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| San José, Costa Rica, Friday, April 15, 2011, Vol. 11, No. 75 | |||||||||
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| Costa Rica Expertise Ltd http://crexpertise.com E-mail info@crexpertise.com Tel:506-256-8585 Fax:506-256-7575 |
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 A.M. Costa Rica file photo
This was the scene April 5, 2009, when the faithful walked in
procession on Palm Sunday.Consider today as a part
of the 2011 Semana Santa By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Semana Santa already is well underway as those who were lucky enough to get off work today are probably headed to a beach somewhere. The pace of life in Costa Rica has slowed. The central government and the courts will have just essential services available next week. Still the police forces will be on the prowl, and the Defensoría de los Habitantes will remain open in its central office in Barrio México to receive complaints Monday through Wednesday. The reception center for the Judicial Investigating Organization will be open 24-hours a day to receive reports of crimes. The religious aspects of the holiday swing into high gear Sunday as Catholic faithful celebrate Palm Sunday, signifying the triumphal arrival of Jesus Christ to Jerusalem. There will be a highly photogenic procession in San José at 9:30 a.m. Sunday from the La Merced Church to the Catedral Metropolitana. Elsewhere in the country there will be similar events. The Escazú Christian Fellowship will be more low-keyed with a 5 p.m. Sunday service followed by what is being called a soup and bread fellowship meal at the International Baptist Church in Guachepelín. Although a new law allows the sale of alcohol during election periods when such drinks used to be prohibited, the dry law still is in effect for Holy Thursday and Good Friday. Fuerza Pública officers will begin closing off alcohol sections in stores and supermarkets Wednesday night. They will place seals on refrigerators and liquor cabinets in restaurants, and they will place seals on the doors of businesses that sell mostly beer and alcohol. Operators of tourist establishments outside the Central Valley usually have creative ways of getting around this prohibition. For the working-class Tico, there are the underground bars in every barrio. Alcohol again will be on sale Saturday morning, although most supermarkets and retail outlets will be working a short day then. Thursday and Friday are legal holidays, and workers are expecting to have them off. Friday and Saturday nights also are the traditional times for the annual Quema de Judas where the apostle who turned in Jesus Christ is denigrated. Effigies are set afire. The problem is that in San José, Alajuela and Heredia such activities have degenerated into wholesale vandalism in previous years with cars burned and lawlessness. The Fuerza Pública said it will be reinforcing trouble spots to keep a lid on the young vandals. The period is not a holiday for the 3,100 officers in the Security ministry or the traffic police, who will be setting up checkpoints, mainly for drunk drivers. Cruz Roja also will be maintaining rest stops on the principal highways. Immigration police and workers will be busy at both borders because of the increased holiday traffic.
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| San José, Costa Rica, Friday, April 15, 2011, Vol. 11, No. 75 | |||||||||||
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| Unusual forced prostitution arrest made in Palmar Norte |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A 61-year-old central Pacific man has been detained on allegations that he was luring foreign women to Costa Rica and forcing them into prostitution. The arrest took place Wednesday night when judicial agents raided and searched a location in Palmar Norte in the province of Puntarenas. Agents said they confiscated evidence including clothing. The raid also confirmed the existence of 12 foreign women, including Nicaraguans, Panamanians, Colombians and Dominicans. Agents said that the women were offered at a night club in the same community, but it was unclear if that is where the raid took place. Also unavailable was the name of the detained man. Agents said the investigation started in February when two Nicaraguan women showed up at Judicial Investigation Organization offices with a consular representative from their embassy. The women said they had been lured to Costa Rica with offers of jobs as domestic employees, agents said. They arrived in San José, and the man took them to Palmar Norte where they were told they had to work as prostitutes in a night club, said agents. The women managed to escape and sought aid from their consulate. Prostitution is not prosecuted in Costa Rica, but pimping or running a house of prostitution is. The central Pacific coast, centered at Jacó is home to many foreign prostitutes who seek customers in the tourism market. Unclear is why someone would import unwilling prostitutes when there are so many willing sex workers nearby. |
Many night clubs are covers for
