by Rod Hughes

No wonder Costa Rica’s unemployment has dropped to the lowest level in Latin America. Costa Rica’s largest newspaper, La Nacion, reported today that competition is fierce among companies to hire such tourism necessities as hotel managers and chefs, or vital construction personnel such as electricians, plumbers and engineers. And bilingual personnel for the some 20 call centers in the country, which employ around 20,000, are being pirated with higher salaries from other companies.

According to the International Labor Organization, a UN agency, Costa Rica’s jobless rate sank from a respectable 6% for the past decade to 4.8% last year, reported the English-language weekly, The Tico Times. “Costa Rica’s economic performance stands out among Central American countries and the rest of Latin America,” said the ILO’s labor expert Leonardo Ferreira. And that is not all, he told the newspaper, the country’s economic growth of 6.3% bettered Latin America’s average of 5.5%

Granted, all Caribbean and Latin American countries’ unemployment sank, but none could come close to this country’s figures except Honduras. Uruguay’s is at 10%, having improved nearly two points, Colombia’s is at 12%, Brazil’s is 9.7%, Venezuela’s is 9%. Even the U.S. figure of 5% (as of December) was not as good, reported Alex Leff, The Tico Times on line edition editor.

Moreover, probably because of the competition among companies for skilled Costa Rican technical workers, income among the employed rose 9.3% last year and the majority–73%–were quality and salaried jobs as opposed to free-lance or jobs of doubtful stability. Meanwhile, a construction company that wants to hire a carpenter, an electrician, or even an accountant, has to dangle a more attractive salary in front of an employed worker to lure him away from his present employer.

by Rod Hughes

Costa Rica’s oil refinery, Recope, has discarded a plan that would double capacity, deeming the project “unprofitable.” The project would have raised the current daily output from 20,000 barrels to 40,000. Still, something will have to be done to fill the country’s appetite of just under 50,000 barrels per day and the projected demand increase of 10% yearly.

Recope had hoped to see a bid of around $165 million for the project but the most viable it received was for $425 million. So the refinery is shelving results of the bidding and is seeking other ways of filling demand without prohibitive price increases to its consumers. “Recope isn’t going to launch this country on a project that’s not feasible,” said William Ulate, the refinery’s International Projects and Commerce manager.

Ulate added that Recope is not discarding the possibility of enlarging the plant to process 60,000 barrels of crude daily, but is simply “reformulating” it. Such a capacity would not only allow flexibility but allow it more favorable rates in buying on the international market. Possibly, China’s National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) can help by running a feasiblity study under an agreement it signed with Recope.

CNPC could offer financing and even do the construction job on the refinery. But, according to Ulate, nothing is committed with the oriental company and if RECOPE ecope sees a better deal, it will opt to take it.

by Rod Hughes

Costa Rica’s All-Star soccer team managed to set a record for itself yesterday in Kingston, Jamaica: 10 matches without a win. They managed this dubious feat with a 1-1 tie with their Jamaican counterparts. The natives around Ticolandia are restless.

At minute 78 in yesterday’s match, it appeared that the blue, white and red were about to break their negative streak when Victor “el Mambo” Núñez broke the scoreless tie on a pass from midfielder Andrés Gómez. This was after a rocky first half in which Jamaica’s Denmark Phillips had rebounded a spectacular shot off the goal frame, and after the home side’s numerous assaults demonstrating a singular lack of marksmanship.

But the Tico ascendency only lasted into the first minute of injury overtime when Tyrone Marchall took Marlon King’s centering of the ball, literally using his head, andguiding it past Costa Rican goalie Ricardo González for the tying effort. Bye-bye Tico victory.

by Rod Hughes

It’s no secret that people like bananas, one of this country’s most lucrative and oldest export crops. But so do a host of tropic enemies.

Insects feast on the leaves, the dread Black Sigatoka fungus kills the plant and nematodes, parasites, gnaw on the roots. To combat these enemies, plantation owners douse their farms with tons of expensive pesticides, to the detriment of the environment. But help may be coming as companies, with the help of the government, study ways and means of reducing dependence on increasingly costly chemicals

Last Novemeber a new research facility at Guácimo in Limon province was opeend by CORBANA, a public-private association that until now was dedicated only to promoting the export crop. Now, experts concur that organically grown bananas are a long way off but CORBANA researchers hope to reduce chemicals by 50% among its 100 members in 10 years. In part the effort is market-driven—customers in the European Union will pay more for bananas that are grown with less chemical content.

