The ultra right candidate Jair Bolsonaro continued ahead of Fernando Haddad in the runoff for the Brazilian presidency scheduled to take place this Sunday, 28 October. According to the latest public opinion poll, released late Saturday, the ex Army captain and paratrooper had a 54% of valid votes support while the Workers Party hopeful stood at 46%, that is an eight points difference.
The ex Army captain Jair Bolsonaro should be the next Brazilian president taking office on January first 2019, according to last minute opinion polls
The Ibope poll which was made public Saturday 19:00 Sao Paulo time has a plus/minus two percentage points error. Valid votes exclude those blank, spoilt ballots or undecided or uncommitted voters.
The latest result, shows the mid week tendency which had Bolsonaro’s support slightly but steadily contracting while that of Haddad gaining. In effect the previous Ibope poll had Bolsonaro with 57% support and 43% for the ex mayor of Sao Paulo City.
Taking into account the whole universe of votes (voting is mandatory in Brazil), Bolsonaro’s support also tends to contract. Ibope estimates it has dropped from 50% to 47%, while Haddad has steadily climbed from 37% to 41%. Among the undecided the margin of error was more volatile closer to 3% than to 2%.
As to rejection for both candidates, the latest Ibope poll also shows some changes. Among those interviewed 39% said that under no circumstances would they vote for Bolsonaro, which represents a slight drop from the previous poll, when it stood at 40%. However in the case of Haddad the change was greater, rejection climbed from 41% to 44%.
A second last minute poll, Datafolha, with interviews collected between Friday and early Saturday, a few hours ahead of Sunday ballot day showed Bolsonaro with 55% support and Haddad 45%, with the same converging tendency.
In effect the distance between the two candidates shrank in the last two weeks, when it stood at 18 points. Considering the whole universe of votes, 8% will vote blank or spoilt while 5% remain undecided.
The Datafolha poll was contracted by the O’Globo network and Folha de Sao Paulo and interviewed 18.060 people, between Friday and Saturday with a margin error of two percentage points.
Datafolha also reflected similar degrees or rejection, 45% for Bolsonaro and 52% for Haddad, with diverging tendency.
With the electronic vote, the name of the next Brazilian president should be known no further than 20:00 hours Sao Paulo.
#NoComaCuento – Costa Rica is NOT going to ban Father’s Day or Mother’s Day, the holiday of holidays, so as not to offend the Lesbianas, Gay, Bisexual y Trans community, as it as circulated in the social networks.
Screenshot from Noti Costa Rica website
Luis Salazar, Comisionado para asuntos LGBTI de la Casa Presidencial, went to deny that this is NOT one of the plans of the government.
“Today this false news came out, to alarm the population,” he wrote.
“Mother’s Day”, August 15, is protected in the Labor Code as a mandatory holiday. Father’s Day, though not a legal holiday, has adopted the North American tradition of being celebrated on the third Sunday of June.
The fake news post generates controversy in social networks reads, “The Government of the PAC headed by Carlos Alvarado would prohibit the celebration of Mother’s and Father’s Day in Costa Rica as part of its agenda not to offend and rather ingratiate itself with the gay movement”.
The post has since been removed from Facebook.
The report does continue on the Noti Costa Rica website.
“Ninis”, young men who neither study nor work and thirsty for cash are behind the rash of assaults on retail stores during the last month. They are mainly men between 18 to 25 years old who are tempted for easy money.
“Ninis”, young men who neither study nor work, are behind the rash of attacks on retailers
They decide to steal the money by intimidating their victims with firearms. Some act alone or in groups and in some cases authorities have identified the presence of minors in the robberies.
Marco Carrión, head of the Assault section of the Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ) recommends is that retailers reduce the amount of cash. In addition, they should add security measures to deter attacks.
Security cameras can be vital in investigations, police say
Businesses such as supermarkets, bakeries and service stations, where cash is available are targeted by the ninis.
Laura Chinchilla. Former president of Costa Rica is heading the Organization of American States (OAS) overssing the Brazil presidential elections.
As head of the observer mission of the Organization of American States (OAS) in the presidential elections in Brazil, former president of Costa Rica, Laura Chinchilla (2010-2014), became one of the targets of criticism in the tense electoral environment in that South American nation.
Laura Chinchilla. Former president of Costa Rica is heading the Organization of American States (OAS) overssing the Brazil presidential elections.
The situation in Brazil, a country that is highly polarized and almost fractured in 2, is pressing.
Legislator Jair Bolsonaro, a former army captain, obtained 46.09% of the popular vote, insufficient to be elected, but with an encouraging outlook for the second round to be held this Sunday.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons for lovers of free minds, free markets, and free peoples, to be concerned about a Jair Bolsonaro presidency. Cataloged as a controversial ‘ultra-rightist’, Bolsonaro has a proposal to make weapons more flexible and has not minded basing many of his speeches on false news.
The Economist recently penned a not-quite-endorsement of Fernando Haddad. As one of the flagship publications of the global technocrat elitist center-left, it should hardly be surprising.
But their perspective on the state of affairs is rather more nuanced than saying: “Brazilians should run out and enthusiastically vote for Haddad.”
The Economist considers Haddad as “the only man who can stop Jair Bolsonaro from becoming Brazil’s president.”
Why against Chinchilla?
The former president, as head of the OAS mission, expressed her concern with the dissemination of false news about the election. A message that disturbed the followers of Bolsonaro.
“It is the first time that in a democracy we are observing the use of WhatsApp to spread false news,” Chinchilla said after holding a meeting in Sao Paulo with candidate Haddad and his team, who raised concerns about this issue.
The attacks against Chinchilla were of all kinds and swarmed in the social network such as Twitter. They broadcast images of her, from her presidential period, together with Raúl Castro and Hugo Chávez to make it look like a policy of the questioned Latin American left.
They also published photos and information of the meetings Chinchilla held with ‘Lula’ (Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva) during his tenure as president from 2003 to 2011 and even brought to light the supposed link with the failed award of a concession to the construction company OAS, a contract that cost the Costa Rican taxpayers tens of millions of dollars in penalties for breach of contract for the (not yet built) road from San Jose to San Ramon
Nearly seven out of ten employees of the Ministry of Public Education (MEP) – the majority teachers – have yet to return to work
File photo
Among the MEP employees on strike since September 10 are teachers, janitors, cooks, and administrative staff, among others,
The MEP reports the attendance report on October 25 indicates 29,501 employees are absent, compared to 12,435 who are at work despite the strike being declared illegal by the Labor Courts.
In percentages, those who have not returned to their jobs, represent 67%.
The absence of the employees has led to the closing of many schools and those open, short staffed.
This causes that a great majority of the students have completed seven weeks without classes and will little time left to catch up, as the school year winds down. The school year in Costa Rica is from February to beginning of December.
Education Minister, Édgar Mora, has insisted to the teachers who return to classes there will not be reprisals.
However, the MEP employees are heeding to the call of the union leaders to continue the strike until the appeal process is completed and return to work if and only if the illegality of the strike is confirmed.
The good news is that, according to Mora, despite a large number of employees still not showing up for work, the number of staying on strike has been decreasing every week.
During the first week of the strike, the MEP reported the absence of 38,635 employees.
“In the last week, many teachers have returned to their work under my word (of no reprisals): no one has received sanctions or retaliation for returning, to the contrary, they have been welcomed,” said the Minister.
The MEP teachers are striking against the Plan Fiscal (Tax Reform) proposed by the government and approved in the Legislative Assembly in the first debate. The bill requires a second and final reading before it can go into effect, a process that could be months away, if it gets that far.
How about staying at hotels in Costa Rica which may have an outdoor pool, a balcony overlooking the ocean, or rustic wooden bungalows, FOR FREE?
Barter Week is a new website offering free stay in B&Bs that can cost up to US$1,500 for a week or more.
All the guests have to do is perform some tasks at the ‘bed and breakfast’ accommodations to avail the free stay. Tasks may include posting pictures on Instagram, gardening and teaching the owners how to make pizza. Or make your own bartering offer. Interesting isn’t it?
How does it work? Every B&B accommodation listed on barterweek.com will host guests in exchange for goods and services on a date of your choice. Browse the photos, read the descriptions, reviews and features, see the map.
Then, check out the host’s “barter wishes” i.e. a list of goods and services he/she will accept in exchange for hospitality and then make your bartering offer through the website form. If a host doesn’t show a specific wishlist you can place any bartering offer.
While in some countries hundreds and even thousands of B&Bs are offering stays in exchange, there is only one in Costa Rica, the Villas Finca Talok eco lodge. So far.
Villas Finca Talok eco lodge, Costa RSica
Barter Week (La Settimana del Baratto in Italian) was launched in 2009 by Italian B&B bookings site bed-and-breakfast.it after the team discovered that one of the B&Bs listed on the site used to practice barter instead of normal payments for its business.
While, as the name implies, Barter Week is a week only event – this year between 19th and 25th November – many like the Finca Talok in Costa Rica, located 1 km from Playa Grande de Cauhita (Limon), barter is offered year-round.
Though there are some B&Bs participating without specifying any requests to avail free stay, tourists can still stay for free by offering a barter of their own. For example, they might like to bring wine or homemade food or perhaps teach a foreign language
So far 450 B&Bs from 60 countries have signed up to take part in the initiative.
According to Barter Week, last year the event saw over 10,000 requests and proposals listed on the site. According to data it has collected, the most commonly requested barter from B&B hosts was travel itself – with 25% of owners offering their home in exchange for a stay elsewhere. After that, B&B owners most commonly asked for home improvement help (19%) or assistance with communication and marketing (15%).
On the traveler side, the most commonly offered barter (37%) was help with communication projects – photo and video, translations or social media. After that, 14% offered to help with housework or repairs and 12% offered lessons in specialist skills, from knitting to belly dancing.
The B&Bs wanting to take part in Barter Week have to upload images and a description of their accommodation online and suggest what they would like in return for offering accommodation for free.
Editot’s note: This article is not an endorsement of the Finca Talok.
