Eleven year old Emily Ibarra Ruiz, a student at the Escuela de San Pablo de Barva (Heredia), used her constitutional right to ask the Constitutional Court, filing a ‘recurso de amparo’ (appeal) on Thursday morning, to request the return to classes after six weeks of teachers’ strike against the tax reform.
“I want to know if with this strike my right to study is being violated because, I believe, I have the right to an education according to the fifth-grade study programs,” reads the appeal letter.
“I ask you (the Court) to please force my teacher and principal to return to open the school and to give us classes. You know the laws of Costa Rica and I ask you to respect them very much “, concludes the student in her appeal.
The press office of the Constitutional Court confirmed that the girl sent the handwritten letter by fax shortly before noon on Thursday. At the request by Ibarra Ruiz, the Court opened the file number 18-016465-0007-CO.
The Court added that they will now proceed to determine if it is admissible. If this is the case, a report shall be requested from the respective authorities regarding the facts alleged in the appeal.
Isabel Bogantes, the school principal, said she was unaware of the action of her student when consulted by La Nación, supporting the action of her student, saying that the girl is in her right, after so long without classes.
In that school, Bogantes reported, of 13 groups only four are working. Despite the declaration of illegality of the strike by Ministry of Education (MEP) workers, issued on October 9, and the constant calls to return to work by Education Minister, Edgar Mora, none of the other nine teachers have returned to the classrooms.
In her note to the Constitutional Court, the girl argues that the Constitution states that education is mandatory and that her right is being violated.
Katherine Ruiz, Emily’s mother, confirmed that her daughter called her in the morning to ask her if the corner store had a fax machine, from where she could send a document. When the mother asked for what, she told her about the appeal.
“Se told me she was making a little note expressing all that frustration. She was very determined and she was the one who found out everything. It was a very fast conversation because I’m here at my job, but when we hung up I felt very proud. She really is upset because she does not know what’s going to happen,” said Emily’s mother.
Emily herself also expressed feeling frustrated by the whole situation and said she was worried because she is in fifth grade and does not know how her school year will end.
“I want to finish my entire school year and I looked up the Political Constitution on the Internet and there it says in article 78 that I have the right to education,” she said by telephone to La Nacion.
She had considered for the days the idea of presenting the appeal.
She said he kept searching the Internet for more information and a friend of her aunt was the one who suggested sending the fax.
“For me this is very boring, I have not learned anything, and I am in great doubt to know how this lost time will affect me. This comes from my heart, I’m worried because I am not getting the education I deserve, nor do the other students like me,” she said.
The strike by public sector workers began on September 10. A number of unions have reached and agreement with the government and have returned to work, there are still thousands, the majority teachers, who have refused to do so, heeding to the call of their unions to hold out until the illegality issue is confirmed.
The strike, on Monday, will enter its seventh week.
A Recurso de Amparo guarantees all the of the rights and fundamental freedoms. It can be presented by any person free of charge and, by any means, without major demands of form and without need to be authenticated by a lawyer
Nicaraguan holding his country's flag outside the Nicaragua embassy in San Jose
From June 18 to date, Costa Rica’s immigration service, Dirección General de Migración y Extranjería de Costa Rica (DGME), has received more than 30,000 applications for refuge from Nicaraguans who have been forced to flee the repression of Daniel Ortega’s regime in their country.
A Nicaraguan holding his country’s flag outside the Nicaragua embassy in San Jose. Photo La Prensa
Of that total, 17,100 already have their provisional card, identification which allows them to have legal permanence in Costa Rica and access to basic services, but they are not allowed to work until three months following the date it was granted.
If the person manages to get a job during this period, he or she can request immigration for change to allow the refugee to work.
Although the biggest wave of forced migration occurred last August, when that institution received nine thousand applications and then in September it received some 4,500 requests, the general director of Migration and Immigration, Raquel Vargas, estimated that 80 percent of that total were already in the country when they made their requests and then considered applying for refuge as an option within the country.
Costa Rica is still receiving Nicaraguans who have found in our country protection from the danger they face in their country.
Vargas made it clear that people who resort to immigration for refuge are offered “total confidentiality”.
The immigration director was clear that, to date, neither the Refugee Commission nor the Refugee Unit has issued has so far granted any refuge, they have only given those seeking refuge the provisional refugee card.
The process of granting refugee status is taking up to eleven months. Vargas said they are working ar reducing that process to three months.
Costa Rica is a signatory to the international protection of refugees, as well as its protocols.
Some Nicaraguans in Costa Rica have no place to go, they camp out outside the Nicaragua embassyin San Jose. Photo La Prensa
To be a refugee a person has to fulfill five mandatory requirements: be a foreigner, express a well-founded fear of returning to their country of origin, that he/she or his/her family is being persecuted, that persecution is for reasons of race, gender, belonging to a specific political group, or political opinion and that its own country does not guarantee the required protection.
“Those five variables are what the commission analyzes, that’s why the refugee status is very exclusive for people who are persecuted and who have that well-founded fear, it is not anyone who can access international recognition as a refugee,” said Vargas
Of the refugee applicants, there are many nationals who have indicated that they do not have any type of document that allows them to prove their origin.
Nicaraguans are not the only foreign nationals seeking refuge in Costa Rica. According to Vargas, the Nicaraguan situation is “very interesting”, in that of the thousands who requested refuge some 30 are being housed in shelters in northern Costa Rica and only one in the south.
Vargas explained that the Nicaraguans find support and help from other Nicaraguans in the country and through social networks. “This is due to a lot of the Nicaraguan culture of having that openness and that humanity to serve their own nationals,” Vargas said.
The immigration official added that some Nicaraguan refugees are also receiving aid from international organizations and civil society that, he believes, has done a very important job locating homes to accommodate Nicaraguans.
AC Hotels by Marriott announced the opening of the AC Hotel San Jose Escazú. The 126-room property is located in the exclusive Avenida Escazú.
According to the press release, “AC Hotels by Marriott celebrates the beauty of classic modern design with its European soul and Spanish roots, born from the signature vision of the renowned hotelier Antonio Catalan, who founded the brand in 1998 and grew it into one of the most respected hotel brands in Spain.
“Following its success in Europe, a joint venture was formed with Marriott International in 2011, which has since launched AC Hotels by Marriott globally in France, Denmark, the United States, Mexico, Panama, Colombia and now Costa Rica.”
The new AC Hotel San Jose Escazú is the fourth AC Hotel by Marriott in Central America.
“We are delighted to bring the AC brand to Costa Rica, especially to such a vibrant area like Avenida Escazú that is full of urban culture. The style, design, and attention to detail makes this hotel ideal for millennial travelers who are looking to explore what San José has to offer,” said Ismael Morales, General Manager of the AC Hotel San Jose Escazú.
The AC Hotel is across the Residences hotel by Marriott.
The Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), Luis Almagro, assured that the Nicaraguan government adopted the “Cuban model of repression” and has used it during the last six months of the sociopolitical crisis, the same forms of state abuse that are committed in Cuba against critics and opponents.
Luis Almagro, Secretary General of the OAS, at the UN Economic and Social Council meeting
“Lately we have seen this Cuban model of repression and oppression exported to Nicaragua with the same forms of abuse, repression, assassinations and torture,” said Almagro last Tuesday during a meeting of the UN Economic and Social Council.
The OAS official explained that this model consists in “systematically silencing all those who dare to express opinions contrary to Government’s policies”, through imprisonment, with minimal justification or without justification.
In Nicaragua, President Daniel Ortega has denied before international media any abuse of rights of prisoners.
Almagro mentioned the alleged abuses of human rights in Nicaragua, referring to the testimony given by a student (whose name was not revealed), who reported being a victim of abuse.
“She was brutally tortured by the regime, with heavy beatings, simulated asphyxiation and rape with a blunt object,” said the secretary general of the OAS.
According to Almagro, the student identified a Cuban as the leader of the physical and psychological abuse she suffered.
“I have always said that bad practices are spread and the worst practices we see today in our hemisphere, which we see here today in the cases of Venezuela and Nicaragua, come from Cuba,” Almagro added.
During his speech, in which Almagro was interrupted by shouts and blows on the table by the Cuban delegation present at the UN event, the official said that the “possible crimes against humanity that the OAS has documented in Venezuela are also happening now in Nicaragua”
For Almagro, “the governments of Venezuela and Nicaragua are dictatorships” that were installed slowly, although they were democratically elected.
“They dismantled one by one their democratic institutions with the objective, support and impulse of Havana. Now, as in Cuba, they continue in power through brute force and fear,” said the OAS Secretary General.
Amnesty International hopes that the Spanish Government will not send more arms to Nicaragua
In the case of Venezuela, Almagro revealed that at least 22,000 Cubans infiltrated the “regime” initiated by Hugo Chávez and currently led by Nicolás Maduro. They did so, he explained, holding important positions in government agencies and in the national security and intelligence services of that South American country.
“There is no doubt that the existence of (political) prisoners in a given country is a decisive indication that there is a dictatorship in the Government,” insisted Almagro.
OAS meets today to address Nicaraguan crisis
Today, Friday, the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) will give continuity to the crisis in Nicaragua, during an extraordinary session, as announced yesterday by the president of the Permanent Council, Ambassador Carlos Játiva Naranjo, permanent representative of Ecuador.
Today’s session, which would be the seventh session of the Permanent Council of the OAS to address Nicaragua’s crisis since April, was requested by the Permanent Mission of Canada on behalf of the Working Group (WG) for Nicaragua.
Bali is the perfect destination for cruise tours if your family is in search of a place with the touch of everything. The high-end luxurious resorts are offering unmatched comfort and totally personalized service.
The sun-kissed peaceful sandy shorelines provide a vast bed for relaxing and gazing. The settings of these exquisitely created and thoroughly planned abodes of luxury are a sight to behold, and this is why tons of tourists flock to this picturesque and pleasurable destination. Touring Bali on a sailing yacht is a good way to spend your vacation, and what’s greater is spending it on a 5-star phinisi sailing yacht.
Offering 2 nights tour and a day trip to Komodo’s most fascinating island destinations, AYANA Lako di’a promises to enhance your holiday accommodating up to 18 VIP passengers in 9 tasteful air-conditioned bedrooms (Master suite, Luxury suite and Deluxe suite). World-Class dining, personalized itinerary to include the region’s best-guided scuba diving, snorkeling above colorful tropical reefs, Komodo Dragon tours, and distinctive underwater photo opportunities.
To enjoy your adventure even better, our professional crew guarantees to give the best hospitality by carrying you off to a multi-day getaway of your choice. Also, our experienced team is knowledgeable about the best marine and beach activities and can personalize your exclusive charter with delicious menus and unique accommodation. AYANA Lako di’a is built to the best standards of stability, safety, fire protection, and pollution aversion.
Having 54 meters in length, the ship’s 10-meter long hull provides ample space for elegant celebrations, while the mast’s 39-meter height is a sight to be beholden.
Cruising on AYANA Lako’dia, you can begin the tour by sailing to nearby Lembongan Island for a fun-filled day of relaxation, enjoying the refreshments that are offered, drinking your coffee or tea as you feel the warm ocean breeze on deck. You may want to try your hand at troll fishing as you make the passage to the island.
The sun, the warmth, the fresh air, and the relaxed atmosphere will soothe you as nothing else can.
Once you reach Lembongan Island Bay, you can partake in a fantastic onboard barbecue buffet. Additionally, offering 1,100 square meters, this ship can serve as a 5-star venue for weddings, honeymoons, private celebrations, family holidays, and corporate events. What better way to spend the day, and still be back in your room anytime you want.
If you wish to, you can begin the day early for a dolphin spotting cruise along Bali’s coast or head off for a day of discovery to Nusa Penida Island. Amongst the day tours, the Dolphin Watching Tour is one of the most popular tours. The tour starts at Lovina beach, which is known for its coral reefs, black sand, and dolphins.
Cross through the calm sea waters on a traditional little boat as you detect these huge mammals in their natural living space. If you are looking for a romantic destination, cruising on AYANA Lako’dia should be your first choice. Followed by wonderful live bands, you can likewise relax and have a great time as you listen to your desired songs played live in a karaoke session as well.
Bali offers a unique opportunity to bond with your near and dear ones. You sure must have prepared and saved for this holiday if you want to give yourself and your loved ones the best in ambiance and experience. So what can be a better experience than having a cruise tour and a sprawling beachside holiday, nestled in the midst of nature? …..Nothing is.
Also, to boost your private experience you can settle for any of the suites most especially the master suite. The master suite is an oasis of refined elegance with distinctive furnishings carefully designed to accommodate you in absolute comfort, completely remarkable bathroom, and a private balcony offering you and your family exceptional privacy and supreme views to work up the best romantic memories which last forever. Finally, to bring in the spring back to your mind and body, rediscover the joys of the aromatic massages within the complete privacy of your own AYANA Lako’dia suite.
If you have not yet visited Bali, now is the time to begin your vacation plans!
We learn in childhood about bees and their role in fertilization. Without bees, we would have no food to eat nor flowers to grace our lives. Because bees are so important to our food supply, and because they are now endangered, the United Nations declared May 20 as bee day, a gesture that was supported by 115 countries, Costa Rica included.
Me in veil and coverall is just for laughs. My father was a beekeeper and when I was a girl scout I had my own hives to earn the beekeeping badge. Photo: Mitzi Stark
The proposal to call attention to bees and their role in our lifestyle came from an association of beekeepers in Slovenia but it is a critical issue for the whole world. Bees are the only pollinators of plants.
Their busy careers traveling from flower to flower provide us with all our fruit, vegetables and sweeteners. Their absence would leave us dependent on genetically modified food or an extremely limited diet.
