by Rod Hughes

Why is it that every time lawmakers attempt to improve something, they seem to make it worse? The latest case is the modification of the Criminal Code that, by error, removes penalties (from a month to five years) for resisting arrest.

That means, according to a story today in the newspaper La Nacion, that anyone can fight, with anything from teeth to a weapon, against authorities. Already the error has had its effect: On March 27, Judge Isabel Porras of a San Jose criminal court was forced to release two alleged gang members who had fought an arrtesting cop when he tried to detain them for disturbing the peace on a public street in the captial’s La Uruca district.

Former Legislative Assembly deputies were questioned by La Nacion about the circumstances of the error. Ex-deputy Luis Gerardo Villanueva said the legislators went over the text “step by step” and attributed the mistake to “a material error.” Such an error raises more questions than it answers and can be anything from articles 305 and 306 being eliminated by a law clerk hitting the wrong key on the computer to a page left out of the reform text. But Villanueva’s explanation was more definitive than former lawmakers Carlos R. Benevides and Ruth Montoya who suddenly had amnesia about the legislation.

The reform was written by Judge Oscar Gonzalez, approved by the three deputies quoted above who former a Legislative Assembly subcommittee named to review such legislation and passed by a floor session of the lawmakers in 2005. At least two experts consulted by La Nacion speculated that the error could have been in the numbering of the paragraphs and the modification could have been meant for, say, Article 207.

Meanwhile, the remarks that the new Minister of Public Security, Janina del Vecchio, made this week that crime was “not as bad as she expected to find it” before she took office continue to encounter contradiction in professional law enforcement circles. On Wednesday, Chief Prosecutor Francisco Dall’Anese testified before the Legislative Assembly, urging that crime be taken seriously as a danger to the nation. The day before, Judicial Investative agency (OIJ) chief Jorge Rojas had also emphasized that crime must be dealt with vigorously.

Commentary: Although the English-language weekly The Tico Times reported recently that President Oscar Arias’s approval figures have risen in recent polls, the Legislative Assembly has fallen even farther in public esteem. Is it any wonder?

by Rod Hughes

Is Vice President Laura Chinchilla, a former Minister of Public Security, the frontrunner in the nomination for National Liberation party’s 2010 candidate? If so, it would mark a truly early start in the party’s primary system. One would not expect maneuvering for a place on the ticket for another year or so.

First, President Oscar Arias speculated that he would not mind seeing Costa Rica get its first woman president and, since Chinchilla is the only woman in recent years to be mentioned in that context… You get the idea. And now, Minister of Housing and War against Poverty Fernando Zumbado has been stung by a story in the morning paper La Nación into admitting that he backs Chinchilla.

The story appeared this week in which the La Nación reporter noted that Zumbado was being very conspicuous, running around the country cutting ribbons on new government-funded housing projects for the poor, handing out home-building bonds to the poor, passing out high school scholarships to poor students and generally acting the role of Santa Claus. At one recent housing inauguration, he was even introduced as “Minister of the Poor.”

But in an angry phone call Wednesday night to the newspaper, he stoutly denied any presidential aspirations and let it slip that he favored Chinchilla. La Nación called the Vice President immediately after Zumbado hung up but she was not biting and did not pick up. Neither would the powerful Minister of the Presidency, Rodrigo Arias, the president’s chief of staff and brother, comment.

It is not far fetched that Zumbado might have been planning a run at the brass ring. He is relatively young, a good speaker and quite active in the party’s affairs. But it appears that the article may have been merely an exercise in journalistic cage-rattling, something that journalists do occasionally just to stir up the beasts.

by Rod Hughes

Saprissa is in freefall in the First Division soccer championship and even some sportswriters are panicked. The headline on the back cover of the paper La Nación speculated that if big purple “S” plays like this against Pachuca in the CONCACAF tourney finals, they can kiss goodbye to going to FIFA’s world championsip of clubs in Japan.

After winning nine matches in a row this year, Saprissa has lost its last four, the latest Wednesday night to Perez Zeledon, 1-0. In its own stadium, Ricardo Saprissa in Tibás, mind you. Now P-Z is not a bad club but is in third place in Group B, six points back from the group leader, Alajuela, and not likely to get much closer. It’s a well-balanced club but, other than Jewisson Bennett, pretty well filled with what’s-his-names. So what accounts for Saprissa’s sudden halt to its rocketing upward course and sudden conversion to bungee jumping with a cord too long?

The first two losses were mostly due to coach Jeaustin Campos resting his veterans and using bench sweepings. But all the familiar names were there Wednesday: Armando Alonso, Ronald Gomez, Michael Barrantes, Celso Borges…And the P-Z goal by Freddy Fernandez early in the first half came partly from Saprissa’s usually reliable goalie Keylor Navas storming out unwisely to break up a play while Freddy’s teammate Tirso Guio fed in a pass with a free kick.