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Naira and her daughter, who are traveling with thousands of other immigrants from Central America, rest in Huixtla, Mexico, on Oct. 22, 2018. REUTERS/Adrees Latif
Roughly 5,000 people, mostly from Central America’s violent and unstable “Northern Triangle” of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras are reportedly making their way through Mexico with the intention of claiming asylum at the U.S. border. The so-called “migrant caravan” is attracting intense social and political attention, with U.S. President Donald Trump declaring it a “national emergency.” He has also claimed, erroneously, that the migrants “have to” claim asylum in Mexico first.
Migrants aren’t obligated to claim asylum in any country, but have a right to seek asylum in a country of their choosing, the right to a fair process in that country, and crucially, a right not to be sent back to a country where they will face persecution – or even death.
I’ve been working with asylum-seekers in Europe and the U.S. since 2008. Over the last decade I have witnessed firsthand the increasing pressure on the asylum system to manage complex situations at borders. The reality is that even if the migrants currently traveling through Mexico are able to claim asylum at the U.S. border – a big if, considering they are still more than 1,000 miles away – the legal path to safety is challenging.
What has always been a difficult process has been made more difficult by growing governmental and public concern that asylum-seekers are gaming the system or that asylum itself has become a backdoor route for economic migrants.
Pressures like these lead to ever-narrowing legal protections for asylum-seekers.
The asylum system is flawed, and ensuring fair access to genuine protection requires making significant improvements to the broader legal, administrative and social contexts.
The convention established five categories on which asylum claims can be based: race, nationality, religion, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.
From the beginning, however, these protection categories were political. Much like recent efforts to limit protections for those fleeing domestic or gang violence, these categories have always protected some, but not all persecuted people. For example, the 1951 convention excluded Germans expelled from Eastern Europe and those forced to flee partition of India and Pakistan.
Many of the people displaced or persecuted today also struggle to fit their experiences into the boxes created by the law. For example, despite broad global support for the rights of women and LGBTQ persons, no specific categories exist for gender or sexuality.
The 1951 Convention is not useless – far from it. However, it contributes to a legal environment in which successful asylum-seekers must have rather narrowly defined experiences in order to be protected.
The administrative process
Sandra Gutierrez, who fled from gang violence in Honduras with her family and was granted asylum by the United States in 2016, at home in Oakland. REUTERS/Stephen Lam
When a person seeks asylum – not just in the U.S., but in any country that is a party to the refugee convention – they have to prove they have been persecuted because of their race, nationality, religion, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. What’s more, they have to prove that they cannot live safely in their country of origin. Their proof depends in large part on being able to demonstrate credibility. In other words, they have to share their experiences in such a way that their claim is believed to be true and their fear of persecution is found to be genuine.
This process is made more challenging by suspicions that asylum-seekers are abusing the system. For example, in January 2018, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which manages the administrative process, changed their policy regarding interviews so that those who have claimed asylum more recently are interviewed first.
The assumption by USCIS is that newer applications are more likely to be fraudulent and quicker interviews will deter people from “using asylum backlogs solely to obtain employment authorization by filing frivolous, fraudulent or otherwise non-meritorious asylum applications.”
In the meantime, those who have been waiting years to be interviewed will wait even longer. In January 2018 more than 300,000 people were waiting. USCIS used to publish a bulletin of wait times, but discontinued it when the interviewing policy changed in January. The last published bulletin showed that, for example, people in Miami were waiting nearly four and a half years to be interviewed.
In addition to confronting suspicion that they are abusing the system, asylum-seekers face a lack of legal support for making claims, and the reality that decision-makers have a great deal of discretion in deciding their fate.
No legal representation is automatically provided for asylum-seekers. Many manage the entire process, including going before an immigration judge, entirely on their own. Unsurprisingly, those who do have an attorney are five times more likely to be granted asylum.
Research also regularly shows that the chances of being granted asylum vary considerably depending on the applicant’s nationality and the location within the U.S. where they seek asylum. In 2017, almost 90 percent of claims from Mexicans were denied, compared to only 20 percent of Chinese cases. All three Northern Triangle countries – El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala – are in the top five most frequently denied, with more than 75 percent of claims being refused. Similarly, a case is more likely to be granted in New York or San Francisco than in those courts closer to the border in Texas or Arizona.
The social context
Naira and her daughter, who are traveling with thousands of other immigrants from Central America, rest in Huixtla, Mexico, on Oct. 22, 2018. REUTERS/Adrees Latif
Lastly, asylum has in many ways become an outlet for broader social anxieties about borders, security, terrorism, economic inequality and multiculturalism. Research shows us that migrants and refugees are in fact not more likely to commit crime than citizens. Nor are they likely to be terrorists. In fact, they contribute to local economies in positive ways. But until these social attitudes and assumptions change, the prospect of there being sufficient political will to create workable legal solutions will likely remain low.
The legal and administrative frameworks can only really be addressed once adequate social and political will exists to make the kinds of changes that would support a just and humane asylum system.
This article by Abigail Stepnitz, PhD Candidate, University of California, Berkeley is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Mass shootings also took place in 25 other wealthy nations between 1983 and 2013, but the number of mass shootings in the United States far surpasses that of any other country included in the study during the same period of time.
The U.S. had 78 mass shootings during that 30-year period.
The highest number of mass shootings experienced outside the United States was in Germany – where seven shootings occurred.
In the other 24 industrialized countries taken together, 41 mass shootings took place.
In other words, the U.S. had nearly double the number of mass shootings than all other 24 countries combined in the same 30-year period.
Another significant finding is that mass shootings and gun ownership rates are highly correlated. The higher the gun ownership rate, the more a country is susceptible to experiencing mass shooting incidents. This association remains high even when the United States is withdrawn from the analysis.
Similar results have been found by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, which states that countries with higher levels of firearm ownership also have higher firearm homicide rates.
My study also shows a strong correlation between mass shooting casualties and overall death by firearms rates. However, in this last analysis, the relation seems to be mainly driven by the very high number of deaths by firearms in the United States. The relation disappears when the United States is withdrawn from the analysis.
#2: Mass shootings are more frequent
A recent study published by the Harvard Injury Control Research Center shows that the frequency of mass shooting is increasing over time. The researchers measured the increase by calculating the time between the occurrence of mass shootings. According to the research, the days separating mass shooting occurrence went from on average 200 days during the period of 1983 to 2011 to 64 days since 2011.
What is most alarming with mass shootings is the fact that this increasing trend is moving in the opposite direction of overall intentional homicide rates in the U.S., which decreased by almost 50 percent since 1993 and in Europe where intentional homicides decreased by 40 percent between 2003 and 2013.
#3: Restricting sales works
Thanks to the Second Amendment, the United States has permissive gun licensing laws. This is in contrast to most developed countries, which have restrictive laws.
According to a seminal work by criminologists George Newton and Franklin Zimring, permissive gun licensing laws refer to a system in which everyone except specially prohibited groups of persons can purchase a firearm. In such a system, an individual does not have to justify purchasing a weapon; rather, the licensing authority has the burden of proof to deny gun acquisition.
By contrast, restrictive gun licensing laws refer to a system in which individuals who want to purchase firearms must demonstrate to a licensing authority that they have valid reasons to get a gun – like using it on a shooting range or going hunting – and that they demonstrate “good character
.”
The differences between these type of gun laws have important impacts. Countries with more restrictive gun licensing laws show fewer deaths by firearms and a lower gun ownership rate.
#4: Background checks work
In most of the restrictive background checks performed in developed countries like Canada and Australia, citizens are required to train for gun handling, obtain a license for hunting or provide proof of membership to a shooting range.
Individuals must prove that they do not belong to any “prohibited group,” such as the mentally ill, criminals, children or those at high risk of committing violent crime, such as individuals with a police record of threatening the life of another.
Here’s the bottom line. With these provisions, most U.S. active shooters would have been denied the purchase of a firearm.
#5: Most mass shootings are not terrorism
Journalists sometimes describe mass shooting as a form of domestic terrorism. This connection may be misleading.
There is no doubt that mass shootings are “terrifying” and “terrorize” the community where they have happened. However, not all active shooters involved in mass shooting have a political message or cause.
For example, the church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, in June 2015 was a hate crime but was not judged by the federal government to be a terrorist act.
The majority of active shooters are linked to mental health issues, bullying and disgruntled employees. Active shooters may be motivated by a variety of personal or political motivations, usually not aimed at weakening government legitimacy. Frequent motivations are revenge or a quest for power.
Editor’s note: This piece was updated on May 18, 2018 and Oct. 2, 2017. It was originally published on Dec. 3, 2015.
This article by Frederic Lemieux, Professor of the Practice and Faculty Director of the Master’s in Applied Intelligence, Georgetown University is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Has the endemic of school shootings in the US reached Costa Rica? The private school, Lincoln School, located in Santo Domingo de Heredia, confirmed that it opened an investigation, and temporarily suspended students who threatened their classmates with a “tiroteo” (shooting).
“School shooting, tomorrow, if you do not want to see your friends die, do not go (I recommend it)”
The threath was made through a private WhatsApp group on Tuesday night (October 23). In the exchange of messages, a photograph of a gun and another of two bullets is shown and, among the texts, there is one that says: “School shooting, tomorrow, if you do not want to see your friends die, do not go (I recommend it)”.
The mother of one of the students who received those messages, reported it the same night to the school, which increased security measures and issued the following statement.
“Lincoln School acted immediately and took the necessary measures to control a situation that occurred on the night of Tuesday, October 23, when an alert was received from a mother, indicating that in a private student chat they were commenting on issues that could affect the safety of the school and its community.
“Given the nature of the matter, the Administration took additional security measures to those already in place.
“It is important to point out that there were never any students with weapons in their hands inside the school facilities. Pre-emptively, the students allegedly linked to the threat were suspended indefinitely, while an investigation is being conducted that allows us to make a complete assessment and determine the sanctions that correspond according to the regulations of Lincoln School and what the legal framework indicates,” the statement said.
The school management also issued an internal declaration guaranteeing the safety of all students and staff.
“We can assure, however, all the members of the Lincoln family, that the situation has been properly investigated and that the pertinent actions have been taken to guarantee the safety of all.” Also, the school provided parents telephone and contact emails to offer help “if any of you perceives that your son or daughter has been affected by this situation”.