But it is unclear that the pesticide reduction will really result in higher product costs. Petroleum-based chemicals are rising in price. Even the costs to establish the research facility only cost $1 million to build, staff and equip. And often the raw materials with which they work will be relatively cheap—like the fungus they are studying that kills the deadly nematodes.

But Peter Krupa, The Tico Times business writer, notes that CORBANA is not the only organization trying to break the addiction to chemicals among banana farmers. EARTH University is also studying the question and Chiquita, one of the most famous companies in the field, has already reduced its chemical use by 35% over the past few years, spurred on by the environmental watchdog Rainforest Alliance. And, naturally, whatever gains are made will be assured of environmentalists’ applause.

by Rod Hughes

Classes are set to open next Monday but Minister of Education Leonardo Garnier is still struggling with messes left him by his predecessors including a serious shortfall of classrooms, equipment and a chronic bureaucratic snarl in payment of salaries.

The daily newspaper La Nacion revealed late last year that salary and personnel records are so antiquated that checks were still being issued to teachers who had moved on or passed on years ago. Now that same paper spotlights the strange situation where a teacher incapacitated by illness or injury may earn more than one working hard in the classroom.

But more urgent even than this expensive injustice is the shortfall of 13,000 students’ desks and 28,826 classrooms due to population growth. (Since the country’s birth rate has fallen to ,9 per mother, much of this growth must be laid to the influx of foreigners, principally Nicaraguans, many illegal immigrants.)

Garnier noted that the classroom shortfall can be remedied only gradually and construction includes not only additions to existing primary and secondary schools but whole new neighborhood schools. Only 34 billion colones is budgeted this year for this task. (The colon has been hovering at about 500 per dollar.)

So far, 45,500 teachers have been appointed with only some 2,811 to be named, most of the latter parttime with only 20 class hours per week. The teachers will be working in front of an estimated 962,500 pupils in this country which was a proud pioneer of universal education in Latin America. Unfortunately, the system has fallen woefully far behind in this efficient, computerized age.

Bureaucratic glitches do not help. A teacher who was absent because of illness or injury in February of 2006 inexplicably receives 13% higher salary than one who was not. Where the average monthly wage was 477,000 colones in 2006, a teacher who was incapacitated that month gets 550,000. But in any other month of that year, the absent teacher would receive 133,600 colones, four times less. Go figure.

by Rod Hughes

Saprissa fans may have worried that their team was exhausted after playing a soccer tournament last week in Uruguay, but they need not have bothered their little heads over it. Sunday, the Tibas side needed only a half an hour to ICE down a resounding 2-0 victory over Heredia. In fact, it appeared that the maroon-clad warriors of Saprissa only let Heredia control the ball for brief periods out of a feeling for showmanship. You know, to keep the fans aware that there were two sides on the field.

Both goals developed in the same way, a long service from midfield to a striker waiting alone near the goal. The first was from Michael Barrantes to Alejandro Alpizar, the second from Celso Borges to Alpizar. It took all too long for Heredia to figure out the strategy and then they found out that they could not break the Saprissa defense.

Liberia 2, Puntarenas 1

Liberia flaunted history Sunday and defeated Puntarenas for the first time in the port city’s Lito Perez Stadium. Why Puntarenas should be so tough for them on its own home pitch is hard to imagine, but this time the Guanacaste province’s club looked as if they had been doing it for years.

Puntarenas’s Athin Roper opened scoring (minute 18) on a penalty kick but from then on the port city could scarcely get a whiff of the goal. With a little over half an hour of play, Liberia forward Allan Aleman followed up on Puntarenas goalie Daniel Cambronero’s rejection of a shot on the goal. Then Max Sanchez hammered on in at minute 47 and history was writ.

Alajuela 2, San Carlos 0

Harold Wallace, returning to his Alajuela club after a long absence due to an injury, could not have celebrated better Sunday, making the first goal early in the second half of what was to prove a 2-0 win over San Carlos. Winston Parks, another red and black mainstay, made another with only two minutes of regular time left on the clock.

Wallace at first seemed hesitant, perhaps unsure that his aim had not lost its precision during his recuperation, passing up opportunities during the first half. But the whole side received praise for “playing with their heads” after a slow start in the “closing tournament” of the season.

Perez Zeledon 1, Universidad 1

For the second match in a row, Jewisson Bennett prevented Perez Zeledon from defeat, which would have been hard on morale for their fans on their own pitch at San Isidro de El General. Doubly damaging would have been a defeat against the University of Costa Rica, a club that is currently fighting going down into the second division at the end of the season, dead last, one point behind Cartago in the standings.