This is not about resting veterans for an important tournament match. This is due to: (Pick one. You will be graded on your answer.)
1. A guilt complex at having stolen the spotlight from other teams so far this year.
2. A massive amnesia attack where Saprissa players cannot remember their positions between tournament matches.
3. A voodoo curse.

by Rod Hughes

New Minister of Public Security Janina del Vecchio, who took over her law enforcement duties from Vice President Laura Chinchilla yesterday, told a press conference that crime in the country “isn’t as bad as she expected to find it,” after being prepped for her new job. Unlike Chinchilla, who filled the job on a pro tem basis after Fernando Berrocal’s sudden resignation, del Vecchio has no prior experience in police work. (See newsfeed 1660 for background.)

At the news conference, the new minister was flanked by OIJ (Judicial Investigation) chief Jorge Rojas and Francisco Dall’Anese, the vigorous Chief Prosecutor, the daily La Nacion reported today. Del Vecchio said that it was “perceived by Costa Ricans that…the violence in crimes are increasingly higher. It’s certain that the perception of insecurity is higher than the insecurity itself. That’s the reality.” The new minister pointed out that this country is rated the fourth most secure nation in Latin America and stated her aim to make it the safest in the world.

She wasted no time in making a minor shakeup in her ministry, naming Erick Lacayo to replace Fabio Pizarro as director of all police forces. The latter, informed of his reassignment to another post by Deputy Minister Gerardo Lascarez, immediately resigned, La Nacion reported. “Costa Rica needs concrete actions and decisions. We should not be alarmed,” said del Vecchio, a former mathematics teacher. She appeal for calm to let the police get on with their jobs.

But Rojas of OIJ, a professional with several years in his current post, was not so sure that del Vecchio was not painting over the seriousness of the problem. He told La Nacion after the conference that, “Costa Rica, obviously, has a serious security problem and we must not compare ourselves to anyone… People don’t feel safe in their cars or walking down the street lest they be carjacked or robbed of cell phone or billfold.” He pointed out that San Jose had suffered 57 murders so far this year, the same number that had had taken until August to accumulate last year.

Rojas is not the only one who fears that complacency may lose the battle against crime. The English-language weekly The Tico Times blasted the Legislative Assembly for inaction in passing crime bills in an editorial two weeks ago. The editorial writer grimly pointed out that lawmakers were taking their time with the Comprehensive Crime Bill, a funding bill to improve OIJ and the Immigration Reform Bill and noted that in recent years deputies had let four other significant bills die without a vote.

(Rojas, Chinchilla and Dall’Anese all were co-authors of the comprehensive crime legislation that plugs holes in criminal codes that causes organized crime to thumb its nose at prosecution attempts.)

by Rod Hughes

Playa Manzanilla– Although rampant development on the country’s Pacific Coast has been under some fire in the past few years, not all building is controversial. A competition last Sunday at Playa Manzanilla on the southern tip of the Nicoya Peninsula sponsored by Banco Nacional definitely encouraged construction–of sand castles.

The top two teams actually won with ecology-themed sculptures, instead of buildings, It was not until the third-place Taj Mahal that castles became rewarded. But the sculpture that perhaps gained the most attention was of two frogs, painted bright green, lying on the white sand of the beach.

But even this may have had a strong element of ecological criticism in it. One of the frogs had a bright red tongue protruding from its mouth. Could they have been dead from global warming? Only Alajuela artist Andres Miranda could tell us.

But one kind of heat in this volcanically active country has attracted Costa Rica’s Electrrical Institute (ICE)—that energy generated deep in the ground. According to the daily La Nacion, ICE is currently looking for global financial partners to help turn geromagnretic energy into electricity. The solution is neat, avoiding destruction of the environment with dams or sending carbon gases into the atmosphere.

The technique is not geothermal generation, such as exists on the slopes of Rincon de la Vieja Volcano where superheated steam from vents is passed through turbines. As explained by ICE’s director of its Energy Control Center, Salvador Lopez, holes are drilled 50 to 100 meters into the earth, where the temperature is at the boiling point of water, 100 degrees Celsus. Then a liquid is pumped down where it is turned into steam conducted to generators. (With geothermy, the holes are up to 2,000 meters deep and temperatures at 250 degrees.)

While petrolum-fueled generators produce a kilowatt hour of electricity at a costly $.30 US, the new technique costs barely three-hundredths of a U.S. cent. Research is under way in Italy, Japan and the United States and “some people say they have prototypes,” said Lopez. ICE is seeking partners to explore the scientific breakthrough in non-polluting generators, he added. ICE has conducted some conversations with a US company named Power Tube but as yet have no agreement, La Nacion reported.

