New security minister
defends police crowd tactics


The new minister of security, José María Tijerino, showed little sympathy Monday for leftist demonstrators who battled police in la Sabana Saturday.

The minister said that the demonstrators tried to break through a police line that was controlling access at the inauguration ceremony for Laura Chinchilla.

The minister told a reporter from the University of Costa Rica newspaper that even his own family had to submit to the crowd controls that were in effect Saturday.

The reporter for El Seminario had color photos of police tackling and arresting protestors. He tried to engage the minster in an argument but he was cut off at an afternoon press conference.

Tijerino said that there also is a photo of a protestor biting a policeman on the hand.

Although most pressure groups decided not to protest in deference to the new president, a group of mostly university students marched from downtown San José to the Parque la Sabana where the ceremony was held Saturday. They were met by police who erected a line with mounted officers at the foot of Paseo Colón.

Police said some of the protestors hit the horses. Then police ran down students, threw them to the ground and put them in handcuffs. Six persons were detained.

Tijerino defended the police action Monday and said that no one should try to go through a police line.  Technically he was not the security minister when the incident took place, but he had met with Fuerza Pública officers earlier that day and told them that anti-militarism should not be confused with being defenseless.

He also was quizzed about a security ministry rule that requires police to confront protesters unarmed. That happened last week in Limón when protesters burned eight semi-trailers, blocked the major highway and shot two policemen, inflicting superficial wounds.

Tijerino did not say one way or another but gave the impression that this rule would be subject to review.

Tijerino said Monday he was taking steps to put more police officers on the streets starting Wednesday. He also was critical of the police force because of what he said was a lack of discipline. He also said that there needed to be more respect shown to police officers and that police officers have to show more respect to the public.

Although Tejerino has been characterized in a weekend article in the Spanish-language press as trying to avoid using a strong hand, he said Monday that he was not someone with a weak hand, a mano floja, either.

Press group criticizes
libel award in Panamá


A hemispheric press group Monday criticized a highly surprising court decision against Panamanian newspaper La Prensa that ordered payment of $300,000 in damages to a former public prosecutor for libel after it published official reports on her wrongdoing while in office.

The second civil circuit court Judge Miriam Cheng de Aguilar ordered La Prensa’s publishing company to pay the damages to public prosecutor Argentina Barrera for moral damages, arising from the publication Aug. 30, 2005, of two articles titled “Attorney General’s Office Continues on the Trail of Corruption” and “For Lack of Ethics Another Prosecutor is Fired.” The reports referred to the content of official press releases issued by the attorney general’s office.

Alejandro Aguirre, editor of the Miami, Florida, Spanish-language newspaper Diario Las Américas, called the court ruling highly surprising because, he said, “the risk here is that a dangerous legal precedent is being set which makes the news media and journalists responsible for official information that originates from government sources.” Aguirre added, “This is a restriction and a message of censorship not only to the press and official sources but to the right that every citizen has to access official information.” He is president of the press organization, the Inter American Press Association.

The attorney general’s press release explained that Barrera was dismissed by the federal agency for “lack of ethics,” together with other legal officers whose names were also mentioned in the report published by the newspaper. In addition to quoting the press release, La Prensa’s articles included statements made by Barrera who was reinstated in 2008 on a ruling by the Supreme Court that also ordered she be paid her suspended salary.

La Prensa’s editor, Fernando Berguido, said he would appeal the court order which also includes payment of costs amounting to $50,000.



A tattoo is about all agents have to go on in the death of a man whose shoeless body turned up in a lot Sunday in Barrio México.

An autopsy Monday showed that the man had ingested 30 small packets of heroin. One of them broke, and death was attributed to a massive heroin overdose.

Someone made an effort to remove all identifying information from the body, except for the tatoo.

historical figures’ portraits in view from both sides.

Eventually the second animal in each scene was reduced to a small silhouette in the lower right of the bill, filled with tiny print that under a magnifying glass says “PURA VIDA” as yet another anti-counterfeiting feature. Uncle Rabbit survives here, the endemic fiery-billed aracari was reduced to a generic toucan, and the sea turtle is just an outline below a very large shark.

The design for the 1,000 colon bill, with the tropical dry forest theme, evolved differently. A guanacaste tree is the centerpiece of the design, with the unfortunate choice of a buck white-tailed deer as the animal. This is the same species as in most of the North American continent, definitely not restricted to Costa Rica. It is quite scarce outside parks even though it is protected, since it was nearly killed off in the 1940s for hides, and does not do well in cattle pasture.

Also, there was little chance in the composition to place the tree in a natural forest setting, so it ended up with pasture grass underneath “since that’s what Guanacaste looks like,” as Ugalde put it. For precision, a zebu would be more appropriate than the deer. All the other ecosystems are portrayed unaltered.

The mangrove ecotone, a special meeting of sea and forest, ended up with a monkey. It’s a white-faced monkey, present in virtually all low- and middle-elevation forest types in the country, and which C.H. Freese in Costa Rican Natural History describes as occurring “occasionally” in mangroves. The “pura vida” animal is a crab.

According to Marvin Alvarado of the Banco Central, the final design was shared by the bank and Oberthur, the French company that printed the bills. In the end, the INBio staff was resigned that “it’s a banknote, not a scientific publication.”

The final score: three large mammals, one bird, one butterfly, one shark. Not terrifically representative of Costa Rica’s unique wildlife, with only the hummingbird endemic. But with fine visual impact.