by Rod Hughes

Three Iraqis trying to enter the country were arrested Monday at Juan Santamaria International Airport. Immigration inspectors processing passports were tipped off by one of the forged documents which proported to be issued by Yugoslavia, a country that no longer exists.

The others were using passports from Great Britain and Greece. They had spent 10 days in this country undetected until last weekend when they boarded a plane for Guatemala. When that country refused them entry (due to bureaucratic reasons unrelated to their documents) they returned to this country where the forgeries were finally detected.

Local immigration authorities, in a report that sent chills down the spines of those concerned about international airport security, questioned a Polish traveling companion and found that the trio had used the documents to travel through Iraq, Turkey and Spain before landing here. The Pole said their eventual destination was the United States.

The traveling companion, by the way, is wanted in Poland for kidnapping a minor, according to Interpol. All four were given three months’ preventive detention by an Alajuela court. (Immigration had to dig up an Arabic speaker to translate for the hearing.) The results would have been the same if the trio had been using Iraqi travel papers; Iraq, Cuba, Afganistan and China are among the countries where a special Costa Rican commission scrutinizes visas before granting them.

by Rod Hughes

High tech antennas installed around La Reforma prison recently are blocking cell phone being used for purposes of extorsion in the cell blocks. The Ministry of Justice, which runs the country’s prisons, were forced to adopt the measure when convicts were using smuggled cell phones for illicit purposes.

The phones are prohibited to convicts but the English-language weekly The Tico Times reported several months ago that convicts were using them to call selected victims, threatening them or family members with death if the victims did not pay confederates outside the prison walls. In at least one case, police suspect that refusal to pay was the motive for murder.

The guards inspecting visitors to the prison were foiled often, reported The Tico Times, by the miniaturization of the latest phones. The compact devices could be inserted into the visitor’s rectum for smuggling purposes. (The weekly paper’s editorial cartoonist, Nestor Gonzalez, had great fun with this, indicating that a phone is well concealed there—unless it rings.)

The jamming devices can interrupt the signal up to a 300 meter radius. The new equipment cost 8 million colones and the units are installed high enough so that criminals cannot damage them. They are also backed up by battery packs for up to 24 hours in case of a power outage.

The daily paper La Nacion reported that at least 200 threats have been investigated by police, the majority coming from some of the 2,200 inmates at La Reforma. Francisco Segura, deputy director of the Judical Detection agency OIJ, cited the recent case in which a foreign resident paid out $12,000 in extorsion to a La Reforma convict. The foreigner ignored the phoned threats until someone shot at his home.

by Rod Hughes

With the ink hardly dry on Costa Rica’s pact with the European Union regarding banana import tariffs, the EU has decided that the long negotiations in Geneva is part of its failed attempt to liberalize trade with the rest of the world. But this country insists on the legality of the agreement and demands that it be respected.

EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said the attempt to come to an agreement with another 30 nations had simply not worked and their failure makes the Costa Rican banana accord invalid. This decision comes as a bitter blow to the country’s hopes in getting the tariffs reduced gradually to make this country more competitive with other banana-producing nations, principally in Africa, that were once European colonies. Those countries have no import duties.

The failure to reach an agreement caps World Trade Organization attempts beginning in 2001 to persuade the EU to lift high tariffs on both agricultural and manufactured items. In the last half of the 20th century, representatives of EU member nations had a difficult time agreeing on import conditions among them, as leaders struggled to try to protect or favor their own farmers. It is, then, no wonder that they are protectionist with the rest of the world.

Despite this favoritism toward EU former colonies, Costa Rica is the number two exporter of banana to the Union, according to a recent article in the daily paper La Nacion. Banana exporters in this hemisphere, including this country, Ecuador, Colombia and Panama, hailed the agreement to reduce the 176 per ton banana tariff joyously. The agreement would have eventually reduced the duty to 114 euros in 2016.

This backtracking by the European Union does not bode well for the fate of a possible free trade agreement with Central america, although the negotiations continue toward that pact.