The Lincoln School director, Robert Rinaldo, confirmed stricter measures have been taken including “a greater presence” of security officers of a private company in order to guarantee the protection of all students”.
Officially, the school did not disclose how many students were investigated and/or suspended due to this situation.
Photo from Lincoln School webesite
For 70 years, Lincoln School has set the standard for quality education in Costa Rica and the region. Founded in 1945 by a group of visionary Costa Rican parents and US immigrants. Lincoln is a non-profit, private educational institution offering programs from Preschool to 12th grade.
School shootings. According to studies, factors behind school shooting include family dysfunction, lack of family supervision, and mental illness. Among the topmost motives of attackers were: bullying/persecution/threatened (75%) and revenge (61%), while 54% reported having numerous reasons. The remaining motives included an attempt to solve a problem (34%), suicide or depression (27%), and seeking attention or recognition (24%). The United States has the highest number of school-related shootings. Wikipedia.
The dollar exchange continued its rise this Friday, October 26, reaching above the ¢600 barrier, with the Banco Central (Central Bank) setting the sell rate for today at ¢601.40.
“Gente Verde” sageguard the front entrance to the Banco Central (Central Bank) in downtown San Jose
The average price of the currency in the wholesale marker, Monex, where amounts are negotiated in excess of $1,000 and involving mainly financial institutions and big business, also road, reaching ¢601.25 this Friday, an increase of ¢2.32 compared to the close of the previous day.
This Friday the Central Bank did not intervene selling dollars to stabilize the market, but it did continue to sell dollars to the public sector directly, using its monetary reserves, which are the funds that the country has to face difficulties.
During this week, the price of the currency rose ¢5.98.
Economist Max Alberto Soto, former director of the Research Institute of Economic Sciences of the University of Costa Rica, explained the factor that is weighing most on the upward pressure on the price of the currency is the fiscal uncertainty.
The same opinion was expressed by the Central Bank in its commentary on the national economy in October, published this Friday.
“Although the seasonality that characterizes these months affected this behavior, the lack of a solution to the structural problem of public finances generates uncertainty among some economic agents, it is estimated an increased demand for foreign currency,” said the Central Bank.
The Central Bank reported expectations of a 4.9% increase in the price of the dollar this month; it was 4.2% in September.
Calamar, Colombia. Out Of Options, Venezuelan exiles turn to prostitution to feed their families. Back in Venezuela, they were teachers, police officers and newspaper carriers, but were forced to flee their homeland in search of work and money to survive.
But the women, without identity papers, ended up working as prostitutes in sordid bars in Colombia, saving all they can to provide for their families back home, still in the throes of economic crisis.
Mother-of-three Patricia, 30, was beaten, raped and sodomized by a drunken client — but she keeps on working in a brothel in Calamar, in the center of the country.
“There are customers who treat you badly and that is horrible,” she says. “Every day, I pray to God that they are good (to us).”
Alegria is a teacher of history and geography but in a Venezuela gripped by chronic hyperinflation, she was earning less than a dollar. Her salary was not enough “even for a packet of pasta,” the 26-year-old mother of a four-year-old boy told news agency AFP.
In the Venezuela of hyperinflation and the economic crisis, her salary of 312,000 bolivars (less than a dollar) was no longer “enough to buy some pasta,” says the 26-year-old migrant.
In February, she crossed the border into Colombia.
She initially worked for three months as a waitress in the east, a job which offered room and board, but Alegria was never paid, getting by on tips. “What I sent to my home were tips,” she says. Six people, including her four-year-old son, were relying on her.
Eventually, even those were confiscated, so Alegria made her way south to Calamar, which is located in an area scarred by decades of armed civil conflict. The region is a hub for drug-trafficking, and a bastion of dissident former FARC guerrillas.
With nine other women, Alegria — a nickname that in Spanish means ‘happiness’ she chose with irony — prostitutes herself every night in one of the bars in the tolerance zone of this dusty town of 3,000 inhabitants. Some 60 other Venezuelan women do the same work here.
Customers (johns) pay between 37,000-50,000 pesos (US$11-16 dollars), of which 7,000 is kept by the bar. On a “good night,” Alegria can earn the equivalent of between US$30 and US$100.
“It never crossed our mind to prostitute ourselves. We did it based on the crisis,” says Joli — another nickname — 35, with a choked voice. In 2016 she lost her job as a newspaper distributor in Venezuela. “There was no more paper to print them!”
Trusting her three children to her mother, she went from city to city, from one job to another. Without a passport, Joli crossed the border without a suitcase, only with the clothes she was wearing.
Joli explains she lost the man she was going to marry, the father of her children, “from renal failure, due to lack of medication”.
“Because of the crisis”
After four years of recession and years of financial mismanagement, Venezuela’s crisis has seen poverty soar as basic necessities such as food and medicine became scarce.
Inflation is set to hit a staggering 1.4 million percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which says 2019 will see that figure reach an astronomical 10 million percent.
Some 1.9 million Venezuelans have fled the crisis-ridden country since 2015, according to the United Nations (UN).
Out of options
Women like Joli, whose backs are against the wall, can’t even find work as a cleaner because of their Venezuelan accent.
In Bucaramanga (northeast), 575 kilometers from Calamar, “I saw myself between a rock and a hard place,” she says. “Because of my tone of voice, they closed the door in my face.”
After having doors closed in her face she ended up in Calamar, she opted to “sell” herself, turned to sex work. In June, her 19-year-old niece, Milagro, joined her at the brothel.
“At first I felt super bad,” says Milagro. But she persisted in the absence of a better alternative to help her brothers, her two-year-old baby and her sick mother, who later died.
Beside the financial hardships and obvious unpleasantness of the work, many women struggle with hiding the truth from their families.
“They don’t know what I do, even my mother,” admits Alegria. “It would be too difficult for her after sacrificing five years of her life to pay for my studies.”
She dreams of beaing a teacher in Colombia but without a passport, it’s impossible. So, she tells her family she works in a bakery but, is sick of lying.
Anxiety, depression, PTSD
Jhon Jaimes, an MDM psychologist, says the women suffer from “anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder.” Their fear of the armed men in the region is very real. On top of that, the tropical climate exposes them to infections such as dengue and malaria.
Then there are sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies that result when clients refuse to wear condoms.
At the Doctors of the World (MDM) hospital in Calamar, a doctor treats them, fits them with birth control implants and offers advice. MDM gives them food, hygiene products and contraceptives. Some break down in tears.
It’s an unforgiving life, but one not entirely without hope.
Escape
Former police officer Pamela, 20, went to San Jose del Guaviare, a three-hour drive from Calamar, for an abortion and managed to continue on to the greater Bogota area.
She now works as a waitress for US$10 a day — only 10 percent of what she could make in the brothel, but one she prefers over in Calamar, where she was basically her pimp’s property.
“This guy lied to us,” she says ruefully.
Milagro has also found a way out, in the form of a pilot she is now dating. Mother-of-four Alejandra, 37, says she isn’t looking for a husband. “One man isn’t enough. I need a lot to feed the little ones,” she says.
Her youngest child, just two months old, was fathered by a client.
Carlos Benavides, leader of the PLN legislative caucus
As the strike by Costa Rica’s on strike, now in its seventh week, and given the failure of the administration of Carlos Alvarado to end the strike, a group of 31 legislators have signed a bill to dock wages for employees on strikes deemed illegal.
Carlos Benavides (in red tie), leader of the PLN legislative caucus
The leader of the Partido Liberación Nacional (PLN) legislative bench, Carlos Ricardo Benavides, presented on Thursday a bill to facilitate the application of sanctions to people who participate in illegal strikes, as well as those who commit abuses such as blocking roads or sabotage public facilities.
The initiative was signed by legislators of the PLN, Partido Acción Ciudadana (PAC), Partido Unidad Social Cristiana (PUSC), the Partido Republicano Social Cristiano (PRSC) and independents Erick Rodríguez, Jonathan Prendas and Ivonne Acuña (the latter two with the Partido National Restoration until earlier this week).
The current legislation allows the application of dismissals and administrative sanctions to employees who participate in illegal strikes. However, Labor Court judges have said that wage cuts, for example, can only be applied once the strike is declared illegal and if the strikers do not return to work within 24 hours.
This happened, for example, in the Municipality of Santa Ana. Although the strike began on September 10 and the strike was declared illegal on October 16, the city council could not dock the wages of the strikers for the 37 days they did not work, since the workers returned to their jobs within the 24 hours.
Labor judges argued that articles 379 and 385 of the Código Procesal Laboral (Labor Procedure Code) prevent retroactive deductions.
The Benavides bill proposes that dismissals be for those who do not return to their positions and administrative sanctions after an illegal strike is declared firm by the courts, and that the reduction of wages is calculated from the moment the employer files the court action to have the strike declared illegal, which as we have learned during this strike, can take weeks.
For example, in the current strike, of the 32 filings for illegality, more than a dozen still remain without a resolution.
The bill also establishes sanctions for behaviors that are not currently provided for in the Labor Procedure Code.
For example, it introduces as a cause of sanction to trade union organizations who incite their members to commit acts contrary to the law, such as “the sabotage of public goods or the blockades on highways”.
Benavides explained the labor courts could also order the dissolution of unions without verifying that they incited or organized such acts.
“There has been a complete disappointment with the strikes that have happened in the last weeks or months,” he said.
These are some of the reforms proposed by the Benavides initiative:
The unions are obliged to inform the Judiciary and the Ministry of Labor of an email to receive notifications.
The reduction of wages for time not worked, in case of strikes declared illegal, will be retroactive to the request of the declaration of illegality by the employer.
Establish that the notification of the declaration of illegality will be made by the electronic means registered before the Judicial Power.
The term to appeal a declaration of illegality of a strike in essential services will be 48 hours and the resolution must be issued in three calendar days.
The Labor Courts may order the dissolution of unions if it is proved in court that they organized or incited their members to block streets or sabotage public property, as well as carry out any illegal criminal conduct.
The strike in essential services is illegal and does not require the qualification process foreseen in the Labor Code. The employer can ask the Labor Court of San Jose to issue an order to workers to return to work immediately.
If employer and employees can not reach an agreement eight days after a strike has been declared legal, the employer may request the judge to suspend the strike if it is proven that the damage is difficult or impossible to repair.