Photo: Mitzi Stark
Bee populations have been going down as the use of pesticides goes up. Bee colonies are also pushed off the land to make room for human homes, and Africanized bees have scared some people away from raising bees. But it is the pesticides that have done the most damage.
Their busy careers travelling from flower to flower provide us with all our fruit, vegetables and sweetners.
Costa Rica has been hit hard by the loss of bee colonies and honey production. Twenty years ago Costa Rica exported honey.
Today it is imported from Guatemala and El Salvador. Industries like Dos Pinos, bakeries, hospitals and hotels are big buyers of honey. Because it is a pure food, not processed, it is rated as a health food and is used in cough medicines and macrobiotic products. Restaurants are another big market. And we, the people, like to have honey on pancakes and fruit salads.
Photo: Mitzi Stark
Costa Rica’s Association of Apículturists (ASOCAPICO) has been active in trying to prohibit those pesticides known to harm bees. Juan Bautista Alvarado, speaking for the association, says that the common use of potent pesticides like neonicotinoids could put and end to bees, and food production here.
Neonicotinoids are used on many food plants to stave off fruit flies and other pests but it is also damaging and killing bees by affecting their nervous systems either killing them or keeping them from returning to their hives. Most of Costa Rica’s honey comes from Guanacaste because the land is mostly in cattle and tourism and there is less use of toxic pesticides.
The association sent a letter to president Carlos Alvarado and the ministries of environment and agriculture urging a ban on neonicotinoids which are used under the names Imidacloprid and Clotianidina by Bayer, and Tiametoxam by Syngenta but the proposal was rejected for now. According to the reply from the government, there is not enough proof that these toxic sprays are killing off bees.
Photo: Mitzi Stark
In August the Alvarado and Luis Zamora of Miel Dorado presented a draft of a law to protect bees and other pollinators to deputy Erwen Masís of the Environment Commission asking for recognition of the importance of bees to our food security and measures for their protection. The draft will now go to the Environment Commission for discussion and a vote.
Costa Rica is not alone in the fight to save bees. Environmentalists and farmers have joined campaigns against these products in Europe and other countries.
In January of this year, the European Union banned these same toxins after huge protests by farmers and environmentalists. Canada has recently banned them. In the United States, Maryland and Connecticut have bans on neonicotinoids and the Environmental Protection Agency issues guides on the use of neonicotinoids.
Australian beekeepers and environmentalists are fighting to have them banned. Some countries have restrictions on their use. In New Zealand, for example, most bee farms are in areas away from other cultivation. However, bees need flowering plants for the honey production and beekeepers and environmentalists are campaigning for a prohibition. Migrating Monarch butterflies are also affected by neonicotinoids
Photo: Mitzi Stark
Bees and honey can be profitable say Kenneth Morera and Emmanuel Miranda who have 200 hives in the Atenas area and in Guanacaste. There is a big demand for honey commercially and industrially as honey is now used in shampoos, skin creams beauty products and health foods.
They plan to start classes for “garden” beekeepers, for anyone who would like to have a hive or two in the yard.
They claim that bees will make a garden more productive. Apicenter, a honey-producing company since 1947 is experimenting with new honey products by adding flavors mint, lemon, ginger, and cinnamon. (see apicentercr.com)
They fled. In six months of socio-political crisis in Nicaragua, more than 23,000 people have left the country because they believe their lives are in danger, after participating in anti-government protests.
Many of the Nicaraguans who have taken refuge in Costa Rica entered that country through blind spots in border controls. Photo END
At dawn on July 17, Álvaro Antonio Gómez, his wife, and two children were awakened by the sound of gunfire. They also heard voices, something distant.
That day in the Monimbó neighborhood in Masaya, masked armed civilians and police forces carried out the “clean-up operation” to tear down the barricades placed by the anti-government protesters on the main roads of the city.
As a result of the operation, there were four deaths, including a police officer, and at least 70 people arrested, according to information from human rights organizations.
Photo END
Gomez and his family were forced to leave their home and take refuge in the homes of friends or relatives, to avoid the persecution that broke out in the neighborhood.
“That same day, family members helped us out of the city and we were hidden in the areas of the outskirts of Masaya,” Gómez recalls.
The man, 48, is the father of Álvaro Alfredo Gómez, one of the first victims of the repression of anti-government protests. The young man, who worked as a worker in a free zone and studied Finance, was shot in the chest on April 20 at a barricade in Monimbó. He was 23 years old.
Due to the siege suffered after the death of his son, and after the “clean-up operation”, the Gomez family considered that it was better to leave the country, and they chose to separate to facilitate the exit.
Álvaro and his wife stayed together, while their two children were received by friends to help them flee. The parents began to move from the city of Masaya to the border area with Costa Rica, supported by friends.
Photo END
“We were like this from July 18 to August 4, when we managed to leave. Those days we spent hiding mainly from a visit that came to the house where we were staying,” says Gomez from exile.
He relates that he managed to enter Costa Rican territory by way of a blind point of the border, at about 8 on the night of August 4.
“After crossing the ‘guardaraya’ (borderline) we walked about 500 meters until we reached a vehicle that took us to another point inside the Costa Rican mountain, where we slept that night,” said Gomez.
The couple’s children managed to leave the country legally, without any obstacle from the Nicaraguan authorities.
Gómez says that both he and his family began the process of refuge days after entering Costa Rican territory, as their case is analyzed by the Costa Rican authorities, but until today none of them are working; they receive the support of humanitarian organizations and other Nicaraguan migrants.
“My idea is not to make life in Costa Rica, I plan to return to Nicaragua whenever possible,” says Gómez.
Photo END
Threatened
Ricardo Zambrana, the former host of Channel 2 television, also chose to go into exile after receiving threats.
Zambrana, who agreed to tell his story under the condition of not revealing where he is, states that after resigning from the television station on April 23 this year, he participated in anti-government protests and published on social networks aspects related to them, the reason he started receiving threats.
He affirms that many of those who poured insults against him were “old friends”, and as a security measure he chose to stop going out; However, as the tone of the threats became stronger, he began to weigh the possibility of leaving the country.
“I spent at least three months practically without leaving home. There came a point where the threats began to increase in intensity, so I looked for how to leave the country before having more complications,” says Zambrana.
Zambrana assures that he could leave Nicaragua without the immigration authorities restricthing his departure, but continues to receive threats through social networks.
Thousands fled
Like Gómez and Zambrana, in the six months of political crisis, thousands of Nicaraguans have left the country to protect themselves from any repression for participating in protests.
Marlin Sierra, executive director of the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (Cenidh), explained that at first the movements of those fleeing took place inside the country, as a way of protection, but later a forced displacement abroad was necessary.
Watch the video by END (in Spanish)
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovOremBaR1M]
He noted that between April and August, according to official data from the Costa Rican Department of Migration, between 23,000 and 25,000 Nicaraguans requested refuge in Costa Rica.
“The mass of migrants who are going abroad are mostly university students, that is, we speak of a generation with a high level of education,” said Sierra.
He added that many of these Nicaraguan exiles have had to leave the country through blind spots (in the border controls), becoming more vulnerable to threats such as human trafficking and sexual exploitation.
Thomas Jeffrey Cook, 62, reported missing since August 23, in Jaco, was on Tuesday found dead, in a 1.5 meter (5 foot) deep grave in the Palmiras de Siquirres, Limon.
The American was wrapped in a blanket, wearing shorts and a shirt. The man was bound hand and foot.
Cook was identified by his tattoo his back. Investigators say he had been dead between 2 and 4 weeks, the autopsy revealing he was murdered, but due to the condition of the body and the time elapsed, the form of death has not yet been determined.
Walter Espinoza, director of the Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ), pointed out that the man did not have gunshot wounds.
He was last seen in a bank where he withdrew an amount of cash he could not have gotten at an ATM, that depending on the bank and card used, have limits on withdrawal amounts and the number of withdrawals per pay.
Apparently, the man was going to pay a pending debt, learned investigators from the woman, Yaritza Hurtado, 23, with whom he apparently had a good relationship with.
In an interview with Telenoticias television news, she said, “I told him (to be careful), but I had very little opportunity to really talk to him, because he spoke only English. I met him a time ago. Earlier this year he contacted me to tell me that he would come to live in the country and asked me to help him get a place. Me, for being good people I agreed to sign for him the rental in Jacó, but he paid everything and I did not live with him”.
“What has bothered me is that a friend of Tom has accused me of causing the disappearance when that is false because for days before he was last seen, I was staying in a hotel,” she added.
According to the OIJ the young woman and Cook’s relatives went to the OIJ to file a report of his disappearance.
Besides the tattoo, the OIJ was able to further identify the body through dental records sent from the United States.
Immigration authorities confirmed that Cook visited Costa Rica in January of this year and had stayed for 3 months.
Cook fell in love with Costa Rica and returned to with the intention to live in the country, setting up a business in Jaco.
Sex & Drugs
According to the statement that Yaritza gave to the authorities, she occasionally met with the Cook, sometimes even asking her to find him women to take back to his place.
Cook paid ¢375,000 in cash per month for a small place a the Residencias Málaga, in Jaco, though he presumably thought about acquiring a property in that same place, he did not have any vehicles and usually, he moved in informal cabs, something that the young woman constantly reproached him for.
“Once he called me to tell me he was coming from San Jose, he kept me waiting for him for several hours, and I saw him arrive in a pirate from San Jose; that is, he paid the service from the capital to here and that is not done. I worried a lot for him,” she said.
According to Yaritza’s testimony, Cook went out every night, drinking and apparently using drugs with a group of American friends that he saw every day.
Until now the authorities are not clear about what happened, the only evidence they have in relation to the facts is an internal security video of the residence in which two vehicles can be seen entering and moving to the house of the foreigner.
His family, through social networks, have called on all the those who know Cook so they can communicate with them for more information.
Victim's car was run off the road by two men on motorcycles and two others in a BMW. Photo from Diario Extra
The Organismo de Investigacion Judicial (OIJ), confirmed they are investigating the disappearance of the owner of local online sportsbook, 5Dimes, located in San Pedro after he was reported missing late last month.
Victim’s car was run off the road by two men on motorcycles and two others in a BMW. Photo from Diario Extra
OIJ director, Walter Espinoza, confirmed they are investigating the disappearance of 43-year-old William Sean Creighton, known throughout the online sports betting world simply as ‘Tony,’ who hasn’t been seen since he left work on the night of September 24.
His wife, a Costa Rican national, reported him missing the following day. Espinoza said they cannot comment anymore on the case for fear of putting at the risk the man’s life. Espinoza would only say the OIJ is investigating a disappearance, not speculating if the case was an abduction, would only say that the OIJ not received any ransom requests.
But Costa Rica’s self-proclaimed “most sold newspaper in Costa Rica”, the Diario Extra, reported that “Tony” had been abducted by four men and that a sizable ransom had already been paid by his family.
According to the Diario Extra report, Tony’s Porsche Cayenne was forced off the road that night by two gunmen on a motorcycle and two more individuals in a BMW. Tony’s wife reportedly received a call from his captors later that night, demanding payment of US$950,000 dollars.
The family and the OIJ are not confirming (or denying) the kidnapping or the ransom. The Diario Extra claims sources close to the case for their information.
The reports say that Tony spoke to his wife to assure her that he was fine, and a payment in ‘virtual currency’ was said to have been transmitted electronically to his captors that same night.
However, Tony’s release never came.
Other reports indicate the family had hired private investigators from the U.S. — allegedly former agents of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation — who traveled to Costa Rica, but would not disclose publicly their findings. The Diario Extra reports the PI’s are still in Costa Rica, though cooperating with local police.
The report indicated that Creighton’s family had hired private investigators before contacting the police.
The body of a Massachusetts man who was swept away by floodwaters while honeymooning in Costa Rica has been recovered.
The family of 30-year-old Josh Byrne said: “he will always be remembered for his helpful and caring demeanor, his ability to make friends in any setting, and his love for his wife, Bianca.”
The couple became trapped in a vehicle on a bridge last week. They tried to drive across and Byrne has swept away, but his wife, Bianca Merritt, swam to safety.
Mélida Cedeño, president of APSE, was one of the negotiators of the preliminary dialogue, but she did not accept the agreement with the government. Photo Jeffrey Zamora
Now in the sixth week of the national strike, we learn that the Ministry of Education (MEP) is investigating 556 teachers on strike who traveled out of the country. According to official data, the travel took place between September 9, one before the national strike and October 8, when the first case was reported publicly.
Mélida Cedeño, president of APSE, who was one of the negotiators of the preliminary dialogue, but did not accept the agreement with the government, calls the MEP report an attempt by the government to give striking teachers a bad public opinion. Photo Jeffrey Zamora
The MEP said if an employee – teacher or other – is absent without justification, he or she is exposed to a suspension without salary benefit or he could be dismissed without responsibility (severance and other benefits).
For clarity, MEP employees on strike are not subject to the above sanctions unless they were not in the country, that is traveling when they were to be on strike if confirmed by the immigration service.
MEP Minister Edgar Mora confirmed an investigation is underway and that each case will be investigated individually.
The news of the investigation confirms that Minister Mora was not wrong when he said that it was not unique the case of the teacher who took advantage of the strike days to go with her family on vacation in Mexico.
Mora said all (who traveled) are identified by name and cedula (ID).
The minister added there are 12 cases of travel of up to 29 days and some who still have yet to return from their self-given vacations.
The MEP report indicates 79 employees traveled between 10 and 19 days, 165 between five and nine days and 245 from one to four days. Another 34 left and returned the same day.