prostitution on the Pacific and in San José. These locations are infrequently troubled by the police. Also seeming immune are so-called massage parlors, which are thinly disguised centers of prostitution. The last time such operations were raided in San José the official concern was not prostitution but failure to provide full access to the disabled. Gradually foreign criminal gangs, Russian or Colombian, have consolidated the prostitution market and exact tribute from supposedly independent sex workers. A.M. Costa Rica has documented the existence of a trafficking ring that spans the ocean from the Dominican Republic to Costa Rica. A Dominican prostitute recounted how she was able to obtain a visa there to travel here and how she paid the amount due on a bribe at a back door of the Dirección General de Migración y Extranjería, the immigration agency. Forced prostitution is a small percentage of human trafficking, although U.S. officials and others who study such issues usually do not make clear the differences. The majority of trafficking in Costa Rica are persons transporting Nicaraguans into the country illegally or transporting Asians and Africans through the country with the goal of reaching the United States. So the case in Palmar Norte is unusual. Frequently such cases are resolved by a financial settlement with the victims in lieu of criminal action. Another case of forced prostitution involved two Costa Rican women who were lured to México with the promise of good jobs. They, too, managed to escape, but that case still is unresolved. Officials said that another Costa Rican women was a recruiter here for the Mexican operation. |
| Hospitality industry is on the trail of a petty scammer |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A petty con man has come to town and is working his scams on owners and residents of backpacker hostels and small hotels. Hotel and hostel operators are circulating a photo and a description of the man, and a complaint with the Judicial Investigating Organization was supposed to have been made late Thursday. The man comes to a hotel or hostel as a guest and befriends guests and staff alike. At one hostel in San Pedro the man ended a two-day stay by offering to provide discount rum. |
He took $60 from employees and $40
from guests and vanished, the hostel operator,
Jonathan Wingate, said. The man has not been seen since. After checking
around, Wingate said he learned the man took $500 from a
Spanish couple in Alajuela and $100 from an American couple in San
Carlos. Wingate expended a lot of effort to obtain what he believes is
a correct identification of the man and a photo. He said interested parties could contact him at his email address, runjwrun@yahoo.com or by telephone, 8740-2592. He said the man is about five feet tall, clean-shaven and chubby. Wingate said he thinks that the man has a long history of such petty thefts |
| Seeing red over the problems with those taxi drivers |
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| Some San
José taxis should be shipped to Cuba for renovation. I
usually try to determine the condition of a taxi before I flag it
down. Sometimes I lose. The other day I tried to lower my
arm before the very large, very old taxi pulled to the curb. All
I could do was look regretfully at the brand new taxi behind it and hop
into the antique. Some taxis are so worn that when you sink into the seat you feel like you are falling into the rabbit hole fanny first. This was one of them. “Donde vamos, mi reina? (“Where are we going, my queen?”) the middle-aged driver asked. I told him and reached for the support handle above the door. There was none, not even evidence of one having been there. I had to do with the seat belt dangling from the front seat. Fortunately, I did because after several blocks, my door flew open. This time I slammed it good. The last time I climbed into a taxi, I nearly fell into the gutter along the street in doing so. These gutters are wonderful because they dispose of downpours that would otherwise flood the city, but they are treacherous to pedestrians. So, almost falling into the cab, I pulled the door behind me — hard. “Oops, perdone.” I said. To no avail. The taxista berated me for the Gringa I was and slamming his fragile door thinking I was in a heavy Gringo car. I gave up excusing myself and enjoyed his comical rant. Taxistas really do hate it when we Gringos slam the doors. This driver was quiet and very good, although it was difficult for me to judge from my sunken position. He made it in good time and thus a couple of hundred colons cheaper. The other day I called for a taxi and after we had gone only about eight blocks, the meter read 960 colons. I commented that that was pretty high for such a short distance — usually at that point it was still at the basic number of 530. He became so indignant at my implications that, over my objections, he turned off the meter. At our destination, and over his objections, I paid |
