by Rod Hughes
As in much of Latin America, the past decades in Costa Rica has shown a steady rush from rural areas to the cities. Now, a recent survey says, 63& of residents live in urban areas.
The study, conducted by the United Nations Population Fund, indicates that this country is only following a worldwide trend. By 2008, more than half the world’s population (3.3 billion) will live in urban areas and by 2030, the number will be 5 billion.
The mass migration places fierce pressure on cities’ public services–education, health and infastructure such as water and sewage. Housing is a problem in many developing countries, a problem that successive Costa Rican administrations have been attacking since the mid-1980s after the government faced a growing housing shortage, especially in towns and cities.
The government attacked the situation with a massive building campaign linked with soft loans from a special housing bank, BANVI. In the low-cost housing shortage, the government has managed to make some headway, although the influx from rural areas continues, due to the higher birthrate in farming areas and the increased mechanization of cultivations.
A more recent factor has been the influx of poverty-stricken Nicaraguans who tend to have a higher birthrate than Costa Ricans. The majority have been unskilled farm workers who have been temporarily absorbed into rural areas of the country.
The UN study turned up one bright spot: Urban families have fewer children because they do not need tham for farm labor and because urban women demand that those fewer children receive a better education and quality of life.

by Rod Hughes
It’s noisy, a bit bumpy and certainly not up-to-date luxury service, but the inter-urban passenger service between the western San Jose suburb of Pavas and Montes de Oca (San Pedro) on the east side is a big hit.
Time was, not too many years ago, when the only trains running in the country were those carrying bananas in the Caribbean province of Limon. The rest of INCOFER (the Costa Rican railway system) had been shut down by presidential decree as a money-losing proposition. But that has turned around in a big way—in May INCOFER sold 70,000 tickets, up an incredible 1,166% over the last three months in 2005, when the service was initiated, tentatively and with some trepidation on the part of executives.
Today, 13 trains ply the route, eight of them all the way from Pavas and the other five between the old Pacific railway station the south of the capital to Universiad Latin in San Pedro. Many of the passengers are students on their way to universities, public and private, on the east side.
And the price is right for students’ pocketbooks—¢300, not even 50 U.S. cents.
At peak hours, passengers cram the cars to the steps and INCOFER is contemplating adding another train from Pavas at 5:05 (where 100 to 125 people have been observed awaiting the train) to the Pacific station, a 17-minute ride. (A bullet train, it isn’t.)
But this service is not the only route that is meeting success. Inspectors have recently given a clean bill of safety to the rail line between Montes de Oca and Atenas to the northwest of the capital. This is a favorite weekend excursion and, again, it is not a French or Japanese-style bullet train. In fact, it is certified as safe only up to 25 kilometers per hour, something like 20 mph.
Inspecting engineers warn that if INCOFER locomotive drivers want to go up to 40 kilometers per hour, railroad had better replace 3,093 deteriorated ties. And if they want to reach that speed between Pavas and Atenas, they must replace 5,151 ties. But Minister of Transport Karla González says work has already been started doing just that—although no increase in speed is contemplated.

by Rod Hughes
Internet service to more than a million users was interrupted for more than 72 hours this weekend, due to a break in the ARCOS undersea fiber optic cable serving the United States, Central America, the Caribbean, Venezuela and Colombia, reported the daily newspaper La Nacion.
Columbus Networks, the operator, managed to replace five kilometers of submarine cable off the Punto Fijo station in Venezuela.
A spokesman for the firm told the paper that since 2005, the company has been replacing the vulnerable original cable with one double-armored with steel. Instead of resting on the seabed as the original did, the new cable is laid in a trench three meters (10 ft.) deep. But not all of the old cable has been replaced in the Caribbean, the spokesman added.
Elberth Duran, spokesman for the Costa Rican Electrical Institute (ICE) and its Internet specialist subsidiary, RACSA, confirmed that the failure has been fully repaired in the ARCOS cable but that another cable serving Costa Rica, Maya, is still undergoing repairs in the Maria Chiquita sector of Panama. ICE (its acronym in Spanish) is the government monopoly supplier of Internet service and electricity in this country.
The NEC Corporation that owns Maya is obligated to guarantee Internet service to this country, continued Duran, even if NEC has to connect with other fiber optic cables to do so.

