A woman throws a bottle during anti-government protests in Caracas. AP Photo
TODAY VENEZUELA – Venezuela sits on the world’s largest oil reserves. It had been South America’s longest-running democracy. Now it is an economic and democratic basket case with even electricity rationed by the leftist government of Nicolas Maduro.
Before the opposition coalition could take control of the National Assembly after winning 60 percent of the seats in December, Maduro’s lame duck United Socialist Party responded by filling 12 Supreme Tribunal vacancies with judges.
In what amounted to a coup of sorts March 29, that court “nullified” the legislature’s lawmaking powers, bestowing those responsibilities on itself. In addition, it gave Maduro the ability to suspend elections and imprison opposition leaders.
It previously had granted him sole power of the purse and overturned a law providing amnesty to 114 political prisoners.
The nullification was reversed April 1 after an outcry that included Maduro associates. But a week later the government banned opposition party leader Henrique Capriles, who narrowly lost the presidency in 2013, from involvement in politics for 15 years.
Bloody protests, including some fatalities, have gained momentum. (Maduro, no fan of any criticism, had pulled the plug on CNN for “distorting the truth” and booted the New York Times bureau chief.)
Shortages are rampant, including bread, soap and toilet paper.
A toilet paper alternative exists — the bolivar, the Venezuelan currency. On Nov. 1, a dollar could be exchanged for 1,567 bolivars. Four weeks later, it required 3,480 bolivars. The government is replacing its worthless 100-bolivar note with a new currency worth 20,000 bolivars.
It will make little difference as Maduro’s United Socialist Party — heirs to the movement founded by the late President Hugo Chavez, a self-styled revolutionary who ruled from 1999 to 2013 and fancied himself the Fidel Castro of South America — continue to take a wrecking ball to the economy.
The International Monetary Fund expects Venezuelan consumer prices to soar by 2,200 percent this year and the economy to contract by 8 percent.
The government continues to either seize industries or undercut their ability to operate profitability. General Motors pulled out last week after its plant was seized. McDonald’s operates sans Big Macs or fries due to food shortages. Major airlines — Delta, United and American included — have had profits frozen and curtailed flights.
Pepsi sustained a us$1.4 billion loss in 2015. Coca Cola temporarily stopped production due to a sugar shortage. Mondelez, maker of Oreos, lost us$800 million.
Chavez’s revolution broke up big farms and put farm workers in control. However, he also undercut them by imposing food price controls so low farmers couldn’t make a profit and increasing imports using oil revenues.
Agriculture — once the bedrock of the economy — is now on life support. Without oil money, food imports are down 50 percent and farmers don’t have access to seeds and fertilizer from overseas. Flour, rice, beans, milk and eggs are among the products rationed.
Medical supplies are lacking from penicillin to pain relievers. Hospitals are in crisis. Venezuela has sought UN assistance, although it lost its General Assembly vote for the second year because it failed to pay dues.
Oil revenues fell from $80 billion in 2013 to $25 billion in 2016. Despite their current rise, Venezuela will see little benefit. Because it didn’t pay bills for oil service providers, many rigs were shut down.
Last December, the government pledged half its shares in Petroleos de Venezuela as collateral for a loan from the Russian oil company Rosnet, owned by oligarchs with close ties to President Vladimir Putin. On April 4, a bipartisan group of six U.S. senators wrote Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin concerned Russia could control Venezuela’s oil infrastructure if Petroleos de Venezuela defaults on the loan.
Curiously, Citgo, its American subsidiary, contributed $500,000 to President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, which went unappreciated. Trump has been photographed with the wife of opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez while calling for the release of political prisoners.
The only booming industry in Venezuela these days is passport applications to leave, reportedly requiring large bribes for processing.
Leftist initiatives as antidotes to poverty in Brazil, Chile, Bolivia and Ecuador haven’t worked. However, nowhere has the failure been as spectacular as in Venezuela, which has abused its resources and bought into a bankrupt ideology.
As protests spread to include Maduro’s base among the lower-middle class and poor, his days have become numbered. But rebuilding the remnants of a market economy, while meeting the needs of an increasingly impoverished population, will be a Herculean task.
TODAY VENEZUELA – Three people have been killed during another day of protests in Venezuela, state television reported, bringing the total number of deaths in this month’s political unrest to 24.
Anti-government protests entered a fourth week on Monday with mass sit-ins to press for early elections. Rival protests were also held.
A 42-year-old man who worked for local government in the Andean state of Merida died from a gunshot in the neck at a rally in favour of President Nicolas Maduro’s government, the state ombudsman and prosecutor’s office said.
Another 54-year-old man was shot dead in the chest during a protest in the western agricultural state of Barinas, the state prosecutor’s office added without specifying the circumstances.
An opposition party, Justice First, said the protest the man was in was against Maduro when it was targeted by pro-government “paramilitaries”.
The latest deaths come amid a month of protests that have sparked politically-motivated shootings and clashes between security forces armed with rubber bullets and tear gas and protesters wielding rocks and Molotov cocktails.
According to a Reuters count, 11 of those killed have died during night-time looting.
The opposition’s main demands are for early elections, the release of jailed activists and autonomy for the opposition-led Congress.
But protests are also fuelled by the crippling economic crisis in the oil-rich nation of 30 million people.
Maduro’s government accuses foes of seeking a violent coup with US assistance.
Demonstrators on Monday wore the yellow, blue and red colors of Venezuela’s flag and held signs denouncing shortages, inflation and violent crime as they chanted: “This government has fallen!”
In the capital, they streamed from several points onto a major highway, where hundreds of people sat, carrying bags of supplies, playing card games, and shielding themselves from the sun with hats and umbrellas.
In western Tachira, at another of the sit-ins planned for all of Venezuela’s 23 states, some played the board-game Ludo in the street, while others played soccer or enjoyed street theatre.
At protests in southern Bolivar state, a university professor gave a lecture on politics while some people sat down to play Scrabble and others cooked soup over small fires in the streets.
“In the morning they appear peaceful, in the afternoon they turn into terrorists and at night bandits and killers,” senior Socialist Party official Diosdado Cabello said. “Let me tell them straight: we’re not going, Nicolas [Maduro] is not going.”
The unrest is Venezuela’s worst since 2014 when 43 people died in months of mayhem sparked by protests against Maduro, the 54-year-old successor to late leftist leader Hugo Chavez.
The latest protests began when the pro-government Supreme Court assumed the powers of the opposition-controlled Congress. The court quickly reversed course, but its widely condemned move still galvanised the opposition.
The government’s disqualification from public office of two-time presidential candidate Henrique Capriles, who would be an opposition favourite to replace Maduro, gave further impetus to the demonstrations.
BLUEFIELDS, Nicaragua (IPS) – The effects of climate change have hit Nicaragua’s Caribbean coastal regions hard in the last decade and have forced the authorities and local residents to take protection and adaptation measures to address the phenomenon that has gradually undermined their safety and changed their way of life.
Bluefields, the capital city of Nicaragua’s South Caribbean Autonomous Region, has endured a series of hurricanes, floods due to heavy rains or storm surges, droughts, environmental pollution and general changes in temperatures, which have caused economic damages to the local population.
The latest catastrophic event along Nicaragua’s eastern Caribbean coast was Hurricane Otto, which was a category 2 storm on the five-point Saffir-Simpson scale when it hit in October 2016.
The structural damages and heavy flooding were the same as always, but something changed for the better: there were no fatalities, wounded or missing people in Nicaragua.
A dock in the coastal community of Laguna de Perlas, in the municipality of Bluefields, which owes its name to its location along the longest coastal lagoon in Nicaragua, 40 km north of the city. Coexistence with maritime, river or lake water is part of life in the South Caribbean Region, but climate change is compelling the local population to make changes. Credit: José Adán Silva/IPS
The 10,143 people from the 69 coastal communities directly affected in the South Caribbean Region survived with no injuries, having taken refuge in shelters set up by the governmental National Agency for Disaster Management and Prevention (SINAPRED).
This was due to the gradual development of social awareness in the face of climatic events, according to Ericka Aldana, coordinator of the non-governmental international organisation Global Communities’ climate change project: “Citizens Prepared for Climate Change”.
“The population in this area has suffered a lot due to climate change, not only because of the hurricanes and flooding from the sea and rivers, but due to the climate variability. They have lost crops because of droughts or too much rain. They used to know how to interpret the signs of rain, but not anymore.” — Guillaume Craig
“Historically, Nicaragua’s South and North Caribbean regions have been hit by natural disasters due to their coastal location and environment surrounded by jungles and big rivers which have served as means of transport. But with climate change the vulnerability increased, and it was necessary to make an effort to change the mindset of the population,” Aldana told IPS.
Her organisation, together with the civil and military authorities, have organised conferences, discussion forums and environmental awareness campaigns, in addition to prevention and coastal community rescue plans in the entire South Caribbean Region.
The two autonomous Caribbean coastal regions represent 52 per cent of the territory of Nicaragua and are home to 15 per cent of the country’s 6.2 million people, including a majority of the indigenous and black populations.
Aldana said that in the coastal communities, especially Corn Island and Little Corn Island, located in the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Bluefields, the waves changed due to the intensity and instability in wind patterns.
This makes it difficult to maneuver fishing boats, alters fishing cycles, drives away the fish, and erodes the coasts of the two small islands.
On Little Corn Island, local resident Vilma Gómez talked to IPS about the threats posed and damages caused by the change in ocean currents, winds and waves.
As an example, she said that she has seen almost four km of coastline submerged due to the erosion caused by waves over the last 30 years.
The municipality of Corn Island, comprised of the two islands separated by 15 km, with a total area of 13.1 square kilometres, is one of the most populated areas in Nicaragua’s South Caribbean Autonomous Region, with about 598 people per square kilometre.
Gómez said that on her island, infrastructures such as seawalls was built with government funds, to contain the coastal erosion, the damage in wetlands, the shrinking of the beaches and the impact on tourism, which together with fishing make up 90 per cent of the municipality’s economic activity.
But in her opinion, they are futile efforts in the face of the strength of the sea. “I believe that if this continues this way, in a few years the island will become uninhabitable, because the sea could swallow it entirely after contaminating the water sources and arable lands,” lamented Gómez.
Other communities located near Bluefields Bay and its tributaries suffer ever more frequent storm surges and sudden floods, that have destroyed and contaminated the wetlands.
But once the shock and fear were overcome, the population started to try to strengthen their capacities to build resilience in the face of climate change, said Aldana.
Guillaume Craig, director of the environmentalist organisation blueEnergy in Nicaragua, is involved in the project “Citizens Prepared for Climate Change”, in which authorities, civil society and academia together in Bluefields carry out campaigns to strengthen the Caribbean communities’ response capacity to the impacts of climate change.
“The population in this area has suffered a lot due to climate change, not only because of the hurricanes and flooding from the sea and rivers, but due to the climate variability. They have lost crops because of droughts or too much rain. They used to know how to interpret the signs of rain, but not anymore,” Craig told IPS.
As a result, he noted that “the wells dry out in January, when that used to happen in April, the rains in May sometimes fall in March, or do not occur until July. It is crazy, and the local people did not know how to handle it.”
After years of training and campaigns, the locals learned to apply techniques and methods to save water, plant crops resistant to the changes, and techniques for building in coastal areas, which started to suddenly flood due to storm surges or heavy rains.
Climate change has already cost the communities a great deal: a fall in the production of basic grains, a loss of biological diversity and forest resources, water shortages, degradation of soils, salinization of wells, floods in low-lying coastal areas and landslides, among other phenomena.
“The rise in temperatures is affecting people’s health and producing cardiac problems, increasing the populations of vectors that carry diseases, erosion by sea waves and loss of soil, and increasing energy consumption and the risk of fires. The rise in the water level is driving up the risks,” said Craig.
Part of the central region of the city of Bluefields, in Nicaragua’s South Caribbean Autonomous Region, from the access pier to Bluefields lagoon, with buildings at the water’s edge. The municipalities’ urban and rural residents learned to raise their houses on pilings, among other measures to face the increasingly frequent floods. Credit: José Adán Silva/IPS
Bluefields, originally a pirate base of operations, is 383 km from the capital city, Managua, and can only be reached by air or by boat along the Escondido River from the El Rama port, located on the mainland 292 km from the capital.