what I usually do. “Por favor,” I said, and he relented. This taxista was a good driver, no heavy horn blowing and jolting starts and stops. Lots of experience, like his car, I thought. At my front door, he turned and said, “I can give you my number in case you need a taxi to go anywhere. From here to downtown, anywhere you want go.” Oh dear. I rummaged into my purse and found my notebook, wrote down his name and number. Climbing out of the cab with some effort, I closed the door, then had to open it again and slam it hard. “I think you could use a newer taxi.” I said, as I wished him good night. Even my experiences in brand new taxis have not been so great lately; not since the new national stadium in Parque la Sabana is up and running. I experienced my first road rage (and, as my friend Sandy pointed out, I don’t even drive.) No, but when all access to escaping from the neighborhood hours before a concert is scheduled to begin, and it costs me nearly twice as much as normal to go anywhere, I get irritated. But in a ladylike way, of course; no hand signals, no swearing. It would be pointless anyway, since everyone on the detour is having the same problem. By next week I will calm down and talk about the interesting and, in most cases, excellent suggestions for the qualifications that make a good columnist. One of the suggestions was that the columnist likes living here, but not be Pollyannish about it. Pollyanna would not have written this column. |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Friday, April 15, 2011, Vol. 11, No. 75 | |||||||||
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| Daily life of Chinese stadium workers
captured in photos |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Images of the Chinese workers who built the new national stadium are preserved in a photo exhibition that will hang in the stadium for five years. The exposition was inaugurated this week. It is by Rándall Campos, who titled the 110 photographic works "Escarlata Marrón," which recalls the scarlet coveralls worn initially by the Chinese laborers and how they eventually turned brown from wear. The Chinese workers were an oddity for most Costa Ricans because they went about their job aggressively and kept to |
themselves.
Costa Ricans joke that the 22 months the Chinese needed to build the
$85 million stadium was the same period that the Costa Rican transport
ministry needed to fix the Rio Virilla bridge on the Autopista General
Cañas. And that is not fixed yet. The 35,000-seat soccer stadium was built by Anhui Foreign Economic Construction as a gift from the People's Republic of China in exchange for Costa Rica repudiating its diplomatic relations with Taiwan. The inauguration of the exposition was at the stadium. Included are photos of the former stadium that was demolished. |
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| $640,000 project will link municipalities
with Registro |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Registro Nacional is setting up a private communication network with itself and 61 municipalities so that local officials have access to the property maps and data contained in the Zapote agency. The $640,000 project is expected to be in operation in May under the auspices of the Instituto de Fomento y Asesoría Municipal. |
This project has been in the
planning since 2002, officials said. The
project is part of the decentralization effort undertaking by the
central government and the modernization of municipal records,
officials said. The Registro, where all property records are kept, already is online and can be reached via the Internet. The new system promises greater security, officials said. The 61 municipalities involved are those that have the bulk of their territory reduced to property maps. |
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| Two men suspected of stealing five tons of
autopista metal |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
In case motorists were wondering what the delay was in construction on the Autopista del Sol around kilometers 46 and 47, they need only look to the junk yard. Judicial investigators in Orotina said that crooks made off with special metal girders imported from Germany. That was five tons worth 30 million colons, about $60,600. |
Agents were able to recover the bulk
of the material. Two suspects were
detained Thursday, a week after the theft took place. They are Alajuela residents who were selling the metal to a junk yard in Joaquín de Flores en Heredia, agents said. The stacks of metal were supposedly under the eye of a guard at the site. |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Friday, April 15, 2011, Vol. 11, No. 75 | ||||||||||
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| Rights group urges trial for ex-dictator Duvalier By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A human rights group is urging Haiti to prosecute former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier to the fullest extent of the law, saying such a trial would be a chance to make history. U.S.-based Human Rights Watch Thursday released a 47-page report, calling on Haiti to try Duvalier for what it calls grave violations of human rights. Human Rights Watch counsel Reed Brody also called on the international community to support Haiti's justice system, to make sure Duvalier gets a fair trial. Known as "Baby Doc," Duvalier took power in 1971 at the age of 19 following the death of his father, Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, who had ruled Haiti since 1957 and was accused of brutality. Jean-Claude Duvalier ruled Haiti between 1971 and 1986, when he was ousted in a popular uprising. Human rights groups have long accused the younger Duvalier of human rights abuses, including the torture and killings of thousands of people. He also is alleged to have stolen millions of dollars in public funds. Duvalier made a surprise return to Haiti in January after 25 years