9/5/7

I haven’t posted for a while because not much is happening. The house is coming along fine, slow but sure. I have been weeding the lawn. We expected the Grammia grass to kill the weeds, but, after a year, the weeds are winning. I tried to hire people to help, but the only one that stayed worked so slow that it hurt to watch him and I am doing it myself again. At least the grass is healthy, and if I can get rid of most of the weeds, it will have a good chance to spread.
I went to Puntarenas today with Julian to get my identity card. I am not in the computer, and have another appointment in a month. They now have my papers, and I hope they don’t lose those. They say they can straighten it out in a month. Julian says it is normal, and the same thing would have happened with the other office in San Jose. Also, when I checked with ARCR about Linda’s papers, it turns out Immigration sent them two copies of my papers instead of one of each of our’s. I might have to go to San Jose again.
I had to have a new windshield put in my car. A semi through a rock on the highway and broke it. $85. Installed. I thought that was pretty good.
The dog is doing well.. We went to visit her old owners and the other two dogs on Monday in Esparza. Louis introduced me to the dog’s vet, and I am trying an injection to repel ticks and fleas. Louis says it has been working well, and they are a big problem in this area.
We had a small rainstorm last Thursday. All the phones in Punta Morales went out. Most of them were back on by Friday afternoon. Mine is still out over a week later. So far, I phoned, Marvin phoned, and Carlos phoned. Carlos is going to phone again tomorrow to make sure they know there is still one that isn’t working.. I am building patience.

9/12/7

I got my phone back last Saturday. That’s the longest I’ve been without one. It was amazing how much I missed the internet. I have been talking to my friends and family with the headsets, and various programs, and it sure seems to shorten the distance.
It’s eleven o’clock Tuesday morning, and the boys aren’t here, yet, to work on the house. It’s hard not to wonder what’s happening, but I just keep hoping for the best.

by Rod Hughes
Santos! is a mild expression of surprise in Spanish, but we assume that Saprissa fans were saying somewhat stronger things yesterday when the struggling team from Guapiles defeated last year’s champions 2-1.
Not only did Santos show adeptness in their attacks on the goal but also imagination and a firm grasp of strategy. And the trio that cracked Saprissa’s defense, Marvin Chinchilla, Johan Condega and Argenis Fernandez, are hardly household words in the sports world. But as the latter two raced down the sidelines, the trio looked like Brazilian All Stars on a good day at the World Cup.
Alonso Solis on a pass from Pablo Brenes opened the scoring for Saprissa after 31 minutes of play but it was not long before Chinchilla tied it for Santos with help from Fernandez. In the second half, Eduardo Valverde, substituting for Condega, won it for Santos on a pass from Cristian Valverde, himself substituting for Fernandez. Saprissa’s only consolation is that they were playing without their contribution to the All-Star team.
Cartago won its first game of the young season, 2-1, taking advantage of a wobbly Perez Zeledon opening game. Esteban Granados scored on a pass from Leonardo Ocamica, followed by Cartago’s second goal by Minor Diaz assisted ably by Richard Mahoney (experience will tell). Diego Diaz scored from a pass by Marco Hernandez at minute 81, too little, too late for PZ.
Playing with only 10 men in the last half hour, Carmelita beat Liberia on its home pitch, 2-1. All goals were made in the second half with David Diach opening scoring for Carmelita only to see it tied 1-1 by Ronald Fonseca on a penalty kick. The winning goal came from Kervin Lacey’s penalty kick.
Las Brujas managed to break its losing streak of late by defeating San Carlos on its home pitch 2-1. The only consolation for San Carlos is that its star Andy Furtado scored his sixth goal of the season to lead the top scorers. The Escazu team’s Ignacio Aguilar and Paolo Rodriguez won it for Las Brujas.