The population of just over 60,000 people is multi-ethnic: Creoles, mestizos (mixed-race), Rama and Garifuna peoples, and descendants of English, French or Asian immigrants.
It faces a bay that serves as a barrier to the sea’s direct waves, and is surrounded by rivers and lakes that connect the region with the Pacific Ocean and the North Caribbean. The elevation above sea level is barely 20 metres, which makes it especially vulnerable.
Marlene Hodgson, who lives in the impoverished coastal neighborhood of El Canal, on the outskirts of the city, told IPS that she and her family have been suffering from the bay’s swells for years.
“Sometimes we did not expect it and all of a sudden we had water up to the waist. Now we have raised the house’s pilings with concrete and dug canals and built dikes to protect it. But we have also become aware of when they come and that allows us to survive without damages,” said the woman of Creole ethnic origin.
After the storms, many houses in the area were abandoned by their occupants, who moved to higher and less vulnerable lands.
The phenomenon also disrupted the economy and the way of life of the traditional fishers, said Alberto Down.
“Just 20 years ago, I would throw the net and in two hours I would get 100 fish,” he told IPS. “Now I have to spend more in fuel to go farther out to sea and I have to wait up to eight hours to get half of that. And on some occasions I don’t catch anything,” said the fisherman from the 19 de Julio neighbourhood, one of the most vulnerable in this area forever threatened by the climate.
Cash on hand helps poor families climb out of poverty.
Cash on hand helps poor families climb out of poverty.
Q24N – Is eradicating poverty, a goal the United Nations’ hopes to achieve by 2030, actually feasible? New research out of Ecuador says yes – if governments are willing to pay for it.
According to a United Nations University (UNU) – Merit study of Ecuador’s Human Development Bonus (Bono de Desarrollo Humano, or BDH), direct cash transfers have definitively improved social mobility, that’s the ability of individuals or households to move between social strata. And it has helped poor families climb out of poverty, especially when complemented by other economic-inclusion programs.
Cash on hand
Ecuador’s BDH is a cash transfer given to extremely poor families each month, as long as their children are regularly attending school and health clinics. Since 2003, each beneficiary household has received US$15 every month, irrespective of household size (Ecuador uses the US dollar). The amount was increased to US$30 in 2007, US$35 in 2009, and US$50 in 2013.
Unlike similar programs in other Latin American countries, including Mexico’s Prospera and Brazil’s Bolsa Familia, where monitoring of student attendance and nutritional compliance is quite strict, in Ecuador conditionality is somewhat soft.
It’s well known that cash transfers positively impact access to quality health and education services, as evidence from 30 developing countries shows. They are also proven to improve labour supply and familial asset accumulation, strengthen social networks and stimulate local markets.
But the literature is scarce when it comes to the long-term effects of such transfers.
For women and indigenous people in Ecuador, poverty isn’t the only barrier to mobility. Dottie Day/flickr, CC BY
Using administrative panel data collected over ten years, the UNU-Merit study analysed the determinants of social mobility in Ecuador on a multivariate welfare index, reflecting the importance of different dimensions of structural poverty conditions.
It sought to answer such critical macro-level questions, such as does more cash, with or without conditionality, actually increase the social mobility of the poor? And does an assured basic income establish the baseline security necessary for people to feel free to pursue their goals?
Preliminary results were released in a January 2017 working paper co-authored by Franziska Gassmann and myself. We showed that the BDH does have a positive long-term effect on individuals and families.
Between 2009 and 2014, households receiving the BDH increased their welfare index – meaning that their wealth grew, as did their ability to rise through the ranks of society, in both absolute and relative terms – by between 12% and 13.6%, compared to people who did not receive the cash transfer.
Or finding demonstrates that the BDH improves recipients well-being not just temporarily, but in the longer term, thereby fostering social mobility among Ecuador’s poorest sectors.
More money, less problems
Our study also showed that welfare increases in keeping with higher cash transfers. A 10% higher BDH transfer amount, or an extra US$3 per month, correlates with a rise in welfare of 0.79% to 0.86%.
The improvement is more marked among households that received the Human Development Loan (Crédito de Desarrollo Humano, CDH), a variation of the BDH that pays a yearly amount of US$600 aimed at promoting productive investments. Households that received this wealth accumulation-oriented transfer have a 4% to 4.2% higher welfare index than those that receive only the BDH.
For economists and policymakers, our research results should confirm that cash transfers must not be seen as merely a way to ensure the minimum level of food consumption, education and access to health for society’s poorest. Rather, they are a tool for fostering longer-term social mobility.
The finding that size matters is also noteworthy. The more money families receive, the better their outcomes.
Finally, social transfers such as the CDH that have the explicit objective of starting a business have an even stronger effect on absolute mobility. Thus, to enable social mobility, anti-poverty policies should be geared towards improving access to physical capital and income-generating activities (vocational training, for instance, and financial services).
These findings are consistent with the idea that social safety nets play a productive role in society. It also confirms our intuition about promoting productive capacities.
In this sense, the role of social transfers can and should be to overcome so-called “poverty traps” such as credit constraints, opportunity and transaction costs, and the non-optimal decision-making that can come from extreme scarcity.
To mitigate poverty traps, policy instruments should consider household composition (gender, for instance, and age) and economic vulnerabilities (such as disability and level of formal education, among other things). A cash transfer does not mean the same thing to everyone; it must be designed considering each household’s specific needs.
The study also confirms that governments must enact complementary policies if they hope to reduce social exclusion for society’s most vulnerable, those who struggle with more than just poverty. Laws promoting reproductive health, fostering gender equity and reducing opportunity gaps between ethnic groups or between urban and rural areas will give cash transfers like the BDH more bang for their buck.
The economic growth of developing nations is a necessary condition for poverty reduction, but it has never been sufficient. If correctly designed and complemented, cash transfers can have a transformative effect on society’s poorest members. They can effectively and efficiently smooth consumption, foster social mobility – and, possibly, eradicate global poverty.
Q OPINION (Letter to the editor by Peter White) On December 30 2016 Costa Rica Star reported that in July of 2016: “Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior, S.A. (“Bladex” or “the Bank”; NYSE: BLX) announced the closing of a US$125 million, dual tranche (2 years and 3 years), senior unsecured amortizing term loan facility in favor of Scotiabank de Costa Rica S.A. ”
The funds were necessary to cover operating expenses of the Scotiabank subsidiary in Costa Rica.
The local bank has enjoyed an amount of success due to the name recognition resulting from Scotiabank of Canada’s expansion efforts in 55 countries worldwide.
Unfortunately Scotiabank’s recent expansion into the area of unsecured credit (credit cards and auto loans) and subsidiaries in high risk markets, like Costa Rica, has changed the reputation of Scotiabank from a secure savings institution “Bank of No Surprises” to negative outlooks by ratings organizations (November 9, 2015 Bloomberg News report).
Since Costa Rica has only recently begun to establish credit ratings of consumers, the risk to Scotiabank de Costa Rica (SBCR) investor’s is considerably higher than to those in North America. Moody’s and Dominions outlook ratings for Scotiabank are negative. And, In August 2016 Fitch took rating actions against SBCR. In other news, Scotiabank was told to improve money-laundering controls at N.Y. branch in November of 2015.
I have found Scotiabank de Costa Rica to be misleading in their Certificate of Deposit (CD) information. Perhaps this is a cost cutting technique to help pull SBCR out of its financial deficit. I have SBCR CDs that pay under the amount stated on the document and was told that SBCR intends to make up the under-payment at the close of the 5 year note. And, unlike the 9 other Costa Rica financial institutions in which I have CD’s, SBCR holds back paying interest any time the due date is a weekend or holiday. In a period of 5 months they have withheld interest for 7 days.
Scotiabank de Costa Rica has suffered from a reputation of poor customer service in some areas. Tim Lytle reported in The Real Costa Rica Blog August 5, 2007 an anti-North American attitude in the Escazu branch. The author has not experienced that in the Grecia branch, but has found the employees incompetent and the explanations about bank policies to be unintelligible. I have been given incorrect information upon investing and the staff and management do not have good product knowledge and are unable to calculate interest.
The Central Bank of Costa Rica is in charge of establishing banking policy. It is then up to the SUGEF (the General Supervisory Agency of Finance) to enforce compliance with Central Bank policies. All banks (both public and private) are subject to the policies dictated by the Banco Central de Costa Rica.
The opinion stated here is solely that of the writer and does not necessarily express the opinion of Qcostarica.com or Theqmedia.com. Peter White can be contacted at greciapete@yahoo.com
The Poas Volcano April 22, 2017. Foto Raul Mora, RSN
Q COSTA RICA – by Chris Clarke – Many readers have strolled through the ghostly ruins of Pompeii. The chariot-rutted streets; the broken pillars and the lewd frescos in the brothel, with improbably well-endowed participants, conjure up decadent lives snuffed out.
Most poignant of all are the human remains, posing grotesquely in solidified ash. The lonely man with the upheld arm failed to protect his lungs against the searing particles. The mother tried despairingly to save her child. The lovers were entwined forever in death. The man helplessly attempted to protect his beloved. The thief was found next to the gold hoard that led him to his doom. Why did they not run away at the first rumblings of trouble? Roman Grand Admiral, Pliny the Elder even sailed his ship to a nearby viewpoint. He died trying to observe the Vesuvius spectacle.
Over five years ago, my wife and I moved to Costa Rica from New York. Its lack of a military, tranquility and diverse wildlife sounded siren calls. Being British, we chose to live at a pleasantly cool 5,000 feet. This is the first thing that has been cool about the Brits since 1967. Our valley vistas, distant mountains wreathed in mists and incandescent sunsets are spectacular.
If we look up behind us at our mountain, all we see is rainforest. The silver-tongued realtors never mentioned volcanoes. Friends tell the same tale.
Conspiracy theorists might argue that the locals remain silent to boost the price of their farms. Maybe the inadequate maps are part of the plot. We thought that the volcano was over an hour’s drive away. As visiting it entailed driving down our ridge and up another several miles away, we assumed it was a completely different mountain.
Innocently, we moved into our tropical paradise. Large red rocks are scattered about the exotic garden. They set off the lush vegetation and passion flowers rather nicely. We never wondered how they got there.
One day, we took a tough two hour walk upwards, along jungle trails. Huffing and puffing we reached the clouds and the misty richness of trees, heavily laden with mosses and bromeliads. Finally, at well over eight thousand feet, the spectacular crater of Volcan Poas appeared before us. We gasped in the thin air. Until now, a major tourist attraction, the crater is awesome and one of the largest on the planet. It possesses all the features that cause two million cameras and selfies to click annually. Vertical cliffs, more than a mile around, show the stratified reds and browns of multiple past eruptions. They cause tourists to peer timidly over the edge into the depths. There, a bilious green acidic lake with plumes of steam cooks gently in one part of its floor.
Vegetation is sparse above the rim due to acid rain. Some plants have evolved thickened upper leaves to protect themselves.
Worried and home from our hike, our further research showed that recent eruptions were of steam and nothing of great concern.
Later, a local computer techie visited us from his village of San Roque de Grecia, two miles further down the valley. Cheerily, he shared his parents’ memories of molten boulders and ash damaging this distant barrio. A workman advised that previous damage had been confined to other ridges of the mountain in San Luis and El Cajon. The locals had sold their farms cheap to developers. He smiled, “It’s alright, only gringos live there now.”
And so, life went on. A few years back, an unrelated 7.4 earthquake caught us in a local gym. My wife was hospitalized. Her friend was badly injured and subsequently fled home to the US. Though concerned for my beloved, I secretly found it rather exciting, like surfing the waves of the earth. Why worry about apparently dormant volcanoes?
Then, it was back to barbeques, gin and tonics on the patio and listening to friends moaning interminably about the state of the US. Apparently, this is a deeply troubled country somewhere in a galaxy light years away.
We enjoyed a little schadenfreude when Volcan Turrialba, some 40 miles distant, rained choking particles on its villages. These had to be evacuated. “Poor people and animals.” Things became more serious when the glassy particles in the ash damaged jet engines and frequently closed the airport.
One morning three weeks ago, I took my dawn swim in a nearby Olympic sized pool. My dive broke the mirror of the surface and the ripples from my strokes painted the blue tiles below with shimmering shapes of light. As I broke the surface, I saw it. In the distance, the mountain, our mountain, was spewing steam far into the air. Driving home I saw people standing in the street taking pictures with their cell phones.