One of the main reasons strikes in Costa Rica can last is the current legislation does not include the mechanism for expeditious notifications.
The example is in the case of the teachers on strike, perhaps the largest block of the public sector striking against the government’s tax reforms. Though the strike has been declared illegal, the notification and appeals process that will take weeks means striking teachers can continue to picket and even take vacations (as some have been confirmed to have done), collect their paycheck on the 15th and 30th as usual and then for those who do head back to work within the 24 hours established by the Labor Courts, all is back to normal. No wages docked, no reprisals of dismissals
More than six tons of cocaine hidden in a shipment of bananas from Costa Rica were confiscated in Spain, hidden among bunches of bananas at an industrial estate in Malaga and arrested 16 people in connection to a suspected drugs ring, Spanish police said in a statement on Thursday.
According to information published by Spain’s newspaper El País, the product came from Puerto Limón. The suspects were smuggling drugs from Latin America via a company based in Badajoz, Extremadura, dedicated to importing large quantities of bananas and other fruit from Costa Rica.
The report said the company “sent and received up to 70 containers with fresh product in recent months.
???? Intervenidas más de 6 toneladas de cocaína ocultas en un cargamento de bananas???? en un polígono industrial de #Málaga.
Detenidas 16 personas e intervenidos 300.000€, armas de fuego, vehículos de alta gama y abundante documentación.#Estamosportipic.twitter.com/njyW6kYYo0
The investigation into the drugs ring lasted for almost a year and also involved Portuguese and U.S. officials, it said. “After a follow-up of almost a year, agents of the Guarda Civil and the Policía Nacional made the arrests on Tuesday and seized 6,310 kilograms of cocaine (…) It is one of the largest caches of this drug ever apprehended on land in Europe and whose market value could have exceeded 1 billion euros (US$1.15 billion),” said the Spanish newspaper.
The criminal group used a company that imported fruit from Costa Rica as a front for their operations, authorities said. The cocaine was hidden among the boxes of bananas that arrived at the port of Setúbal, in Portugal, and was transported by truck to Málaga, Andalusia, to the south of Spain.
The police operation allowed to dismantle a network of drug traffickers constituted “by well-known Dutch criminals settled in the Costa del Sol”, in the Spanish south, specialists in introducing cocaine to Spain and Holland, according to the police statement.
Some of them were considered “priority targets” authorities in the Netherlands. The drug arrived in Spain “hidden in a shipment of bananas,” the police explained, without giving further details.
“Those arrested hid their drug trafficking activities in a company that imports large quantities of fruit from Costa Rica,” he added.
Through a communiqué, Costa Rica’s Corporación Bananera Nacional (Corbana) – National Banana Corporation – regretted the event, although it said it was unaware of more information about the case.
“Banana producers have always been in the best position to support the authorities to clarify any situation related to drug trafficking in the containers that transport fruit,” the organization said.
According to Corbana general manager, Jorge Sauma, in the process of exporting bananas, very strict security protocols and controls are followed. “Regrettably, we see the need to double the measures with the Ministry of Security and the producers,” Sauma added.
Hiding drug in shipments of bananas is a habitual practice of drug traffickers. In May 2017, more than one ton of cocaine was seized in Colombia, concealed in a container with fruit, when it was to be exported to Europe.
‘Overwhelming’ Amount
Costa Rica’s Minister of Public Security, Michael Soto, said through a video that the Spanish authorities had informed them of the seizure before it became public news.
Although he acknowledges that the drug came from Limón, according to the information, Soto said that it is not clear that the fruit is from Costa Rica.
Costa Rica’s Puerto Limon is a transit port. “What we are trying to establish, in conjunction with them (Spanish police), is if that container came in transit through the country,” according to the research they developed for more than a year, establishing that other containers with a similar product had also been seized from countries in South America, such as Colombia.
“It’s a pretty elaborate network. The research, in coordination with countries such as Portugal, Spain and the United States, today gives this important and positive results,” he said.
According to Solo, the “overwhelming amount of cocaine” shows that there is overproduction, in South America, as they have warned.
In Costa Rica, Soto recalled, 28 tons have been confiscated so far this year and he estimates that more will arrive before the end of the year, reaching “historical records”.
Also in pineapple
Months ago, pineapple producers recognized the concern for the constant drug discoveries in Costa Rican pineapple that occurred in Europe and the United States.
Abel Chaves, president of the Cámara Nacional de Productores y Exportadores de Piña (Canapep) – National Chamber of Producers and Exporters of Pineapple – emphasized the damage caused by these criminal acts in the image of the Tico product.
In August a total of 245 kilos of the drug was detected in three shipments arriving at ports in the United States and Spain. Another shipment was destined for Ireland.
“The damage they are doing not only to the country because of the image, but also to the sector is big”, Chaves said at that time.
Costa Rica is great for nature enthusiasts wanting to indulge in a little monkey business. The Central American country, a pioneer in the ecotourism movement, is home to different types of monkeys, a Toronto audience was told Wednesday.
Costa Rica Lapas Tucan Birds. Of the 42 tucan species in Latin America, six are found in the lowlands and rainforests of Costa Rica.
And, Costa Rican tour guide Michel Aranda continued, Costa Rica also provides a haven for some 922 bird species that include different types of toucans and macaws. “All of Europe doesn’t have this amount of birds,” he said.
Where can you see birds in Costa Rica?
Top 5 Spots in Costa Rica for Bird Watchers:
A pair of Scarlet Macaws (Ara macao) in Palo Verde National.
Beautiful Hummingbird at Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve.
Male Quetzal spotted in Los Quetzales National Park.
Keel Billed Toucan preparing to fly on forest.
Northern Jacana in Caño Negro Wildlife Refuge.
Other exotic creatures that Aranda noted are found in Costa Rica include the red-eyed tree fog, which has green skin and distinctive large, bright-red eyes; five of the world’s seven sea turtle species; and some large members of the cat family as “the North American puma met the South American jaguar in Costa Rica.”
Aranda said Costa Rica has a greatly disproportionate amount of the world’s biodiversity and has set aside a large amount of its territory to protect wildlife.
He added his homeland – which gave the world the likes of ziplines – is easily able to accommodate adventure-seekers, with whitewater rafting being one option. Adventurous sorts needn’t be concerned about their safety, he said. “We do worry 300% about your security.”
The tropical country’s landscapes include active volcanoes and among particularly dramatic sights is interior Costa Rica’s Celeste River, famed for the bright blue hue of its water. Costa Ricans say that, “God painted the skies and then cleaned his brush in this river,” Aranda said of the shade of water.
Temperatures shift little throughout the year in Costa Rica because of its location. The country does have a rainy season, but Aranda said “one word can change all” that – green. A country with huge tracts of rainforest looks particularly green during the raining season, he continued.
Although Costa Rica first established itself on the tourist map by promoting its natural side, the country’s northwest coast has large resorts now that attract beach enthusiasts.
Air Canada, WestJet and Sunwing are among the options with direct fligths for those wanting to get to Costa Rica.
A new audio from Bishop Silvio Báez, a member of the Conferencia Episcopal de Nicaragua (Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua), confirms that he and other members of the Catholic hierarchy conspired and encouraged the social chaos to destabilize the people of Nicaragua, reports Nicaragua’s official media, El19digital.com.
The official media, El19digital.com, says a new audio from Bishop Silvio Báez, a member of the Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua, confirms that he and other members of the Catholic hierarchy conspired and encouraged the social chaos to destabilize the people of Nicaragua.
The official report says in the new audio, Báez expresses himself with abundant disqualifications against President Daniel Ortega, Chancellor Denis Moncada, and the presidents of Venezuela and Bolivia. In addition, it makes clear the intentions of the plan orchestrated by terrorists, hit institutions like the Army of Nicaragua.
The bishop says that “if we do not want war, the only solution is to make him (Ortega) see, make this imbecile understand, that the only solution is for the people to decide with their vote. Instead of all of us Nicaraguans take to the gun, that we take (vote) in the next elections, that I hope they will take place and soon”.
The El19digital says the audio it is clear that the tranques (barricades) were a pressure to force the government to dialogue and give in to the requests of the coup and terrorist groups and in the same audio, he (Baez) talks about the participation of the United States.
The official media blames the crisis, a crisis created by the opposition in Nicaragua.
The message by E19digital explains the bishop is seeing the interference of the U.S. as a way of the Ortega administration not be able to touch the ‘riales’ (money), that will weaken him enormously. And according to Beaz, there are other bishops of the Episcopal Conference plotting against the government.
The E19digital claims that Báez also spoke out against the leaders of Venezuela and Bolivia, calling them stupid.
“It’s the three. (The leaders of) Bolivia, Venezuela and Nicaragua, three stupid people. The rest are people who are educated, they are people … because they have to make economic decisions, they have to know how society works politically, they have to know many things … “, said the bishop.
What happened on that fateful day, Saturday, October 20, 2018, when five people died – four tourists and a guide – while white water rafting accident during a bachelor party. The accident occurred near Quepos, on Costa Rica’s Central Pacific coast.
In the accident four Florida men, Ernesto Sierra, Jorge Caso, Sergio Lorenzo and Andres Dennis died. Local guide Kevin Thompson Reid also died in the accident
The four were part of a group of 14 taking part in the bachelor party for Lorenzo’s brother Luis Beltran, when they set off down the Naranjo river at 3 pm. After experiencing a delay of almost an hour by rain and wind, they were confident it would be safe when they got in the water.
Andres Denis
Sergio Lorenzo
Ernesto Sierra
Jorge Caso
Local Kevin Thompson Reid
But, within five minutes in the water, all three rafts capsized and all were in the water. Ten managed to grab on to rocks and save themselves but four did not.
It took rescue teams hours to recover all of their bodies, the last after 9 pm.
On the GoFundme.com, the fundraiser page by Anthony Castro, that has raised (as of this morning) US$66,000 of the US$100,000 target, the group described fighting for their lives as the waters carried them out of their rafts.
From GoFundeMe.com
“We’ve all been friends for many years and we knew we wanted to do something special for our friend before his wedding. We planned a few activities, one of them being a white water rafting tour on the Saturday of our trip.
