by Rod Hughes
Costa Ricans are well known for their adoration of children. But isn’t a law prohibiting parents to use any kind of physical punishment going too far?
The bill is out of committee with multi-partisan support. The current Family Code specifies that parents have “the rights and…duties to educate, care for, watch over and, in moderate ways, correct their children.”
But the proposed law would go much further, adding “excluding ANY form of physical punishment or mistreatment, as well as aggression or dengrating physical or emotional treatment.”
Physical punishment has long been banned in schools but the home has been left to the parents.
Unity Party congressman Jorge Eduardo Sánchez, for one, is troubled by the bill, fearing that parents will lose authority over their own children. “We could be sending a wrong signal here,” he warned, in robbing parents of their right to correct kids with punishment.
Three persons selected by the morning paper La Nación in a mini-poll did not think much of the bill, although they acknowledged that abuse is not the answer in guiding a child.

by Rod Hughes
We’ve heard it so many times that when Minister of Health Maria Luisa Avila seriously announced the definitive closure of the Rio Azul landfill near Cartago July 31, one is tempted to laugh.
The landfill, which opened in 1973, has faced a series of deadlines, some of which that passed almost unnoticed and always without action, victims of a lack of political will. The problem was that alternate sites were vehemently opposed by residents with the attitude, “Sure we need landfills. Just put them in someone else’s neighborhood.”
But Minister Avila is well aware of this, so she rejected the proposal of the landfill administrators to extend the life of the rubbish site another two years, pleading that they have only half the money necessary to do the proper final filling and needed more garbage to build up a stable drainage system to prevent landslides.
“For 12 years we’ve been closing this landfill,” she said, noting that the contract is up July 31. In 1994, the government closed the fill—for four days. Two years later, the Health Ministry closed it for all of three days. In 1996, disgruntled neighbors closed the fill and the government reopened it by force. In September of 2005, the fill was supposed to close but the Health Ministry extended the contract.
The minister added that the municipalities that use Rio Azul can use the newer La Carpio site and the brand new Aserrí landfill. Right now, Rio Azul currently receives 500 tons per day from eight municipalities as far away as Alajuela.
Wednesday, 80 “buzos” (literally, “divers”) who sift the refuse for recycleable and reuseable items mounted a partial shutdown of the facility to protest the impending closure.

by Rod Hughes
For the media, it was an irresistible photo opportunity. For the government, it was a prod to get congressmen off the dime to pass two anti-poverty bills.To some humorless Costa Ricans it was just a cheap publicity stunt.
President Oscar Arias’s point man in the government’s plans to alleviate poverty, Housing Minister Fernando spent Tuesday night sleeping over inside a dirt-floored hovel in a San Jose shantytown, after a humble dinner of noodles there. Zumbado noted that some small children are unable to crawl around the house because of unsantiary conditions.
“What do I care when they tell me I’m putting on a show, if a child can crawl a year earlier than if we didn’t do something?” asked the well-heeled minister. “We live separate lives and I don’t think people realize.”
It was not only for the public’s consumption that Zumbado made his gesture. Two bills the president considers important tools against poverty are stalled in the unicameral Legislative Assembly. An estimated 40,000 families live in 400 slums throughout the country, most crammed into nooks in the metropolitan area.
These are divided into two types: Precarios, where squatters invade an area and set up hovels, and tugurios, slums where the people own the land but cannot afford decent housing. They are indistinguishable, clusters of rusty tin and castoff wood shacks that would be uninhabitable were it not for the tropical climate. Still, they are damp and chilly during the rainy season, lacking decent sanitation and, sometimes, running water.
At that, Costa Rica has done more to provide liveable housing than most Latin American nations, administrations vying with each other to grant more land titles and build more publicly-funded homes. The drive began in the administration of President Luis Alberto Monge and continued uninterrupted thereafter. Before this, the country had a severe housing shortage and even middle class rentals were in short supply.
Another sign of growing awareness of the importance of decent housing was the creation of the Housing Ministry. Before this agency, public housing had been provided by INVU, an underfunded agency drowning in a sea of demands it could not hope to meet. Then came Banco de la Vivienda to provide soft loans on long term so the working class could erect humble but adequate concrete block homes on small lots.
(A complete story on Costa Rica’s housing situation will appear Friday, June 1, in The Tico Times, Central America’s leading English-language newspaper.)

31/5/7

I finally did it! My last post showed a picture of the footings, and the start of the block walls. I was just experimenting, and didn’t check the picture too closely. It clearly shows the outhouse they built on top of the new septic tank. There is a curtain for a door. Quite ingenious, really. They also built a house to live in out of the roofing and perlings.
The house is moving along quickly now, despite the rain. They are putting the columns in between the sections of block walls. Next they will pour a crown around the top, joining everything together. There are cages of rebar inside all the pourings, and more coming from the footings through every block and poured full.
I will try to post pictures every time now, if I can. It certainly is different from Canada. They don’t seem worried about snow load at all.