by Rod Hughes

Costa Rica’s All Star team (la Sele) fought Honduras to a standstill yesterday in an exhibition game in East Hartford, Connecticutt (USA), playing an ordered soccer style that shows much improvement over recent performances.
All eyes were on Honduran star forward, David Suazo, 27, who currently plays for Inter de Milan, in other words, for the BIG boys in the Italian first division. But he complains that the referee was not keeping enough of an eye on him when he alleges he was fouled most foully but heard not a chirp from the official’s whistle.
But, as La Nacion sportswriter Jose Luis Rodriguez noted, “one must remember that soccer has 11 players and David Suazo, no matter how brilliant he is in Italy, cannot win a game by himself.”
Costa Rica played a much more aggressive first half than the team had in its last lackluster attempt, against Peru, and made seven attacks on the goal besides a goal that Victor Cordero actually made–only to see it nullified by a judge in the midst of his celebration. That decision is doubted.
In the second half, still scoreless, Honduras redoubled its efforts and made three near misses including a blast from Julio Cesar de Leon that rebounded from the left vertical frame of the goal guarded by Costa Rica’s Jose Francisco Porras.
But Costa Rica was not sleeping and continued threatening, including with its own breathtaker when forward Ronald Gomez took a fine pass from Brian Ruiz and slammed it into the horizontal goal brace.
It should be noted that dependable midfielder Walter Centeno was on the receiving end of many fouls–and kept his professional cool. He has a reputation for hotheadedness.
Of the penalty kicks, only Cordero missed for La Sele while Armando Guevara, Carlo Costly (an apt last name in this case) and, surprisingly, Suazo failed for Honduras.
It might be wise to mention that Honduras played without star forward Carlos Pavon. Honduras coach Reinaldo Rueda was much perturbed when Pavon’s MLS team, the Los Angeles Galaxy, refused to let Pavon free. This is not only discourteous but against FIFA regs.

by Rod Hughes

The following is a news analysis by an apolitical observer who has been entertained by Costa Rican political posturing for more than three decades. Opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of the sponsors of these Web pages.

The resignation this week by Libertarian Movement congresswoman Evita Arguedas from her party–although not from her seat on the Legislative Assembly–has stimulated a quick, stinging reaction from the hierarchy of her party. In her public resignation statement she accused the party of being “obstructionist” and “extremist.”
Understandably, party president Otto Guevara and Argiedas’s five Libertarian ex-colleagues in the Assembly have a different view of her defection. She resigned Tuesday. The day after, the party issued a statement that contained these words: “The Libertarian Movement is the victim of betrayal by an opportunist who used the party to gain power, once there, abandoned her commitments.” The statement called for her to step down from her congressional seat, which she has refused to do.

Libertarians are the consumate small government adherants. Some on the left consider them so far right as to be almost anarchists. During the last legislative session, during which former President Abel Pacheco was unable to accomplish any of his pet projects, the Libertarians blocked bills by introducing countless amendments and otherwise throwing procedural monkey wrenches into the works. So fragmented with small parties was that session that this was easy to do and the Libertarians were not the only ones guilty of such maneuvering. During that session, another Libertarian Assembly deputy, José Francisco Salas, also resigned but such was the disorder in the house that few even took note.

But at the beginning of Arias’s term, the Libertarians entered into a loose alliance with the president’s National Liberation Party and appeared more cooperative, partly because of Ms. Arguedas and partly because of the free trade treaty, CAFTA, that looked as if it would come to a congressional vote. Libertarians are all for removing tariffs, along with a lot of other governmental machinery. But even before CAFTA was put on the the referendum ballot, the party’ cooperative attitude began to dissolve, as did Arguedas’s influence in the six-person delegation. She considered her colleagues to be suffering from a sort of hardening of the doctrinal arteris.

Minister of the Presidency Rodrigo Arias appeciates Arguedas and said of her in the daily La Nación, “Doña Evita Arguedas has sufficient judgment and capacity to do what a party delegation advises. Her decision is very measured and reasoned. She has always had an independent judgment.”

Arguedas dismisses the Libertarian statement with, “When there are no valid arguments to contradict what I say, they attack me. Don Otto (Guevara) knows I came (to congress) to change the party’s image–I haven’t moved even a milimeter from this idea. They were the ones who changed.”