For her part, the president of teacher’s union, Mélida Cedeño, called the list the “unfortunate list” and criticized the MEP cross-checking the information with the immigration service when it has never been done before.
For the leader of the Asociación de Profesores de Segunda Enseñanza (APSE), the report is the government’s attempt to discredit them – the teachers and the union.
“It is to believe because we’ve seen a lot of distorting information regarding our strike and what educators do because what they (the government) want is to give us a bad public opinion in the fight we are in (national strike against the tax reform,” Cedeño said.
For his part, Gilberto Cascante, president of the Asociación Nacional de Educadores (ANDE), sais, “My position is to investigate the causes of why they left the country, but I do not have the list; immediately when the MEP gives me the list and if they are affiliated to the ANDE, I will review case by case the cause for which they left.”
Today, in its 38th days of the strike movement, 98.5% of public employees who are still on strike are from the education sector, a situation that brings uncertainty to students of all levels about the future of the school year, especially the 49,000 who would begin national tests “bachillerato” (high school graduation) on October 30.
The formation of a Blue and White National Unity movement (Unidad Nacional Azul y Blanco) with representation from the majority of the social and political sectors that actively oppose the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship, is a great historic event due to its broad political agreement without ideological discrimination or sectarianism.
Photo: Carlos Herrera / Confidencial
The ten principles, ten values and thirteen commitments of their founding proclamation must now move beyond unity and into action as the only way of achieving victory.
Two of their essential propositions sum up all of them; and from this starting point all the others must be developed in a continuous and simultaneous way, but without a linear or mechanical vision. The first task is getting rid of the regime through any civic route, be it via the dictators’ resignation, or their defeat in early elections. In that way, the unity movement can fulfill the humanitarian objective of freeing society from the tragedy of seeing its young taken prisoner, persecuted or killed.
Later, a program of action and transformation must be undertaken, based on the 23 principles, values and commitments outlined. These will guide the eradication of Ortega’s system and begin the historic job of constructing a legal system built on respect for human rights and guarantees of all the democratic civil rights.
In politics, you can’t be a romantic. I want to note the difference between aspiring to democracy and the supposed “recovery” of our democracy.
This isn’t at all easy. None of the changes proposed to advance economic, political and social programs will be possible without achieving in practical terms that which presently exists only as a stated intention: putting aside ideological differences in favor of carrying out each common task, and resolving the difficulties between groups with the least possible degree of sectarianism.
This means that when a law is discussed – or the entire body of laws – to regulate the unjust social relations that have characterized our historically unjust system, that which is merely spoken now must be made real. For example, we might suppose that some of the business representatives in the Unity Movement could call for absolute freedom of enterprise, as historically they’ve done, with the objective of getting around the issue of social justice.
Or, in an opposite example, suppose that some representatives of the salaried workers sector adhere to the mechanical concept that the defeat of the dictatorship means a victory for the radical social revolution. I bring this up, because people almost always abandon the idea of reflection when acting in defense of special interests and that tends to confuse things. Conceivably, out of selfish class interests, some would be working to maintain the unjust economic and social system (the Ortega system without Ortega), while others would expound an ingenuous and infantile radicalism.
The reality is that unity in action must be practiced to reach common objectives (rights and liberty) without losing the ideological autonomy of each group to exercise their freedom of thought while respecting the thinking of others. Unity in action won’t bring about an absolute harmony, but a mutual understanding at the moment of removing the barriers that impede everyone’s freedom.
From the moment the Blue and White Unity Movement came into being, the traditional sectors of the opposition have already been expressing opposing criteria. Despite proclaiming their agreement with the struggle against the dictatorship, they reject the route traced by the Unity Movement and, prompted by their sectarianism, raise party questions. It goes without saying that acting in this way will only leave them to stagnate with their prejudices. Without meaning to, they end up reinforcing the students’ beliefs about the uselessness and undesirability of the traditional strongmen leaders and their parties, as political actors who’ve been left behind in this new form of historic struggle.
No one wanted these differences to arise, but they had to be foreseen. Since they’ve already arisen in a weak and tentative way, the most probable thing is that these parties will be left on the margins of history, obsolete as a political force, while as individuals they end up resentful, or as pawns in the electoral farces.
Certainly, other phenomena will arise in the united struggle, when the dictatorship had become nothing more than just a sad era of the past. There may be no antidote for some of these happenings, but they can be foreseen and not frighten us, with the understanding that such phenomena are inevitable in politics and we can act accordingly.
In politics, you can’t be a romantic nor become confused because someone refuses to understand that in every struggle and every field of political action there are opposing interests at play. But if you renounce sectarianism, then finding a better way of conducting politics is a much safer bet.
This isn’t the first time that – in the face of extremism from one side and the other – I’ve tried to tackle the topic of democracy and the democratic. These two words may seem the same, but in my view, they aren’t. I’ve given my opinion and I continue to do so, that in today’s Nicaragua we’re not struggling to “recuperate” our democracy, but to construct it, because it’s never existed here in any finished form.
Looking backwards… During the first 30 years of the nineteenth century, there was a conservative version of democracy, in that it practiced the alternation of parties in power. However, this alternation involved only a few families from the oligarchy, while the very poor (those who didn’t own property worth at least 100 pesos) and the illiterate couldn’t vote. It was a democracy only for the minority.
In the 125 years that have passed since 1893 (spanning 7 years of the nineteenth century, the entire 20th century and 18 years of this 21st century) we’ve never had a democracy which satisfied all sectors. The dictatorship of Zelaya followed, then there were governments of the liberal or conservative parties, puppets of the United States’ armed intervention, including the Somoza dictatorship that they left us, right up until the Sandinista revolution of 1979.
That revolution was only such in terms of some political and social changes; it was later cut short or left at a halfway point by another form of pro-North American armed intervention, and due to the Sandinistas own mistakes. It lasted only eleven years, and it was a democracy for the classes that had historically been passed over, but a dictatorship for the other social classes.
After that, we had sixteen years of a democracy that was more formal than real, although it did allow political liberties. However, it also embraced the traditional class privileges and a rapacious administrative corruption, especially during the presidency of Arnoldo Aleman. It could be said that respect for political liberties was no compensation for the rampant social injustice.
And now, we have the worst of all the dictatorships, the two-headed rule of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. In addition to their level of criminality and corruption, he’s tried to swindle and continues to swindle many, especially his friends outside the country, with the lie that his regime is the continuity of the 1979 revolution. In fact, they themselves have done and are doing more than enough to definitively bury that revolution.
With this brief summary of our history I hope to make clearer the difference between aspiring to democracy and the supposed “recuperation” of our democracy. In passing, I’ve tried to explain the difference between the aspiration for democracy and what we can in reality hope to attain after the dictatorship is defeated: a democracy under construction with full respect for all the human and political rights for all.
To help construct that democracy is the goal of the conscientious, honest, non-sectarian participation within the Blue and White National Unity movement, if true to its objectives, values and commitments. Demanding other conditions won’t bring any success, and, in fact, would be a gift to those who oppose all stripes of democracy.
Carlos admits he’s on the wrong side, and he repeats this realization five times during our conversation. ”I know I’m on the wrong side: I know it, and my wife knows it. It makes me ashamed,” he states.
Public workers are sent daily to th rotondas in Managuaa. Photo: Carlos Herrera/Confidencial
For three years, Carlos – whose name we’ve changed to protect his identity – has been working in the Nicaraguan Social Security Institute. Prior to the socio-political crisis that erupted in April, he would attend the massive government gatherings only to commemorate important dates.
“I very happily attended two July 19th celebrations (marking the anniversary of the revolutionary victory). My third time was this last July, but this time I attended with shame,” he tells us.
“I felt bad being in that plaza, and holding up a flag bathed in blood,” he affirms. Carlos’ discomfort stems from the government repression exercised against hundreds of thousands of protesting citizens, a repression that has left a confirmed toll of 325 dead, another 2,000 wounded, dozens missing, and more than 400 political prisoners languishing in the jails of the prison system.
For eleven years, Daniel Ortega has imposed an authoritarian government, reducing the spaces for opposition. The civic rebellion tore away his control of the streets, and he now is attempting to reassert it by criminalizing protest at the same time that he increases the mobilizations of his party.
In September alone, the government held eight marches in Managua and multiple caravans in the departments.
Carlos was obligated to participate in all the mobilizations
“I tried to refuse once, but a workmate told me that if I did, I was going to be viewed as a traitor. I had to listen to him,” Carlos comments.
According to him, the majority of the workers are forced to attend, and if they complain, they’re fired. They don’t discuss these things in the office, “because the walls have ears.” He’s aware, that they go out on the streets to “boycott” the “blue and white’s” – the citizens who have organized themselves and risen up against the regime.
The image of public employees has been tarnished
On the street, many Nicaraguans have a negative perception of the state functionaries. According to the latest CID Gallup poll carried out from Sept. 6 – 18, 65% of Nicaraguans believe that public employees have gotten their jobs through influence trafficking; only 21% believes that they’re contracted for their capabilities.
In addition, 54% believe that the public employees don’t have a service mentality, and 68% admit that they’ve given a state employee a “tip” to receive better service.
“To be a government employee now even makes you a target of insults and name-calling. State employees should serve the public and not a specific government. But during this period, the public service function has been completely destroyed; in saying this, I’m referring to the fact that what’s being imposed and what prevails is party loyalty, above one’s real function as a worker,” criticizes Gonzalo Carrion, legal director of the Nicaraguan Human Rights Center (Cenidh).
For his part, Carlos states that working for the Social Security Institute is complicated. “People are focused on gossip, on ‘ratting each other out.’ And after all that happened in April and the whole massacre, it’s gotten worse,” he relates. However, for now he has no other job prospects.
Since the protests erupted, at least 347,000 Nicaraguans have lost their jobs according to data from the Nicaraguan Foundation for Economic and Social Development (Funides).
“I’d like to leave, run away and stop working for a government that’s corrupt, inefficient and murderous, but my hands are tied,” Carlos laments. “And if I put in my letter of resignation, I may not even receive my severance pay,” he adds. Family and personal debts have chained him down.
Carlos complains about having to participate in the obligatory pro-government marches. “There are a few who are fanatics and love wasting their time. But many of us aren’t in agreement. You’re out there risking your life, you’re there because you have to be, you’re being watched and if you say “no”, you can be fired,” he sums it up.
According to the CID Gallup poll, 58% of Nicaraguans believe that the salary of a public employee depends on their “contacts”, and 55% feel that their level of honesty is “little to none.” Six of every ten Nicaraguans feel that those who work in the government institutions don’t respect the Constitution.
Carlos’ wife has asked him to resign. She wants her home to be peaceful, even if he earns less. Carlos says that he’s tried.
“My wife doesn’t know, but I’ve looked for work elsewhere. One day I went to a photocopy place and printed out some twenty copies of my resume. I left these copies with a number of companies in hopes that they’d call me and I could leave this job that’s making me sick,” he says.
Carlos is tense. We meet in a Managua shopping center, but he doesn’t stop looking all around. He’s afraid that someone will recognize him, and asks that we go somewhere else. He says that on the street he feels he’s being followed, and he assures us that his telephone is being bugged because “sometimes it makes a strange noise.”
“Do you consider yourself a hostage of the government?”
“I’ve never looked at it that way, but you could say that. If I don’t obey, they’ll put me on a “list”. And if I’m on that list, they could fire me. The only thing I can do is obey their orders.”
“What’s your plan?”
“Honestly – to keep going. Although I’m also giving out my resume to other places. Things are tough. Another option would be to go to Costa Rica.”
The telephone rings and Carlos answers it. He talks for more than ten minutes, then returns and excuses himself. “I have to go back to work. They could get suspicious,” he states. He heads for the nearest bus stop and is lost to view among the taxis waiting at the exit.
Andrea: “We’re the next victims”
Andrea, 30, has been working for four years in the Ministry of Education. She grew up in a Sandinista home, hearing about the revolution and Daniel Ortega. During her childhood and teen years, she identified with the red and black Sandinista party flag, and she was proud to be a member of the Sandinista Youth, (Juventud Sandinista 19 de Julio). She studied, graduated, and when the opportunity arose to apply for a position in the Ministry of Education, she only had to present the recommendation of the political secretary from her neighborhood.
“To me, Daniel was the figure that represented Sandinismo. I never imagined anyone else heading up the Sandinista Front, even though I understood that a process should exist for passing along control to the next generation. I couldn’t imagine this, because for me Daniel had carried the party on his shoulders when no one else thought it was worth a peso,” she tells us.
Since April, Andrea’s image of Ortega has changed. “We identify with that drawing in which Daniel Ortega is holding a gun to the head of a state employee. That’s how we feel: we’re the next victims, and we have to save ourselves,” she explains.
News of the first death from the government repression destroyed Andrea’s admiration for Ortega and unleashed a bitter taste for Rosario Murillo, his wife and Nicaragua’s vice president. “They need to leave power,” she thought. “They can’t continue to represent the FSLN.”
At Andrea’s workplace, the atmosphere also changed. Her boss, previously understanding, began acting like a soldier for Murillo.
“When the looting began, my boss told us that we had to stay and guard the Ministry of Education. I refused, and he exploded. He said: “Excellent! I’m glad to see who are the ones who don’t raise their hands, because tomorrow, when this shit hits the fan, I want to see who’s ready to die at my side.” [My office mates] and I was frozen. This person thought that I should die for the Ministry of Education, for a government that was doing something that wasn’t right,” she recalls.
According to Andrea, of the thirty employees in her office, only four are in agreement with the government’s new orientations, which have included suspending projects and even restricting internet connections. Instead of this, they have to serve shifts at the Managua traffic circles.