In fact, it appeared at the 30 minute mark that Universidad might be pulling out a desperately-needed win when Esteban Maitland hammered in the sphere from a pass by Lucas Carrera. It was not until minute 47 that Bennett saved Perez Zeledon from shame.

by Rod Hughes

The Costa Rican soccer All-Stars go up against Jamaica tomorrow in Kingston’s National Stadium and coach Hernan Medford is looking for the first victory to end a dismal streak that began June 17 of last year without a victory–nine matches. Although it is an exhibition game, fans will scrutinizing their play, seeking some sign that they may make it to the next World Cup.

The natives are restless. The newspaper Al Dia conducted a poll of 220 fans, the results of which were printed yesterday. The vast majority of fans, 174, categorized the All-Stars as “very bad.” When sportswriters conduct surveys, it is a bad sign, Either they lack stuff to fill their columns or they want the fans to say what they haven’t the heart to write. This is clearly the latter.

Almost as a footnote last week, the “Sele,” as the picked team of national soccer heros is known, journeyed all the way to Teheran, where they battled their opponents to a scoreless tie. Then, they lost the shootout of penalty goals, 4-3. That did not sit at all well with Al Dia sportwriter Ericka Rojas who criticized their lack of maneavering close to the goal. She seemed to feel that Costa Rica’s soccer team deserves their FIFA ranking of a dismal 69th in the world.

Sooo…We will see tomorrow how they do against the “Reggae Boyz” in Jamaica. The Caribbean islands traditionally do not do well in the regional Concacaf runups to the World Cup, fielding blazingly fast teams that often seem unable to aim their goal kicks. But this is an exhibition game and Medford is still experimenting like an alchemist, thrying to turn lead into gold.

by Rod Hughes

The discovery of five bodies last week in a garbage dump in Costa Rica’s southern zone underscored the preoccupation of Chief Prosecutor Francisco Dall’Anese and Judicial Police (OIJ) director Jorge Rojas about organized, drug-related crime in the country. All the victims were Panamanians, all with their hands tied, carefully shot in the back of the head.

While these mass murders would hardly raise cops’ eyebrows in Miami-Dade county in Florida, a massacre such as this is most un-Costa Rican. Granted, assassination-style murders are not unknown here in the narcotics underworld, they usually entail as single killing, often gunned down on the street by paid assassins riding motorcycles. But 61 gangland-style murders have occurred in the past two years, up from only five killer-for-hire murders in 2005.

In a report to the Supreme Court last year before his reappointment to a second term as Chief Prosecutor (the equivalent of Attorney General in the United States), Dall-Anese told the judges that he wanted to target organized crime. Many law-abiding citizens and tourists, untouched by the violent struggles for turf among drug-runners, wondered what he meant or thought he was referring to auto thieving gangs.

As for Rojas, the OIJ director complained bitterly to the Al Dia newspaper that new laws with more teeth in them to combat crime were still stalled as bills in the Legislative Assembly. He did, however, succeed this year in obtaining an increased budget for equipment and personnel, but only by threatening late last year to resign.

He told Al Dia that many hired killers are Latin foreigners who enter the country to kill a specific persons and then leave. This lethal tourism makes them hard to catch.

by Rod Hughes
A march was held Monday in San Jose to demonstrate opposition to the bloody-handed Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a guerrilla group in that country responsible for thousands of deaths, corruption from their engagement in narcotics traffic, widespread kidnappings and a climate of fear in some regions. The demonstration, planned for at least 184 other cities in the world besides San Jose, departed from the Parque de Grarantias Sociales in eastern San Jose at about 11 a.m. today.

FARC began as a guerrilla group in the 1970s but soon turned into one of the world’s most notorious terrorist organizations, well-armed through financing by drug traffic.The “One Million Voices against FARC” movement is calling for the rebels to lay down their arms and release hostages. Its purpose is to “demonstrate our repudiation of the hostage-taking and pain caused by FARC and to call attention of the people of the world to its indifference,” according to Maria Fernanda Gualdron, the demonstration’s Costa Rican-based organizer.

Gualdron added that she expected at least 1,000 participants in the march, including Colombians and members of Costa Rica’s active peace movements. The Christian Science Monitor reported that the word spread through the Web-based Facebook, an on-line social-network site boasting some 230,000 members. The march organizers hope to raise public awareness of the more than 40 high-profile hostages, inluding three U.S. citizens and Franco-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt.