This phase continues. The local media now relegates our eruption to its later stories or middle pages. Only an exploding nocturnal light show of molten rocks briefly raises its profile.
Our drama is slowly developing over the weeks. An understanding of our long-lost brothers and sisters of Pompeii emerges. The process is like the story of how to boil a frog, without it jumping out of the pot. Why anyone invented the frog analogy is unknown. Maybe it was a hungry Frenchman, seeking supper between revolutions?
The process requires persuading a frog to bathe in pan of cold water. The heat is gradually increased, so that the poor amphibian never notices. Maybe that is what happened in Pompeii. Is it happening to us?
Or perhaps we will deliberately remain, to be encased in rock for posterity. Like the dinosaurs, we will be discovered in millions of years, probably by the dominant evolved cockroaches. Or maybe today’s ruling, unevolved cockroaches will break off from their wars of destruction and come to our rescue in the nick of time. Pass the gin!
– – – – –
Chris Clarke is a writer living in Grecia, Costa Rica. Since settling here, 6 of his works of fiction, written under the name of Aaron Aalborg, have been published on Amazon. They are available as e-books and in paperback. They often include scenes set in Costa Rica. ‘Doom Gloom and Despair’ is a book of short stories. Several are set in Central America and are darkly humorous. He is working on book number 7.
Krizz Solano in the Multiplaza parking lot flanked by two bodyguards
Krizz Solano imitading Justin Bieber in Multiplaza Sunday night. Photo Juan José Fonseca, La Nacion
Q COSTA RICA – Multiplaza Escazu became a madhouse Sunday night when mall shoppers noticed that “Justin Bieber” was among them.
A young woman in sweater, hat and sunglasses accompanied by two burly bodyguards ignited the madness.
However, what seemed like a dream fulfilled for many Tico fans, turned out to be a prank.
The well-known YouTuber, Krizz Solano, who is known for imitating “the Bieb” was the person many mistook for the Canadian singer and songwriter.
Krizz Solano in the Multiplaza parking lot flanked by two bodyguards. Photo Juan José Fonseca, La Nacion
“I’ve always been a fan…I saw of pranks that people do in countries like in the United States and Europe when he (Beiber) will be in concert. That was my motivation to do it,” Krizz mentioned.
To make the prank credible, Krizz, her manager Juan José Fonseca and the entire production team came up with the plan some months ago.
“We got bodyguards and a car like the one he (Justin) uses. We put up some kids to say it was Justin and the frenzy started,” said Juan José.
The result was overwhelming. Krizz never thought that hundredse would crowd together to have their “idol” close at hand.
Crowds gathered to get close to what they believed was Justin Bieber. Photo Juan José Fonseca, La Nacion
“We entered two stores. While I was in the first one people noticed what was happening and from outside they screamed and even cried. There were people of all ages,” Krizz said.
Jaja que excelente muchacha, mis felicitaciones @KrizzSolano
“Justin Bieber” en Multiplaza, la trolleada del siglo ???????????? ???????????? pic.twitter.com/aSHD7WY2BQ
When more and more people arrived, the mall’s security made a security curtain so that “Justin” was unharmed. Leaving the mall fans yanked the dark glasses and cap she wore.
Krizz Solano, photo from Twitter
“I know a lot of people did not like this, but it turned out superb, I never thought it would be like this. I feared for my life when I left the place, we did not think it would be at that level,” Krizz said.
The YouTuber asked fellow Bieber fans ‘not to take it so serious’.
“I tell people to take it easy, everybody pulls pranks…it was a joke…they took it so seriously…,” said Krizz.
The real Justin Beiber will be at the National Stadium in La Sabana tonight (Monday), starting at 7:00pm.
2304/17.Parque Nacional, San José Costa Rica. Acto de Solidaridad con el Pueblo Venezolano.Diputada Dinorah Figueroa Asamblea Nacional Venezolana. Estuvo presente en las manfestaciones recientes en Venezuela. Fotografía: Alejandro Gamboa Madrigal
Parque Nacional, San José Costa Rica, April 23. Venezuelan legislator Dinorah Figuera was in Costa Rica this weekend, at the invitiation of the PLN party, to take part in protests against the current situation in her country. Fotografía: Alejandro Gamboa Madrigal
Q COSTA RICA – While in Costa Rica to protest against the humanitarian and health crisis in her country, Venezuelan opposition legislator, Dinorah Figuera, denounced that while she was here, the Bolivarian National Guard stationed two tanks in front of her house in Caracas, as a way of intimidating her.
Figuera, of the progressive party Primero Justicia, came to Costa Rica at the invitation of the Partido Liberacion Nacional (PLN), to attend a demonstration on Sunday at the Parque Nacional, convened by Venezuelan residents, who also oppose the government of Nicolas Maduro.
Venezuelans gathered in downtown San Jose on Sunday
The Venezuelan legislator said she got the news from her 19 year-old daughter who was in the house when the military tanks arrived.
The government of Venezuela placed tanks in front of the legislator’s home in Caracas while she visits Costa Rica
The legislator denounced the actions of the government in her country by way of Twitter.
Figuera says it is not the first time she receives threats or direct attacks by the ruling party. Two days earlier she was attacked by police while taking part in a peaceful demonstration.
At the Parque Nacional in downtown San Jose on Sunday
Her party colleague, legislator Tomas Guanipa, also denounced threats against him and said that military counterintelligence surrounded his residence in a large deployment Sunday afternoon.
Relationship With Costa Rica
This is the third visit by the Venezuelan legislator, who is part of a legislative group of friendship with Costa Rica, to hold talks with Costa Rican legislators and politicians in search of international support.
In an interview with La Nacion, Figuera said that this visit to Costa Rica was at the invitation by the President of the Legislative Assembly, Antonio Alvarez Desanti, and other legislators of the PLN party, as well as legislators of the Partido Renovacion and Partido Nueva Generacion, among others.
Figuera arrived in Costa Rica on Saturday, April 22. Today, Monday, she will be meeting with Desanti, as well as the head of the PLN legislative bloc, Maureen Clarket, to continue looking for ways to stop the crisis in her country and help the Venezuelan people.
Figuera is clear, she and her party, Primero Justicia, are looking for recognition in the National Assembly, the opening of a humanitarian channel for medicines and food, the release of political prisoners that is now numbering 144 and the denunciation of subhuman conditions and torture in prisons, among others. Also with the support of governments such as Costa Rica, they call for progress in agreements to combat violence.
“I want my daughter to get to know a Venezuela of prosperity, of sharing, where she can go out after 6:00pm without fear of losing her life.” More than 25,000 citizens die each year in Venezuela in the hands of the underworld. It is a very hard figure,” the legislator said.
Following Sunday’s demonstration, the PLN sent a public message to the Foreign Ministry (Cancilleria) requesting Costa Rica subscribe to all the petitions mentioned above by the Primero Justicia party.
In addition, the PLN asked the Cancilleria they request that the international community be informed that “the Government of the Republic of Costa Rica will not accredit a diplomatic representative in Venezuela until there is a sincere disposition on the part the (Venezuelan) government to dialogue, respect of same and the cessation of repression against the civilian population.”
Doubts remain regarding Donald Trump’s meeting with former Colombian presidents Andres Pastrana and Alvaro Uribe (Flickr).
TODAY COLOMBIA (Bogota) President Donald Trump quietly met a pair of former Colombian presidents last weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, thrusting his administration into an ugly power struggle in Latin America that threatens to undermine the country’s controversial peace agreement with rebel leaders.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos is expected to push Trump to support the peace accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia at their first meeting at the White House next month. He wants the Trump administration and Congress to maintain the $450 million in foreign aid promised by former President Barack Obama to implement the plan to end Latin America’s longest armed conflict.
The meeting between Trump and the former presidents, Álvaro Uribe and Andrés Pastrana – Colombia news media have reported it was arranged by an influential U.S. critic of the plan, Republican U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida – was not on the president’s schedule and was not disclosed to reporters who traveled with him to Palm Beach.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer initially declined to answer questions about the meeting, leading to a rash of speculation in Colombian media. Colombian newspapers, websites and radio stations debated the meeting’s significance — and whether it actually had happened. “I don’t have anything for you at this time,” Spicer said Wednesday when asked.
The White House later confirmed the meeting to McClatchy but downplayed its significance, saying it was a mere coincidence that both former leaders opposed to the peace pact were at the president’s club. Aides to Rubio declined to comment.
“They were there with a member from the club and briefly said hello when the president walked past them,” spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said. “There wasn’t anything beyond a quick hello.”
But the leaders’ own comments contradict the White House’s characterization.
In a tweet following the meeting, Pastrana thanked Trump for the “cordial and very frank conversation” about problems in Colombia and the region.
Uribe was unavailable for an interview, but his former vice president, Francisco Santos, said it was important that the Trump administration and U.S. Congress hear a more complete picture of the reality in Colombia. He described the meeting as short, but with a clear message. The former presidents raised concerns about the situation in Venezuela and Colombia, including damage they say the peace process has caused.
“We’re very worried,” said Francisco Santos, who is the Bogotá chair of Uribe’s Democratic Center political party and the current president’s cousin. “You have a perfect storm, and the government says everything is going fine and we’re living in peace. And that’s not true.”
The Mar-a-Lago meeting coincided with a letter Uribe wrote to the Trump administration and Congress, which he published on Twitter, warning that President Santos’ efforts to complete a peace deal with the rebels could lead to Colombia becoming an authoritarian state similar to Venezuela.
The undisclosed meeting also raises a number of questions about the ease with which people trying to influence Trump can access him through membership in his club without fear of public disclosure; a Mar-a-Lago membership costs $200,000 for the initiation alone.
“It suggests that the people who patronize the president’s businesses have more influence than the rest of us,” said Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government watchdog group.
The White House did not say which Mar-a-Lago member had accompanied the leaders to the resort. Members’ names are not public, though some have leaked out since Trump became president.
The meeting also raised questions about whether Trump intends to support the Colombia peace plan, the result of years of negotiations to end five decades of combat with the insurgency group, which is known by its Spanish initials as the FARC. Santos received the Nobel Peace Prize last year for his efforts at negotiating a deal.
Spicer and Sanders did not answer questions about whether Trump supports the peace pact.
Rubio, whose wife is the daughter of Colombian immigrants, has been critical of the peace process. He shares the views of many Colombians that it is inappropriate to negotiate with a guerrilla group known for drug trafficking and kidnappings. He repeatedly has noted that the FARC remains a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization, and he has argued that Congress shouldn’t commit any additional money to the Colombian government until the peace plan is approved by the Colombian people.
An initial peace deal narrowly lost in a referendum in October. Santos then reopened negotiations with the rebels, but he bypassed a referendum in favor of submitting the deal to the Colombian Congress, which approved it in November.
The Colombian government criticized the former presidents for going outside diplomatic channels and taking the country’s “dirty laundry” to the White House.
Juan Carlos Pinzón, Colombia’s ambassador to the United States, said it was important not to oversimplify the meeting. He noted that Colombia has a long record of strong bipartisan relations with the U.S. Congress.
Santos was the second Latin American president to speak with Trump after the American was sworn into office. In their 25-minute call, Santos asked Trump to support the U.S. funding to back the country’s peace deal. Santos, who is seen as an “Obamanista” who publicly lobbied for Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, has described Trump’s politics as “not in line with what Colombia wants.”
Pinzón said the Colombian government must respect that Trump had his own way of doing things but that it was dangerous for the former presidents to take Colombia’s polarized politics to the United States, which could damage the country’s bipartisan support.
“We need to address these issues at home,” Pinzón told W Radio in Colombia. “We need to wash our dirty laundry at home.”
Arlene Tickner, a professor of international relations at Rosario University in Bogotá, said it was disconcerting for the leaders to be campaigning against a sitting president and the peace process.
“I think they’re hoping to get the Congress to hold back on funding to the government in order to gain leverage vis-à-vis the process,” Tickner said. “And obviously Uribe is posturing, trying to position himself and his party with an eye to the next elections.”
Last year, Obama promised to throw the White House’s full support behind the historic peace accord, including a pledge of $450 million in aid annually to help pay for regional development and to demobilize and reintegrate around 7,000 fighters.