“People see us at the roundabouts, and they call us toadies, but they don’t understand that the majority are their under duress. We don’t want to do it, but we have debts to pay,” Andrea justifies her actions.
She also affirms that she and several of her office mates are tired. “To have them tell you that you have to go on a march isn’t easy. And it’s not easy to resign either, and just be in limbo with three children and a house you’ve recently bought. I understand that we should all resign, but it’s not all that easy,” she maintains.
“Who obligates you to go to the traffic circles?”
“In all the government ministries, the political aspect is overseen by the Sandinista youth coordinators. There are usually two of them. In the current situation, even Salvador Vanegas [the President’s advisor on education] must heed their orders. In our case, they’re two young guys who’ve been in the offices since 2011. They’re the ones who organize this.”
“So, they order you to go to the rotundas?”
“Before August, they would tell my boss and later he’d give us the schedules. Now they do it directly.”
Andrea says that during the first months of the crisis, going to the roundabouts wasn’t obligatory, but since June the orientation changed. Now, according to the schedules set out, a Russian-made bus comes to take them there, “be it raining, thundering or lightning.” Their mission, they’re told, is to support “President Ortega’s peace mission”. This protest is counted as part of their work day.
According to the agreements made, they need to arrive one hour previously. They’re always watched, sometimes by two lines or roped off areas with members of the Sandinista Youth. Other times they’re guarded by the riot police, who don’t let them leave until their time is up.
The coordinators, Andrea reveals, are very well-paid employees. “They have their homes in Ciudad Doral and their salary is over 22,000 cordobas a month (US $684). They’re loyal to the party, or more exactly, to Rosario Murillo. Their discipline is really impressive. In our group on the WhatsApp site, they’ve told us that we should denounce the “coup promoters” because they don’t deserve to have this job,” she relates.
To smile or not to smile
One Sunday afternoon in October, there’s a concentration of people at the roundabout known as El Gueguense. About forty people are there under two large canopies that shield them from the rain. Only a few of them are on the outside edges of the roundabout getting wet while they wave the flags of the Sandinista Front.
Those underneath the canopies have long faces. The atmosphere only improves a little when a pick-up truck from the Managua mayor’s office arrives to pass out dry t-shirts, caps and plastic capes to keep dry.
Andrea says that in the roundabouts she puts on her worst face. She argues that she can’t be a hypocrite and show joy for something that’s simply causing annoyance. Her workmates have similar attitudes, and the coordinators of the Sandinista youth have already asked them to be more enthusiastic.
“In the famous marches, they tell us that we should carry posters with messages alluding to peace or demanding justice, but it’s difficult to really feel it. What happens in the blue and white marches is completely different. There, people go whole-heartedly. They jump, they hop, they smile, they hug each other. The thing is that their feelings really come from their hearts, because it’s for a noble cause. In the government marches, they give us prefabricated signs to hold,” she compares.
Andrea feels that right now there’s no one person that represents her. Nevertheless, she feels some affinity for people like Socorro Matus, better known as “dona Coquito”, the marathon runner Alex Vanegas, or the population of the indigenous neighborhood of Monimbo that became a symbol of resistance in this peaceful revolution.
“The bishops also represent me. Even some of my workmates who aren’t Catholic recognize the important work that they’ve done, in taking the lead in everything that’s happened to us in these months,” she assures.
At the Ministry of Education, Andrea and her office mates continue coming to work to “do nothing”. They can’t even put USB memory sticks into their computers. In each area, the boss’ assistants keep watch over the employees: checking to see if they go to the roundabouts and fulfill their three or four obligatory hours. She notes that some of the employees have gotten sick because of the pressure. But the shifts haven’t been shortened.
“What do you think of Daniel Ortega now?
“He’s a dictator and an assassin – a coward.”
“What do you think will happen to the FSLN?”
“I was talking with my boyfriend, and I said to him that the FSLN had died, just like Somoza’s party was left dead and buried. That’s the future of the party. The day that Daniel falls, Sandinismo is going to go down with him. He and Rosario have taken it upon themselves to eliminate it.
Dozens of denunciations at the Cenidh human rights office
Daniel Ortega’s government has obligated the state workers to take shifts as demonstrators at the traffic circles of the capital, so that the “blue and white” demonstrators can’t occupy these areas. Since September, the script repeats itself every day in Managua. In the towns in the rest of the country, there are small mobilizations every weekend.
Gonzalo Carron, legal director of the Nicaraguan Human Rights Center (Cenidh), feels that the absolute control of government and the party orders issued to the public employees have destroyed their public function, because party loyalty is imposed above and beyond service to the citizens.
Cenidh has received dozens of denunciations from state workers forced to resign because they’ve been blackballed as “coup plotters”. They’ve also received complaints from functionaries who’ve been pressured and forced by their superiors to stand out in the rain or to defend their jobs by serving the political party.
“The state workers can’t stay in their jobs unless they show party loyalty, although there may well be functionaries or employees who don’t agree. One thing for certain: the base of support has eroded, but they’re also worn out from marching and being obligated to go out on the streets,” he warns.
Carrion assures that Daniel Ortega’s regime has assaulted the public institutions. In his judgement, the majority are functioning as a barracks for the Sandinista Front.
The public employees, he adds, are not exempt from the systematic and serious human rights violations that Ortega’s regime is committing. A recent investigation on the part of Confidencial revealed that the government is violating at least 18 of the 30 human rights violations contemplated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
“They’re running a unique risk and are obligated to become instruments of repression. There are some that have done so of their own free will and have even joined paramilitary groups. The person who hasn’t done this for pleasure is the person who has suffered more. Participating in counter-marches, being an instrument to defend a government you’re not in sympathy with and exposing yourself to that kind of risks, is a violation of your rights,” denounces Carrion.
Up to 3,000 migrants, according to organizers’ estimates, crossed from Honduras into Guatemala on a trek northward after a standoff with police in riot gear
(Merco Press) The organizer of a migrant caravan from Honduras was detained in Guatemala on Tuesday as the U.S. government threatened to withdraw aid from both countries and El Salvador if the flow of migrants north to the United States was not stopped.
Up to 3,000 migrants, according to organizers’ estimates, crossed from Honduras into Guatemala on a trek northward after a standoff with police in riot gear
Up to 3,000 migrants, according to organizers’ estimates, crossed from Honduras into Guatemala on a trek northward after a standoff on Monday with police in riot gear.
The Honduran Foreign Ministry called on its citizens not to join the group. The government “urges the Hondurans taking part in this irregular mobilization not to be used by a movement that is clearly political,” it said.
Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez said in a public address on Tuesday evening some Hondurans in the caravan had already returned home and the government was preparing to support them. He did not specify how many had turned back.
Over the border, Guatemalan police officers detained Bartolo Fuentes, a former Honduran lawmaker, from the middle of the large crowd that he and three other organizers had led from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, since Saturday.
The moves followed comments by U.S. President Donald Trump that his administration would halt aid if the Central American governments did not act, his latest effort to demonstrate his tough stance on immigration.
Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez said some Hondurans in the caravan had already returned home and the government was preparing to support them
The Honduran security ministry said Fuentes had been detained because he “did not comply with Guatemalan immigration rules” and would be deported back to Honduras in the coming hours.
Security officials at the Honduran border with Guatemala in Agua Caliente blocked the road to prevent another much smaller group from getting through, television images from the border showed.
“We can’t attend to people en masse. People are going through one by one,” police spokesman Alex Madrid said in a radio interview.
Illegal immigration is likely to be a top issue in Nov. 6 U.S. congressional elections, when Democrats are seen as having a good chance of gaining control of the House of Representatives from Trump’s fellow Republicans.
“Trump and the West” published in a diplomatic journal showed the Bolsonaro camp how much Fraga Araujo shared their world view
MercoPress – The far-right front-runner in Brazil’s presidential race plans to put foreign policy in the hands of a diplomat who has praised the nationalist agenda of U.S. President Donald Trump that has shaken the global order, an adviser to the candidate said.
“Trump and the West” published in a diplomatic journal showed the Bolsonaro camp how much Fraga Araujo shared their world view
Policy experts said the pick fits conservative firebrand Jair Bolsonaro’s plan to make Brazil’s most dramatic foreign policy shift in decades. Bolsonaro has already vowed to rethink membership in developing nation blocks such as Mercosur and BRICS and move the country’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, embracing Trump as few in Latin America have done.
That represents a direct reversal of nearly a decade and a half of diplomacy under leftist Workers Party (PT) governments, which focused on alliances with South American neighbors and other emerging powers.
Brazil has a chance to recover its “Western soul,” embrace Trump’s brand of nationalism, and pursue its national interests instead of being tied to blocs of nations
With a commanding lead just a dozen days before a run-off against Fernando Haddad of the PT, Bolsonaro has already begun naming members of a future cabinet, but has not confirmed his pick for foreign minister.
Ernesto Fraga Araújo, head of the United States and Canada department at the foreign ministry, is Bolsonaro’s first choice for the role, according to Paulo Kramer, a politics professor who advises the Bolsonaro campaign.
In unusual behavior for a Brazilian diplomat, Fraga Araújo has used a personal blog dedicated to arguments “Against Globalism” to call for Brazilians to back Bolsonaro’s campaign. But it was an article called “Trump and the West” in a diplomatic journal that showed the Bolsonaro camp how much the 51-year-old diplomat shared their world view, Kramer said.
Fraga Araújo argued in the paper that Trump is saving Western Christian civilization from radical Islam and “globalist cultural Marxism” by standing up for national identity, family values and the Christian faith as Europe has not.
Ernesto Fraga Araújo, head of the United States and Canada department at the foreign ministry, is Bolsonaro’s first choice for the role, according to Paulo Kramer
Brazil has a chance to recover its “Western soul,” embrace Trump’s brand of nationalism, and pursue its national interests instead of being tied to blocs of nations, he wrote.
Bolsonaro has not been shy about his affinity for the U.S. president, whose 2016 campaign served as a model for his own anti-establishment movement, pledging an iron fist against corruption and crime.
Brazil, one of the world’s most closed major economies, is already skeptical of free trade. But Bolsonaro has pointed to several symbolic moves underscoring an ideological realignment, too.
One of the clearest signals would be moving Brazil’s embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, following Trump’s cue, as neighboring Paraguay has done.
Brazil has long supported a two-state solution for the conflict over Palestine and in 2010 recognized the Palestinian state based on 1967 borders with Israel. However, Bolsonaro has said Palestine is not a country and vowed to move Brazil’s embassy to Jerusalem and close the Palestinian embassy in Brasilia.
Bolsonaro’s attitude toward South American neighbors has been chillier, especially socialist Venezuela, which he has pledged to confront firmly. Still, his aides said he would not cut off diplomatic ties or close the border because that would shut out refugees flowing into Brazil.
One of the clearest signals would be moving Brazil’s embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, following Trump’s cue, as neighboring Paraguay has done.
“Bolsonaro’s foreign policy will be pragmatic. It will not discriminate against any nation and will follow the best interests of Brazil,” said Kramer, his foreign policy adviser.
Even the BRICS alliance, which has gained steam as Brazil set up development banks and encouraged trade with Russia, India, China and South Africa, could get a skeptical second look from Bolsonaro. Many in Brazil’s foreign ministry would resist a move to withdraw.
On China, Brazil’s main trade partner and source of foreign investment in recent years, experts say Bolsonaro may be forced to temper his more antagonistic impulses for the sake of economic interests.
Bolsonaro has warned of Chinese investors taking control of strategic natural resources in the mining and energy sectors.
“China isn’t buying in Brazil, China is buying Brazil,” he said in August. “Are you willing to leave Brazil in the hands of the Chinese?”
However, Rubens Barbosa, a former Brazilian ambassador to the United States, is optimistic that a Bolsonaro administration would shun protectionism, even when it comes to China.
“Bolsonaro may have reservations about the sale of certain assets, but if Chinese investment goes into infrastructure that Brazil badly needs to export food and minerals, I do not think he will oppose it,” Barbosa said.
Venezuela, the country with the lowest wages in the region and an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, has broken the record for the highest inflation in the Americas, to such an extent that by 2019 hyperinflation will reach the astounding figure of 10,000,000%. This is due, according to the Venezuelan economist José Toro Hardy, to “aberrant public policies” full of state controls.
The Venezuelan government’s monetary policy has created worthless money. EFE/Miguel Gutiérrez
Toro Hardy explained to the PanAm Post that with the IMF’s new estimate, Venezuela is among the worst inflation cases that humanity has known in its entire history:
“This is the result of aberrant public policies and unrestrained populism. The government of Venezuela has incurred an unmanageable fiscal deficit to finance the cash flow of PDVSA, which is the oil company of the market.
The Government has resorted to demanding from the Central Bank of Venezuela that it make immense issues of money without support; that money is incorporated into the country’s money supply and, consequently, demands goods. But since there are no goods to be had, because they have destroyed the productive apparatus through expropriations, price controls, through all kinds of socialist measures, what they have achieved is that there is a shortage of absolutely anything. In Venezuela there are no medicines, there is no food, but the result is that with this huge money supply demanding goods that do not exist, the only thing that is achieved is that prices go up,” he explained.
Given this situation, generated by Chavismo, 91% of Venezuelan families live below the poverty line, and 65% of them face extreme poverty.
“It is very difficult to live in these conditions, first because the country has become impoverished, because there is no salary that can withstand this increase in prices, and that adds to the scarcity of almost any product. People are getting desperate and living in terrible anguish and for that reason many Venezuelans simply choose to leave the country,” notes Hardy Toro.
Fondo Monetario Internacional.
Informe octubre.
Inflación (e) 2019.