The dissident deputy also accused her party colleagues of sexism but said sexism was rampant in the Legislative Assembly generally. Whatever one thinks of Arguedas, opportunist or patriot, this last criticism is easy to believe. Costa Rica has one of the highest percentages of women elected representatives. This has upset, but not eliminated, the old boy network that used to rule the congressional roost.

The mostly male party leaders have learned to live with it, but they don’t have to like it…

by Rod Hughes

Hail in Costa Rica? Maybe on Cerro de la Muerte, the country’s highest peak, but surely not in spring-like San Jose.
But it happened Wednesday, along with heavy winds that tore down trees and power lines and a lightning show that rivaled any fireworks celebration lit the sky. Hardest hit was the capital suburb of Tibas where the hail was intense and large. A 25-foot-tall cipress tree came crashing down near the central park in Tibas and residents tell of large limbs crashing against the walls and gates of houses. Tibas resident Manuel Salas, 72, told La Nacion about a tree in his yard, “I planted that tree that fell in 1973. I wanted to cut it for a long time but my neighbors wouldn’t let me because they liked it a lot. They said they’d go to court if I did. Now something’s got to be done.”
Meteorologists blamed a low pressure system (not the indirect effects of Hurricane Felix) and promised that the weather would return to what is normally expected during the average rainy season

by Rod Hughes

As Tico Times staff writer Peter Krupa wrote last week, the U.S. donation did not look like much, just boxes of twigs with buds on them. But the gift may prove to be insurance to maintain Costa Rica’s multi-million dollar citrus export industry against the plagues that have severely damaged crops in Florida and Brazil. Known as “budwood,” the twigs, guaranteed disease-free, are grafted to existing citrus stock.
Costa Rican citrus harvests–knock on woodstock–so far has not been crippled by such plagues as citrus canker and the Chinese disease called “greening.” Last year, the country exported $51 million in juice and $275,000 in whole fruit, most of it grown in the northwestern province of Guanacaste. Randolph Fleming, CEO of the citrus producer Del Oro, notes that citrus diseases spread rapidly. The 400 samples of stock, containing 66 varieties of the fruits, are an invaluable.
Del Oro, a British-held company and the second largest producer here, will care for the clean budwood on behalf of the Production Ministry in Del Oro’s $200,000 nursary and could invest as much as $750,000 more, said company spokesmen.Ticofruit is the largest exporter and its research and development manager, Donovan Brown, says that having a “bank” of budwood avoids the risk of importing possibly diseased budwood from abroad.
But another advantage in a so-called germplasm bank is that one of the varieties may actually come to dominate the market. Five years ago, pineapple producers switched to the MD-2 variety that was disciovered in such a germplasm bank, revolutionizing the market. So, the budwood will be nurtured carefully in “screenhouses” where sunlight and breezes can get in–but not disease-carrying insects.