That money is now in doubt as the Trump administration plans to slash foreign aid as part of 31 percent cuts to the State Department’s budget.
“If you’re going to reduce foreign assistance, you have to go to the places where assistance is provided,” said Eric Farnsworth, a former State Department official who is now vice president of the Washington-based Council of the Americas.
Colombia, the fourth largest economy in Latin America, is considered a major success story for U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. has provided more than $10 billion in aid to Colombia since 2000, supported by both Republican and Democratic administrations, to combat drugs and drug-related violence. But coca cultivation has soared to levels not seen in decades, and some see Trump’s hard-line rhetoric on keeping drugs out of the United States as more sympathetic to the opposition.
You have a perfect storm and the government says everything is going fine and we’re living in peace.
Francisco Santos, former vice president of Colombia
While Colombia may not get all the money, Santos needs, at a minimum, some form of support for the peace process, said Sandra Borda, a professor of political science and international relations at University of the Andes in Bogotá. A reduction in aid can be explained as part of Trump’s budget cuts, but not supporting the peace plan could be politically crippling for Santos, Borda said.
The United States continues to have an outsized role in Colombia’s internal politics. A Trump declaration of support would go a long way to shoring up Santos’ domestic backing. Anything less would fuel opposition efforts ahead of next year’s presidential election.
“If you have a president in the United States who is opposed to the peace process, it’s a form of undermining the legitimacy of the peace process,” Borda said.
“Look at Cuba. What is happening on the island is very hard to handle.” (Twitter)
TODAY CUBA – The Cuban opposition group Ladies in White has spoken out again about increased repression against political dissidents on the island.
In Miami, Florida this week, the group spoke about the current political situation, which they claim is worsening.
“We ask the international community to tell the Castro regime to stop repression in Cuba,” the Lady in White member Maria Elena Alpízar said.
According to the organization, the issue has intensified following cooling relations with the United States in December 2014, and President Barack Obama’s approach to opening up the island.
“We gave a report (to the Organization of American States) with all the human rights violations that have been committed against us over the past 95 Sundays,” she said, claiming there has been some form of repression every weekend.
Leticia Ramos during a press conferrence in Miami (Foto: CubaNet)
Meanwhile, Leticia Ramos Herreria, another member of the group, asked that the international community step up its oversight of the island.
“Look at Cuba. What is happening on the island is hard to handle,” Ramos said. “We have Ladies in White in prison, transferred to prisons in other provinces, our children are being imprisoned to weaken the movement. Unfortunately, what is happening in Cuba, is very hard.”
The group believes the Cuban government is out to “destroy” the organization.
“By arresting Ladies in White, high ranking officials in the regime have let us know that we already cease to exist,” Ramos said, “that we can’t continue on Cuban streets, that we must come to an end.”
Despite repression by the Cuban regime, the group said it will continue to be active on the streets and not relinquich its demand for the freeing of political prisoners.
“Let it be very clear to the regime that we are willing to go to jail if necessary,” Ramos said, “because we are not going to give up our fight … We will continue, no matter what.”
TODAY VENEZUELA – The Venezuelan dictatorship faces massive citizen protests, which for the first time include far more poor people than those of the middle and upper class, an unmanageable economic crisis, and increasing isolation from the international community.
All of this is due to strongman Nicolás Maduro’s incompetence; his henchmen are equally inept.
The Maduro regime is against the wall and, for the first time, the governing Chavistas face the imminent threat of being toppled.
Reliable sources told the PanAm Post that Maduro’s decision to assign lawyer Hermann Escarrá and José Vicente Rangel, Chávez’s vice-president from 2002 to 2007, with the task of unblocking the political game and establishing a timetable for general elections, just as Organization of American States’ (OAS) General Secretary Luis Almagro demanded in March, involves his ordered exit from power. The only condition would be a guarantee of some type of transitional justice for Maduro, his wife Cilia Flores, and possibly some members of his inner circle, all of whom would face serious criminal charges under ordinary circumstances.
The Venezuelan Minister of Defense, Vladimir Padrino, pulls the strings of power behind the scenes and is behind this agreement. He clearly counts with the support of the armed forces according to our sources, who stated that “Padrino is the only person who holds all the cards in Venezuela, and he seems to know how to use them.”
Obviously, this is not Maduro’s only choice. Part of the regime’s leadership still holds on to the thesis that they should increase repression against protesting citizens until one of the following goals is met:
They crush all resistance to the regime, a temporary solution given Venezuela’s international isolation and economic collapse.
They carry out a self-induced coup d’état which would allow Maduro and his closest followers to leave government as supposed victims. This option would be geared toward ingratiating themselves with the international left, which as of now is generally rejecting Maduro’s heavy-handed tactics. The Chavista top echelons would then hold on to the means of corruption which they have used to enrich themselves.
The Evidence
Maduro is sending messages in all directions. He suggested he was eager to hold elections while proposing a plan to “sustain the (Bolivarian) revolution for the next 20 years,” a plan that presumably includes no elections. According to political scientist John Magdaleno, the Chavistas would lose any election in Venezuela by 36 percent of the vote at the very least, so an opposition candidate would win with approximately 68% of all votes.
For a political movement which, under its founder, Hugo Chávez, allegedly won 18 of 20 elections in the last 18 years, such damage would be devastating. Maduro knows this and therefore wants to avoid elections unless he is offered some kind of immunity for his crimes. This is why Uruguayan leftist senator Verónica Alonso said that Pepe Mujica, Uruguay’s former left-wing president, “can help to negotiate Maduro’s exit” from power.
Putting Escarrá and Rangel in charge of talks with the opposition is key because they still have contact with anti-Chavista politicians who could offer them guarantees. Our source, who has access to high government circles, said that Maduro’s collapsed credibility is evident to all. This is why negotiating with him is so difficult.
Despite his recent loss of prestige, Escarrá has a reputation for fixing disputes. He is also one of the few Venezeulan lawyers who can give Maduro’s ouster some acceptable legal form. In fact, Escarrá is reputed to have negotiated several instances of amnesty after the failed coup against Chávez in 2002, particularly benefitting the military officers involved. Rangel, on the other hand, played a fundamental role in leading Venezuela back to government by institutions after those events by laying bridges between Chavistas and the opposition.
Escarrá and Rangel are holding dialogues with the opposition, with OAS chief Almagro, and Leonel Fernández, former president of the Dominican Republic. It is not insignificant that opposition politician Luis Florido, president of the Commission of Foreign Policy in the National Assembly, is also involved. Florido left the country despite having his passport confiscated, in order to provide evidence of government abuse before the OAS. He returned to Venezuela from Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, where talks were held, still without a passport. Nevertheless, he was allowed into the country without being detained.
On the other hand, the increasing levels of repression suggest that the self-induced coup is a real option. The regime’s violence against the citizenry at nighttime is meant to force the people to demand a strongman who can keep order. That strongman would be none other than Defense Minister Padrino, who also has contacts with anti-Chavista officers and their leader Raúl Baduel, who is in prison without a trial after serving the time stipulated in his original sentence.
The regime’s crude repressive tactics are also meant to cow people into submission. The Chavistas’ worst nightmare is for political protests to become a means for citizens to vent their frustration for the hunger which they endure. There could be an unstoppable wave of popular fury leading to Maduro’s most feared scenario: having to leave power at a moment’s notice, risking not only political but also physical decapitation. According to our sources, however, all members of the Chavista upper echelons already have several plans of escape carefully prepared.
A Timetable for General Elections
According to Almagro’s report on Venezuela, general elections must include the regional elections which Maduro cancelled and a presidential election by the middle of 2018. If this were to take place, Maduro would step down some months before the end of his term. Only two other Venezuelan presidents have done this in the past.
Although most members of the opposition rejected this option at first, several parties have accepted it in recent days, including Voluntad Popular, Primero Justicia and Acción Democrática. All three parties, which form part of the Democratic Unity Roundtable coalition, have agreed that, if elections take place, there must be no political prisoners and no politicians arbitrarily prohibited from running. How this can come about is still unknown.
Winner Takes All
Would the entire opposition accept such a deal? It would in theory, although there is a group that favors a more radical stance. The opposition includes considerably large sectors which claim that no negotiation with Maduro is viable. They think that only the massive street protests are accelerating the end of the Chavista regime.
They are still organizing protests in the hope that Maduro is forced to step down and that a transitional government which includes the opposition takes his place. A transitional government would also include Chavista elements and the armed forces. Being unelected, it could take on institutionalized corruption without paying political costs at the ballot box. This sector believes that Maduro can only negotiate his removal from power without retaliations.
In Venezuela, however, everything can change in a matter of hours.
Q24N – The revenue generated from Honduran banana exports in January 2017 was 37.2% higher than that of the same month in 2016, totalling 46.5 million dollars, as reported by official sources.
The value of banana sales increased by 12.5 million dollars (+37.2%), compared to the 33.9 million dollars exported in January 2016, according to a report from the Central Bank of Honduras (BCH).
During that month, the Central American country shipped 3.19 million 18 kilo boxes of bananas abroad, which is 48.3% over the 2.15 million boxes sold in January last year.
The Central Bank pointed out that this increase is the result of the application of “better planting, fertilization, cutting and pest control techniques,” although it has been offset by the 7.5% reduction of prices.
The price of the banana box reached an average of $ 14.55, while in the same month of 2016 it stood at $ 15.72, according to the Central Bank.
The United States and Ireland were the main destinations for Honduran banana exports, although the BCH did not specify the volumes that those markets bought.
Throughout 2016, the value of banana exports, one of the main agricultural products of Honduras, totalled 456 million dollars, according to official figures.
The camera of the RSN captured incandescence in the Poas in the daylight this Saturday, reflecting the high temperatures of the eruptive process and the instability of the colossus. (RSN)
Q COSTA RICA – As of 9:00am this morning (Saturday, April 22) the Poas volcano has accumulated 35 hours of uninterrupted eruptive activity, that began at 11:00pm Thursday.
Since the start of its eruptive activity at the beginning of the month, the last few days has seen an increase in the evaporation and degassing of the acid lagoon. Last week, during Semana Santa, the ‘domo’ (volcanic dome) or 30 meter high wall of the active crater disappeared.
According tot he Red Sismológica Nacional (RSN) – the National Seismological Network (RSN) – the eruptive activity has also included an increase in the amplitude of the volcanic tremor,
The break of dawn image captured this morning by the RSN camera demonstrate the high temperatures of the eruptive process and the instability of the colossus. (RSN)
The emission of solid material and the explosiveness gradually increased on Friday, and by the night the emission of ash was more noticeable and the volcano began the ejection of blocks at very high temperature that is still continuing this morning.
“This eruptive process is characterized by small explosions that are very frequent in time and of varying magnitude,” says the RSN.
During the night the high temperatures of the ejected material generated a strong incandescence seen through RSN surveillance camera, located at the southern edge of the active crater.
Q24N (AFP) – The co-founder of the law firm at the center of the Panama Papers scandal says the fallout has set off a “thriving” boom in the creation of tax shelters in the United States.
Juergen Mossack, who partnered with Ramon Fonseca to create the Panamanian firm Mossack Fonseca, said in a document obtained on Thursday (April 21) by AFP that after the Panama Papers leak a year ago, the number of new tax shelters created has fallen by 30 per cent in Panama and elsewhere.
“However, jurisdictions such as Delaware, Nevada and others located in the United States, where virtually no due diligence is required… incorporations are thriving!” Mossack said.
“Whilst Panama tries hard to be whiter than white, others are profiting,” he wrote.
The Panama Papers, published a year ago in a leak of more than 11 million documents belonging to Mossack Fonseca, spurred fresh government action against the secretive world of tax fraud and evasion. The documents linked some of the world’s most powerful leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, former British prime minister David Cameron and others to unreported offshore companies.
Before the scandal exposed the global extent of offshore tax havens, Panama was the last major financial centre refusing all exchange of banking information.
But since then, Panama has adopted new legislation and signed up to the international fight against tax fraud, with all the transparency required.
Law firms in Panama have been required to undertake due diligence – to know their clients and the final beneficiaries of the companies they create – since 2015.
Mossack said US jurisdictions have “zero transparency” and that is why, after the scandal, there has been an increase in clients creating tax shelters in the US who previously would have gone to Panama.