Argentina 20,2% Bolivia 4,5% Brasil 4,2% Chile 3% Colombia 3% Ecuador 0,1% Paraguay 4% Perú 2% Uruguay 6,5% Venezuela 10.000.000%
The economy in Venezuela resembles that of a country at war, with a shortage of food and medicines unique in its history. In addition, with a daily price variation that translates into the highest inflation in the region, the country now constitutes one of the worst ten significant hyperinflationary cases in the world.
According to the latest forecasts of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Venezuela’s GDP will register a contraction of 18% this year, extending its fall to five straight years; while next year the recession could be 5% as a result of the collapse of oil production and political and social instability.
According to the IMF studies, Venezuelan hyperinflation will reach 1,370,000% annually in 2018, and will jump to 10,000,000% in 2019. The situation is so serious that Venezuela was excluded from the regional average and from the list of emerging markets so as not to distort the figures.
On the other hand, the IMF calculates that the per capita wealth of Venezuela has fallen “more than 35%” between 2013 and 2017, and predicts the loss of around 60% of GDP per capita between 2013 and 2023, a figure that would place the impoverishment expected for Venezuela at levels similar to that registered by countries at war like the cases of Iran between 1976 and 1981, Iraq between 1999 and 2003, Azerbaijan between 1990 and 1995 or Libya between 2010 and 2011.
A decade ago, when this situation was first noticed, many economists said that hyperinflation could never occur in Venezuela because of oil. However, thanks to socialism, it was possible to destroy not only the economy, but also the production of crude oil.
Before, the primary reason why Venezuelans emigrated was mainly due to the insecurity and the high levels of violence in the South American country; now the main reason is because Venezuela’s economy is so entirely unsustainable.
Jair Bolsonaro and the right are on the rise in Brazil (Metro1).
Bolsonaro’s triumph in Brazil has brought back the left/right debate to the forefront. On extremism. It is a debate that, in recent months, has reached a paroxysm. With Trump in the United States, totalitarian feminism in Spain, the rejection of immigration in the United Kingdom, racism in Germany, or anti-Spanish sentiment in Catalonia.
Jair Bolsonaro and the right are on the rise in Brazil (Metro1).
However, the emergence – or the simple existence – of individuals who dare to think outside of the carefully labeled politically correct boxes crafted by “polite society”, harms the dogmatic positions in the discussion.
When the ingenious rapper Kanye West announced his support for President Donald Trump, I wrote that the artist represented a lethal danger to the anti-Trump rhetoric.
If you support Trump, you are racist, xenophobic, a climate change denier, or a recalcitrant nationalist. Or, now, if you support Bolsonaro, you flirt with rape, assume blacks are inferior, and support the annihilation of leftist rebels.
When the black rapper said he loved Trump, they tarred and feathered him. He was subject to a barrage of attacks and insults. Writers questioned his mental health, and tried to strip him of his racial identity. Presumptuous, haughty, they arrogate to themselves the power to decide where the support of various communities should go, and how they should think. Because, otherwise, they would have to be unbalanced. Traitors to their racial identity, their gender, their sexual orientation…
As NYU social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, says: “There are third parties, who are usually a presumptuous collective, who claim the right to speak on behalf of millions of individuals: women, homosexuals, African-Americans, Muslims…And they invoke their feelings, by subjective definition, to justify their intolerance.”
Because there is nothing more totalitarian than the left. Because it does not conceive of citizens. It does not conceive of individuals. Only a huge collective. And these anointed divinities in the sky, must subdue and manipulate various groups in identity politics. They must solemnly pronounce upon how they should act. What they must say. And how, according to their skin color or gender, they should think.
A recent Twitter debate has shined valuable light on the intersection of politics and racial identity.
A documentary maker, Andrés Carvajal, wrote on his Twitter account: “Being a black man on the right is as respectable as being a cow and working in the butchery.” One Jorge Ugueto, took umbrage at the remarks, and penned a lengthy response, explaining why he is a black conservative.
This was what he said in a thread on Twitter:
“Well, it turns out, my friend Carvajal, that I’m black and I’m conservative. And I’ll explain why:
Because the only equality in which I believe is equality before the law, while the left wants to equalize the whole world by force and the result of that is horror: Cuba, Venezuela. I am Venezuelan and I know what I am talking about.
Because I feel smart enough and able enough to get by without any government assistance. I am not in favor of any affirmative action or special treatment for blacks or for women. I believe, yes, in merit, work, and intelligence.
That’s why I do not want to be given work because I’m black, but because of my ability. When you say that blacks can not be conservative, you are equalizing the whole world. It is annoying to have to explain something so obvious, but among the black community you will find great variety and diversity: brilliant people and stupid people; honorable people and scoundrels, brave people and pusillanimous people. There is everything, but you equal everyone and you arrogate to yourself the authority to say: ‘You can be this, but you can’t be that.’
And I ask you: who the hell are you to decide what someone else’s political views should be? I am on the right because I agree with what Sowell says in this interview (https://t.co/NdprXR5o6i).
I am on the right because I see myself as a full member of society, not as a victim. There is the debate, that the left builds its discourse on victimhood. Blacks, women, gays…it suits them that everyone is a victim.
That historically there has been injustice against these three groups, that is undeniable; but it is also undeniable that these three groups have never had it better than now. And it is also undeniable that the position of the victim is a hindrance to growth and development.
I am conservative because what the left is offering today is nonsense: (Chávez, Castro, Iglesias, Monedero). Just look at what’s on the other side, and it’s not hard to see why someone leans to the right.
I am on the right because in the 90s I already felt antipathy for the left and, after 20 years of Chavismo, it is impossible not to be right. I am on the right because after a lifetime of reading and reflecting, I can not be anything else.
And before you commence with the spiel about fascism, nobody is talking about Hitler. I would have to be very disturbed to feel sympathy for that. I tell you clearly: as much as we hate fascism and Nazism, we also hate Communism. My thing is liberal democracy.
It just so happens that for people on the left everything that doesn’t square with their Marxist orthodoxy, is far right. That way they put everyone in the same bag. Even social democracy is called “right-wing”. That’s how serious and rigorous they are when it comes to a debate.
I always say that there are few things as racist as a socialist. For you, a black man can only be left-wing. And if one is not, they speak of alienation, of betrayal…Always the same cheap manipulation. They are so predictable, that they bore us easily.
That they are not racist? It is enough to see their treatment of blacks who do not agree with them. It is enough to see the treatment of blacks in Castro’s Cuba.
Isn’t it the worst form of racism to want to define the political orientation of blacks, just because they are black? For you people are defined only by their race. Is that not racism? I am on the right because it is “my” choice, not yours. I’m right because I feel like it. And period.”
There is no more to say. Sure, Ugueto wields a defense of liberalism, contrasting it with the totalitarianism of the left, and their collectivist crusades.
Bolsonaro did not win in Brazil because almost fifty percent of the citizens of that country are racist, xenophobic or sexist. To understand his triumph, this article by Álvaro Vargas Llosa is quite pertinent.
What the left does not understand is that we are free and independent men. Now they ask the individuals to shut up. They deny them. They exclude them. They say that they are the advocates in the defense of minorities. But to them, the opinion of blacks, gays, or women only matters, until it becomes uncomfortable.
It may be the end for the Fujimori dynasty, with Alberto back in prison, and Keiko soon on the way.
To say that it’s been a bad week for the Fujimori family would be putting it mildly. First Peru’s Supreme Court overturned a pardon for former president Alberto Fujimori, which will send him back to jail to complete a 25 year prison sentence for human rights violations.
It may be the end for the Fujimori dynasty, with Alberto back in prison, and Keiko soon on the way.
Then, yesterday, Keiko Fujimori was handcuffed and arrested at the prosecutor’s office, on charges that she accepted USD $1 million in illicit funding from Odebrecht for her 2011 presidential campaign.
The Fujimori political dynasty has been the dominant force in Peruvian politics for decades. Alberto Fujimori cultivated an every man image that included lengthy trips to remote Andean villages where he would walk hundreds of miles through the mountains. This Japanese immigrant earned a special place in the hearts of millions of Peruvians. He brought the Marxist rebel group the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso), which had terrorized the country for decades, to its knees, and laid the foundations for an economic resurgence.
In the process he turned Peru into a haven of tyranny and corruption, epitomized by the Machiavellian and outlandish levels of malfeasance committed by his head of the National Intelligence Service Vladimiro Montesinos, whose crimes included bribery, corruption, abuse of power, drug trafficking, arms trafficking, and murder. Montesinos infamously arranged a deal to ship 10,000 assault rifles from Jordan to the FARC in Colombia. In 2006, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison on this charge.
Alberto Fujimori’s image was tarnished, but the Peruvian public largely gave his progeny a pass. Twice, Keiko Fujimori was just thousands of votes away from winning the presidency, narrowly losing to Ollanta Humala in 2011, and then again to Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in 2015. Coincidentally, both have been ensnared in Odebrecht’s omnipresent web: Humala was arrested in 2017 and is currently awaiting trial for corruption, while PPK resigned the presidency in disgrace earlier this year.
The big question for the Fujimori family is this: can Keiko now convince her militants that this is, in fact, political persecution as opposed to legitimate criminal prosecution? The Peruvian public may be out of patience at this point, as a recent poll finds Keiko with an abysmal 13% public support.
In my travels, I have been fortunate enough to have enjoyed adult beverages at some of the world’s most renowned drinking establishments. I have sipped a Pimms Cup at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, where I sat under the same overhead fan that Ernest Hemingway, Summerset Maughan, and Rudyard Kipling had in earlier eras.
I have watched the Pacific surf with an old-vine zinfandel at the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego, California. I have savored a snifter of cognac at the stately Plaza Hotel in New York City.
I now live in Costa Rica. As I reflect on those rich old memories, a question comes to mind: Does Downtown San José offer such a civilized refuge where one can indulge in an early-evening cocktail? Well, let me offer three places that are worth considering.
Gran Hotel Costa Rica
Gran Hotel-Costa Rica – Glowing at night, the newly renovated Gran Hotel Costa Rica features a new restaurant and bar on its 5th floor.
This past summer, the historic Gran Hotel Costa Rica completed an extensive top-to-bottom renovation. One of the key changes that they made was to the top floor, which now holds the check-in lobby, some nice comfortable seating areas and an elegant bar and restaurant.
The statue of Juan Mora Fernandez, Costa Rica’s first elected president, greets visitors to the newly remodeled Gran Hotel Costa Rica.
If you are not familiar with the Gran Hotel, it sits on the Plaza de la Cultura in the center of Downtown San José, and it is just a few steps from the National Theater of Costa Rica. Originally built in 1930, it is now recognized as a historical architectural monument. Since it’s beginning, the Gran Hotel has been an important part of Costa Rica’s history. It has even named a suite after its most famous guest, President John F. Kennedy.
Tables near the windows in the luxurious new bar on the top floor of the Gran Hotel Costa Rica give patrons a sweeping view of the Plaza de la Cultura, the National Theater of Costa Rica and all the way to the mountains south of San Jose.
Today, when you take the new glass elevator to the top floor, you can’t help but be impressed by the sleek modern elegance of the check-in lobby, and of course by the stunning views. As soon as you arrive on the top floor, you are almost compelled to walk to the windows and take in the sweeping view of the Plaza, the National Theater and all the way to the mountains that rise up to the south of the city.
The new bar atop the Gran Hotel Costa Rica features chic lighting and elegant fixtures, while preserving the historic tile floor.
The bar features chic lights and fixtures hanging from the ceiling that go surprisingly well with the original tile floor that has been carefully preserved. There are tables at the windows that allow you to watch the comings and goings on the Plaza and at the Theater. And there is a grand piano, which we are told, is played on Wednesdays during happy hour.
The only criticisms that I have heard about the bar at the Gran Hotel Costa Rica, is that it should have been created as a more intimate space. The critics say that it is wide open with the rest of the top floor and that it has all the warmth of a convention center. Well, be that as it may, I think it is one of the most memorable places in Downtown San José to have a cocktail or a glass of wine.
Hotel El Presidente
The new “modern art” exterior to the Hotel El Presidente gives it a whimsical facelift on an otherwise traditional corner of Avenida Central.
Another Downtown hotel that has recently been renovated is El Presidente, about two blocks east of the Gran Hotel. Although Hotel El Presidente does not have the storied past of the Gran Hotel, it still has plenty of history. It is one of the major Downtown hotels and it sits on the corner of Avenida Central and Calle 7.
From the outside, the renovation of Hotel El President has made two very noticeable changes. The first is its modern-art paint job that gives it’s exterior an almost graffiti-like appearance. The second is that they have inexplicably moved the main entrance of the hotel from Avenida Central, to around the corner and down the street on Calle 7.
Azotea at Hotel El Presidente flows outside to an open-air seating area. The tables and lush vegetation create a memorable place for an early-evening cocktail.
On the fourth floor of the hotel, there is an inviting bar and boca lounge called Azotea. Here the room is warm and comfortable, and the back bar has a very polished classy appeal to it. The room opens up to a “roof-top” section of open air seating that is just delightful. And even though it does not have commanding views, it is a great place to enjoy a beverage or two (weather permitting).
Although I really like the beauty and the feel of Azotea, and the welcoming attention of the staff, I have two problems with it. The first is that, even though Azotea is only 4 stories up, you will need to find and to take two separate elevators to get to it. This was certainly not very well thought out by the hotel’s architects.
I can overlook the confusing elevator issue, but the second problem is much more glaring for me. I ordered a glass of wine, and when it arrived, there was a mere two fingers of wine in the bottom of the glass. (There appears to be a very worrisome trend among some upscale restaurants and cocktail lounges; to see how little wine they can give to their patrons.) It is a shame, since Azotea could be a favorite drinking spot if this serious problem is rectified.