February 4, 2008

This has been a very hectic month. Let me try to catch up. I have been to San Jose twice for materials. Once we took Mike and his pickup to bring back the kitchen countertop, which was ready for sure, but it wasn’t ready. The guy said he would send it on his friend’s pickup on Saturday. I had already paid half, but was ready to cancel the order and get that money back if I could. I agreed to this plan, and on Monday, when it still hadn’t come, started looking for a truck to go and get it. I paid $130 for that, but got the countertop here, and it was installed before our Sunday deadline, with guests arriving on Tuesday. Now the guy who made the countertop is in a hurry for the rest of the money, and the second “half” is $100 more than the first “half”, and no mention of the second truck trip. I will send him an amount equal to the first half, and let him fight with Carlos after that. Especially since this is the second time paying for the countertop. Carlos brother, Victor, stole the first half, and Carlos ran out of money before we got to the second half.
The house is basically finished at this point. When our guests arrived Tuesday, we were still running the new house off the hydro from the old house, and did not have the capacity for air conditioners. We were waiting for ICE, the electric company, to change their mind on their decision that I needed to buy a transformer because it is a “high load” house. Carlos says we ran a welder and air conditioners as well as the old house, no problem. Well, I lost touch with Carlos for a couple of days, so I had Jose phone ICE. It seems Carlos was supposed to set up a meeting in San Jose. Jose and I went up to the office in Judas the next day to try to understand the situation better. The engineer from ICE read the plans, and decided the load for the house would be 38kva. Kva not important. 10 kva is considered normal. If your house load is less than that, you don’t need to buy a transformer. I roughly calculated that, with three air conditioners, a pool pump, and hot water heater, it will be at least 12kva. Therefore, the minimum size transformer is 25 kva., but they are recommending a 50 kva transformer. The price would increase from about $4000 to about $5000, to go from a 25 to a 50 kva transformer. I decided to go with the 50 kva, in case they are right about the load. Engieers came Friday to see if it could be mounted on the pole, it can, and I have to phone today to find out the best place to buy my transformer. Then ICE will install it, part of the $5000, and if I sign ownership over to them, they will maintain it. Then I will get the meter, and service to the new house.
Another problem we had was the pool. When we added chlorine, the water turned brown because of minerals. We expected that. Run the pump through the filter for three days, vacuum three times a day, and it will clear up. Well, the pump didn’t work very well, and when I hooked up the vacuum, I either lost my prime, or got very little flow, not enough to work the vacuum. Mike came down from Laguna, and we worked on it all day, finally digging up the line from the skimmer to the pump. One elbow had no glue on one side, and the line was creased enough to let air, and a bit of mud in. I went to the store and bought a union, we cut out the bad part, put in a new piece, and now everything is working well, knock on wood.
I was having trouble with the new engine I put in my car. The mechanic, Siviani, said the fan was weak, and put the old one back on. Carlos met me there on his way ba,ck from Heredia, and we went to Esparza to buy the “very last” stuff for the house. The car used 3 liters of water to get there. After we had the materials, I went to Luis’ mechanic, who had offered to look at it for me. He took 30 seconds to determine that I should take the engine back, because there was a serious problem in the bottom end, and a leak in the head gasket. We stopped in at Siviani’s on the way home, and he argued with Carlos, and said the engine was good, except for the head gasket, which I had probably blown by letting it get hot. I insisted I added water in the high white of the temperature guage, it had never reached the red, or been hot enough to blow a gasket, and it shouldn’t have overheated at all. He decided he will fix whatever is needed free, but insists it is a good motor. Luis volunteered to call the motor shop, and they said they would take the motor apart, and if it is not good, they will replace it, no problem. So, I decided, Valin, Luis’ mechanic is probably right, and he and I are going with the car on a tilt and load, to San Jose, to the shop, on Wednesday. I sure hope the motor’s bad.
Our guests left after two nights because they couldn’t sleep without air. They were very understanding about the pool, as all three couples have pools. They were a big help with the constant priming, and figuring out the pool problem. It was fun to have them here, and they insist they will be back when we get things running right.
On February 1st, Linda’s friend, Kris arrived to live in the old house for two months. She is an old friend, and is enjoying herself. She would like to get some postcards, of volcanoes and wildlife and stuff, but mostly she wants to sit around the pool. Not too hard to entertain.