“When we first arrived, it was windy and raining, and the professional tour guides advised that we wait a bit before going out on the water. Less than an hour later, we got the okay to head out, and the 14 of us separated onto 3 different rafts. Within five minutes of being out on the river, all three rafts capsized, and everyone ended up in the water.
“Everyone struggled to get back on the rafts, with some efforts being successful, but ultimately the rafts continued to capsize due to the immense current. Within minutes, all of us were careening down the river with life jackets and helmets just trying to stabilize and find something to hold on to.
“Throughout the dangerous ride down the river, all of us struggled to stay above water, swallowing lots of it on the way down as our bodies ricocheted against the rocks in the water while struggling to survive. Most of us were ultimately able to grab hold of rocks or barriers in or around the water and await the rescue teams to get to us. Unfortunately, not all of us were so lucky. Four of our dear friends drowned in those waters.
“Luis, the man we hoped to celebrate all weekend, lost a brother and we all lost four great friends during this vacation which went horribly wrong.”
On Sunday, the Organismo de Investigacion Judicial (OIJ) raided the offices of the rafting company located in Quepos and are continuing their investigation into the accident.
The surviving group said they created the GoFundMe page to help raise money for the families of their friends, to alleviate costs for funeral and memorial expenses.
“They all had so much life left to live as sons, brothers, fathers, cousins, and friends before this devastating tragedy occurred.”
The government of Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, last week, before an international stage, on Friday, accused the Costa Rican government of “many dead” during the ongoing strike by public sector workers against the Plan Fiscal (tax reform) and incurring “massive human rights violations” during the protests by Costa Rica’s public sector employees.
The blue morpho butterfly’s iridescent colours glisten as it effortlessly swoops through the air, the howler monkeys chatter fills the high canopy of trees and the crocodile blends into the stream so well, you’d be forgiven for missing him.
It’s easy to see Scarlet Macaws in Corcovado National Park. Sharon Lindores / National Post.
This is Costa Rica’s Corcovado National Park — one of the world’s most biodiverse regions — and as in much of the country, nestled between Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the south, the Caribbean to the east and the Pacific to the west, nature’s abundance is captivating and inescapable.
Costa Rica means rich coast. And the nation of 50,000-square-feet boasts of an explosion of life. About 40 per cent of the land is protected (roughly 27 per cent by the government and 10 per cent privately), as are all of the animals, islands and rivers. The country, encompassing 12 climatic zones, is blessed with everything from mountains to mangroves.
Walking through the national park, Tony Jimenez Rogas, a guide with Aguila de Osa who’s been coming to the reserve on the Osa Peninsula in the country’s southwest for more than 40 years, points out brightly-coloured scarlet macaws, brown boobies and brown pelicans.
There are about 300 types of birds, 36 kinds of bats and four species of cats — jaguars, ocelots, pumas and margays — in the undisturbed 424-square-kilometre park, which is the last remaining large and sustainable lowland tropical rainforest in Central America.
We hike from the San Pedrillo Ranger Station to the Casa Corcovado Jungle Lodge (just outside of the park) and back for a break with some mouth-wateringly good, fresh pineapple, papaya and watermelon.
Itís beautiful to walk through the rainforest in Osa Peninsula. Sharon Lindores/National Post
Old-growth rainforest
And then we set off in the other direction, passing the aforementioned crocodile, wading through a stream and trudging through old-growth rainforest to the beautiful San Pedrillo Waterfall — which cascades down a slope in two areas before flowing into a fantastic natural swimming hole.
It doesn’t take long for my group of seven to wade in, swim around and enjoy the refreshing pool. We take turns swinging like Tarzan from the Ficus vines, swim hard against the current to reach the falls, and once there clutch the rocks and then duck behind the chutes for the sheer exhilaration.
The rush of water, the lush rainforest and the joy of seeing wildlife in a vast, natural habitat really casts a spell.
And it stays with me. Like tuning into a certain frequency — the acute appreciation and respect for the natural world took centre stage and remained thus throughout my trip.
The next day, I’m in a small boat on the choppy Pacific Ocean looking at lightning bolts ahead of me and wondering if diving in this weather is really such a good idea. The dive-master Jean-Paul Arana, from Costa Rica Adventure Divers, assures me the storm is a ways off and that we’ll be fine.
Thankfully, the storm stops before we back roll off the boat and go underwater by Cano Island, one of the best snorkelling and diving sites in the country.
La Paloma Lodge is on the beautiful and remote Osa Peninsula. Sharon Lindores/National Post
Turtles, lobsters and more
We are rewarded by seeing two huge turtles, a cluster of rock lobsters and numerous tropical fish. A few small schools of fish swim past us and the coral appears to be in decent shape.
But the highlight is swimming with five white tip sharks who seem to be play fighting. I later learn from Arana that it was in fact four males trying to mate with a female — who was having none of it.
When we surface after our second dive and get back on board we see a humpback whale breaching a short distance in front of the boat.
Full disclosure: I think the underwater world is amazing and I’m happy to see monkeys, birds and the like, however I’ve never been much of a fan of insects and rodents.
But a night hike, with Tracie Stice and Gianfranco Gomez, by Drake Bay on the peninsula changes all that. Seeing and learning more about the critters makes them much more interesting. And as most tropical insects and mammals are nocturnal — there’s simply more to see when it’s dark outside.
Stice points out a golden orb spider — which NASA has shown can adapt to the weightless environment of outer space and weave webs there. Our group also sees a Spirostreptid millipede and Stice explains that some millipedes have toxins, which monkeys use as insect repellent. And on the mammal front, we see a woolly opossum that literally stops in its tracks when it hears Gomez trill out “ch-ch-ch,” capturing the little creature’s attention.
It all reinforces the idea that nature is indeed amazing, as Juvenal Acuna, my naturalist guide throughout my trip, often says.
And in a country like Costa Rica, it’s difficult to disagree.
From the Osa Peninsula, we take a boat across part of the Pacific Ocean and through some mangroves to the town of Sierpe — where we stop to admire some of the mysterious stone spheres, thought to date back to 300 BC to 300 AD, at the Unesco World Heritage Finca 6 archeological site.
And from there we set off on a road trip across the Terraba River, the biggest in the area, and over the Talamanca Mountain Range — where you can find the Cerro Chirripo Mountain, which at 3,900 metres above sea level is the highest in the country. Acuna points it out as we take the route up the Cero de la Muerte (also known as the mountain of death, which at 3,700 metres is the third highest in the country.) The name is slightly disconcerting, but Acuna assures me it got the moniker many years ago when the Spanish came this way and many of them died of cold at the top.
En route, we pass through rainforest, into the cloud forest and eventually into elfin forest. Acuna explains how different crops grow at the various heights (we pass pineapple fields, sugar cane crops and Arabica coffee plantations) and he points out that the trees become shorter the higher up we go.
“Nature is amazing, it always finds a way to grow,” Acuna says, adding that the country’s lucky to have rich soil thanks to its 112 volcanoes. More than half of them are dormant, but two in the central valley are active — the Turrialba Volcano and the Poas (which is the second-largest active crater in the world).
Costa Rica’s top crops are Arabica coffee, bananas and pineapples. In terms of industry, agriculture ranks third for the country, after tourism and technology respectively.
About 4.9 million people live in the democratic republic, which is known as a world leader in environmental conservation. Almost all of the country’s energy (97 per cent) is produced from nature and the recently elected President Carlos Alvardo Quesada announced a plan to make it the first carbon-neutral nation in the world by 2021 — when the country will mark the 200th anniversary of its independence. (Interestingly, Costa Rica abolished its army in 1948 — choosing to use the money for healthcare, education and a social safety net. And it ranked No. 12 in the world for happiness, according to the 2017 World Happiness Index.)
Indeed most of the people I meet on the trip seem to be happy, peaceful and proud of their country.
And in Turrialba Valley, about 70 kilometres east of the capital San Jose, they’re also energetic. This is a centre for adventure activities.
The Pacuare River is known for its fast Class III and IV white-water rapids. This, along with the lush, tropical rainforest on either side of the 108-kilometre river led National Geographic to call it one of the top-10 river trips in the world.
I join five others visiting from France and Spain and our expert Explornatura guide Jorge Segura, who steers our raft and is so adept at reading the river he can call out commands faster than the river surges as we alternately get thrown about the rapids and then peacefully glide along the water.
White-water rapids
Luckily, we’re also accompanied by a couple of kayakers in case someone gets thrown overboard, or loses a paddle. Indeed both of these things happen (a number of times), which adds to the adrenaline rush, the laughter and the vibrancy of totally living in the moment.
Segura and both the kayakers have all competed internationally in kayak events and riding the river seems like it’s second nature to them. It leaves the rest of us with an exhilarating thrill that lingers after we disembark.
With the rapids still racing through me I opt for more of a relaxed activity the next day and go for a bike tour through the CATIE botanical garden. I see cows, coffee and cocoa plants along the way and learn how this international research and education centre helps promote sustainable growth in Latin America and the Caribbean. The large site, which has about 4,400 species of plants from all over the world, is an oasis of green and also home to a forest seed bank.
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Explornatura’s Mario Ramirez, aka Super Mario, leads my group of five adults and four children as we whiz through the treetops on five different zip-lines, cross a balance beam of a hanging bridge, and canyon down three different waterfalls.
The latter is the most challenging — loosening the rope on the harness, while finding my footing against the rock face and being soaked by the cool waterfall at the same time definitely takes a bit of co-ordination and adds to a bizarre sense of accomplishment afterwards.
But there’s more to it than the adrenaline kick — just being surrounded and immersed in the rainforest again is an extraordinary experience. It’s no wonder so much wildlife calls this natural haven home.
The writer Sharon Lindores was a guest of the Costa Rica Tourism Board (ICT) and first pulished at the National Post
The Ministry of Education (MEP) is looking to sanction striking teachers who used the time to vacationing abroad instead of being on the “picket line”.
The Nicaraguan man who killed his signicant other in Costa Rica was arrested, tried and convicted in his home country after 3 years as a fugutive
After three years on the lam, a Nicaraguan man was arrested and convicted in his country for murdering his significant other in the Guanacaste town of Filadeldia, in Costa Rica.