by Rod Hughes
NICOYA, GTE.—Good news came from the Ministry of Transport and Public Works (MOPT, its Spanish acronym) today, answering the dearest hopes and dreams of residents, farmers and tourists in the Northwestern province of Guanacaste: MOPT will send road repair equipment to be spotted in strategic locations around the province for ready repair of the–until now—wretched road system.
The state of Guanacaste roads is the most frequently-mentioned criticism in hotel guest book comments, but other benefits from more frequent road work will be felt by farmers whose trucks will need far fewer repairs and even in real estate values. Rampant real estate development is, indeed, one of the most important factors in the roads’ deterioration as trucks carrying construction supplies have increased traffic several fold.
Nor will the province have to wait long for the pilot plan to be put in play—the Comptroller General’s office, the government’s contracting watchdog agency, has cleared the way for direct contracting of repair work, cutting several miles of red tape by the decision.
Work could start as early as July, Minister Karla Gonzalez told the daily paper La Nacion last week. “With the purchase of new equipment, MOPT will have what it needs to give the roads continuous repair,” she said, “The roads will always have the presence of our equipment and we’ll save time in being able to resurface them.”
The new equipment will include trucks, backhoes, graders and loaders, Gonzalez said. MOPT will cut downtime (an Aquilles heel in Costa Rica where periodic maintenance in the past has not been a prime priority of MOPT) by contracting companies to journey to the province to provide repairs to the far-flung machinery.

by Rod Hughes
The gasoline from the National Refinery (RECOPE, its Spanish acronym) you get the second half of next year will contain 7% alcohol fuel, RECOPE announced yesterday. The plan goes along with President Oscar Arias’s ecology program as well as reduces somewhat expenditures for imported fossil fuel.
But, at least initially, it will not reduce your cost at the pump, since RECOPE must invest a total of $5.3 million in infrastructure, with the first bid of $600,000 to be let in two weeks. Eventually the refinery hopes to infuse gasoline with 10% to 15% ethanol, and a somewhat lesser percentage in diesel fuel.
RECOPE, a government monopoly, provides all the fossil fuels to the country. It was also noted that the new fuel will not obligate service stations to change their present storage tanks.
The renewable resource may be a boon to small farmers, since alcohol can be made from almost any fermentable crop. Brazil, a pioneer in ethanol technology, uses sugar cane but yuca (manioc), sorgum and palm oil, among other crops, can be used.
Alcohol fuel was tried here a couple of decades ago as an alternative fuel. But customers mostly spurned it, acting on myths that it would ruin the car’s engine (not true) and that costly special carburator adaptation was needed (also not true) and the movement died in its tracks. This time, there’s no choice–You want gas, fella, you fill up with this.

By Katherine Stanley
Tico Times Staff | kstanley@ti…

It’s a job that would make most of us quake in our boots or call for our mommies – but not Jorge Woodbridge, apparently.

The Vice-Minister of Economy and Commerce has been assigned the task of getting rid of government institutions’ unnecessary trámites, or bureaucratic processes. Institutional Coordination Minister Marco Vargas announced Woodbridge’s new assignment at a press conference following President Oscar Arias’ weekly Cabinet meeting yesterday.

Woodbridge will have “special political power” over even the heads of government institutions to study, then eliminate their excess bureaucracy. His first stop: the National Technical Secretariat of the Environment Ministry (SETENA), where he is already working almost full-time, Vargas said.

Excess trámites at SETENA, which is charged with evaluating environmental impact studies for all development, include a central commission that sees all projects four times when one would do, according to Vargas.