in exile. He has already been charged with corruption, embezzlement and other abuses of power. Human Rights Watch says Duvalier also could be held liable under Haitian law as an accomplice for any crimes carried out by those under his command. Last month, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon called on Haitian authorities to pursue all legal and judicial avenues in Duvalier's case. Daughter seeks an autopsy for Chile's deposed Allende By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The family of late Chilean President Salvador Allende has asked for his remains to be exhumed as part of an ongoing investigation into the circumstances surrounding his death in 1973. Allende's daughter, Sen. Isabel Allende, met with an investigating judge this week and asked him to proceed with the probe. At issue is whether the elected president was killed or committed suicide during the September 1973 coup that brought military dictator Augusto Pinochet to power. A Marxist, Allende is reported to have committed suicide as the coup occurred. President Allende was found dead in the presidential palace as soldiers supporting the coup closed in and warplanes bombed the building. Allende took power in 1970 after being elected with only 36 percent of the vote. During his tenure in office, Chile experienced severe shortages of consumer goods, food and manufactured products, and domestic production fell. Inflation climbed to 1,000 percent per year, and mass protests erupted due to the country's economic problems. Following the 1973 coup, Gen. Pinochet held power until 1990. He died in December 2006, leaving incomplete many court cases that had charged him with human rights violations. More than 3,000 people disappeared or were killed during his 17-year rule. Colombia will extradite to Venezuela, not to U.S. By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Colombia has confirmed it will extradite a suspected drug lord to Venezuela instead of the United States to face charges. The United States had been seeking the extradition of Walid Makled, who is on its most wanted list for allegedly shipping large amounts of cocaine into the U.S. Colombian officials say Venezuela requested Makled's extradition first. They say he is facing charges of murder, drug trafficking and money laundering in Venezuela. Makled was arrested last year in Colombia near the Venezuelan border. |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Friday, April 15, 2011, Vol. 11, No. 75 | ||||||||||
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Latin American news Please reload page if feed does not appear promptly |
to the Caribbean coast By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
President Laura Chinchilla is visiting Limón today, in part to appear at the Feria Limón Emprende, which is being held at the Moín dock through Sunday. Ms. Chinchilla is expected to visit about 5 p.m as part of a full day of inaugurations, press conferences in an effort to push her plans for development in the province. She will overnight on the Caribbean coast and visit Bribri, Talamanca, Saturday morning. Some 15 food vendors and 26 handicraft artists are participating in the fair where 500 persons are expected each day. The fair is part of the Limón Ciudad-Puerto project that seeks to improve the area's infrastructure and the employment. The title of the fair can be translated as Limón in action. Ms. Chinchilla begins her day with a 9 a.m. visit to the Escuela Beverly. She also will visit Pacuara High School and then help inaugurate a new set of judicial offices and then a new facility for the Instituto Nacional de Seguros in Limón Centro. In the afternoon she will visit the Limón prison and then speak with employees of the state-run petroleum refinery. Monetary Fund and Bank warn against complacency By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank stressed the need for continued cooperation among world economies, saying the global financial system remains vulnerable to further shocks. The warning comes as the world lending institutions prepare for its annual spring meeting in Washington. The world economy has weathered the worst of the economic downturn, but the Monetary Fund says the global financial system is not out of the woods just yet. Thursday, the Monetary Fund managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, warned member countries to guard against complacency. "Certainly the recovery is getting stronger, but everybody can understand that it's not the recovery we want," Strauss-Kahn said. The Monetary Fund says uneven growth poses the biggest risks, with advanced countries growing too slowly and developing economies growing too fast. "The main challenges for emerging market economies have certainly to do with the risk of over-heating, and in low income countries, the question of food and fuel prices is coming back with the risk of having something as important and strong and difficult as we had in 2008," the maanging director said. Despite projections of four-and-a-half percent growth in the global economy, the Monetary Fund says it's been a jobless recovery. World Bank president Robert Zoellick says the disconnect helped fuel popular revolts, resulting in greater instability. |
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James
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