The Nicaraguan man identified as Misael García Calero who killed his signicant other in Costa Rica was arrested, tried and convicted in his home country after 3 years as a fugutive
The man was identified as Misael García Calero, sought by Santa Cruz authorities for the murder of 38-year-old Patricia Quiñones Acuña, on September 19, 2015, in the house where they lived together.
García killed his live-in partner with a hammer and then fled to Nicaragua, his native country.
After almost three years on the run, on January 25 of this year, García was captured in San Pedro de La Paz, in the Carazo department of Nicaragua, according to prosecutor Manrique Morales of the Santa Cruz district attorney’s office.
And on October 1, in an abbreviated trial, in a Nicaraguan court, Garcia pleaded guilty to the murder of his partner. He is now awaiting sentencing.
The prosecutor stresses that with this arrest and conviction of Garcia they bring some peace to the family of the victim.
But this is not the first time a foreigner commits a crime in Costa Rica and then flees the jurisdiction. Some get away with it, Nicaraguans, for the most part, don’t.
Nicaragua does not permit the extradition of its citizens, it does, however, try its own for crimes committed abroad.
Nicaraguan justice is quicker, arrest, trial, and conviction taking months instead of years as in the case in Costa Rica.
In July 2016, the “Matapalo Monster” accused of murdering an entire family in Guanacaste in February of that year, who fled to Nicaragua, was convicted there to 183 years in prison.
According to sources who spoke to the Q, Nicaraguans don’t necessarily run back home to avoid paying the price for their crimes, rather they prefer, if and when caught, to be tried at home and serve out their time in a Nicaragua than in the Costa Rica prison system.
More cases of femicide
Increase in femicides has Costa Rican authorities worried
Authorities in Costa Rica are concerned on the rise in femicides in the country. So far this year there have been 18 femicides, while in 2016 and 2017 there were 26 cases in each year.
In the last week alone three women were died at the hands of their significant others, in Rita de Pococí, Grecia and Cariblanco de Sarapiquí.
In the Cariblanco case, a man identified by his last name Pérez, a 31-year-old handyman, is alleged to have killed his wife, Marili Catalina Rojas Jiménez, 44 years of age, stabbing her in the neck on Sunday.
He fled to Nicaragua.
On Tuesday, the Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ) confirmed Nicaraguan police detained Perez in the Leon department on Monday
Kevin Thompson Reid, the guide who died in a raft accident on Saturday in Quepos, was not registered with the Costa Rican Institute of Tourism (ICT), according to the ICT director of Tourism Management, Gustavo Alvarado.
Image for illustrative purposes
Thompson Reid, 45, worked for the company Quepoa Expeditions, which organized the rafting adventure in which he and four American tourists died.
Tourism companies are required to have accredited guides to operate, according to the “Operación de Actividades de Turismo de Aventura” (Regulation for the Operation of Adventure Tourism Activities).
Failure to comply with this rule, are subject to Article 355 of the Ley General de Salud (General Health Law), which could involve the closure of the business and the cancellation of their permits.
In the water accident that occurred on Saturday, October, 20, the three rafts, carried 14 tourists from Florida and three guides, overturned into the swollen river.
In addition to Thompson, Ernesto Sierra, Jorge Caso, Sergio Lorenzo, and Andres Denis, all from Florida and between 25 and 35 years old, also died in the accident.
The tourists had arrived in Costa Rica on October 18 for the bachelor party of Luis Beltrán, who survived the accident.
The ICT reported that the relatives of the four deceased foreigners have already arrived in the country.
Meanwhile, the office of Quepoa Expeditions was raided on Sunday by theOrganismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ), investigating the role of the tour operator in the accident.
OIJ investigative officer, Elioth Barquero, confirmed that on Monday the Fiscalia (Public Prosecutor’s Office) compiled the testimonies of the surviving tourists before they left the country.
The company organizing the tour has the permission of the Ministry of Health, but not with the ICT Tourist Declaration, a non-mandatory accreditation to verify that companies have up-to-date insurance policies and high-quality services.
Tourism reaction
Rafael Gallo, founder of Rios Tropicales and honorary president of the Asociacion Deportiva de Aventura y Remo, Costa Rica (Costa Rican Rafting Association), warned that in 2002 a “price war” began that deteriorated the safety offered by rafting operators.
Image for illustrative purposes
“Rafting at great discount prices does not allow any operator to reinvest any profit in continuous staff training or the purchase of more sophisticated equipment. Rather, it causes the entry of low-cost equipment and the investment in human training is reduced to having guides ‘quickly’, with less experience and little training,” Gallo said in a letter published on social networks.
The incident on Saturday “is not only a cause of strong pain, but it will also be a reason to question an activity that millions of people enjoy pleasingly around the world,” he said.
For its part, the Costa Rican Association of Tourism Guides said that the hiring of non-accredited guides “in addition to being illegal”, exposes tourists to situations where it is impossible to confirm whether they have the proper preparation for professional practice.
The Ministry of Health, the Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social (CCSS) and the National Animal Health Service (SENASA) confirmed a case of human rabies.
Image for illustrative purposes
The patient is a man bitten while handing a bat last August 15, when he was on a walk in the canton of Dota.
After the bite, the man did not go to any medical center but proceeded to clean the wound.
According to the CCSS, for several weeks the man showed no symptoms. However, he went to a medical center after feeling pain in his upper left limb, numbness in both hands, muscle weakness, symptoms of malaise, disorientation, as well as difficulty swallowing.
Currently, the patient is in the Intensive Care Unit on life support. The name of the man or the medical center was not released to the press.
Daniel Salas, director of Epidemiological Surveillance of the Ministry of Health, explained this is an isolated case while calling on the population not to approach or provoke wild animals and in case of being bitten immediately go to the closest health center.
Is Rabies Really 100% Fatal?
Rabies is a viral disease that causes inflammation of the brain in humans and other mammals. … It is spread when an infected animal scratches or bites another animal or human. Saliva from an infected animal can also transmit rabies if the saliva comes into contact with the eyes, mouth, or nose.
Rabies is an acute viral infection caused by a virus that mainly attacks the central nervous system, causing a progressive viral encephalomyelitis almost always fatal; Transmission is usually through saliva from the bite of an infected animal, where the virus of saliva passes to the wound.
New research has shown that humans may be able to survive Rabies without vaccination or treatment after all. Even in animals who carry Rabies the virus isn´t completely fatal; 14% of dogs survive. Bats can survive too.
It affects both humans and warm-blooded animals more often than dogs and cats, it also affects wild animals such as bats, coyotes, wolves, and foxes.
The first symptoms can appear from a few days to more than a year after the bite occurs. One of the most distinctive signs of a rabies infection is a tingling or twitching sensation around the area of the animal bite. It is often accompanied by a fever, headache, muscle aches, loss of appetite, nausea, and fatigue.
Rabies in Costa Rica
Costa Rica health authorities ask to vaccinate cats and dogs since they could be bitten by bats and pass rabies to humans.
In Costa Rica, there has not been a case of rabies since 2014, according to a press release by the CCSS, when a 9-year-old boy and resident of Palmar Norte died of rabies, after, apparently, bitten by an infected squirrel.
He would have been president, today he is without a party. Tomorrow he will have a new one. Fabricio Alvarado, presidential candidate in 2018, announced Tuesday his resignation from the Partido Restauración Nacional (PRN), a party he claims it does not welcome him, to form a new party, Partido Nueva República (PNR) – New Republic.
Joining Alvarado were seven legislators – Ivonne Acuña Cabrera, Jonathan Prendas Rodríguez, Carmen Chan Mora, Ignacio Alpiza Castro, Harllam Hoepelman Páez, Floria Segreda Sagot and Marulin Azofeifa Trejos – who also quit the PRN legislative block to join the new party that aims to take elect a president in 2022.
Through his official Facebook page Fabricio Alvarado announced the news and launched strong statements against the PRN.
“I’m leaving because I can not be in a political party where I’m not welcome, a party where I had the intention to contribute, add and grow, but whose leadership misunderstood and saw it as a threat to their interests, a party where their leadership falsely accuses its members and it hurts people who worked with a strong will and an iron conviction” said the former presidential candidate and journalist.
Fabricio assures that he leaves the party in peace.
“I will not surrender and I will continue working for Costa Rica, with courage and without greed or selfishness, I decided to found a new political movement that represents the ideals of the thousands of Costa Ricans who struggle to solve their problems, asking everyone to help, to all that one day they believed, we invite them to continue marching to bring back values and productivity,” he said.
Fabricio also launched strong criticisms against the corrupt and mentioned that he will not let them steal more from Costa Ricans.
“I am leaving and leave behind a political party whose members will have to ask for an accounting on the administration more than ¢3 billion colones left for the disposition of the party. Everything will come to light,” he said.
“We will build a new patriotic movement, people who are not married to a political party but a dream, the dream that we will become again the Switzerland of Central America,” he concluded.
In the 2018 presidential election, Fabricio Alvarado ran neck-in-neck with rival Carlos Alvarado (no relation), forcing a run-off section election, losing in the final vote.
At least 30,000 Nicaraguans have entered Costa Rica in the last six months, fleeing violence and police persecution in their country, according to official data from the Costa Rican government.
The director of Costa Rica’s immigration service, Raquel Vargas, said on Sunday that the number of Nicaraguans who have fled to Costa Rica in the past six months is of no less than 30,000.
At least 30,000 Nicaraguans have fled Costa Rica in the last six months, fleeing violence and police persecution in their country, according to official data from Costa Rica’s immigration service.
Vargas said they are seeking refuge from the violence and persecution in their home country, a result of the socio-political crisis that began mid-April.
Vargas make the on the “Esta Semana” television show, broadcast by the privately-owned Channel 12 in Managua.
She acknowledged that not all the Nicaraguans arriving in Costa Rica are seeking refugee status, of the estimated 30,000 around 23,000 have requested to be treated as refugees. Of that total, more than 17,000 already have their provisional card which allows them to have legal permanence in Costa Rica.
Raquel Vargas, director of Costa Roca’s immigration service, the Dirección General de Migración y Extranjería (DGME)
The immigration director explained that the Nicaraguan refugees reached Costa Rica by airplane and also through the “blind spots” along the common land border.