July 29, 2008

Howie was here. And the waves of influence spread wherever he went. He was here before, and I described how he impressed everyone he met with his strength of character, and sense of humour. For a brief recap, I worked with Howie at the casino. He qualifies for a government pension because he is in a wheelchair, but liked to work, and for a long time, until he could finish up pending business, he ran an investigations business as well. Before he came here in 2006, a driver crossed the line and hit Howie head on. Totalled his pickup, and injured Howie’s wrist, back, and neck. Summer of 2007, he had just got another pickup fitted with hand controls and on the road. While driving to a friend’s house the pickup caught fire. Howie got mostly out, except for one foot. He had to watch the foot and lower leg burn, no feeling, but not a pleasant experience. Help arrived before the gas tank caught, and they got him to the hospital.
Then the burn got infected. He went through a year where they thought he might lose the leg, or worse, the infection spread into the hip, the leg was swollen from top to bottom, and they even suspected flesh eating disease. They fought it off, and now it is a hole in his ankle about the size of a silver dollar. As soon as he was well enough, he came down here.
When he got here, we partied for five or six days, and he got a bladder infection. We took a more relaxed pace after that, but still managed to visit all the people he met the last time he was here, and meet a bunch of new ones. Any time you ask this man how he is, he is fine. No problems. The bladder infection was painful, but he had had lots of them, and it never affected his mood. It took some time, but I guess I’m used to Howie now, and don’t notice his influence on people. I was reminded today.
Another man I have a lot of respect for is my neighbour, Chino. He recently bought the neighbourhood Soda. A Soda is a small restaurant without a liquor licence that serves typical Costa Rican food, and recently the odd hamburger. It comes with a house he has moved into, and now rents the one he lived in before, as well as another house he already had rented out. Quite impressive for a 26 year old in a neighbourhood where other people can’t find a job. At least not without leaving their front porch. He is married, with a beautiful two year old daughter who always insists on sitting with me when I ate there.
Chino was telling me today he has been working for fourteen years, including three years in a restaurant in Los Angeles, which would explain why he makes the best hamburger in Costa Rica. He makes excellent Tico food too, and business has shot up since he bought it.
Some people blame handicaps for not doing things, others blame their parents or part of their childhood for not doing things, but Howie didn’t let his handicap stop him from anything, and Chino didn’t let his background slow him down either. Chino is one of 28 children that an owner of multiple ranches in Costa Rica and Nicaragua has had with 28 different teenage women. Chino dislikes him, and has no respect, and obviously didn’t know him at all. Pretty tough people to come out successful.
Howie and I went to Chino’s Soda many times while he was here, and of course, Ashley the daughter, always sat with us. Like I said, seemed normal to me. Howie is used to the grandfather role, and played all the games Ashley wanted to play, like Mix the Salt and Ketchup, or Stick the Toothpicks in the Fries. Chino told me today, it was three days before Ashley stopped asking if Howie was coming. When you can impress a two year old like that, you got it!

by Rod Hughes

The chief opposition to the administration’s National Liberation Party, the Citizen Action Party (PAC) appears to be still undergoing internal tensions. The latest was when PAC lawmaker Marta Zamora demanded the resignation of the party’s president Epsy Campbell for accepting $9,000 from the Arias Administration for technical advice.

Is PAC undergoing an ideological hardening of the arteries? It would appear so, if only from an exclusive article in the English-language weekly The Tico Times. Earlier this year, one of its lawmakers, Andrea Morales, deserted the party to become an independent. The chief reason was that the lady representative refused of follow the PAC blocking tactics against CAFTA in congress, reasoning that a majority of the electorate had ratified the treaty in a referendum vote. Also she was aware that important bills were piling up behind PAC’s delaying tactics.

But Campbell attributes her fall from grace in the eyes of the PAC hierarchy because they fear she will run for PAC’s presidential nominee in 2010. Campbell herself denied categorically in an exclusive interview with the daily Al Dia that she has any interest in being PAC’s standard bearer. But she says that until PAC choses a candidate that there will always be some who see “phantoms.”

The party could do worse than Campbell. At 45, she looks 15 years younger and would be an attractive candidate in more ways than one. Intelligent and articulate, she is a dynamic black woman economist from the Caribbean zone who was elected lawmaker from 2002 to 2006, is a consultant for UNICEF and the World Bank and is an activist for black rights. She would have the black vote and the backing of many anti-National Liberation women even if that party nominates Laura Chinchilla.

Lurking behind Campbell’s discomfort is former PAC presidential candidate Otton Solis. He is a leftist ideologue, a hardliner who was one of the party founders and one of the architects of its stubborn scorched-earth tactics against CAFTA. Although he has not openly sought the 2010 candidacy, he came back this spring from the United States where he was a guest lecturer at a university with a string of hard-line speeches that certainly sound like campaign orations.

But his ideological intolerance worries many of the rank and file. Moveover, since Solis has already tried and failed twice to be president, some of the faithful may want to see a new face on the ballot. So far, his stance has not left any doubt that he would view any such movement as heresy.

rong>by Rod Hughes</strong>

Leave it to the daily newspaper <em>Al Dia</em> to know what is REALLY important in the world. A recent news story pointed out that when the Central American Free Trade Agreement is finally fully ratified, U.S. beer will benefit by a reduction of import tax.

The 15% duty on, for example, Budweiser will diminish one percent per year until in 15 years, it reaches zero. But the chief beer distributor in the country, /florida Beverages, says the reduction will have only "minimal" effect on price and consumption of foreign beers.

But Costa Rica is also known for producing fine beer, such as Imperial and Bavaria. Jose Francisco Echeverria of Florida Beverages noted that local beer exports to the United States would also be cheaper. So there.

by Rod Hughes

The so-called ICE bill to free up the telecommunications market to open competition in accordance with the provisions of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) is in its final phase, the second debate. Its backers, the administration’s National Liberation Party, the Libertarian Movement and the Social Christian Unity Party have all agreed to limit their comments in order to speed it on its way to President Oscar Arias’s desk for his signature.

