun. Why do we have to add the “s” for he and she. We could say, yesterday, or tomorrow, “I go to the store”. If we had learned it that way, it would be fine. And other languages would be a lot easier to learn. At least the spelling in Spanish is phonetic. In English, even “phonetic” isn’t spelled phonetically. Thanks for listening.

 

 

In March, contractors hired by MOPT will begin to widen the road parallel to the south side of La Sabana Park, which runs from the old Agricultural Ministry and the Universal store.  Pedro Castro, Vice Ministro of Public Works, estimated the cost at ¢3.3 billion colones (6.37 million dollars). The 1.1 kilometer stretch contains significant amounts of electrical cables and pipes, which increased the budget considerably.

The objective of the project is to reduce travel time during rush hour to 1/3 of its current delay.

Gas prices continued to decline yesterday as the Public Services Regulatory Authority (ARESEP) approved the third price reduction so far this year, according to a statement from ARESEP.

Meanwhile, a previous approved decrease went into effect today. The price of one liter of super gas dropped from ¢488 ($0.95) to ¢475 ($0.92), while one liter of regular gas dropped from ¢460 ($0.89) to ¢447 ($0.87). Additionally, the price of one liter of diesel fuel dropped from ¢364 ($0.71) to ¢349 ($0.68), according to an ARESEP statement.

The third reduction will bring the price of super gas down to ¢453 ($0.88) per liter, regular gas to ¢425 ($0.83) per liter and diesel to ¢335 ($0.65) per liter, the statement said. These prices will go into effect as soon as they are published in the official government daily La Gaceta. ARESEP planned to send the approval to the National Printer today.

Falling gas prices are reflective of trends on international markets, the statement said. Unseasonably warm temperatures in some parts of the United States have decreased the demand for fuels, causing prices to drop.

-Tico Times