Vargas added that country is able to manage the mass migration thanks to a comprehensive plan which involves 33 public institutions, a plan developed after the arrival of 8,000 Cubans and almost 3.000 Africans in 2015 and 2016 on their way to the United States.
The peak month for Nicaraguan refugee claims, according to immigration records, was July with more than 5,000 arriving that month alone. The massive refugee claims began in June when the number of requests went from less than 100 to more than 3,300 that month.
The Costa Rican government has two main immigration centers for Nicaraguans, one in the North, in the area of La Cruz, near the Peñas Blancas land border with Nicaragua and one in the South, near the Paso Canoas border with Panama.
Photo from https://www.local10.com/news/international/4-miami-area-tourists-killed-in-rafting-accident-in-costa-rica
“My knees tremble, my heart barely beats and my hands and feet are cold. But my son is alive,” were words are of Belen Valladares, the mother of one of the tourists who survived a rafting accident in Quepos on Saturday.
Photo from www.Local10.com
Four American tourists and a guide died after the rafts were overturned in the Naranjo River, in the town of Naranjito, in Quepos.
Thirteen others survived the water accident, 10 were tourists and 3 tour guides.
Valladares says that, according to her son, water was rushing down from the mountains while they were on the tour. She still did not have all the details, but she knew that her son was alive, with only a few scrapes on his back.
“All the rafts overturned, one or two, all. She caught them by surprise,” the woman posted in a Facebook comment. “It leads me to believe that the tour should not have occurred because the conditions were clearly not safe.”
According to the report by authorities, all the rafts capsized in the rough water and everyone was dumped into the water and that the weather is to blame.
The Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ) detailed that the visitors who perished in the accident were between 25 and 35 years old and had arrived in Costa Rica on October 18 as part of a group — alumni of Christopher Columbus High School — visiting the country to celebrate the bachelor party of one of the survivors.
The tourists had been renting a house in Playa Hermosa, north of Playa Jaco.
“I condemn Costa Rican authorities for not implementing sufficient security measures. I want to dissuade all tourists from visiting places that care more about their profitability than life and safety,” Valladares warned.
More than half of the tourists that visit Costa Rica are involved in some adventure activity according to a study by the Costa Rican Institute of Tourism (ICT). Rafting in river rapids accounts for 8.4% of the total adventures, according to interviews with visitors traveling by air.
In the Saturday accident, the fallen tourists were identified as Ernesto Sierra, Jorge Caso, Sergio Lorenzo, and Andrés Denis, all between 25 and 35 years old. All four were from the Four tourists from Miami-Dade County area in Florida. Kevin Thompson Reid, 45, was the Costa Rican guide.
The U.S. State Department reacted in a tweet, saying, “The State Department has no higher priority than the protection of U.S. citizens overseas. Working with local authorities, we stand ready to provide consular assistance to U.S. citizens in the area.”
A GoFundMe has been created for the victims. You can visit the page here.
Four U.S. tourists and a tour guide died on Saturday afternoon, after a rafting accident on the Naranjo River, in the town of Naranjito, in Quepos.
Initially, authorities reported the rescue of the 13 people and search and rescue efforts for five missing persons, whose death was confirmed Saturday night.
The group was made up of 15 tourists and three guides.
The group of foreigners tourists arrived from Florida on October 18. The trip was intended to celebrate the bachelor party of one of the survivors.
Despite the fact that it was not raining Saturday afternoon, Guzmán assured that bad weather prevailed in the Santos area, from where the Naranjo River tributary feeds, could have caused the accident.
At the time of the rescue, authorities assured that the channel of the river was swollen.
Enrique Arguedas, deputy director of the Fuerza Publica (National Police), said at a press conference at the Ministry of Public Security(MSP), the call for help came in 3:20 pm.
The first report by Arguedas said 15 people had been rescued and three bodies recovered. Later, he updated to 4 dead and 3 rescued. By 9 pm the, the body of the fifth victim was recovered.
A total of 120 people took part in the search and rescue, including personnel from the Red Cross, Fire Department, National Police and teams of several tour operators in the area.
“We do not know if the company has its permits in order, it is a recognized company to carry out the activity,” added Arguedas.
Meanwhile, the director of the Fuerza Publica, Daniel Calderón, added that they have not been able to locate the people in charge of the company.
The surviving foreigners made a statement Saturday night to the Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ) in Quepos and later departed in a minibus to Jacó. None of those affected wanted to give statements to the press.
The Deputy Director of Risk Management of the Red Cross (Gestión de Riesgo de la Cruz Roja ), Luis Guzmán, indicated that the search remained on the river bank due to rain in the higher altitudes.
ICT and Chancellery provide support to survivors and family members
The Minister of Tourism, María Amalia Revelo, informed of the coordination of local office of the Costa Rican Institute of Tourism (ICT) to facilitate lodging and transfer of relatives to the country. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that they contacted the United States Consulate General in San José to provide the support they require.
“On behalf of the Government of the Republic and the people of Costa Rica, I express my deepest consternation at the water accident that occurred on the afternoon of this Saturday, October 20, on the Naranjo River in Quepos,” said President Carlos Alvarado.
Expreso mi profunda consternación por el accidente ocurrido esta tarde en el río Naranjo en Quepos. pic.twitter.com/r9HMW6SpjY
The Tourism Minister also called on the country’s tour operators to respect the recommendations of the National Emergency Commission (CNE).
At this moment the tropical wave number 43 is over the country, with moderate to heavy rains, increasing the flow of rivers and streams. The area where the accident occurred was one of those that would be affected by this phenomenon.
Rafting is a popular tourist activity in Costa Rica. The country is currently in its wet season, and heavy rain over its Pacific coast has flooded waterways, making water sports more dangerous.
Leslie Briceno was convinced that she was going to die. What she feared most wasn’t death itself, but the life that her eight-year-old son would have without her. She wept with frustration and impotence in her hospital bed, where there were dozens of doctors but no one did anything to help her.
She thought about her dreams and the illusions she’d had a week ago when they told her that she was going to be a mother once again.
She began to cry anew.
More than twenty hours previously, she’d arrived at that hospital with severe pain in her uterus. When they examined her, the doctors told her that she had an ectopic pregnancy. In other words, the fertilized egg hadn’t lodged in the uterus, but had remained in one of her ovaries. As a result, it couldn’t develop, but the worst thing was that if they didn’t remove it soon, the ovary would burst and she would die.
Leslie understood immediately that that diagnosis was a death sentence for her. Three years before, she’d accompanied a group of women who were demanding the decriminalization of therapeutic abortions. Since 2007, Nicaragua has been one of only five countries in the world in which all types of abortions are completely prohibited.
n many cases, this prohibition has led to the death of the pregnant woman, along with her baby. One such case was that of Cruz Selena Centeno, 20 years old, who died in 2017 after carrying her dead child inside for over 24 hours, because the doctors refused to allow her to have a therapeutic abortion.
There are no official records of the maternal deaths that have occurred for the lack of a timely therapeutic abortion. The official data only lists maternal deaths from hemorrhaging, infections and other complications. According to the epidemiology bulletin that the Health Ministry publishes, up through the thirty-ninth week of this year there’d been 37 maternal deaths, three more than last year at the same date.
Leslie’s miracle
Before June 16, 2010, Lesbia Chavarria didn’t condone any kind of abortion. To her, it was a sin. Until she saw her daughter, Leslie Briceno, 32, writhing in pain while the doctors did nothing to save her. At that moment, she told them desperately: “I don’t care what the law says. What I care about is keeping my daughter alive. Do whatever you need to do, so she leaves here alive.”
Her pleas went unheard. The only thing the doctors told her was that they couldn’t do anything until the hospital’s medical board – who were supposedly meeting to analyze the case – gave them the go-ahead to operate. Further, even though Leslie’s pain was increasing hour by hour since her arrival, they couldn’t anesthetize her, because if they did so they wouldn’t know when the embryo died. They were waiting for it to die, so that they could operate on her.
Lesia also tried to have her daughter transferred to another hospital in a country where they could perform the abortion, but this option was also denied her.
While close to death, Leslie thought about the last time that she participated in a march. On that occasion, she had demonstrated with a group of women outside of the National Assembly, marching to demand the repeal of Article 165 of the Nicaraguan Penal Code, which allowed therapeutic abortions. Leslie had accompanied the group of women in her role as a lawyer and an activist.
“It was incredible for me to realize that something that I had struggled against and expressed was really going to affect my own life. We think that certain things will never happen to us. But at that moment, I thought to myself: “Wow! I’d never have thought that three years later I’d find myself demanding an abortion with all my strength because it was necessary to save my life,” recalled Leslie Briceno, eight years later.
At midnight on June 17, 2010, in her hospital room in Managua, Leslie Briceno had a miracle that prolonged her life. A woman doctor who had recently begun her shift decided on her own volition to give Leslie a therapeutic abortion. “I’m taking this woman into the operating room, because if I don’t she’ll die,” Leslie heard her say through the pain that consumed her.
The next day the same doctor told her that in the exact moment that they were operating, the embryo was causing an internal hemorrhage; if they had waited longer, Leslie would almost certainly have died.
“I’m super grateful to that doctor, because she was truly a courageous woman who decided to save my life. I was left with just half of my left ovary. I not only carry that mark in my internal organs, but I also carry the emotional scars,” she confided.
A dead child in her womb
Cruz Selena Centeno, 20 years old, didn’t get the same opportunity to live that Leslie Briceno did. She was forced to carry her dead child in her womb, and left without the aid of a therapeutic abortion from the hospital where they were attending her.
According to her husband, Francisco Javier Carvajal, she had initially been in the hospital for two weeks, but was then released although she had liver problems and low platelets.
“Her health worsened, and we decided to take her to a private doctor. However, he referred us back to the hospital: she was anemic and had hepatitis, and he couldn’t help her. He recommended we take her right to the hospital and gave us the letter of transfer,” Carvajal told journalist Eddy Lopez.
