Police officers thought that the driver was nervous because he was carrying drugs in his Isuzu. They stopped the vehicle at a checkpoint on the Interamericana highway Saturday.

They instructed the driver to follow them to the Buenos Aires police station, but the man seems to have panicked and crashed the car and then fled on foot.

After towing the vehicle to the police station and getting legal permission to search it, Fuerza Pública officers said they brought in an anti-drug dog. There were no drugs but some $62,000 in dollars was found hidden in the vehicle, police said.

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President Laura Chinchilla signed Tuesday a contract to build part of the northern section of the Circunvalación. The $147 million contract also calls for designing the entire new route.

The job is supposed to take 18 months with six months for design. The contractor is the Consorcio La Estrella-Hernán Solís.

The construction is supposed to be from La Uruca where the Circunvalación now ends to an intersection with Ruta 32. The design work will include the shorter stretch from Ruta 32 to Calle Blancos.

The money comes from a loan from the Banco Centroamericano de Integración Económica.

The new road will be a boon for truckers who now have to navigate their way through San José to reach Ruta 32. And trucking from the west usually exits the General Cañas highway at La Uruca and travels briefly on the Circunvalación and then enters city streets. This includes any produce shipments from the south that are on the way to the docks in Limón and Moín.

The contract needs approval from the Contraloría de la República, the budget watchdog.

Plaque was found in Rivas
with unexpected dedication

Dear A.M. Costa Rica:
 
Every country seems to need their heroes, valiant people who overcome overwhelming odds to accomplish noble deeds for the good of his or her country and countrymen, usually at great peril to themselves. Costa Rica is no different, and, although for centuries she has avoided the wars and troubles of much of the world, Costa Rica still seems to need her heroes.

I have always heard of the brave Juan Santamaria who threw the fire into the house of William Walker´s filibusteros in Rivas, Nicaragua, causing them to retreat in panic. So, around 20 years ago when I was in Rivas I asked the local people, ‘Where is the William Walker house that was burned down?’ No one knew. I asked police officers, school teachers, tourist guides and no one knew. Finally an elegant elderly gentleman told me how to find it: up that street, over two streets, down that one, in the middle of the block. I went there and found a fenced-in empty lot with a plaque on the side.

It said, in Spanish, “Here is the site where the Filibusteros of William Walker were fighting until the brave Nicaraguan hero, Emmanuel Felipe Neri Mongalo, threw a torch into the house causing it to burn and putting the filibusteros in retreat.”  |


EDITOR'S NOTE:  Mongalo y Rubio is a national hero of Nicaragua and survived the war.

Reader favors label idea
for modified products

Dear A.M. Costa Rica:

I applaud president-elect Solis' move to have GMOs labelled.  People deserve to know what is in their food, and products exported from the U.S. to other countries already are labelled, so it is no burden to request it for Costa Rica.  Of course, the "scientific" information is conflicting on the health effects of GMOs.  Many of the people doing the studies and most in the U.S. regulatory agencies are GMO industry insiders. 

There are studies that show that some of these products have less nutritional value than the natural versions.  Most Monsanto GMOs are Roundup-ready, engineered to tolerate mega-doses of Monsanto's famous herbicide, which has been linked to health problems especially in children and negative environmental effects due to run-off from fields into streams.

As importantly, I hope that president-elect Solis addresses the problem of over-use of pesticides (insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides) on crops grown here in Costa Rica.  Costa Rica uses more pesticides per hectare of cultivated land than any other country on the planet.  We over-use those chemicals to such an extent that we use more than three times the number 2 country (Colombia) and use more than #2-9 combined.  It is quite possible that these chemicals in food and in the water supply are responsible for some of the chronic health conditions suffered by Ticos, especially agricultural workers. 

One reason that these chemicals are used with such abandon is that they are inexpensive due to a special import tax exemption.  Another reason is, no doubt, ignorance about the proper usage of these chemicals.  The Costa Rican government should reconsider the import tax exemption and should consider requiring an educational program for those growers who use these chemicals.