According to the Panamanian economy ministry, the creation of offshore companies fell 27 per cent in 2016 from the prior year.
No one has been arrested in the Panama Papers leaks scandal. In this Central American country, tax evasion is not a crime.
But Mossack and Fonseca have been placed in provisional detention on money-laundering charges as part of a sprawling Brazilian corruption probe dubbed “Operation Car Wash.” Mossack’s letter, written from detention, was dated April 10.
Panama’s chief prosecutor, Kenia Porcell, said his office was cooperating with European countries investigating tax fraud revealed in the Panama Papers.
Mossack said more than 98 per cent of his firm’s clients were not Panamanian nationals and that 85 per cent of the companies noted in the Panama Papers were set up to comply with other jurisdictions.
According to him, “less than one per cent of all the companies incorporated” by Mossack Fonseca could have “a possible wrongful use.”
If some of the companies set up by Mossack Fonseca were used by their owners to try to cheat on their taxes “we would not have been aware of that, since no client in his right mind would tell people he has never met that he would use the company for an illegal purpose,” he said.
“Such a disclosure would automatically disqualify him from being accepted as a client.”
Q COSTA RICA – Here is something that is of no surprise to most in Costa Rica, about half of the 147,000 new vehicles sold in Costa Rica between March 2106 and December 2017, were financed.
Image for illustrative purposes
An analysis of the vehicle fleet in Costa Rica by the Business Intelligence Unit at CentralAmericaData.com reveals that placement of loans for vehicle purchases during the period between March 2016 and March this year amounted to US$1.2355 billion.
Analyzed were 344,000 sales and purchase transactions of vehicles registered in the time period.
Of the total, 147,000 transactions were for vehicles registered for the first time. About 50% of these transactions were made by way of some form of financing, supported by loans registered on title.
The remaining transactions relate to sales of vehicles that were already registered. In those transactions, only one-tenth were financed.
The main lenders are the major banks with total loans amounting to US$564 million dollars. Principally the loans were made the state bank, Banco Nacional and the private banks, Scotiabank, BAC San Jose and Davidienda.
Finance companies or ‘financieras’ in Spanish, recorded US$436 million dollars in loans for vehicles.
Leading the group of financieras are Credi Q, followed by CAFSA, CARROFACIL, MB Creditos, Instacredit and Viensa. Credit Q and Viensa are also new and used vehicle dealers.
About half of the loans were for a period of seven years (US$477 million), followed by US$90 million for a six-year term, US$80 million for five years and US$52.5 million for four years.
The leaders in leasing were BAC, Scotiabank, Desyfin and CAFSA.
Besides loans financing, a growing number of transactions were by way of leasing. Some 7,000 transactions for a value of US$230 million dollars were recorded in the time period.
What is not included is the new trend of “renting“, where the customer rents the vehicle on a long term contract, typically one year or more, without a cash outlay or qualifying for a loan.
In renting, the customer is required to make a security deposit and then make monthly payments.
Renting tends to be more costly than a lease or loan payment. However, in renting there is no requirement for guaranteed residual value (such as is for a lease), or pay costs such as property tax (Marchamo). Repairs and maintenance costs are the responsibility of the rental company. In some contracts, the customer can easily exchange for a different vehicle in the same class or upgrade.
Q24N – Beyond the political differences that some insist on highlighting, businessmen from Costa Rica and Nicaragua countries have developed a growing business relationship that has led to the trade balance growing by more than 40% in the last six years.
From an editorial article by the Superior Council of Private Enterprise of Nicaragua:
In recent years, news about the relationship between Nicaragua and Costa Rica has been focused mainly on discord between the two countries, territorial disputes, rulings by the International Court of Justice, the migratory border crisis, and differences between presidents.Much ink and paper has been used to highlight the negative, that which sets us apart.
However, there is an agenda beyond political and media differences.
Although it is not written about as much, it does exists.It is real and has brought us much closer than what is perceived.
It is a relationship that has been developed between companies and citizens of both countries, a reality that unites us far more than than which separates us.
El expresidente de FIFA, Joseph Blatter, junto a Eduardo Li, durante la conferencia de clausura del Mundial Femenino Sub-17. | AFP
From FIFA president, Joseph Blatter (left) and Eduardo Li, during a press conference of the FIFA Sub-17 Women’s competition. Photo AFP
Eduardo Li, once the darling of Costa Rica soccer, has earned himself a lifetime ban from the FIFA’s ethics committee for taking bribes,
The FIFA decision was announced Friday.
“As a consequence the official is banned for life from all football-related activities (administrative, sports or any other) at both national and international level,” a statement announced.
Li pleaded in a Brooklyn Federal Court in October 2016 to one count of racketeering conspiracy, one count of wire fraud and one count of wire fraud conspiracy, relating to bribes received US$500,000 dollars from sports marketing companies, linked commercial rights for World Cup qualifying games.
The Costa Rican was arrested at the Baur au Lac hotel in Zurich in an early morning raid in May 2015 by Swiss police acting on a US warrant.
After spending several months in a Switzerland jail, he was extradited to the United States.
More than 40 people and marketing agencies have been indicted or pleaded guilty in the FIFA corruption case, also known as ‘FIFAgate’.
Li was the head of the Costa Rica soccer association, FEDEFUTBOL, from 2007 to his arrest in 2015. In addition, Li served as a member of CONCACAF – the North AMerica, Centra America and Caribbean soccer federation – executive board.
Doña Eugenia's hysterical call to a Tigo customer service agent was leaked on the social media and now the decades Tigo customer i
Doña Eugenia’s hysterical call to a Tigo customer service agent was leaked on the social media, raising doubts about to what extent can users refuse to be recorded.
Q COSTA RICA – A call to customer service should be a private matter. At least that is the reasonable expectations of clients calling to make a complaint or obtaining assistance about a service there are paying for.
However, a recent conversation between an irate customer and a Tigo customer service center agent that went viral on the social media has raised doubts about the extent to which users can refuse to have their calls recorded.
The discussion on the subject went public after a recording of a very emotional and sometimes vulgar rant by Eugenia Maria Cartin Barrios to a Tigo customer service was leaked to the social media.
Doña Eugenia, earlier this week, went public to bring awareness to the problem. On national television, Doña Eugenia explained that she was very upset when she made the call months ago, upset at the lousy internet service provided by Tigo.
In the audio, Doña Eugenia is hysterical during the call, a call she may have or not known it was being recorded, but never imagined it would go public.
Talking to Teletica, Doña Eugenia said she was only asserting her right of a customer demanding the service she is paying for.
Doña Eugenia publicly accepts that perhaps her reaction to the customer service agent was not her best, but said her patience ran out after having had so many days of problems with her Internet service.
Wendy Rivera Roman, director of the Agencia de Protección de Datos de los Habitantes (APDH) and Manuel Emilio Ruiz, board director of the Superintendencia de Telecomunicaciones (Sutel), both government agencies, warn and advise how to deal with the issue of customer service center calls.
Rivera explains that calls are monitored and recorded for commercial reasons. This is usually done to verify the attention the user (customer) is receiving and for supervisors to verify the work of their operators. The APDH director stresses that decision to record of not the call is between the user and provider.
Ruiz, for is part, had a similar explanation. The state regulator board director added that the provide (company) can use the recording as support in disputes with customers.
Both Rivera and Ruiz are clear that there is no mechanisms to prohibit the recording of calls, the only recourse customers who do not want to be recorded have is to hang up. The options are then to either communicate via email or online chat.
Despite the claims by authorities that there really isn’t much they can do, Doña Eugenia’s lawyer says they “will go to the last instance.”
“At TIGO we are very sorry that the information (recorded a few months back) has been leaked on social networks … the purpose of recording the calls is to monitor and always improve the service … we are analyzing what happened,” was the company’s official response.
Gases emitted by two volcanos Poás (foreground) and Turrialba (farthest) increased the amount of sulfur dioxide in the environment. In the photo, captured this Thursday at 6:40 a.m. from an airplane, you can also see the Barva and Irazú volcanoes. (Photo by Laura Barboza Rodríguez)
Q COSTA RICA -The Poas volcano eruptions are triggering air pollution in the Greater Metropolitan Area (GAM) of San Jose at levels that exceed the maximum values allowed by the World Health Organization (WHO).
This means that the residents of GAM that includes the capital city (San Jose) and the cities of Alajuela, Cartago and Heredia are breathing high amounts of sulfur, carbon dioxide and sometimes ash particles that can affect their health.
The pollution levels were confirmed from measurements made by the Volcanological and Seismological Observatory of Costa Rica (Ovsicori) on Thursday, April 13 at 2:40 pm, almost an hour before the strongest eruption that day and 3:40 pm.
The air quality at the Hatillo (south side of San Jose) monitoring station recorded an average sulfur dioxide concentration of 81 parts per billion (ppb), with a maximum peak of 99.1 ppb, which exceeds the WHO limit of 75 ppb.
According to Jorge Herrera, coordinator of the environmental analysis laboratory of the Universidad Nacional (UNA) – National University, the Poás gas emission is modifying the air quality in the GAM, which was already compromised due to the eruptions of the Turrialba volcano, as well as contamination of the industries and vehicles.
Other monitoring stations located in Coronado (San Jose) and Alto de Ochomogo (Cartago) also had a high gas concentration that day, explained Herrera.
Measurements of sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide at the edge of the Poas volcano active crater, between April 10 and 14, are the highest recorded at the volcano, revealed the UNA.
The monitoring equipment was destroyed by subsequent eruptions.
Scientists interpret these values ss the presence of fresh magna very close to the surface.
All these data are consistent with the detection of a sulfur dioxide cloud over the central region of Costa Rica that was identified by the NASA AURA satellite during the days of highest concentrations.
Sulfur dioxide is a colorless gas with a penetrating, choking odor that can damage the respiratory system with only a short exposure to high concentrations.
Children, the elderly and people with asthma are particularly sensitive to these emanations that can cause health problems.
Herrera explained that the emissions generated by the two volcanos (Poas and Turrialba) are natural processes, but are a source of pollution.
The expert added that today, Friday, the Ovsicori and the Ministry of Health are going to erect a measuring station in Fraijanes and Sabanilla (Alajuela) and soon in Grecia, to transmit real-time air quality.
Q COSTA RICA – Two Costa Ricans are among 39 arrested, members of an”interconnected criminal network” that spanned 18 countries in Europe and Latin America.
The men distributed child pornography via the instant messaging service WhatsApp, according to a report by the Spanish National Police on April 18.
The others arrested were, 17 people in Spain, six in Colombia, four in Italy and more in Germany, Bolivia, Paraguay, Chile, El Salvador and Portugal.
The Spanish police, Interpol and Europol worked together under the code name “Operation Tantalio”, targeting what is believed to be “the main international network” of its kind to date.
The operation began in 2016 as investigators delved into the ‘dark web’ via the Tor browser that conceals users’ online activity.
Although the Tor browser is free to download and use, users could only obtain the URL to gain access to the multimedia files of children being sexually exploited by way of WhatsApp groups.
On the dark web, illicit websites can be found are for drugs, money laundering, counterfeit bills, hackers for hire, trade or distribution of malware, illegal pornography, hitmen for hire and instructional material and much, much more.
Around 96 groups were detected and over 360,000 archives found, some dating back two decades.
Authorities say a total of 135 people are being investigated, and further arrests are expected.
In Costa Rica, the Ministerio Publico (Prosecutor’s Office) identified the two Costa Ricans by their last names Matamoros and Rojas.
According to the Ministerio Publico, the two men were questioned, but later released, though they remain under investigation.
International child pornography networks operating on dark web networks and social or messaging networks such as Facebook and WhatsApp are not uncommon. These often consist of individuals exchanging personal material of minor abuse on virtual channels and websites, some with tens of thousands of users.
Such activity has made the level of secrecy of virtual platforms — including the encryption system used by WhatsApp — deeply problematic. While this software supports user privacy, it also allows for criminal operations of all kinds to abound. A recent report revealed that over half of websites exclusively accessible through Tor facilitated illegal activities, including drugs and arms trafficking, money laundering, hiring assassins and child exploitation.
As the “first joint international action against child pornography in the European Union,” this latest operation seems to fit into a concerted global effort to tackle transnational organized crime with transnational security force cooperation. Recent worldwide operations have covered all kinds of illegal activity, from drug trafficking to cyber crime.