La Esquina de Buenos Aires
Esquina Bar – The bar at La Esquina de Buenos Aires is well stocked with spirits and has an exceptional wine list.
Perhaps the best well-stocked bar in town is in the venerable Argentinian restaurant, La Esquina de Buenos Aires. Here you will find a wide selection of Scotch and Bourbon, Vodka and Gin, Brandy and of course some of the very fine sipping-quality Rums that come from this part of the world.
With only 8 seats, the bar at La Esquina de Buenos Aires can be tight and crowded on a busy night. But that is part of its charm, as you will almost always meet interesting people here.
Then there is their wine list: It is nothing short of amazing. There are several pages of wine offerings mostly from Argentina and Chile, and also some from Spain and Italy. There is a good selection of wines by the glass, including a very drinkable house wine.
Of course, the reason most people go to La Esquina de Buenos Aires is for its food. Widely known for its Argentinian beef, it also has good seafood dishes and, since Buenos Aires has a very sizable Italian population, it has some great pasta dishes.
La Esquina de Buenos Aires – One of the most popular restaurants in San Jose is La Esquina de Buenos Aires, featuring Argentinian beef and other excellent dishes.
The one difficulty with the bar, is that it is just a bar . . . . and a small one at that. The bar is tightly wedged near one wall and has only 8 seats, and there is no lounge seating area. So this bar is unfortunately not suitable for a party of 2 or 3 couples.
However, most of the times I have have been to La Esquina, I have gone solo or with just one friend. I enjoy sitting at the bar for a drink, and even for dinner. In fact, since La Esquina is such a popular place, I have always met interesting people sitting on either side of me.
If you are reading this story, you are probably past the age where you use the word “party” as a verb. There comes a time in life when we choose one or two comfortable establishments to share a drink with friends. Like Hemingway, we all search for that “clean well-lighted place.”
I enjoy each of the three places mentioned above, even though I recognize that each has its advantages and its drawbacks. They are part of what gives Downtown San José so much character. They are all part of “the real San José.”
Michael Miller is the author of the first and only guidebook that focuses on Downtown San José, Costa Rica, titled The Real San José. Paperback copies are available for sale at the ARCR Office. An electronic version of The Real San José is available at Amazon/Kindle.
Your questions and comments are always welcomed. You may contact Michael directly by email: therealsanjose@gmail.com. You can see other stories that Michael has written about Downtown San José at his website: TheRealSanJose.com
Costa Rica president Carlos Alvarado and the government of Daniel Ortega are in a war of words with the news of the alleged arrest of two Costa Rican nationals taking part in the peaceful anti-government protest on Sunday in Nicaragua’s capital city, Managua.
The Costa Rican couple detained in Nicaragua on Sunday, Allan Cordero Ocon and his wife Marcela Martínez Guzmán.
On Twitter, President Alvarado said, “I make an urgent call for an immediate end to the repression in Nicaragua. Arbitrary arrests and intimidation against the media, students, human rights defenders and members of the Catholic Church are unacceptable.”
Hago un llamado urgente al cese inmediato de la represión en Nicaragua. Las detenciones arbitrarias y la intimidación contra medios de comunicación, estudiantes, defensores de los derechos humanos y miembros de la Iglesia Católica son inaceptables.https://t.co/EVzK2qU7G6
On the government website Sunday, Costa Rica called for the cessation of repression and arbitrary arrests of demonstrators in Nicaragua. “In light of the events that took place this Sunday, October 14, in Nicaragua, the Government of the Republic of Costa Rica calls for the immediate cessation of repression and arbitrary arrests of those who participate in the protests. Costa Rica supports the concern expressed by the international community regarding the systematic erosion of human rights and fundamental freedoms, which occurs daily in Nicaragua (…) Costa Rica reiterates its conviction that committed and effective dialogue is the way to generate the strengthening of democracy, the protection of Human Rights and respect for the Rule of Law, in the face of the crisis that Nicaragua is going through. Once again, the country expresses its solidarity with the Nicaraguan people, with whom it shares historical ties of neighborhood, closeness and brotherhood.”
In a second Tweet, an hour after the first, President Alvarado said, “Deeply disturbing the arrests this morning (Sunday) in Nicaragua. The repression that the Nicaraguan people are suffering must end.”
Profundamente preocupantes las detenciones de esta mañana en Nicaragua. La represión que está sufriendo el pueblo nicaragüense debe acabar.
Again on Twitter, Alvarado said that if the information (of the arrest) is confirmed, his government will immediately come to the aid in Nicaragua’s prison.
Se nos ha informado sobre la presunta
detención del ciudadano costarricense Allan Cordero Ocon, como parte de los detenidos en la manifestación de hoy. De comprobarse la información, se acudirá inmediatamente a su auxilio en el centro penitenciario.
The government of Daniel Ortega was quick to respond to President Carlos, issuing a statement to the (official) press, that Nicaragua categorically rejects the statements of Carlos Alvarado on Nicaragua’s internal affairs and the interference of the “pretentious and insolent” statement of the Costa Rica’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The official statement continued with, “Nicaragua does not interfere nor pontifies with the affairs of other countries of their decisions in relation to their problems.”
Basically, that is Daniel Ortega telling Carlos Alvarado, not to mess with him because he (Orteg) does not mess with anyone, as clearly expressed by @Bacanalnica on Twitter.
Daniel Ortega pidiendo respeto a Costa Rica, que no se metan con él porque él no se mete con nadie.
Masacrín, vos sos asesino, no se están metiendo, están salvando nuestras vidas#SOSNicaraguapic.twitter.com/npotkqKOCd
The Costa Ricans arreste on Sunday are Allan Cordero Ocon and his wife Marcela Martínez Guzmán, who are being held in the El Chipote prison.
Arlen Cordero, in Costa Rica, publicly denounced the “illegal detention” of her brother and sister-in-law. “We do not have information on their status or health,” she told Telenoticias.
For their part, the Foreign Ministry reported that it is investigating the situation and confirming the facts.
The Nicaraguan government is not denying the arrest, in fact, it confirmed it by releasing the list of the 38 detained in Managua on Sunday, 8 of which were released after the arrest.
Journalists in Latin America are forced to take to the streets to demand respect for freedom of expression, such as these reporters in Caracas demanding: "Stop abuses against the press!" Credit: Humberto Márquez/IPS
(IPS) – The murder of journalists and changing forms of censorship show that freedom of expression and information are still under siege in Latin America, particularly in the countries with the greatest social upheaval and political polarization.
Journalists in Latin America are forced to take to the streets to demand respect for freedom of expression, such as these reporters in Caracas demanding: “Stop abuses against the press!” Credit: Humberto Márquez/IPS
Journalism “maintains a central role in the work for democracy in the region, although it suffers persecution of the media, journalists and political and social activists, which goes against hemispheric human rights agreements,” Edison Lanza of Uruguay, special rapporteur for freedom of expression at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), told IPS.
The harassment “is very worrying in countries with political crises that lead to threats against journalism, with actions by states or various groups to repress, restrict or silence the press,” said Natalie Southwick, coordinator of the Latin American programme at the non-governmental Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), based in New York City.
CPJ “is concerned about cases like the persecution of media and journalists in Guatemala and Nicaragua, the electoral polarisation in Brazil, the humanitarian crisis, repression and censorship in Venezuela, the deadly violence and impunity in Mexico, and the dangers for journalists in post-peace agreement Colombia,” Southwick told IPS from New York City.
Mexico, which up to July was in the grip of an electoral campaign tainted by violence, has seen eight journalists killed so far in 2018 and 12 in 2017. The most recent victim was 28-year-old Javier Rodríguez Valladares, shot dead in the middle of the street in Cancún, in the southeast of the country, while he was interviewing with his camera a local craftsman, who was also murdered.
Sandra Patargo, an activist with Mexico’s Red Rompe el Miedo (“break down the fear network”), reported that 146 attacks on journalists were documented during the electoral campaign. “On election day alone (Jul. 1) there were 32. And the rate of impunity for violence against journalists is 99 percent,” she said.
The NVALabs network against violence records “a general increase in violence in Mexico, but in the case of women journalists this growth is alarming, at around 20 percent per year and it involves two-pronged violence: for being journalists and for being women,” said Luisa Pérez Ortiz, the founder of the organization.
There are journalists and media harassed or intimidated for covering the institutional crisis in Guatemala and the social crisis in Honduras, Lanza said, although the most serious case in Central America this year has been the hazardous coverage of the social rebellion in Nicaragua.
On Apr. 21, as the wave of protests and repression that in five months has claimed hundreds of Nicaraguan lives broke out, journalist Miguel Ángel Gahona was shot in the head while filming a clash between demonstrators and police in the town of Bluefields, on the country’s Atlantic coast.
A month earlier, on the border between Colombia and Ecuador, three members of a team of journalists from the Quito newspaper El Comercio were kidnapped and murdered by a dissident group of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
Also this year, four radio journalists died at the hands of gunmen in different states of Brazil. One thing in common is that in their programmes they had aired cases of corruption involving politicians from their regions.
But Southwick acknowledged that the murders of journalists have declined in countries that in previous years were more violent, such as Colombia, Honduras and Brazil.
“However, the figures can be analyzed further if we take into account that in some regions there is less violence against journalists because insecurity has reduced press coverage,” she reflected.
Cyber-attacks
The climate of persecution and siege in which many traditional media outlets operate has begun to reach the on-line media, which, according to Lanza, “have remained somewhat beyond the reach of control strategies of some governments.”
The growth of digital tools “has been a great opportunity for journalists and media seeking to expand their ways of telling stories, but also for governments and other actors to try to limit, control and censor the press,” Southwick said.
These controls from the political powers-that-be are carried out “through tactics such as account hacking, attacks against websites and, in cases such as Mexico, the monitoring of journalists with tools such as spyware,” she explained.
These programmes collect information from a computer and transmit it to an outside entity without the knowledge or consent of the computer owner.
“They also operate strategies to criminalize the use of social networks, such as the Anti-Hate Law in Venezuela or Anti-Terrorism Law in Nicaragua, used to monitor social networks and arrest people who send satirical or critical messages,” added Lanza from Washington, D.C., where the IACHR has its headquarters.
An example of these actions is the case of El Pitazo, an on-line investigative news outlet in Venezuela, which has been a victim of “hacking” and denial of service attack (DoS) for more than a year, its director César Batiz told IPS.
“And everything seems to indicate that these are people linked to the government with the complicity of the private sector Internet service provider,” he added.
With the cyberattacks, El Pitazo has seen its daily users decrease, from 70,000 a year ago to 12,000 today.
“The peak numbers of attacks were recorded in September 2017 and April 2018, when we published reports on the arrest in the United States, as front men for multimillion-dollar corruption, of relatives of high-ranking officials” in the power structure in Venezuela, Batiz said.
Favorable winds
Southwick considered that “there are positive signs in the world of journalism rights in Latin America. Sentences and trials for the murder of journalists such as Jaime Garzón (1999) and Flor Alba Núñez (2015) in Colombia and Pablo Medina (2014) in Paraguay…point against the cycle of impunity, although much remains to be done.
“In Ecuador, under President Lenín Moreno, we have seen enormous changes in the relationship between the government and the media, and we expect changes in the Organic Law on Communication,” said the CPJ activist.
According to Lanza, “the Southern Cone, notwithstanding the political polarisation there, is on a fairly consistent line in defense of freedom of expression and the right to information.”
In addition, “there has been good evolution in cases like Colombia, Costa Rica, Panama and Peru, and the changes made by Ecuador are very positive, since President Moreno has abandoned the organization of the state apparatus to control information,” as happened with his predecessor, Rafael Correa (2007-2017).
“When you look very closely, you find problems,” but “in general the region is inclined toward international standards of democracy with freedom of expression,” Lanza concluded.
The Comisión Nacional de Emergencias (CNE) – national emergency comission – raised the from green to yellow the alert status in the Central Pacific and South Pacific because there are about 130 reports of flooding.
To a lesser extent, the warning includes th Central Pacific and very specific areas of the Central Valley.
A green alert is maintained in the Central Valley.
In addition, the national weather service (IMN) indicates in its latest report that more rain is expected during the night and early morning.
Not too much rain is expected from tropical wave number 41, however, the intertropical convergence zone, which is very close to our territory, could cause a lot of instability and intense rains during the weekend.
What I am going to suggest as an answer to the fiscal crisis in Costa Rica is simple.
Collect the taxes that are due and payable through enforcement.
In the U.S., we had the IRS with frightening power. When I lived in Russia we had what called the “Tax Police” with terrifying power. The IRS can take away almost anything when one failed to pay or were caught evading taxes. I remember an audit were I received threatening letters almost weekly from the IRS. Fortunately, we were right and they ended up paying us. In Russia, I had the experience of an attempted sting on our company in Moscow by seemingly nice guys with concealed Gryazev-Shipunov semi-automatics.
With new legislation and electronic invoicing, it appears that the government is getting serious about tax collection. In my limited experience, in the past, these things have been a “wink and a nod” with a little money exchanging hands. Costa Rica is almost out of time before it faces bankruptcy. Being nice or failure to do what is necessary has created a populace that doesn’t believe in the rule of law.
Costa Rica needs to create an enforcement department through the Directorate General de Taxation or the Ministerio de Hacienda that has fangs not teeth. They need to greatly expand their audit department with teams with the power to spot check the financial records of businesses with a 24-hour notice appointment. When cases are found of failure to pay the CAJA, for example, the evading company should be given 90 days to pay the past due payments or be closed. If their recording keeping is sloppy, they need an education with follow up audits. If their records show fraud then it is jail time.