It is obvious that more Costa Ricans than just the builders of sand castles are sensitive to dangers of global warming…

by Rod Hughes

The Tico Times star columnist, Mitzi Stark, recently did a profile on the woman depicted on the 10,000 colon banknote. While most countries have the faces of founding fathers or ex-presidents on their paper currency, it is characteristic of Costa Rica to have honored Emma Gamboa, an educator and textbook writer.

If you look closely at this predominantly blue note, you will see the lady, who died in 1972, depicted with a slight pucker to her lips, as if she is slightly disgusted to see the need for currency with such a high figure on it. In her day, the highest banknote was the rarely-seen 1,000 colon red banknote and the colon itself was worth 6.80 to the dollar. The five-colon note was lavishly designed, one of the most colorful and beautiful pieces of currenty ever printed.

But that was before a series of presidents had borrowed from foreign institutions as if there were no tomorrow. Tomorrow came, crashing down in late 1980 on the head of President Rodrigo Carazo, in the form of a falling world coffee prices, the chief export. The country was bankrupt, unable to pay its debt interest. Carazo, who had been dealt a bad hand, played it badly, discarding solutions offered by his economic wizard, Leonel Barruch, in favor of selling off the gold reserve in a vain attempt to stave off devaluing the colon.

By the end of 1981, local companies with dollar debts were closing their doors. To add to the insult, local mechanics were drilling holes in the aluminum five and 10 centimo coins that had subdivided the colon, in order to use the coins as washers. (Imported washers cost more than the coins.) The official rate at the banks was still 6.80 to the dillar but the colon, exchanged illegally on the street, was 20, then 30, then 50 and finally 80 at the beginning of 1982.

It was not until President Luis Alberto Monge took office in May, 1983, that local banks raised their official exchange rates and began renegotiation of the debt with foreign lending institutions. By then, centimo coins were gone and the colon coins were basic. (Even those are collectors’ items now.) The recovery was being engineered by the International Monetary Fund, basically a U.S.-run institution. The State Department later used the debt to pressure Monge into helping the Contras fighting against Nicaragua’s Sandinista regime while Monge did his best to keep the country neutral, at a distance from Nicaragua’s civil war.

Emma Gamboa’s bill is a product of a series of mini-devaluations of the colon that wound up seeing the currency creep up to more than 500 per dollar. Thus, the rare 1,000-colon note became slightly less than $2. Today, with dollar troubles in the north, the rate is in the high 480s per dollar and so the lady’s bill is a bit more than $20.

In her day, issues were more social and less economic. Costa Rica was recognised as a poor, Third World country and few thought much about it. Cash was rare in rural areas and campesino (farm) families got most of the food they did not raise by bartering crops and livestock. Older folk were more apt to bury their savings in a hole on the farm than in a bank.

The issues that gripped Ms. Gamboa were women’s suffrage (the female vote did not come until 1948 after she and better educated sisters lobbied for it it) and improving education. Dissatisfied by the beginning readers’ primers of her day, she wrote one that became standard throughout the land, “Paco y Lola.”

The text has fallen out of favor in today’s Costa Rica, considered sexist, columnist Stark writes. The beginning sentence is quaintly antiquated, “Mama amasa la masa.” This translates to, “Mama kneads the dough,” and raises an image of mother in a smoky kitchen with an open wood-fired stove, working the corn meal she has ground, making breakfast tortillas. Gamboa’s family says they hope to update the book eliminating stereotypical, obsolete role model for women.

Personally, we cannot visualize how it can be rewritten. The phrase, “Mama buys a loaf of bread on her way to her seat in congress,” seems a bit advanced for beginning readers…

by Rod Hughes

The Cristobal Colon School in Santo Domingo de Heredia was left without fire extinguishers last week, but don’t blame the Ministry of Education for an oversight. The administrators started the school year with four, all the students, who bought them out of their own meager resources, could afford.

Blame the thief who represented himself as an employee of an extinguisher recharging company. He made off with them never to be seen again. The ministry budget often is so tight that equipment such as fire extinguishers and desks are donated by parents or local companies.

Anyone wishing to help out with a donation may call the school at 2268-9018.

by Rod Hughes

Saprissa fans don´t know whether to laugh or cry. After Wednesday’s smothering of Houston Dynamo in the CONCACAF tourney, 3-0, yesterday they dropped another Summer Tournament game in Costa Rica, 2-0, against Carmelita. The only assurance this gives fans is that they’ll be in the finals for national championship because of winning the first half of the 2007-8 season.

Still, it’s frustrating to see the club that had been running away with the national tourney with an 11-game winning streak drop their third match in a row. They are making a lot of lower echelon clubs look good. Sunday, Carmelita’s David Diach scored first on a pass by Kervin Lacey at minutes 65, followed by Olman Vargas’s goal, assisted by Lacey again five minutes later.