by Rod Hughes

A 34-year-old scandal revolving around a $60,000 donation by foreign businessmen to the National Symphony Orchestra has erupted again after Sunday’s exposé in the nation’s leading daily paper, La Nación. The donation was given to then-President José “Don Pepe” Figueres during his final term in office and raised eyebrows at the time when he became secretive about where the money ended up. The paper estimates that the donation would be worth, in today’s dollars, about $280,000.
When cornered by newsmen in 1973, Figueres said, “‘ I spent it on candy,’ then scuttled away,” reported the weekly Tico Times. But La Nación reported Sunday that Figureres set up the so-called “Association for the National Symphony Orchestra” with himself as president and bought three farms with a part of the money. La Nación estimates that only about a third of the money was spent on the farms, plus a sum to build a road and to plant trees, the rest deposited in the asssociation’s name in a Banco de Costa Rica account.
When Figueres died in 1990, the association presidency passed to one of his daughters, Kirsten Figueres, who remains the head of the private entity. Thus, points out the newspaper, a donation given to the government three decades ago remains control of the Figueres family.
The daughter, in a written answer to the newspaper’s inquiry, maintains that the land never generated a profit and even takes money to maintain. Former Culture Minister Guido Saenz, once vice president of the association, also says he does not believe the farms were ever developed because Don Pepe became ill after the purchase and was unable to develop it, although he told the symphony’s magazine in 1972 that he planned an agricultural campaign to belong to the orchestra. It was for this plan that the donation was made. Saenz himself declares flatly that he never had anything to do with the financial side of the association nor in development of the farms.
An internal audit of the Culture Ministry determined in 1998 that the farms should revert to the government and not be controlled by the Figueres family. Moreover, the present Minister of Culture, Maria Elena Carballo, says that she is willing to go to court to recover the association assets, none of which were ever under control of either the Culture Ministry or the Orchestra.
In 1974, reports the daily, the symphony board was disturbed about the donation and one member proposed that the Comptroller General’s office investigate. Saez, the board’s chairman, opposed this, saying that he had talked with Figueres and that Don Pepe confirmed that two businessmen had donated the money to Figueres for the orchestra and promised a written accounting, which he presented in 1975. But congressmen also called for a Comptroler accounting and Figueres gave another story to the now-defunct daily El Excelsior: “I received no donation for the Symphony Orchestra. I made a presentation to friends for some funds.”
Gabriel Goñi, who was director of the National Symphony Orchestra in 2002, says he urged then-Culture Minister Saenz to transfer the property to the government several times that year until he was threatened with being fired, reported the paper. Goñi says that Saenz finally told him, “Look, stop making problems or you go. I’ll settle this with Kirsten later.”
But Saenz says that isn’t what happened. “That’s an infamy. I fired him for other reasons and nobody likes to get kicked out. Let him say what he wants.”
La Nación maintains that it was Saenz himself who, in 1997, petitioned a judge to transfer the farms to the association headed by Kirsten Figueres.
Perhaps the controversy would pass all but unnoticed if it were not for the figures involved. Don Pepe Figueres, a leader of the victorious National Liberation Army in 1948, one of the founders of the National Liberation Party and thrice chief executive of the country, is given credit for such reforms as abolition of the armed forces, the present constitution and liberalizing the political structure of the country. He was a political icon, a firm spokesman for democracy in a Latin America largely ruled by dictators.
But his final term in office was scandal-ridden, including the orchestra donation. And his name will forever be associated with fugitive financier Robert Vesco, whom he and his successor, Daniel Oduber, protected from prosecutors in the United States and France who demanded his extradition on fraud charges.
If Don Pepe is a political icon, Guido Saenz is a cultural one. He is a Renaissance man, an expert in music, art, an author and the chief mover behind the creation of the Culture Plaza next door to the National Theater when it was feared that some tall building might fill the then-vacant space and ruin the effect of that architectural jewel. He was twice Minister of Culture.
Yet, when approached by a pair of reporters to ask about the affair, the usually mild mannered Saenz turned almost hostile. “You came all this way here to talk about the farms?” he said, “I don’t care a fig (about them), it irritates me,,,It makes me angry.” Asked what made him angry about the subject he returned, “That you’re talking about that foolishness.”
Under the probing questions of the La Nación reporters, he admitted that he had been lax in not paying attention to the farms when he was Minister of Culture. Asked who was responsible that the donation did not pass into the hands of the government, he said, “In part, I was, without a doubt, I’m not going to pass the buck to anyone else…” Repeatedly he said, “Ask Kirsten. Ask Kirsten.” Asked who the donation benefited, he answered “What? It wasn’t good for absolutely anything.”

by Rod Hughes

The four-year-old Hewlet-Packard operation here is expanding, adding another 2,000 jobs, The Tico Times reported recently. The computer multi-national’s offices in Heredia north of San Jose currently has nearly 5,000 Costa Ricans in service-related posts. HP operates 2 divisions in Costa Rica, one does sales and marketing in Central America and the other offers global outsourcing services to business customers.