To put the fear of the “tax police” into the hearts of cheaters their businesses need to be exposed through the media.
Costa Rica is a wonderful place to live but it is too forgiving when laws are intentionally broken. It is time to get serious.
Ken Beedle Cartago
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Centro Financiero Confinanzas, also known as Torre de David (the Tower of David), is an unfinished abandoned skyscraper in Venezuela’s capital city, Caracas, the third highest building in the country after the twin towers of Parque Central Complex.
To those unaware of its history, the Centro Financiero Confinanzas looks like any other unfinished skyscraper, located in the financial district of Caracas. At 45 stories high, it is also the eighth tallest building in Latin America.
Its glass facade glimmers in the sun, a projection of wealth and economic prowess that was intended to house national and international businesses. Inside, however, hides a rather different reality.
Construction and banking crisis
The construction of the tower began in 1990 but was halted in 1994 due to the Venezuelan banking crisis. Construction ground to a halt. It lay unoccupied and unfinished, an ironic symbol of financial failure that was intended to represent the unstoppable march of Venezuela’s petro fuelled booming economy.
The complex has six buildings: El Atrio (Lobby and conference room), Torre A that is 190 meter tall and stands at 45-stories still includes a heliport, Torre B, Edificio K, Edificio Z, and 12 floors of parking.
During the banking crisis of 1994, the government took control of the building and it has not been completed since. The building lacks elevators, installed electricity, running water, balcony railing, windows, and even walls in many places.
In 2001, the Venezuelan government made an attempt to auction off the complex, but no one made an offer.
Residence by squatters
A shell, a skeletal construction whose bare structural bones became, in October of 2007, a remarkable opportunity for an intrepid group of squatters, families whose economic and social situation led them to seek a new life in a space intended for stockbrokers and bankers, their potential interaction with the grinding poverty at ground level negated by the presence of a helipad.
Families whose search for a decent home had led them to risk forging a new life 30 floors up, reminded constantly of their precarious position by the wind that whipped through their sparse living quarters. The views were incredible but deadly, a god like view of a city that had failed to accommodate its newest inhabitants.
A woman looks out of a crudely constructed cinder block balcony on an upper floor of the “Tower of David.” Squatters live in the bottom 28 floors of the 45-story, uncompleted skyscraper, located in downtown Caracas. Credit Meridith Kohut for The New York Times
They made use of cheap building materials, breeze blocks and tarpaulin, cardboard and corrugated iron, to construct their homes. It is a formula that has been endlessly repeated and replicated around the world, from the favelas of Rio de Jainero in Brazil, to the shanty towns of India, hastily arranged dwellings that initially provide temporary shelter.
The construction of homes, the imposition of a personal space in which to live, was illegal, a form of trespassing in a building that belonged to a government supposedly tasked with providing a decent living space for its citizens. Yet the difference with Torre David is that there was only one way to keep building. Up. Yet with all temporary dwellings, bits and pieces are added, living space expanded as and when the money to construct them becomes available.
Materials were precariously carried up bare concrete staircases as homes began to take shape. Basic necessities such as electricity and toilets were rigged up rudimentarily. The tower began to become more than a shell, its residents had illegally and crudely started to finish the job that had started some 17 years before, a potent emblem of a resourceful population becoming self-sufficient in the face of government ineptitude.
Because whilst the ‘Torre David’, so named after its main investor David Brillembourg, who died from cancer in 1993, may look like the newest high rise addition to the Caracas skyline, it is actually became home to over 700 families, a ‘vertical slum’ that was a truly fascinating example of reappropriation of space in an urban environment.
Residents improvised basic utility services, with water reaching all the way up to the 22nd floor. They could use motorcycles to travel up and down the first 10 floors, but had to use the stairs for the remaining levels. The residents lived up to the 28th floor. Some residents even had cars, parked inside of the building’s parking garage.
The population grew from over 200 families in October 2007, representing about 40% of Caracas’ “informal communities”, to seven hundred families made of over 2,500 residents living in the tower by 2011 and had a peak population of 5,000 squatters.
The occupation of the tower, however, was more than just a search for living space. A flourishing economy built up inside its concrete walls, hairdressers, grocery stores and workshops served the burgeoning community of increasingly settled occupants.
The towers fundamentally isolated nature – bear in mind it was originally intended as a sanctuary for the city’s gilded workforce amongst the noise and chaos of urban Caracas– have fomented a strong sense of community, utopic even. Roots were set down and the flowering buds of a society emerged, anchoring the tower with more than its massive foundations.
Yet it was not without its dangers. Stories of children playing dangerously close to the edges, falling to their death even, were a constant worry.
Relocation
On July 22, 2014, the Venezuelan government launched so-called “Operation Zamora 2014” to evacuate hundreds of families from the tower and relocate them into new homes in Cúa, south of Caracas, as part of its Great Housing Mission project.
Former tenants of the Torre David vertical slum leave the building to be transported to their new home. Photo taken July 22, 2014. Photo: REUTERS/Jorge Silva
By June 2015, all of the residents were relocated to their new homes. Some of the government-provided homes designated for relocated tower residents were already occupied by squatters who had taken over the government facilities.
Possible future
Alfredo Brillembourg, relative of the late David Brillembourg who was a main investor of the tower, founded Urban Think Tank, which call on international attention for developing “informal settlements”.
The group made a documentary on how to make potential improvements with the complex which won a Golden Lion at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale of the Venice Biennale.
After relocation had proceeded in July 2014, newspaper Tal Cual reported that Chinese banks were interested in buying the tower and renovating it for its original use. On July 23, 2014, President Nicolás Maduro announced that the government had not yet decided what to do with the building, but was considering at least three possible options: “Some are proposing its demolition. Others are proposing turning it into an economic, commercial or financial center. Some are proposing building homes there. …We’re going to open a debate.”
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In April 2015, the head of the government of the Capital District, Ernesto Villegas, announced that the tower would be used temporarily as a center for emergency care. Villegas indicated that members of the National Guard, Fire Department, and officials from the Directorate of Civil Protection would be installed in the building to serve the public.
However, in April 2016, it was reported that the Chinese bank proposal fell through and that the tower was not in use. Since then, the tower has remained incomplete.
Today, in 2018, the building remains incomplete and unused. It was damaged due to two earthquakes on August 21 and 22, 2018, when a magnitude 7.3 earthquake struck just off the northern coast of Venezuela, near Cariaco, Sucre. The tower was significantly damaged by the earthquake which caused the partial collapse of the top five floors, resulting with the affected portion leaning outward by 25 degrees.
Carolina Martínez and her children stand in front of their house, lit inside by a light bulb, in the village of Joya de Talchiga in the eastern Salvadoran department of Morazán. The 36-year-old teacher is one of the beneficiaries of the community hydroelectric project, which since 2012 has provided electricity to more than 40 local families. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS
Joya de Talchiga, EL SALVADOR (IPS) – In Lilian Gómez’s house, nestled in the mountains of eastern El Salvador, the darkness of the night was barely relieved by the faint, trembling flames of a pair of candles, just like in the houses of her neighbors. Until now.
Juan Benítez, president of the Nuevos Horizontes Association of Joya de Talchiga, rests on the edge of the dike built as part of the El Calambre mini-hydroelectric dam. The 40 plus families in the village have had electricity since 2012, thanks to the project they built themselves, in the mountains of eastern El Salvador. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS
Electricity arrived when they decided to build their own hydroelectric dam together, not only to light up the night, but also to take small steps towards undertakings that help improve living conditions in the village.
Now she uses a refrigerator to make “charamuscas” – ice cream made from natural beverages, which she sells to generate a small income.
“With the money from the charamuscas I pay for electricity, food and other things,” the 64-year-old Gómez, head of one of the 40 families benefiting from the El Calambre mini-hydroelectric plant project, told IPS.
This is a community initiative that supplies energy to La Joya de Talchiga, one of the 29 villages in the rural municipality of Perquín, with some 4,000 inhabitants, in the eastern department of Morazán, which borders to the north with Honduras.
During the 1980-1992 civil war, this region was the scene of fierce battles between the army and the then-guerrilla Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), now a political party, in power since 2009 after winning two consecutive presidential elections.
When the war ended, the largest towns in the area were revived thanks to ecotourism and historical tourism, where visitors learn about battles and massacres in the area. But the most remote villages lack basic services, which keeps them from doing the same.
The El Calambre mini-hydroelectric power plant takes its name from the river with cold turquoise water that emerges in Honduras and winds through the mountains until it crosses the area where La Joya is located, dedicated to subsistence agriculture, especially corn and beans.
A small dike dams the water in a segment of the river, and part of the flow is directed through underground pipes to the engine house, 900 meters below, inside which a turbine makes a 58-kW generator roar.
La Joya is an example of how local inhabitants, mostly poor peasant farmers, didn’t stand idly by waiting for the company that distributes electricity in the area to bring them electric power.
The distribution of energy in this Central American country of 6.5 million people has been in the hands of several private companies since it was privatized in the late 1990s.
During the days IPS spent in La Joya, locals said they own the land where they live, but they lack formal documents, and without them the company that operates in the region doesn’t supply electricity. It only brought power to a couple of families who do have all their paperwork in order.
In this Central American nation, households with electricity represent 92 percent of the total in urban areas, but only 77 percent in rural areas, according to official data released in May.
Without much hope that the company would supply power, the residents of La Joya set out to obtain it by their own means and resources, with the technical and financial support of national and international organizations.
“People still doubted when they came to talk to us about the project in 2005, and even I doubted, it was hard for us to believe that it could happen. We knew how a dam works, the water that moves a turbine, but we didn’t know that it could be done on a small river,” Juan Benítez, president of Nuevos Horizontes, the community development organisation of La Joya, told IPS.
Carolina Martínez and her children stand in front of their house, lit inside by a light bulb, in the village of Joya de Talchiga in the eastern Salvadoran department of Morazán. The 36-year-old teacher is one of the beneficiaries of the community hydroelectric project, which since 2012 has provided electricity to more than 40 local families. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS
The small hydroelectric plant, in operation since 2012, was built by local residents in exchange for becoming beneficiaries of the service. Paid workers such as electricians and stonemasons were only hired for specialized work.
The total cost of the mini-dam was over 192,000 dollars, 34,000 of which were contributed by the community with the many hours of work that the local residents put in, which were assigned a monetary value.
The charge for the service is based on the number of light bulbs per family, at a cost of 50 cents a month each. Thus, if a family has four light bulbs, they pay two dollars a month, lower than what is charged commercially.
Local residents still remember how difficult life was when they had no hopes of getting electric power.
“When I was a girl, things were so hard without electricity, we had to buy candles or gas (kerosene) to light candles,” one of the beneficiaries, Leonila González, 45, told IPS as she rested on a chair in the hallway of her house, located in the middle of a pine forest, 30 metres from the river.
The small generator in the engine room built by the residents of Joya de Talchiga. Men from the village carried the heavy turbine that moves the 58-kW generator on their shoulders, since there is no access by vehicles where the mini-community dam was installed in the mountainous municipality of Parquín, in eastern El Salvador. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS
Most residents, she recalled, used to use “ocotes,” the local name for pieces of pine wood, whose resin is flammable.
“We would put two splinters in a pot, and that’s how we lived, with very dim light, but that’s how it was for us,” she said.
Meanwhile, Carolina Martinez, the teacher who works at the village preschool, pointed out that in those days the children’s homework was stained with charcoal soot from the ocote.
She and her family used to buy car batteries to run some appliances, which implied significant costs for them, including payment for the appliances and the person who brought them from nearby towns.
Others who needed to work with more powerful devices, such as saws for carpentry, had to buy gasoline-powered generators, she said. And those who had a cell phone had to send it to Rancho Quemado, a nearby village, for recharging.
“Now we see everything differently, the streets are illuminated at night, it’s no longer dark,” Martínez said.
For the village carpenters or welders, working is much easier with a power socket at hand.
For María Isabel Benítez, 55, a homemaker, one of the advantages of having electricity is that you can watch the news and find out what’s going on in the country. “I like the 6:00 a.m. news programme, I see everything there,” she said, holding her little granddaughter Daniela in her arms.
Elena Gómez, a 29-year-old psychology student, said she can now do her homework on the computer at home. “I no longer have to go to the nearest cybercafé,” she said.
The project was considered binational from the outset, since the surplus energy generated in La Joya is distributed to the village of Cueva del Monte, four km away, in Honduras.
Additional power lines were installed so the plant can benefit another 45 families, 32 of whom are already connected.
“The Hondurans deceived us, they told us they were going to set into operation the energy project, but they didn’t, and we were only left with the blueprint,” Mauricio Gracia, the community leader of the Honduran village, told IPS.
The people of Cueva del Monte are Salvadorans who from one moment to the next found themselves living in Honduras, in September 1992, following a ruling by the International Court of Justice, which resolved a lingering border dispute that included the area north of Morazán.
Benitez, the president of the La Joya association, said the generator sometimes fails, especially when there are thunderstorms, so the organization is looking for more support to purchase a second generator, which could operate when the first one turns off.
Also, as a community they hope to little by little generate development initiatives, with the electricity they already have, to give the local economy a boost.
For example, they have discussed the possibility of promoting rural tourism, taking advantage of the natural beauty of the area’s pine forest and the pools and waterfalls of the Calambre River.
The plan is to build mountain cabins, which would have electricity. But the idea has not come to fruition because it has not been possible to reach an agreement with the owners of the land, said Benítez.