Rob Wainwright, Director of Europol: “These offenders are pushing the boundaries of modern technologies to try to avoid being caught by law enforcement. This case is an excellent example of global law enforcement cooperation, led by the Spanish National Police. We need to continue to combine our joint resources and skills to tackle this threat to our children and bring these offenders to justice.”
“Criminals will continue to exploit new technologies to share videos and images of child abuse around the world at the push of a button. But actions like Operation Tantalio send a strong message: police worldwide remain united in their efforts to identify, locate and bring you to justice for engaging in or benefiting from these heinous crimes,” said Bjorn Sellstrom, INTERPOL’s Crimes Against Children operations coordinator.
Q24N (Insightcrime.org) US President Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions launched a rhetorical campaign this week against the MS13, one of the most violent gangs in Central America. But the verbal offensive by the president and the attorney general, as well as their statements on the origins and evolution of the gang, are for the most part false or misleading.
The broadside included tweets by President Trump and comments made by the attorney general to law enforcement officials, as well as statements to the press, which compare the gang with other, much more sophisticated and developed criminal groups, such as Mexican and Colombian drug cartels.
On April 18, Trump tweeted that the “weak illegal immigration policies of the Obama administration” allowed the MS13 to develop in several US cities. The current president also said that his administration has been expelling gang members at rates never seen before.
In addition, speaking to Fox News, the president stated that the gangs are made up of “illegal immigrants that were here that caused tremendous crime. That have murdered people, raped people — horrible things have happened. They’re getting the hell out or they’re going to prison.”
On the same day that Trump made these comments, Sessions expressed similar thoughts in a separate TV interview and in a speech he gave to an elite group of federal officials, the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF).
Like Trump, Attorney General Sessions also blamed so-called “sanctuary cities,” which forbid local police forces from cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, for facilitating the MS13’s expansion.
As he had promised during his presidential campaign, upon assuming office Trump began threatening to cut federal funds to these cities if they refused to cooperate with ICE. Only a few of the more than 100 sanctuary cities have given up their sanctuary status. Others that are home to large migrant communities, such as San Francisco; Hyattsville, Maryland; Houston; and Los Angeles have defied Trump.
In addition, Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly spoke about the MS13 at a public event held by George Washington University, in Washington, DC.
“They are utterly without laws, conscience, or respect for human life. They take the form of drug cartels, or international gangs like MS13, who share their business dealings and violent practices. Their sophisticated networks move anything and everything across our borders, including human beings,” Kelly said.
Each of these comments comes with its flaws, and at the very least distorts the reality and obscurs the strategies that should be followed to tackle the MS13 threat. In an effort to shed more light on this complex issue, InSight Crime has listed seven aspects of these statements in which the Trump administration is plainly mistaken.
A captured gang member makes the Mara Salvatrucha’s signs in a police station.AP Photo/Luis Romero
1. Barack Obama’s immigration policies allowed the MS13 to expand across the United States
Trump blames former President Obama, but he may have been more correct if he had pointed the finger at Ronald Reagan. The MS13 and Barrio 18 street gangs were established in the 1980s in Los Angeles. At the beginning, they were made up of young undocumented migrants that came to California escaping the civil war in El Salvador. They were tuned in to rock music and took part in small-scale drug dealing. Some of them had received military or guerrilla-style training.
As Salvadoran news outlet El Faro wrote about the origins of the MS13, very soon the gang began to articulate a violent ideology based by and large on opposition to rival gangs, most notably the Barrio 18.
The gangs migrated to the US East Coast towards the end of the 1990s, as part of the migration waves that saw Latino communities looking for jobs elsewhere in the country. By the beginning of the 2000s, the MS13 began to catch the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Even the fact sheet the US Department of Justice (DOJ) released on April 18 to support Sessions’s statements clearly says that the MS13 was born and began to expand before 2009; “The MS13 has been functioning since at least the 1980s,” the report states.
In 2004, under the George W. Bush administration, the FBI created a special unit targeting the MS13, after members of the gang committed some atrocious homicides.
In 2006, Brian Tuchon, then-head of the FBI’s special unit, told Salvadoran news outlet La Prensa Gráfica that the gang had settled in 42 US states, and had begun to participate in drug trafficking, chiefly as local distributors. Since that time, the FBI and the US State Department have maintained that gangs like the MS13 do not play an important role in the international drug trafficking chain.
The MS13’s expansion is directly related to the evolution and migration of Central American communities into the United States, and also with the large-scale deportation campaigns that began towards the end of the Bill Clinton administration and intensified during George W. Bush’s two terms in office.
2. US law enforcement has done nothing against the MS13
“It is a serious problem and we never did anything about it, and now we’re doing something about it,” President Trump told Fox News during the April 18 interview.
This is false. In addition to several FBI operations, local police forces and attorneys from counties across the states of Maryland, Virginia, New York, New Jersey and California carried out several law enforcement actions against MS13 members during the previous decade.
To give a few examples, federal cases brought by attorneys under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) law in Greenbelt, Maryland, and Arlington, Virginia led to blows that decimated the MS13 cells on the US East Coast for a decade.
In 2007, Greenbelt’s federal court sentenced some 20 members of gangs based in Maryland, DC and Virginia to several years in prison as part of an organized crime case that included charges of homicide, drug possession, illegal use of weapons and rape, among others. Among the defendants was Saúl Hernández Turcios, alias “El Trece,” one of the MS13 leaders in El Salvador.
Again, the DOJ report on the MS13 appears to contradict the president’s words. The fact sheet states: “Through the combined efforts of federal, state, and local law enforcement, great progress was made diminishing or severely disrupted the gang within certain targeted areas of the US by 2009 and 2010.” That is, during the Obama administration.
3. More gang members are being deported from the United States than ever before
In his tweet, Trump said that “we are removing [gang members] fast.” Yet there is no data to support this claim. The ICE deportation figures available to the public do not show data from the first three months of 2017, when Trump has been in office. Up until the end of 2016, the percentage of gang members compared to the total deported population was minimal: 0.8 percent, that is, 2,057 individuals “with confirmed or suspected connections to gangs” out of a total of 240,255 deported people that year.
Ever since 2011, when the Obama administration announced that it would prioritize deportations for undocumented migrants with criminal records or ties to illegal groups, Washington has been juggling two distinct figures: the number of people accused or convicted of a crime, and the number of people whose only crime has been violating migration laws by illegally entering the United States. This, according to many pro-immigrant organizations, has only further criminalized migrant communities.
There is no data showing that deportations carried out during the Trump administration have targeted more gang members, and Central American police sources have told InSight Crime that this is not the case.
4. The MS13 is recruiting more in the United States in an attempt to revive defunct ‘clicas,’ and to commit more violent acts
Sessions told OCDETF that “Because of an open border and years of lax immigration enforcement, MS13 has been sending both recruiters and members to regenerate gangs that previously had been decimated, and smuggling members across the border as unaccompanied minors.”
This is, in part, correct. As InSight Crime recently reported, between 2014 and 2016 the FBI and local authorities detected an increase in homicides attributable to the MS13 in Virginia; Boston; and Long Island, New York.
Testimony from a RICO case opened in Boston in 2015 against various MS13 “clicas,” or cells, indicates that orders from the gang’s jailed leadership in El Salvador may have been behind some of these homicides. The court documents also mention a meeting between clica leaders in Richmond, Virginia, in which a spokesperson known as “Ricky” relayed the order to expand the MS13’s East Coast program.
Federal investigations revealed that some of the Boston homicides could be linked to this order. It is also true that the recent homicides were brutally executed, which is characteristic of the MS13 in Central America.
But Sessions’ statement also distorts the truth. Once again, there is no information that allows the attorney general or Trump’s administration to affirm that these murders are attributable to the arrival of undocumented minors, who began coming to the United States in larger numbers in 2014. In fact, there is no study by federal agencies or academic institutions that proves that there is a significant number of gang members among these minors. On the contrary, a large portion of these undocumented youths who come seeking asylum claim that they are fleeing gangs in the Northern Triangle.
Moreover, there is no evidence that the migratory patterns of gang members are different than those of any other group of migrants, or that they are moving in accordance with a grand plan forged by the MS13’s Salvadoran leadership to revitalize the organization.
It is nonetheless true that in 2007 the MS13 started to resume recruitment activities and indiscriminate use of violence in some US cities, according to FBI officials who have studied the gang for at least two decades. But these efforts are not directly related to Obama’s migration policies. David LeValley, who until last November was chief of the FBI’s criminal investigations unit in Washington, explains that there have been attempts by the MS13 to regain strength following the RICO prosecutions between 2006 and 2010. This has been occurring “since 2007, after real successes and after the leadership had been decimated,” the FBI agent told InSight Crime in an interview last year.
In more recent years, the MS13 has largely been following the organization’s dynamics in Central America. This includes the gang truce between the MS13, Barrio 18 and the Salvadoran government during the presidency of Mauricio Funes (2009-2014), and the subsequent declaration of war by current President Salvador Sánchez Cerén.
5. Sanctuary cities are more hospitable to the MS13, and the gang can operate freely in them
Sessions told OCDETF that sanctuary cities “dangerously undermine [the process of fighting gangs]. Harboring criminal aliens only helps violent gangs like MS13. Sanctuary cities are aiding these cartels to refill their ranks and putting innocent life — including the lives of countless law-abiding immigrants — in danger.”
This is false. There is no evidence that the “sanctuary” status of certain cities — those that refuse to allow local police to assist ICE in locating and deporting undocumented migrants — has any effect on their crime rates. Evidence indicates that, as in much of the United States, crime rates in sanctuary cities have been decreasing for years. In fact, some studies suggest that crime indicators are actually lower in migrant communities.
Furthermore, some successful models for combating gangs have been carried out in cities with a strong migrant presence, where the police established ties with such communities in order to counteract the influence of the MS13 or Barrio 18. This has been at the root of anti-gang operations in, for example, Fairfax, Virginia; Montgomery, Maryland; and Washington, DC, where InSight Crime has carried out investigations over the past two years. Between 2009 and 2014, gang-related homicides in Fairfax and Montgomery fell to nearly zero.
6. The MS13 represents a threat comparable to Mexican and Colombian drug cartels, and the Italian mafia
Attorney General Sessions compared the MS13 to Colombian cartels and the Italian “mafia.” Yet years of investigations into the MS13 and the Barrio 18 have shown that the participation of both gangs in the regional drug trade is minimal. In some cases, their activity is limited to controlling local markets.
Even the US State Department has recognized on multiple occasions that Central American gangs are not “important actors” in international drug trafficking. In contrast to the old Colombian cartels, their modern Mexican counterparts or intermediary criminal organizations, neither the MS13 nor Barrio 18 have ever had the economic or political power to obtain the protection needed to run large-scale drug trafficking activities in Central America. Nor have they been able to establish strong networks in the United States beyond small local cells.
In general, the number of big trafficking cases associated with MS13 clicas in Central America or the United States is small. And they typically involve gang units that, due to their location or leadership, have pre-existing connections to drug traffickers.
Apart from extortion, which is tightly regulated by the gang leadership, the MS13’s remaining criminal activities depend largely on decisions made by the local clica leader.
7. A law enforcement solution alone is adequate to solve this problem
Both Trump and Sessions resorted to repeating misinformation that other officials — including Central American presidents, ministers and police chiefs — have used to justify heavy-handed anti-gang policies, which have only helped the MS13 and Barrio 18 to become more sophisticated as their members have been stuffed into prisons.
At the end of the day, the words of both officials are intended to link the recent homicides attributed to the MS13 in New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia to Trump’s narrative, which he has used to criminalize migration and the Latino community in the United States.
(CNN)Venezuela has been riven by violent protests in recent weeks as opposition leaders face off with President Nicolas Maduro and his supporters.
Anti-government protesters want Maduro to step down, accusing him eroding democracy. Maduro, meanwhile, has ordered the Venezuelan armed forces onto the streets to maintain order.
The political turmoil comes against the backdrop of a worsening economic crisis. Despite having the largest proven oil reserves in the world, Venezuela is fast running out of cash, and its people have struggled for years with food and medical shortages, coupled with skyrocketing prices.