“It’s really a sickness we have,” the minister said of Costa Rica’s infamous tramitología.

by Rod Hughes
So you think San Jose is expensive…
Be happy you’re not in Sao Paolo or Rio, which rate the highest in cost of living in Latin America, according to the Mercer Human Resources Consulting firm, based in Britain.
Mercer’s research people found San Jose has the fifth lowest cost of living in Latin America. If you would like to live more cheaply, you’ll have to move all the way south to Montevideo, Uruguay, or Quito, Ecuador, or Asuncion, Paraguay, the least expensive cities surveyed.
Using New York as the study base (100 points) the researchers surveyed 148 cities in the world, finding that London and Moscow are the most expensive places to hang your hat. Tokyo, for example, rated quite high at 122.1 points.
Of the 148, San Jose came in 128th in the survey, among the least expensive but not as good as Asuncion in 143rd place.

by Rod Hughes
You can add another toothpaste to your list of “don’t buys” in Costa Rica: Dentamint. The bright red and white tubes look legitimate but Nicaraguan authorities say the toothpaste is laced with the antifreeze diethylene glycol, reports the daily paper Al Dia.
Nicaraguan Health Minister Maritza Cuan yesterday confirmed to Al Dia that laboratory tests of the 145-gram tubes had turned up traces of the chemical. She said the tests had been performed on tips from health authorities in Panama and the Dominican Republic.
Already this month, 85,000 tubes of Mr. Cool and Genial toothpaste imported from mainland China have either been confiscated or voluntarily turned over to health authorities in this country. Both brands are contaminated with the industrial chemical, which can be fatal and which even in small quantities can cause damage to the central nercous system.
Local authorities had not known Dentamint was being sold here until a Cartago woman turned over a tube purchased locally.
Nor are Latin America and the Caribbean the only places plagued by toothpaste contaminated by the chemical. Yesterday the AFP news agency reported that counterfeit “Colgate” toothpaste sold in the United States may be contaminated with diethylene glyocol.
As of today, no deaths from the contaminant have been reported in Costa Rica. (See previous news story No. 1179 - )

by Rod Hughes
Despite Costa Rica’s diplomatic recognition of mainland China June 1 and the subsequent cancelation of Taiwanese aid projects in this country, the firm building the Naranjo-San Carlos highway says the construction will continue, according to the daily Al Dia. The project is important to the area for transport of agricultural produce and tourism development.
Taiwan responded on June 7 by breaking its own diplomatic ties with this country, promising to cancel a reported $70 million in soft loans and donations to Costa Rica.
But Chiang Chih-Yang, chief of the construction, said the highway, nearly 30% finished, would continue. He added that the road must be finished by April, 2010 at a total cost of $61 million, the paper reported.
Al Dia’s sources on the island nation say that Peking promised to donate to Costa Rica $130 million plus to purchase $300 million in Costa Rican bonds. Neither Peking or the Arias Administration has confirmed these figures.
Mainland China considers Taiwan a rebellious province, so Taiwan and China have been engaged in a diplomatic struggle for decades. Costa Rica’s defection leaves 24 countries that still recognise Taiwan as an independent state, half of them in Latin America and the Caribbean.

by Rod Hughes
In a drastic foreign policy turnabout, President Oscar Arias has established diplomatic relations with mainland China, ending six decades of cordial relations with Taiwan. Costa Rica has dropped out of a group of 25 countries with diplomatic ties to the island nation.
Arias made no secret that foreign trade moved him to take the step, sure to be a controversial one in Costa Rica. Mainland China has become a major market for this country as well as an important source of imported goods.
Taiwan’s relations with Costa Rica were automatically severed–China considers Taiwan a rebellious province and there is no middle ground in a choice between the two. The island nation has cancelled its cooperation projects here, ending a long string of projects that have benefitted Costa Rica, including the new bridge on the Gulf of Nicoya.
The president’s pragmatism also raises Taiwan’s fears that other Latin American nations will follow suit.
Meanwhile, the Promotion of Foreign Trade agency announced that a trade fair featuring Chinese products will be held in August in San Jose. (If this seems amazingly speedy work, one must remember that a cooperative trade agreement has existed for years with mainland China and Chinese goods have been sold here by importers for years.) The agency also said that Costa Rican products and produce will be displayed at a trade fair in the city of Canton next October.
On Saturday, the Web site of the country’s leading daily newspaper, La Nacion, contained many letters to the editor, the overwhelming majority decrying the president’s diplomatic course change. The adverse letters cited the long friendship with Taiwan and mainland China’s poor record of human rights. One invoked a spaghetti Western title, criticizing the morality of the change “for a few dollars more.”
A few echoed the president in saying that, no matter how sad it was to break old ties, one must be logical in matters of economy and pointing out that mainland China is one of the largest and fastest-growing markets in the world.