But the chief opposition to CAFTA, the Citizen Action Party (PAC) floor leader, Francisco Molina, says he refuses to put any limits on his 16 deputies. Earlier this year PAC ran a virtual filibuster campaign to killed the 13 bills needed for the nation’s legal structure to draw into concord with CAFTA. Included in these laws were hotly-contested bills to open up telecommunications which has been the monopoly of ICE, a government-owned entity, and the insurance market which has been the sole bailiwick of INS, also a government agency.

But Molina did promise that his delegation would not mount a blocking campaign as they did earlier. The party’s intransigence has given them the unfortunate image of not caring about the will of the electorate. (CAFTA was passed, albeit by a narrow majority, in a national referendum last November.) PAC’s tactics have included sending bills to the Supreme Court’s Consititutional Chamber for prolonged study, boycotting sessions so a quorum cannot be achieved and attempting to drown the bills under an avalanche of amendments.

Meanwhile dozens of important bills, such as a comprehensive crime bill, have waited in line for months for floor debate. As Liberation Deputy Carlos Gutierrez told the daily La Nacion impatiently, “It’s time to leave off talking” in order to get some work done.

by Rod Hughes

Heredia, opting to hold its opener on Monday, a holiday, showed itself to be a solid, measured machine, easily outplaying Brujas, 2-0, in its first match under the command of Paulo Cesar Wanchope. “Chope,” as he is affectionately known, did some magic with the lineup, experimentation being not unusual for the early season. A fine start for Wanchope.

In the closing ticks of the clock in the first half, Kenneth Vargas took a pase from Margin Angulo and struck goal. Then Angulo, having a fine day, made the second goal on a free kick that came on a foul against Kenneth Cunningham late in the second half. As the La Nacion sportswriters made clear, the organization of Heredia’s fieldwork both on offense and defense made Brujas, on paper a potential protagonist for the national soccer crown this season, look like amateurs.

In other soccer news, the nation’s under-17 girls soccer team that made it for the first time into the World Cup for teenagers in New Zealand Oct. 29 to Nov. 16 has had the bad luck to draw the toughest group in the early eliminations. Its group B is comprised of Germany, North Korea and Ghana, a killer list of adversaries. Its opening in Christchurch will be against the current champion in this category, Germany, Oct. 28.

by Rod Hughes

A riot of youths disappointed at not being able to get into a packed free concert yesterday afternoon resulted in 10 injuries, three sufficiently severe to warrant hospitalization, and 35 arrests. Millions of colones in damages was caused when the rioters broke windows at Universidad Latina and nearby business front.

The youths were turned away from the university’s covered parking lot where the Argentinian musical group, “Los Pericos,” was playing. Head of the San Pedro private university’s public security force, David Espinoza, said shots were fired and the police were forced to employ tear gas. Luis Leiva, boss of a nearby pizza parlor, said his customers found it hard to breathe when tear gas was blown into the establishment by the wind and blamed the organizers of the concert for allowing “a lot of alcohol and drugs” used by concert goers.

Such a disturbance is unusual in this country and warranted headlines in the nation’s press. Hooliganism is on the rise in soccer stadiums but most concerts come off without any serious unpleasantness.

by Rod Hughes

It was a tough fight but Costa Rica and the other Central American countries finally hammered out an agreement in an all-night session of negotiations with the European Union at tense negotiations in Geneva, Switzerland, Saturday night. The EU had levied prejudicial taxes against the region in order to favor the Europeans’ ex-colonies in Africa in banana imports.

In the wee hours of Sunday morning, the region’s representatives managed to get a gradual relaxation of import taxes over the next few years. The current EU tax of 176 euros per ton will drop to 148 in 2009, then further decline until it reaches 114 euros in 2016. Costa Rica’s ambassador to the World Trade Organization, Ronald Saborio, called the 16-year-old banana wars “the most difficult in the history of the GATT or the WTO.”

Costa Rica, according to the news agency Reuters, is the leader of the Tropical Products group in the WTO and is the second largest banana exporter to Europe. All told, 30 ambassadors attended the grueling session.

Meanwhile, talks between the EU and Central American counties for a free trade treaty are still going on and may turn out to be just as bitter, especially with sugar producers in the light of renewed world interest in biofuels to offset high petroleum prices that have adversely effected nearly every Western nation except Venezuela and Brazil.

The first round of negotiations regarding import duties was held in Brussells July 14-18 but the hard part is yet to come: agro-industry and food processors are bracing for it. One of the most difficult political difficulties that European leaders have had to face in the years of development that went into formation of the EU has been protection of their farmers.

And again, European nations have given the African countries, nearly all of them ex-colonies of one nation or other, a free ride on imports. It will prove an uphill pull for Central American nations.