here we go again

by Rod Hughes
The trial of Juan Carlos Ledezma, accused of arson and 19 counts of homicide, began Monday in criminal court. The defendant, a male nurse, was charged with causing one of the country’s most terrible tragedies in recent years, a roaring inferno that destroyed the fourth and fifth floors of the antiquated neurosurgery unit of Calderon Guardia Hospital July 12, 2005, killing 16 patients and three nurses.
Ledezma was a male nurse at the facility. After the fire, investigators revealed that most of Ledezma’s credentials, that hospital personnel staff had relied upon in hiring him, were forgeries, the press reported.
In the aftermath, the entire wing of the hospital had to be demolished and another, costing millions of dollars, is under construction. Early news reports blamed the fire on faulty wiring in the obsolete facility, based on firefighters’ suspicions. (Faulty wiring is the most common cause of fires in this country.)
But TV Channel 6, part of the Repretel network, interviewed hospital workers and Repretel News was early in reporting alleged arson as the cause. It was several weeks before OIJ, the equivalent of Britain’s Scotland Yard, admitted it was following a possible arson lead.
Some 26 witnesses have been lined up by the prosecution and defense lawyers. The fire is reported to have started in a fourth floor storeroom filled with inflammable materials and spread quickly to the rest of the wing. The horror multiplied when the fire extinguishers were found to be empty and alarms failed to work. Some of the more mobile patients managed to escape through windows, either alone or with the aid of nurses. One nurse especially became a national heroine, sacrificing her life for her patients. But many patients were bedridden and unable to help themselves
But more than Ledezma appears to be on trial, if the first two witnesses called by the prosecution Monday are any measure. Soon after the blaze, strong public and editorial criticism was leveled at national public hospital administration for conditions in the old unit that contributed to the tragic loss of life. Luis Alfonso Pérez, father of a 17-year-old neurosurgery patient, said Monday that the only nurse in the early evening hour of the fire was absent, having coffee on another floor when the fire began. He told the three-judge panel that “others must be (involved) in this legal process due to their negligence.”
Pérez added that the passages that offered the only avenue of escape were choked with wheelchairs, wastebaskets, tables and other medical equipment.

About 130 radio stations in Costa Rica observed one minute of silence at 7:03 a.m. yesterday to protest the Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s decision not to renew the license of Radio Caracas Television (RCTV).

The station has long been an outlet for opposition parties, according to CNN’s Web site. Chávez has accused RCTV of supporting the failed 2002 coup against him and violating broadcast laws. The 53-year-old station was scheduled to go off the air at midnight last night and be replaced a state-run station.

Costa Rica’s National Radio Chamber (CANARA) organized the moment of silence, and all its member stations participated, as well as a few others, according to director Juan Sepúlveda.

The chamber considers Chávez’s action “a threat against freedom of expression,” he said. Latin American governments should regulate broadcasts, but should do it “with tolerance in the political realm.”

The Costa Rican Institute for Press and Freedom of Expression (IPLEX) also expressed its “complete rejection” of the decision to close RCTV.

-ACAN-EFE

I’m going to make this work right, yet.

The first picture was of the concrete in the trenches. It surrounds a long cage of rebar. The columns in between the block walls are also full of rebar, and a corona will be poured around the top of all the walls, with everything linked together by rebar. They are using enough rebar for a two story house, so I am hoping nothing shifts.

by Rod Hughes
Seven Costa Rican soccer stars will play with clubs in the Champions’ League (European soocer federation), a tournament the daily La Nacion calls “the most relevant tourney of clubs in the world.”
Injury-plagued Gilberto (Tuma) Martínez, recuperating from a persistent knee injury, hopes to be recovered enough to play with his AS Roma team in the competition. The defender missed the last Champions’ League with the injury but was able at least to accompany his team to the quarter finals last April 11–in time to see Manchester administer a horrible 7-1 beating. But AC Roma is back, having finished second in Italy’s Serie A. June 9 will be the year’s anniversary since he last played but he hopes to be on the pitch in September.
Then there is Winston Parks whose Czech Republic team Slovan Liberec finished second. But second was enough to get into the tourney.
The seven stars in champions’ League include a woman, Shirley Cruz, to play with Olympique of Lyon in the women’s version of the tourney.
Ronald (La Bala) Gómez would have been playing with his European team, Apoel of Nicosa, Cyprus, but he opted to return to Costa Rica to play with Puntarenas.
Avaro Saborío will be with Switzerlands FC Sion, Luis antonio Marín with Isreal’s Maccabi Netamya, Bryan Ruíz and Randall Azofeifa with Belgium’s K.A.A. Gent.
During the season Saborío accounted for 14 goals, topping is own team and placing second in the Swiss league in goals.
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LATEST NEWS BULLETIN:
The National Champion Saprissa soccer club has just sold star striker Alvaro Saborío to Sion of Switzerland for $1 million!
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But not all the Ticos in Europe will have a chance to play in the tourney. In Austria, Pablo Chinchilla and Froylan Ledezma had the bitter experience of playing with a team, Altach, that ended up in eighth place. Chinchilla began playing regularly later in the season and was instrumental in keeping his team from sliding into the Second Division. He will stay with Altach next season while Ledezma will go with Augsburg in Germany’s Second Division.