Meanwhile, Lilian Gómez is happy that there is strong local demand for her charamuscas, which she could not make if electric power had not come to La Joya.
Of the 134 printed newspapers that circulated in Venezuela five years ago, as of September 2018 there are only 60 left, only half of which are daily newspapers, which have shrunk in size and in number of copies sold, according to a study by Espacio Público, a non-governmental organisation dedicated to the defense of freedom of expression.
“This reduction is not due to the global trend of changes in the newspaper industry, but to the monopoly of the government publishing complex for the import and allocation of newsprint,” said Carlos Correa, director of the organization.
The monopoly has resulted in the closure and loss of jobs, leaving only the digital format, of emblematic newspapers in some regions, such as the century-old El Impulso de Barquisimeto, and as a result some states have no print newspaper at all.
Correa argues that the death knell for the print media is one of the three shortcomings of today’s journalism that prevents coverage of what is happening in Venezuela today.
Another is the attack, blockade and restrictions on digital media, “in an increasingly broad and sophisticated manner, ranging from the degradation of the quality of the Internet to direct state responsibility for the denial of service and lack of protection for names and domains on the web.”
A third obstacle is the persecution of sources, such as doctors who speak to the press and show images of the poor state of hospitals; demonstrators, activists or investigative journalists who denounce corruption or poor quality in public services; and even social network users who could go to jail under a controversial Anti-Hate Law drafted by the exclusively pro-government National Constituent Assembly.
LIMA, PERU (IPS) – Rural women in Latin America play a key role with respect to attaining goals such as sustainable development in the countryside, food security and the reduction of hunger in the region. But they remain invisible and vulnerable and require recognition and public policies to overcome this neglect.
Yolanda Flores, an Aymara indigenous woman, speaks to other women engaged in small-scale agriculture, gathered in her village square in the highlands of Peru’s southern Andes. She is convinced that participating in local decision-making spaces is fundamental for rural women to stop being invisible and to gain recognition of their rights. Credit: Courtesy of Yolanda Flores
There are around 65 million rural women in this region, and they are very diverse in terms of ethnic origin, the kind of land they occupy, and the activities and roles they play. What they have in common though is that governments largely ignore them, as activists pointed out ahead of the International Day of Rural Women, celebrated Oct. 15.
“The state, whether local or national authorities, neglect us,” Yolanda Flores, an Aymara woman, told IPS. “They only think about planting steel and cement. They don’t understand that we live off agriculture and that we women are the most affected because we are in charge of the food and health of our families.”
“They play key roles and produce and work much more than men. In the orchards, in the fields, during planting time, they raise the crops, take care of the farm animals, and disproportionately carry the workload of the house, the children, etc., but they don’t see a cent.” — JulioBerdegué
Flores, who lives in Iniciati, a village of about 400 indigenous peasant families in the department of Puno in Peru’s southern Andes, located more than 3,800 metres above sea level, has always been dedicated to growing food for her family.
On the land she inherited from her parents she grows potatoes, beans and grains like quinoa and barley, which she washes, grinds in a traditional mortar and pestle, and uses to feed her family. The surplus is sold in the community.
“When we garden we talk to the plants, we hug each potato, we tell them what has happened, why they have become loose, why they have worms. And when they grow big we congratulate them, one by one, so our food has a lot of energy when we eat. But people don’t understand our way of life and they forget about small farmers,” she said.
Like Flores, millions of rural women in Latin America face a lack of recognition for their work on the land, as well as the work they do maintaining a household, caring for the family, raising children, or caring for the sick and elderly.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) urges governments in the region to assume a commitment to reverse the historical disadvantages faced by this population group which prevent their access to productive resources, the enjoyment of benefits and the achievement of economic autonomy.
“Depending on the country, between two-thirds and 85 percent of the hours worked by rural women is unpaid work,” Julio Berdegué, FAO regional representative for Latin America and the Caribbean, told IPS.
Women engage in subsistence agriculture at more than 3,300 metres above sea level in the highlands of the southern department of Cuzco, in the Andes of Peru, in the municipality of Cusipata. With the support of nongovernmental organisations, they have built greenhouses that allow them to produce a range of vegetables despite the inclement weather. Credit: Janet Nina/IPS
Berdeguè, who is also deputy director general of FAO, deplored the fact that they do not receive payment for their hard work in agriculture – a workload that is especially heavy in the case of heads of families who run their farms, and during growing season.
“They play key roles and produce and work much more than men,” the official said from FAO’s regional headquarters in Santiago. “In the orchards, in the fields, during planting time, they raise the crops, take care of the farm animals, and disproportionately carry the workload of the house, the children, etc., but they don’t see a cent.”
“We say: we want women to stay in the countryside. But for God’s sake, why would they stay? They work for their fathers, then they work for their husbands or partners. That’s just not right, it’s not right!” exclaimed Berdegué, before stressing the need to stop justifying that rural women go unpaid, because it stands in the way of their economic autonomy.
He explained that not having their own income, or the fact that the income they generate with the fruit of their work is then managed by men, places rural women in a position of less power in their families, their communities, the market and society as a whole.
“Imagine if it was the other way around, that they would tell men: you work, but you will not receive a cent. We would have staged a revolution by now. But we’ve gotten used to the fact that for rural women that’s fine because it’s the home, it’s the family,” Berdegué said.
The FAO regional representative called on countries to become aware of this reality and to fine-tune policies to combat the discrimination.
A global workload greater than that of men, economic insecurity, reduced access to resources such as land, water, seeds, credit, training and technical assistance are some of the common problems faced by rural women in Latin America, whether they are farmers, gatherers or wage-earners, according to the Atlas of Rural Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, published in 2017 by FAO.
But even in these circumstances, they are protagonists of change, as in the growth of rural women’s trade unions in the agro-export sector.
Afro-descendant Adela Torres (white t-shirt, L-C, front), secretary general of the National Union of Agricultural Industry Workers (Sintrainagro) in the banana region of Urabá, in the Colombian department of Antioquia, sits on the floor during a meeting of women members of the union. Credit: Courtesy of Sintrainagro
With the increased sale of non-traditional products to international markets, such as flowers, fruit and vegetables, women have swelled this sector, says another regional study, although often in precarious conditions and with standards that do not ensure decent work.
Trade unions fight exploitative conditions
But trade unions are fighting exploitative labour conditions. A black woman from Colombia, Adela Torres, is an example of this struggle.
Since childhood and following the family tradition, she worked on a banana farm in the municipality of Apartadó, in Urabá, a region that produces bananas for export in the Caribbean department of Antioquia.
Now, the 54-year-old Torres, who has two daughters and two granddaughters, is the secretary general of the National Union of Agricultural Industry Workers (Sintrainagro), which groups workers from 268 farms, and works for the insertion of rural women in a sector traditionally dominated by men.
“When women earn and manage their own money, they can improve their quality of life,” she told IPS in a telephone conversation from Apartadó.
Torres believes that women’s participation in banana production should be equitable and that their performance deserves equal recognition.
“We have managed to get each farm to hire at least two more women and among the achievements gained are employment contracts, equal pay, social security and incentives for education and housing for these women,” she explained.
She said rural women face many difficulties, many have not completed primary school, are mothers too early and are heads of households, have no technical training and receive no state support.
In spite of this, they work hard and manage to raise their children and get ahead while contributing to food security.
“The empowerment of rural women and girls is essential to building a prosperous, equitable and peaceful future for all on a healthy planet.”
— UN Secretary-General, António Guterres
Making the leap to positions of visibility is also a challenge that Flores has assumed in the Andes highlands of Puno, to fight for their proposals and needs to be heard.
“We have to win space in decision-making and come in as authorities; that is the struggle now, to speak for ourselves. I am determined and I am encouraging other women to take this path,” Flores said.
Faced with the indifference of the authorities, more action and a stronger presence is the philosophy of Flores, as her grandmother taught her, always repeating: “Don’t be lazy and work hard.” “That is the message and I carry it in my mind, but I would like to do it with more support and more rights,” she said.
Article By Mariela Jara originally appeared at IPSnews, with reporting by Orlando Milesi in Santiago. The article forms part of IPS coverage of International Rural Women’s Day, celebrated Oct. 15.
The Banco Central de Costa Rica (BCCR) – Central Bank of Costa – reported Friday that it has been using its International Reserves to smooth the changes in the exchange rate.
Is it time to dollarize the Costa Rica economy?
So far this year, the Central Bank has used (to October 12) US$1.101 billion dollars in order to ensure “an orderly process of price formation and avoid abrupt movements in the exchange rate”.
The use of reserves has occurred in two ways:
First, it has made direct currency sales in Monex to prevent abrupt movements in the exchange rate.
The second, indirect but more important in quantitative terms, is that the Central Bank has been selling foreign currency to the non-banking public sector, and has not restored it through purchases at Monex because, if it had done so, it would have exacerbated the upward pressure on the exchange rate.
Through a press release, the Central Bank announced that it will buy foreign currency to restore its position as a Reservas Internacionales Netas (RIN) when market conditions permit.
These reserves are funds that the country has to face difficulties. At the beginning of 2018 these resources amounted to US$7.149 billion, then increased with the income of US$1 billion from a loan from the Fondo Latinoamericano de Reservas (Latin American Reserve Fund) in March, and thus the reserves rose to US$8.473 billion.
However, after operations in the foreign exchange market, the fund currently stands at US$7.178 billion.
To finance these foreign exchange purchases, the BCCR said it will issue colones in exchange for the currencies it buys (while, on the contrary, it receives colones and withdraws them from circulation, in exchange for the currencies it sells).
The Central Bank announced that it will buy foreign currency to restore its international reserves when market conditions permit
The monetary impact of these foreign exchange operations on inflation is carefully analyzed by the Central Bank, and if necessary, as stated in the statement that “it will be neutralized (‘sterilized’) by means of financial operations that ensure that monetary aggregates grow in a manner consistent with the achievement of the inflation target in the medium term.”
The statement was sent hours after the exchange rate of the dollar with respect to the colón, rose above ¢600 in the 32 financial institutions, an atypical behavior since Costa Rica abandoned the system of mini-devaluations, 12 years ago.
Economist Norberto Zúñiga told La Nacion that he has called attention to the fact that the Central Bank cannot continue with this rate of loss of reserves and therefore considers that it is time to increase the monetary policy rate, which is a reference for the market. This to attract the savers to the colones again and lower the demand for dollars.
What are your thoughts on the dollar exchange? How or will it affect you? Post your views in the comments section below or post to our official Facebook page.
The dollar exchange rate could close 2018 and start 2019 in a range between ¢650 and up to ¢700 colones for one US dollar.
This according to economists consulted by the Q, who assured that dollar exchange rate will continue to rise due to the critical situation facing the country in fiscal matters.
This week the dollar exchange rate set by the Banco Central (Central Bank) has risen steadily, resulting in an increase at the public and private bank and financial institutions.
Felipe Arroyo, an economic analyst, explained that there are two fears about the increase in the exchange rate.
The first is related to the fact that people do not want to invest or buy, which causes a decrease in national production, which is reflected in the Macroeconomic Program of the Central Bank (Programa Macroeconómico del Banco Central).
While the second fear is related to the colon, as consumers move to the US dollar, and causing greater demand for the currency.
“Everything will depend on the Government achieving the way it is financing its spending requirements. If it manages to solve them with the Plan Fiscal (Tax Reform) and with access to cheaper credit from the financial institutions and with greater stability, the pressure of the fiscal deficit decreases,” he said.
The dollar exchange rate set by Central Bank for this Saturday, October 13, is ¢590.91 for the buy and ¢597.15 for the sell. The next change (up or down) expected from the Central Bank is Wednesday, October 17.
What are your thoughts on the dollar exchange? How or will it affect you? Post your views in the comments section below or post to our official Facebook page.
The Refinadora Costarricense de Petróleo (RECOPE) requested on Friday an increase in the price of fuel from the regulating authority, the Autoridad Reguladora de Servicios Públicos (Aresep).
The RECOPE cited the upward trends in the international market and the rise in the dollar exchange as reasons for the monthly fuel price adjustment model.
“The situation of the international market and the rise of the dollar are 2 factors that have pushed the local market upward, a trend that is cushioned by the tariff lag that on this occasion corresponds to apply, which favors the consumer with a rebate”, said the entity, in a press release.
The request will increase prices as follows:
Regular gasoline or Plus 91: would increase ¢9 per liter, going from ¢663 to ¢672
Super Gasoline: it would increase ¢13 per liter to go from ¢680 to ¢693
Diesel: would go from ¢586 to ¢598 for an increase of ¢12.
The refiner explained that every 2 months the value of the tariff delay is updated as a result of the difference between the reference price at which the petroleum is purchased and the reference price at which it is sold.
“This study carries out this update and corresponds to return to the consumer around ¢10 colones in both gasolines and ¢13 colones in diesel, this cushions the increase in the international price and in the exchange rate,” RECOPE concluded.
Aresep is expected to resolve the petition in the coming days. The price at the pumps would take effect within 5 working days after the publishing in the official government newsletter, La Gaceta.
Argentina 20,2%
Bolivia 4,5%
Brasil 4,2%
Chile 3%
Colombia 3%
Ecuador 0,1%
Paraguay 4%
Perú 2%
Uruguay 6,5%
Venezuela 10.000.000%
From the outside, the renovation of Hotel El President has made two very noticeable changes. The first is its modern-art paint job that gives it’s exterior an almost graffiti-like appearance. The second is that they have inexplicably moved the main entrance of the hotel from Avenida Central, to around the corner and down the street on Calle 7.
The official statement continued with, “Nicaragua does not interfere nor pontifies with the affairs of other countries of their decisions in relation to their problems.”