The announcement was made last week at H-P headquarters in a press conference attended by First Vice President Kevin Casas, Foreign Trade Minister Marco Vinicio Ruiz and Minister of the Economy Jorge Woodbridge.

By Blake Schmidt
Tico Times Staff | bschmidt@ti…

Costa Rican authorities nabbed a wily U.S. fugitive yesterday. Then they nabbed him again.

Nicholas Himmelsbach is accused in the United States of crimes including attempted murder, assault with a lethal weapon, damaging property and shooting in public, according to a statement from the Public Security Ministry.

He fought off five Costa Rican cops who tried to detain him at a house in the western suburb of Rohrmoser yesterday morning. They had to call for back-up before they were able to arrest him.

Himmelsbach was then taken to an immigrantion shelter in nearby Hatillo, which he escaped from an hour after arriving. Authorities tracked him down and arrested him again. He is now in a high-security detention center and faces deportation to the United States, according to a statement from the international policy agency Interpol.

“They have really strong security measures because he’s really strong and really violent. All of us were beat up,” the statement said.

Himmelsbach, 26, fled the United States, where he is accused of conspiring to kill his ex-girlfriend while he was in jail in 2005 and of being involved in a drive-by shooting of an occupied home with a high-powered rifle in the state of New Mexico.

The Decorah Newspapers — a news organization in Decorah, Iowa, where Himmelsbach served jail time after being accused of shooting into an occupied dwelling, conspiracy and shooting from a motor vehicle — reported that he posted a fraction of his bond and fled the country in March.

Costa Rican authorities have found no records of Himmelsbach entering the country and believe he did so illegally, according to the Public Security Ministry statement.

Patrick Cunningham, a former employee at the travel agency Costa Rican Vacations in Rohrmoser, said he worked with Himmelsbach before the fugitive was fired in July after working for the company a few months.

Cunningham described Himmelsbach as “pretty stocky” and added that he seemed to have mood swings.

“His moods would turn on a dime,” Cunningham added in a phone interview from the United States.

by Rod Hughes
Not since Hurricane Mitch nearly 10 years ago, has Central American received such punishment from a tropical storm, reports say. But Mitch was not a Category 5 as this one is, yet killed nearly 10,000 in Honduras and El Salvador.
Hurricane Felix made landfall on Nicaragua’s north coast with winds up to 110 miles per hour The area hit is sparsely populated but this factor means that the infrastructure is poorly developed and many of the devastated small villages even in the lowlands are accessible only by air or sea. Felix is also slowing down as it moves into Honduras, which means that the heavy rains will have more time to fall, increasing danger of flooding and mudslides.
The hurricane lost some force and is, as this is written Tuesday morning, been downgraded to a Category 3, little solace since some of the small Indian villages in the Honduran mountains, with their lightly-built houses, often badly damaged by mere tropical rainstorms. Of concern is that most of these villages are at the feet of mountains, vulnerable to landslides. One report from Nicaragua says that wind blasts tore off roofs from some refugee shelters so that those who had abandoned their homes were exposed to the elements anyway.
Here in Costa Rica, some 200 shelters are ready to receive those forced from their homes by the heavy rains Monday afternoon that went on well into the night. In Golfito and the Corredores in the southern Pacific zone, several rivers threatened to overflow their banks during the night. In Golfito, ll persons were forced from two homes into shelters.
Longtime Golfito resident Gorgina Barrantes told the newspaper La Nacion, “In the more than 40 years I’ve lived here I haven’t seen anything like this.” With the soil thoroughly soaked throughout the country, there is nowhere for the water to go except to run off the surface and into the rivers. The National Emergency Committee reported that the road between Rincon de Osa and Puerto Jimenez de Golfito is closed due to severe damage to the bridge over the Aguja River.
The National Meteorlogical Institute has no consoling information but expects the continued effect of Felix to last two more days here. Currently, the Emergency Committee is maintaining a yellow alert throughout Costa Rica.
CNN reports that this is the first time two such heavy hurricanes have made landfall in a single hurricane season since the 1880s.