As the protests continue, here’s what you need to know:
In short, the opposition says Maduro has created a dictatorship. The government has repeatedly blocked any attempts to oust Maduro from power by a referendum vote. It has also delayed local and state elections.
The last vote held in Venezuela, the parliamentary election of 2015, gave the opposition a majority. Critics say elections have been delayed because Maduro is afraid of the outcome.
Then, on March 29, the Venezuelan Supreme Court dissolved the parliament, transferring all legislative powers to itself. By doing away with the opposition-controlled legislative branch, the move effectively meant the remaining two branches of Venezuelan government were controlled by Maduro’s ruling United Socialist Party. The opposition was outraged and called the move a coup.
The decision was reversed three days later, but protests had already erupted.
The demonstrations have been bloody. At least nine people have died and countless others, including journalists, have been injured.
The opposition call became even stronger when, on April 7, the government notified main opposition leader Henrique Capriles that he had been banned from doing any political work for 15 years. The 44-year-old governor of Miranda, who has run for president twice, said the government was again acting like a dictatorship.
How has Maduro reacted?
Maduro, 54, has been defiant, taking a confrontational tone with members of the opposition and protesters, whom he calls “vandals and terrorists.”
“We’re after and will capture the very last of the attackers,” Maduro said Saturday on national TV.
“You all know that I don’t fool around. When I go after criminals, I get them, and I will capture all of these criminals who are getting their orders from the right-wingers.”
In a show of force Monday, Maduro paraded the streets of Caracas surrounded by men and women in uniform. The military has also vowed its full support to Maduro.
A country in crisis
Venezuela is in crisis, and while there is no simple solution to the country’s woes, the opposition argues it can fix the failing economy.
Food shortages have become severe. Venezuelans have endured weeks, in some cases months, without basics such as milk, eggs, flour, soap and toilet paper.
.When there is food on the shelves, prices are so high that few Venezuelans can afford it. Many have taken to eating out of the trash.
Medicine remains in short supply, too. Venezuelans hunt for penicillin and other remedies at pharmacies everywhere, often without success. Public hospitals have fallen apart, causing people, including infants, to die because of the scarcity of basic medical care.
Venezuela recently asked the United Nations for help to relieve serious shortages of medicines.
The country only has $10.5 billion in foreign reserves left, according to recent Central Bank of Venezuela data. For the rest of the year, Venezuela owes roughly $7.2 billion in outstanding debt payments. In 2011, Venezuela had roughly $30 billion in reserves. In 2015, it had $20 billion.
Massive government overspending, a crashing currency, mismanagement of the infrastructure and corruption are all factors that have sparked high inflation in Venezuela. Inflation is expected to rise 1,660% this year and 2,880% in 2018, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Another key problem is the relatively low price of oil, which stands at half of what it was in 2014. Venezuela has more oil reserves than any other nation, and oil shipments make up more than 90% of its total exports.
The low price is making it nearly impossible for the country to pay its debts and import food, medicine and other essentials. Hyperinflation has wiped out salaries and the value of the currency, the bolivar, sending prices for all kinds of goods skyrocketing.
The outlook isn’t great either. Unemployment is set to surpass 25% this year, according to the IMF, and the economy is expected to remain in recession this year and the next after shrinking a massive 18% last year.
What are Venezuela’s neighbors doing about the turmoil?
President Donald Trump has not said much publicly about the crisis in Venezuela. In the early days of his presidency, he tweeted a photo of himself with Lilian Tintori, the wife of opposition figure Leopoldo Lopez. In the tweet, Trump called for Venezuela to release its political prisoners.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters the United States was “concerned that the government of Maduro is violating its own constitution and is not allowing the opposition to have their voices heard, nor allowing them to organize in a way that expresses the views of the Venezuelan people.”
The Organization of American States (OAS) recently tried to declare Venezuela in violation of its democratic charter but was denied the necessary votes by Caribbean and Central American nations that have depended for years on cheap Venezuelan oil. OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro, a Uruguayan, routinely calls Venezuela a dictatorship.
In March, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodríguez called Almagro a liar and a criminal mercenary at the OAS.
The region seems split in its support for Maduro. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay signed a joint statement Monday asking for the Venezuelan government “to guarantee the right to peaceful demonstration,” and avoid violence against protesters.
They have also urged the government to call for elections.
Even the Vatican has gotten involved in the Venezuela crisis. Pope Francis sent an envoy to Caracas to mediate talks between the opposition and the government in 2016. While those talks failed, Francis said he is willing to meet with the opposing parties to help resolve the conflict.
CNN’s Flora Charner and Patrick Gillespie contributed to this report. A previous version of this story gave the wrong home country for Luis Almagro.
In the wake of three dead in yesterday’s march, Venezuelans took to the streets for a second day to demand a return to democracy and Constitutional order (VOA).
TODAY VENEZUELA – Venezuela’s marches showed no signs of stopping as protests rage throughout the country for a second day.
Yesterday’s death toll stood at three, with a 17-year-old boy in Caracas, and a 23-year-old woman in the western state of Tachira among the dead, while a hospital in Chacao in central Caracas reported the death of a Bolivian national guardsman.
The newspaper El Nacional is reporting that six members of Venezuela’s opposition Justice First party were detained on O’Higgins Avenue in Caracas. Over 400 Venezuelans have been detained by security forces in the past 48 hours.
Yesterday the opposition party, National Will, published a demonstration route with 26 meeting points throughout Caracas, with the intention of arriving together in front of the public defender’s office downtown.
The mayor of the city of San Cristóbal, Patricia Gutiérrez, reported that a young woman died after being shot, allegedly by supporters of the Venezuelan government. In Caracas, a 17-year-old man lost his life earlier in the day after being shot in the head.
World leaders are calling for calm in the wake of what is certain to be a chaotic and violent week in Venezuela.
“We are concerned that the Maduro regime is violating its own constitution, and is not allowing the voices of the opposition to be heard,” US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said at a press conference on Iran. “Nor is it allowing them to organize themselves in a way that they can exercise their right to freedom of expression as the Venezuelan people.”
Colombia President Juan Manuel Santos publicly demanded the Secretary of the United Nations keep up on the situation, noting, “I have directed the Colombian Minister of Foreign Relations to request that the UN Secretary General take action in consideration of the alarming militarization of Venezuelan society.”
“We are not afraid,” said Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles Radonski. “Venezuela belongs to all of the Venezuelans, and we will keep fighting for the future of our country.”
It was his prohibition from political life for 15 years that served as one of the major catalysts of the mass protests. Capriles has served several terms as Governor of populous Miranda state, north of Caracas on the coast. He was recently banned from politics over irregularities in contracts related to the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht. Capriles noted, however, that ruling party politician Diosdado Cabello was, in fact, governor when the contracts in question were signed.
The Venezuelan opposition is also up in arms over the government’s refusal to schedule regional elections, which were supposed to have been held months ago. The government has also used questionable pretexts to ban opposition political parties and leaders from elections. It is widely believed that the Maduro regime has refused to schedule such elections because they believe they would lose.
“We will meet up tomorrow at the same time, in the same place, because the fight for democracy never ends,” Capriles said last night. “We won’t rest until we have returned Venezuela to its rightful constitutional order!”
TODAY VENEZUELA – Tens of thousands of people were out protesting Wednesday in Venezuela, demanding that Socialist President Nicolas Maduro leave office. Organizers called this the mother of all marches, but there were clashes shortly after the march started. Police responded with tear gas. At least two people have died.
the government established roadblocks, deployed security forces and shut down the metro in preparation for what government opponents labeled the mother of all marches. The opposition is pushing for President Nicolas Maduro’s ouster.
Whether this was actually the mother of all marches is hard to say, but the turnout was certainly very large. In Caracas, there were more than 20 gathering points for these protests. By mid-morning there were some 10,000 people there waving flags and chanting slogans against the government, saying the government’s about to fall.
It wasn’t long before reports of violence began to emerge.
Among the casualties a teenager shot in the head while walking near a protest. He died on the operating table. And at one of many protests outside the capital, a woman in her early 20s shot in the western city of San Cristobal. The town’s mayor there has told the Associated Press that she was shot by pro-government supporters out on the streets because there was also a pro-government rally today.
“The most simple thing is so difficult to achieve. We’re struggling each day, day after day, for even milk, bread,” said Louisa Mayorga, a lawyer from Caracas, taking part in the protest. “this is exhausting, but we won’t give up until we achieve a better country and democracy. This government, this regime is making our life miserable, and we cannot accept it.”
Q COSTA RICA TRAVEL – KLM is coming back to Costa Rica. On Monday, the Dutch flag carrier KLM Royal Dutch Airlines announced that, starting October 31, 2017 a planned twice weekly Amsterdam – San Jose flight.
The airline previously served San Jose until March 1998.
The airline has opened reservations for flights flown on Tuesdays and Fridays and operated by one of its new Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner aircraft.
It previously served San Jose until March 1998 offering a three times weekly triangle flight combined with Panama City flown by a McDonnell Douglas MD-11 in its last season of operation (winter 1997/1998).
“KLM currently brings many passengers to Costa Rica via Panama. The increasing interest of the European market in this beautiful country convinced us to start a direct flight to San José,” said Pieter Elbers, president and chief executive officer, KLM.
Toursm data from 2015 shows that arrivals into Costa Rica from Europe grew 6.1% versus the previous year to almost 400,000 annual visitors with the Netherlands being the sixth largest European source market after Germany, Spain, France, UK and Italy.
“This new flight, not only will facilitate visits to our country, but also thanks to KLM´s global network, this route will serve as a liaison for Costa Rica to open its doors to tourists from all Europe. This will for sure strengthen tourism in our country, generating benefits to the more than 600,000 persons who work in this activity in direct and indirect manner, and to the communities that find in tourism their opportunity to grow,” confirmed Luis Guillermo Solís, president of Costa Rica.
KLM joins growing the list of one-stop options from San Jose to Europe, that include British Airways (London), Iberia (Madrid), Air France (Paris) and Condor (Frankfurt).
The flight will leave from Amsterdam – Schiphol at 3:25pm and arrive in San Jose at 8:05pm.
The return flight will leave San Jose at 10:05pm and arrive in Amsterdam-Schiphol at 3:10pm the following day.
A check on the KLM website, the cost of the flight (KL0760) on October 31 and returning November 7, is US$960. Total travel time is 10 hours and 5 minutes.
Reversations and prices can be found at www.klm.com
Toyota is the predominant brand in Central America
Q24N – Contrary to the perception that, in general, only old card circulate in Central Ameriac, in December 2015, 22% of the vehicles circulating in the countries of the region were between 1 and 5 years old, and 19% were between 6 and 10 years old.
The report “Vehicular Fleet in Central America in 2015,” compiled by the Business Intelligence unit at CentralAmericaData.com details the age of vehicles circulating in the countries in Central America.
Of all vehicles in circulation up to December 2015, 14% corresponded to units which were more than ten years old, and less than 15 years old. 32% were vehicles made between the years 1986 to 2000.
When analyzing the vehicular fleet in Central America by brand, Toyota’s predominance can be seen, with 19% of the total, followed by Honda, Nissan, Suzuki and Hyundai.
Of all the vehicles circulating in December 2015 in Central America, 21% corresponded to cars, 26% to motorcycles and 17% to light-duty vehicles.
The autopista General Cañas becomes a parking lot daily
The autopista General Cañas becomes a parking lot daily.
Q COSTA RICA – Want to know why there is some much traffic congestion in the Greater Metropolitan Area (GAM) of San Jose? The real reason?
One half of the answer is the sheer number of vehicles on the roads.
Figures from the Figures from the “Central American Vehicle Park” report, prepared by CentralAmericaData‘s Business Intelligence Unit, indicates that in January 2017, 1.5 million vehicles were circulating
Of the total number of vehicles circulating in the country in January 2017, 61% corresponded to automobiles, 21% to motorcycles, 11% to light-duty vehicles and 3% to heavy loads.
When analyzing vehicle in the automotive category by brands, Hyundai, Toyota and Nissan together make up 54% of the units in circulation. In the motorcycle category, 25% of the units in circulation correspond to the brands Honda and Yamaha.
Interesting, while the Centralamericadate.com report indicates Huyndai is the top brand in Costa Rica, in its report of Age of vehicles in Central America, the Korean brand is last in the top five, behind the Japanese brands of Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Suzuki.