Saprissa coach Jeaustin Campos moved his veterans around like chess pieces in strange patterns and it will take a far more astute soccer fan than I to explain what he had in mind. For example, star Armando Alonso opened playing striker, then was shifted to forward and back to striker when the damage was done.

Puntarenas, Heredia in Exciting Scoreless Tie

It is a characteristic of soccer, unlike many sports, that a goal is not needed to provide plenty of thrills So it was Sunday with the port city Puntanreas and Heredia. Puntarenas appeared calm and ordered while Heredia, under brand new head coach Paulo Cesar Wanchope, is not quite ready to show the world what they can do. Still, no one went to sleep in Rosabal Cordero Stadium in Heredia.

Brujas 2, Santos 1

Brujas of Escazu edged ever closer to qualifying for the second round of the Summer Tournament with a 2-1 victory over Santos. The loss shoved the hapless Guapiles club ever closer to last place and oblivion in the Second Division. (Brujas was playing “at home” but are really nomadic, having no stadium of their own. This time they played in the southern suburb of Aserri.)

Unfortunately, the game was marred by players’ protests on referee calls and altercations among fans. It seems a rather strange thing, taking into account that the result was never much in doubt. Santos’s only attack worth mentioning, aside from Yeinor Santamaria’s free kick that scored at minute 47, was a blast from Marvin Chinchilla.

Daniel Jumenez tied it for Brujas and Sequiera booted in the winner.

Alajuela 1, Liberia 1

Liberia, despite being rather shaken at having to arrive at the Stadium in eight taxis (their bus broke down) managed to beat back Alajuela with a 1-1 tie. (Even warmup was complicated when the equipment managers left their balls in one of the taxi–and no comments on that, because they played well.)

Eliseo Quintanilla scored fior Alajuela at minute 37 and Jacques Remy tied it for Liberia with but three minutes over regular time left on the clock. The Guanacaste province club left a bit disgruntled because, mathematically, they could have qualified if they had won. That Liberia did not win was not the fault of forward William Sunsing who played brilliantly throughout the match. Alajuela, on the other hand, has already qulified for the finals.

by Rod Hughes

The daily newspaper Al Dia reported today that Bill Gates–yes, THAT Bill Gates–and his wife, Melinda and two of their three children were seen yesterday on vacation in San Carlos, north of San Jose, at a resort hotel. Informants told the paper that the computer software magnate was dressed in polo shirt, shorts and sandals.

According to Al Dia’s sources, a helicopter whisked the Gates family to the Hotel Kioro at La Fortuna. The source added that Minister of the Presidency Rodrigo Arias was also in the area but that the software innovator and the highest cabinet official did not meet.

Immigration source Heidy Bonilla, told Al Dia that a certain William Henry Gates III (the cumbersome name the boyish and informal Gates must lug around with him for official use) entered the country last Friday and thinks he plans to leave next Saturday.

President Oscar Arias met with Gates last year at a conference in Colombia and is known for never ending a conversation with a foreigner without a warm invitation to visit this country.

by Rod Hughes

Costa Rica’s Most Wanted woman has been discovered, alive and well, living in a $1.5 million home in a posh neighborhood on Long Island near New York City under a false identity. She escaped from Costa Rica in November, 1998, after having been found guilty of the murder of Jose Andres Borrase.

Her former boyfriend, Laureano Montero, is currently serving a 25 year homicide sentence here for the same murder. Magdalena Pacheco’s capture came not a moment too soon–the Interpol statute of limitations on her capture would have run out in less than a year. The trail after her escape led through a series of false identities from The Netherlands to Panama, from Britain to Colombia, to Guatemala to, finally, the United States, according to the daily paper, La Nacion.

The celebrated case began on Nov. 19, 1997, when Borrase’s body was found in a coffee field. Pacheco and Montero were arrested, tried and convicted but Pacheco fled the country before sentencing. After a series of identities and residences, she settled in the U.S. under the forged ID of a Guatemalan, Veronica Giron, obtained residency and married a Costa Rican identified by authorities only as Carvajal. They have three children, La Nacion said.

According to police, the murder victim, son of Andres Borrase, former publisher of the daily newspaper La Prensa Libre, was lured to the Montero-Pacheco home. Hours later, his body was found.

Unfortunately, it is not infrequent for local criminals to escape in the lapse between conviction and sentencing. Indeed, they are often left free by the court in that interim. Pacheco will be deported from the U.S. by immigration authorities due to her forged papers. La Nacion reported that Pacheco’s arrest could involve her husband, Carvajal, in legal difficulties in New York, as well.

La Nacion reported that Pacheco lived a seclusive life due to her state as a fugitive from justice, never attending school functions of her children, going out only at night. Her neighbors only knew her as “the Guatemalan woman.”