On September 6, 2017, the director of the Oscar Danilo Rosales Teaching Hospital, or HEODRA, in Leon, Nicaragua, allegedly told them that the baby that Cruz Selena had been carrying for six months had died, and that the family should take her home with the dead baby still in her womb. They refused to do so and demanded that the hospital remove the fetus and save her life. It was then that “the doctors told them that they couldn’t operate to remove the dead baby because Cruz’ health condition was poor,” affirms an article published in the newspaper “La Prensa”.
A little after ten on September 12, 2017, Cruz Selena Centeno died. Her family members sued the hospital for medical negligence, but the widower later commented to the Niu news team that the family eventually decided to abandon the case and to let “the body of Cruz Selena rest in peace.” For that same reason, one year after her death, they preferred not to offer any further declarations.
Over 200 people detained or denounced for abortion
According to investigations carried out by Human Rights Watch, Nicaragua has high rates of domestic and sexual violence. This leaves adolescent girls and young women particularly exposed to the risk of an undesired pregnancy as the result of rape. However, the state doesn’t publish the estimated numbers of illegal abortions, nor the cases of women, girls or abortion providers who are arrested, accused or sentenced for carrying out abortions.
A 2016 report cited in the document “Nicaragua: the prohibition of abortion creates risks for health and life” published in July 2017, indicates that between 2003 and 2013, 290 people were either denounced or detained due to the prohibition of abortion.
Abortion was partially decriminalized for 169 years of Nicaragua’s history, until in 2007 Daniel Ortega’s government decided to criminalize it completely, including all types of abortion. This action, according to experts, was one more strategy to gain the support of the Catholic Church.
The cases of Cruz Selena Centeno and of Leslie Briceno are only a sample of the hundreds of cases that remain hidden and are rarely brought to light.
“We can only understand the full magnitude of this law when we experience it in our own life. It’s true that as a human rights activist I supported therapeutic abortion, but to experience it in your own flesh makes you reaffirm that it is truly is a just cause,” affirmed Leslie Briceno.
Venezuela will switch to international payments in euros or yuan, while the US dollar will cease to be the base currency amid the financial blockade imposed on the country by the administration of US President Donald Trump.
The decision announced by Economy Vice President Tareck El Aissami, is aimed at speeding up the country’s economic growth.
“This is a measure that took a long time implementing. It is Venezuela’s response to US attacks on our country’s economy,” Venezuelan economist Raul Penaloza told Sputnik.
Penaloza, who is a teacher and researcher at the Venezuelan Center for the Study of the Economic Situation (OVRE), welcomed the initiative which he said would stimulate businesses and individuals with foreign accounts that they can no longer use in transactions.
“A switch to an alternative European or Asian system will definitely simplify trade and give a positive result in the shortest possible time,” the expert explained.
Raul Penaloza also believes that the decision will reduce Venezuela’s technological dependence on the United States.
“The Venezuelan market will be able to reorient itself to the European and Asian markets for technologies, spare parts and goods. As a result, the US influence on the region will weaken,” he noted.
This is going to be a bumpy road for Venezuela though the most obvious hurdle is the need to stop using bank accounts opened in the United States or managed with US mediation.
“A large number of Venezuelan importers and exporters have foreign accounts in the United States or in its satellites, such as Panama. This will cause small delays before enterprises and the entire system, both public and private, is reoriented to Europe or Asia,” Penaloza continued.
To prevent possible speculation with new base currencies, the authorities have announced an increase in reserve requirements.
The minimum share of funds that commercial banks are required to keep in the Central Bank will increase from 31 to 40 percent. As a result, the amount of money in circulation will decrease along with the possibility of speculation.
Since winning another six-year term, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has promised to bring about economic recovery. Still, the government has struggled to attract much needed investment amid a raft of sanctions on Venezuelan debt and its problem-ridden oil sector.
As a distraction to the current situation in Nicaragua before the international stage, on Friday, the government of Daniel Ortega accused the Costa Rican government of “many dead” during the ongoing strike by public sector workers against the Plan Fiscal (tax reform) and incurring “massive human rights violations” during the protests.
The Nicaraguan ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), Luis Alvarado, made the accusation after the Costa Rican delegate, Rita Hernández, delivered a speech condemning the repression of Daniel Ortega’s regime in the face of the protests against him, resulting more than 325 deaths according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH).
Luis Alvarado, Nicaragua’s ambassador to the OAS
During the session in Washington, Costa Rica endorsed the report of the OAS mission in which it describes “a climate of fear and intimidation persisting in Nicaragua,” produced by the Ortega government against the civilian demonstrations that are opposed to his mandate. The report also pointed to a deterioration of human rights in Nicaragua.
In an extensive reply, the Nicaraguan envoy to the OAS accused Costa Rica and its Government of denouncing a cover-up of a supposed internal social situation that he painted as chaotic, full of poverty, misery, and intolerance.
The Nicaraguan official characterized the situation in Costa Rica as “institutionalized discrimination, machismo, and xenophobia” by the administration of Carlos Alvarado during the strike against the fiscal plan.
The Nicaraguan ambassador relied on alleged reports from international media that, he said, said that the Costa Rican government arrested 40 human rights defenders during the demonstrations against the tax reform and also said that the protests left “many dead.”
The complaint by Nicaragua comes after the comments by Albino Vargas, leader of one of the largest public sector unions in Costa Rica, the ANEP, that has led the strike that on Monday enters its 7th seek.
Vargas denounced repression of “military bias” and that his right to freedom of transit was violated.
On October 4, Vargas wrote on Twitter: “It seems that a violent eviction from the camp of patriots that was installed in front of the Legislative Assembly is approaching in the next hours of the night. The repression of military bias ordered by Alvarado and the PLN-PAC-PUSC troika is unimaginable for Democracy. But the world will know.”
Parece que se avecina en las próximas horas de la noche un desalojo violento del campamento de patriotas que fue instalado frente a la Asamblea. La represion de sesgo militar ordenada por Alvarado y la troika PLN-PAC-PUSC es inimaginable para la Democracia. Pero el mundo lo sabrá
On Friday October 19, the Nicaraguan ambassador read: “The police violently stormed peaceful protests until they managed to remove temporary roadblocks and access to public institutions in particular in the province of Limón, in Caldera and the southern border of that country, where a strong police repression was unleashed with the death of many (…). So far neither the American Commission of Human Rights nor the OAS has spoken out against these serious violations of the human rights of the Costa Rican population.”
Ortega’s voice at the OAS, in addition, affirmed that Carlos Alvarado and “the voices of the oligarchy” have censored the opponents to the tax reform, because this, in his opinion, “seeks to unload on the shoulders of the Costa Rican workers the effects of the mismanagement of elite groups in that country and the permanent theft by corrupt officials.”
“This explains why now the United Nations (UN) has placed Costa Rica as one of the most unequal nations in the world. Slums and poverty are growing throughout the country, the peasant economy is destroyed, pain is rampant everywhere and the agricultural and commercial monopolies have brutally torn apart the social fabric,” he told the Security Council.
He continued: “Important prominent politicians of that country have affirmed that the ‘entreguismo’ realized by diverse Costa Rican administrations has taken them to become a Yankee semi-colony (in reference to the United States), where the lumpen (sic) and the mafias that have placed under their service to some of the poorest, not to mention that more than one million people are engaged in informal activities and more than half of wage earners earn less than the minimum wage”.
The Nicaraguan ambassador also touched on the protests of August 18 in San Jose against the increase in migration of Nicaraguans fleeing to Costa Rica due to the socio-economic crisis in that country.
Smokescreen
The Costa Rican ambassador to the OAS reacted with a warning to the Nicaraguan government that the “fallacies and attacks” will not make Costa Rica lower its voice to what happens in the streets of that nation, such as human rights violations.
“It is true that, in Costa Rica, we have had a strike movement, but the great difference is that, in Costa Rica, we have resolved it through dialogue and negotiation, not through repression and indiscriminate violence, which has caused more than 400 deaths in Nicaragua. Creating smoke screens will not serve the Nicaraguan government to shut us up. We will continue raising our voice in defense of a people that live one of the worst and bloodiest repressions,” said Rita Hernández.
Costa Rica was part of the majority of nations that endorsed the report of the UN Permanent Council on Nicaragua. Only Venezuela and St. Vincent and the Grenadines separated from the majority.
State banks, the Banco Nacional (BN) and Banco de Costa Rica (BCR), in a press conference on Friday, October 19, announced they are implementing measures to help people who are having problems paying their loans due to the difficult economic situation the country is going through.
Loans with arrears over 90 days or in judicial collection have gone from representing 2.07% of the total loan portfolio in January of this year, to 2.58% in September of this year. Although delinquency remains below the level of the 3% considered normal by the banking regulator, the General Superintendence of Financial Institutions (Sugef), the increase has generated the concern of the banking authorities.
Many people face problems because their income has decreased and unemployment remains high, while others because have debts in dollars and income in colones and have been affected by the increase of about ¢26 in the dollar exchange in the last two months. According to the Sugef, of the 2.5 million credit transactions in dollars in the current financial system, 97% belong to people or companies have no income in the foreign currency.
Some measures
Gustavo Vargas, interim general manager of the National Bank, explained that the state bank has applied two types of measures: they created a credit program for consumption at a fixed rate of 22%, for five years, so that people who are facing problems with consumer loans can refinance.
The other measure was to reduce by half percentage point the interest rates on colones for housing (mortgages), this with the purpose of encouraging people to take out loans in colones.
The change, a credit from dollars to colones, incurs charges. Vargas explained that the charges are based on individual terms of the loan agreement.
The BN general manager added that although it is difficult to lower interest rates in the current situation, where there are pressures to rise, they prefer to do before seeing an increase in defaults.
At the Banco de Costa Rica (BCR, Douglas Soto, general manager, said they are offering to extend loan terms and facilitating passing loans in dollars to colones with more favorable conditions such as interest rates, valuations, and disbursement conditions.
Soto added that the bank may even finance the costs (of the change in currency) so customers do not have to face the upfront costs.
Soto explained, the bank does not charge a commission for moving loans from dollars to colones, but do for refinancing.
“Lincoln School acted immediately and took the necessary measures to control a situation that occurred on the night of Tuesday, October 23, when an alert was received from a mother, indicating that in a private student chat they were commenting on issues that could affect the safety of the school and its community.