Those numbers a decade ago was a little more than half.
Which brings us to the second half of the answer, the roads. More specifically, its bridges.
In the last decade the only “new” road built is the Ruta 27, not counting the section between La Sabana and Santa Ana, which existed prior to the “San Jose – Caldero project.
And the Coyol radial, the road from the Ruta 1 by the Riteve station and the Ruta 27 is new. Other than that it is really hard to come up with any new roads build in the last ten years.
The others have had makeovers, like the autopista General Cañas, a four lane ‘autopista’ – not daring to call it a highway – was expanded to six lanes from the Juan Pablo Segundo bridge to the airport. In the expansion, the General Cañas lost its shoulders and the lanes narrowed.
Or the Bernardo Soto, from the airport west to the Cruce de Manolos, where the expansion was from two to four lanes, but with interruptions for the bridges, that like on the General Cañas, remain narrower than the lanes.
The bridges on just about every major road is the major source of congestion. On the General Cañas, four lane bridges are part of the six lane road. On the Bernardo Soto: four lanes road, two lane bridges. Drivers in Lindora live daily the horror of the two lane Virilla river bridge.
Examples like this are all over, I am just citing those example that I, living in the west end of the GAM, live daily. The same is lived by thousands in the east, north and south.
There is an effort underway to fix this, but the solution, I fear, may be short by the time the bridges are actually built.
On the General Cañas, the new six lane bridge is almost ready. But what about now the Juan Pablo II bridge that is falling apart? Or the bridge by the Cerverceria?
I fear that by the time these problems are solved, it will not be enough for the ever-growing volume of vehicles on the roads. As the vehicular fleet grows, the road infrastructure lacks further behind.
TODAY COLOMBIA – In its annual outlook, a Panama-based publication recently ranked the best global locations to buy real estate this year, and two of the largest cities in Colombia — the “irresistible” Cali and gentrifying Bogotá — made the top five.
Only two markets in Portugal — Algarve in first place and Lisbon coming in second — beat out the Colombian hotspots on the list of the “Best Places to Buy Real Estate Overseas in 2017” compiled by Live and Invest Overseas.
Cali, Colombia
Its complete top nine ranking features these cities:
Algarve, Portugal
Lisbon, Portugal
Cali, Colombia
Bogotá, Colombia
Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic
Playa del Carmen, Mexico
Cocle, Panama
Ceara, Brazil
Cape Verde
When looking at Cali, the editors are experiencing deja vu. They see the Valle del Cauca capital following the same path that another Colombian city has already taken. “Cali is Medellín 10 years ago,” wrote the publication.
“Property values are an absolute global bargain,” continued Live and Invest Overseas. “The rental demand is expanding — this is one of the fastest-growing tourist markets in Colombia — as is the city’s middle class. The U.S. dollar is at a record high against the Colombian peso, making this undervalued market irresistible.”
The capital, Bogota, while always appealing as one of Colombia’s largest and most connected cities, is also on the rise. The currency deflation in recent years has hit at the exact same time that high-quality food, coffee, and cultural attractions are popping up more and more throughout Bogotá.
“This is a hub for Latin American business, meaning a strong business traveler rental market,” according to the outlet. “At the same time, this is Colombia’s most popular tourism destination and international travel to Bogotá is increasing. All this adds up to a growing tourist rental market. Neighborhoods are being gentrified and the local middle class is expanding quickly, meaning this city offers a capital appreciation play as well.”
The Poas Volcano crater as seen Tuesday morning. The most obvious change is that the lagoon grew some 40 meters in diameter, the 'domo' is gone and the water level dropped. Also evident are the giant rocks, that were not there before, on the 'playon' (the beach head) on the south side of the crater. Photo Gino Gonzalez
The Poas Volcano crater as seen Tuesday morning. The most obvious change is that the lagoon grew some 40 meters in diameter, the ‘domo’ is gone and the water level dropped. Also evident are the giant rocks, that were not there before, on the ‘playon’ (the flat area) on the south side of the crater. Photo Gino Gonzalez
Q COSTA RICA – Last Friday, April 14, at 7:56am, the Poas Volcano left behind a period of relative calm, with small emanations of ash, mud and small stones, and went to a more explosive activity, which experts believe will include eruptions of up to five kilometres in height.
The change, volcanologists and geologists stay, occurred in a relatively short period of time that began at the end of 2015.
On Friday, the eruption sent a plume of gas and ash up to three kilometres high.
Following Friday morning’s activity, the eruptions at the colossus intensified. Although the emanation was mainly of gas, ash and steam, there were also ballistic elements (stones), expelled with great force landing in the visitor lookout and trails of the national park.
Specialists concur that from that moment the scenario changed.
The volcano is expected to become more violent, with a greater release of ash and stones at a considerable distance.
Tuesday night, at 7:08pm, was the latest eruption. The Ovsicori said the eruption was recorded only by seismic instrument, given that the gloomy weather conditions atop the colossus prevented observation by cameras.
Volcanologists Guillermo Alvarado Induni, Gerardo Soto Bonilla, Raúl Mora Amador and Mario Fernández Arce, explained that the rapid alternation of the behaviour of the colossus is due to some “unknown disturbance” in the reservoir of magma (believed to be one kilometer from the surface).
As the amount of magma grows and when it comes in contact with the hydrothermal system (water that is infiltrated by rain), it causes the warm to warm and evaporate. In addition, the magma and all the other elements seek to rise to the surface, explained the experts.
For the experts, this internal change also caused the volcanic structure to deform, allowing magma to continue to rise and cause the explosive eruptions, moving from phreatic eruptions (gas, water and ash) to the phreatomagmatic.
Major tourist destination
The Poas volcano is a major destination for tourists visiting Costa Rica and nationals alike. Visits to the national park by many are daily. The road leading to volcano has become a source of income for many, including entire families who work the restaurants and souvenir shops. One of the stops that cannot be missed are the shops selling strawberries from the Poas.
Activity at the Poas
The Poas had registered eruptive cycles in 1834, 1940 and between 1953 and 1955. Although there were episodes of activity in 1989, 1990, 1994 and 1999, on those occasions the emanations was acid rain.
During 1953-1955 the eruptions were uncountable and responsible for the creation of the ‘domo’ – the volcanic dome – from the lava. Last Sunday’s eruption completely destroyed the domo.
TODAY NICARAGUA – The International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s recent assessment of Nicaragua reinforces the narrative that the country has made tremendous strides in fighting poverty, but many experts stress the importance of staying vigilant against the country’s still deep inequalities and precarious economy.
The routine assessment of Nicaragua’s economy was conducted by a group led by the IMF’s head of mission to Nicaragua, Gerardo Peraza, last week. At the end of the visit, Peraza issued a statement that cast the economy in a pretty promising light.
“Notwithstanding challenging external conditions, economic activity remains buoyant,” Peraza said on the IMF website. The statement said economic growth is projected at 4.7 percent this year, supported by strong agricultural and commercial activity, while inflation is projected to moderate to below 4 percent given low food and other commodity prices.
Peraza also warned that the Central American country will be challenged “to maintain strong, sustainable and inclusive growth” as the face of global trade and economic activity grows less certain. Among several recommendations, the IMF urged Nicaragua to continue strengthening its public finances.
Nicaragua’s ongoing progress is often associated with its newly re-elected President Daniel Ortega. During his previous two terms in office, Nicaragua experienced stable economic growth and low rates of crime and violence compared to elsewhere in Central America. Ortega also helped many Nicaraguans out of poverty: between 2005-2014, poverty in Nicaragua decreased by 30 percent. Many of the country’s poor, who benefited from his social programs, supported his re-election.
In what was widely perceived as an official mark of the country’s renewed stability, the IMF even closed its office in Nicaragua this year, saying it was done helping the country reduce debt and poverty and get on the path to sustainable growth.
But many experts warn that Nicaragua’s progress needs to be kept in perspective. Nicaragua remains the second-poorest country in the Americas after Haiti and has the lowest level of GDP per capita in Central America. Roughly 40 percent of the population still lives in poverty, while in rural areas, the rate of poverty reaches nearly 60 percent.
And some analysts warn social inequality may again be on the rise. A survey published last Thursday by the Nicaraguan Foundation for Economic and Social Development found that a growing number of high-income Nicaraguans perceive improvements in their purchasing power, from 17 percent in March to 38 percent in October of this year.
“Meanwhile, the net balance of consumers in the [lower economic]strata decreased relative to that observed in June,” reads the report, “suggesting that these groups are more vulnerable to the rise in price levels.”
The roots of these deficiencies in the economy are debatable, but some experts have pointed to the country’s low quality of education. Nicaraguan teachers are the worst paid in Central America, earning less than 60 percent of the average wages for other jobs. And with a pitifully small portion of the national budget allotted to education, Ortega’s government has come under fire for not doing enough to improve it.
Informality in Nicaragua is also a top concern, as informal employment is associated with lower education, lower productivity and higher poverty levels. An estimated eight out of 10 Nicaraguans are self-employed and without steady income or social security, said Nicaraguan journalist and writer María López Vigil in a recent interview with Latin America Press, making it one of the biggest challenges in the country today.
“[And] migration to Costa Rica and Panama is massive,” López added. “The dollar remittances that migrants send to their families are an important support for the poorest people in the country.”
This immigration trend has sent waves of Nicaraguans to neighboring Costa Rica, searching for better paid work opportunities but doing little to strengthen the economy back home.
TODAY NICARAGUA – The monthly variation in March was 0.12%, mainly explained by the behavior of prices of various goods and services and furniture and household items.
From a report by the Central Bank of Nicaragua:
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) showed a monthly variation of 0.12 percent (0.63% in March 2016), mainly explained by the behavior of prices of some goods and services in the divisions of miscellaneous goods and services (0.40%) Furniture, household items and routine household maintenance (0.31%) and Health (0.36%), which together contributed 0.068 percentage points to the observed variation. In contrast, in the division of Housing, water electricity, gas and other fuels there was a variation of -0.19 percent (-0.017pp).
In cumulative terms, domestic inflation was 1.48 percent (1.45% in March 2016), induced by the behavior of prices in the divisions of Food and non-alcoholic beverages; Housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels; and Education, with a joint contribution of 1.283 percentage points.
In inter annual terms, inflation stood at 3.17 percent, 0.49 percentage points lower than in March 2016, and core inflation was 3.87 percent (5.02% in March 2016).
Workers stand in front of a drilling rig at an oil well operated by Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA in Morichal. Venezuela’s state-owned oil company PDVSA has been racking up debts around the world (El Ají).
TODAY VENEZUELA – Russia is losing patience with ally Venezuela because of the country’s million-dollar debt. Russia confiscated an oil tanker that belonged to the state-owned oil companhy PDVSA because Maduro’s regime owes Russia USD $30 million.
According to the Reuters news agency, in October, Venezuela sent an oil tanker to the Caribbean with the expectation that its cargo would earn about USD $20 million. However, the owners of the vessel Aframax NS Columbus (which is part of the fleet of Russian state conglomerate Sovcomflot) seized the oil.
The legal decision made in March by a San Martín island court states: “They have claims for bills unpaid by PDVSA related to the rental of their boats.”
Although the oil on board had already been sold to the Norwegian company Statoil, the cargo was being transported in a tanker that sailed with a shipping document under the name of PDVSA.
The dispute with Sovcomflot reveals how shipping companies are becoming increasingly aggressive when they collect debts from PDVSA.
According to Reuters,
“Its tangled debt network is expanding all over the world, from shipyard repairs in Portugal and mid-ship shipbuilding bills in Iran and Brazil to a shipment of crude oil seized in the small island of St. Eustatius, whose strategic location in the Caribbean became a commercial port in the eighteenth century.”
This is not the first time that PDVSA is affected by the debts it maintains with its suppliers. In September, a vessel owned by the Venezuelan state-owned company was held in Curacao under a court order requested by service company Core Laboratories due to the accumulation of outstanding debts.
In a nutshell, according to economist Steve Hank, PDVSA has become the worst oil company in the world.
In a show of force Monday, Maduro paraded the streets of Caracas surrounded by men and women in uniform. The military has also vowed its full support to Maduro.
CNN’s Flora Charner and Patrick Gillespie contributed to this report. A previous version of this story gave the wrong home country for Luis Almagro.
