Dear A.M. Costa Rica:

Walter Fila made some good points in his letter about corruption being responsible for the road conditions. I would add that corruption is a top-down phenomenon. Corruption can only exist when the jefe either is directly involved or turns a blind eye to it. 

Favoritism, such as awarding contracts to relatives/friends without a competitive bidding process is also corruption.

Corruption causes people to lose faith in the processes of government, and is responsible for the general malaise that exists in corrupt countries. If you can't pay the mordida or don't know the right person to get the job done, why care?

I confess that I was unaware that the diputados in Costa Rica are not elected. This explains why, on numerous occasions, that when I have asked my Tico friends why they didn't complain to their diputado about things gone wrong they just shrugged their shoulders and said it wouldn't do any good anyway.

I didn't realize you could have a "democracy" if only the president was popularly elected! 

Murder generates
mixed feelings

A young man died early Monday just a week before his 18th birthday when a dispute turned into a knife attack. The location was Avenida 6 at Calle 8, and the time was 6 a.m.

Police had mixed feelings because the victim, identified as Yasdani Josué Delgado Mora, was well-known to them, although he had never been convicted officially of a crime.

The young man, knifed in the chest, staggered down the sidewalk before falling dead. Police are seeking a person who was identified as a suspect.

Later a police spokesman said that Delgado had been investigated seven times since 2002 for robbery, drug use and drug sales. All the cases were in juvenile court.
 

Monetary Fund pitch
is for taxes, trade pact

An official of the International Monetary Fund was in San José Monday promoting the benefits of the free trade treaty with the United States and the proposed $500 million package of new taxes.

The man is Agustín Carstens, a Mexican and deputy managing director of the fund.

The fund is an international organization of 184 member countries. It was established to promote international monetary cooperation, exchange stability, and orderly exchange arrangements; to foster economic growth and high levels of employment; and to provide temporary financial assistance to countries to help ease balance of payments adjustment, according to its Web site.

It is better known as the agency that bails out countries that are in financial distress.

In Latin America the fund promotes regional integration and financial integration.

Carstens spent last week at a regional meeting of Central American officials in Honduras. He said Monday that the proposed tax plan would strengthen the Costa Rican economy and guarantee the finances of the Banco Central. He also said the country was vulnerable to outside financial forces because of its dependence on the dollar. He urged the wider use of colons, the national currency.

The fund estimates, and Carstens has reported, that Central America will experience about a 4 percent growth this year after coming through a trying period of economic stress.

Cable shock kills boy

A 14-year-old boy, Diego Gómez Cordero, died Sunday afternoon when he touched a high tension cable while crossing a river near Siquirres. Investigators said that the cable appeared to have become loose.

A.M. Costa Rica
Consultantes Río Colorado S.A.

James J. Brodell.........................editor
Saray Ramírez Vindas.... associate editor

Avenida 11 bis, Barrio Otoya, San José

 In Costa Rica:                    From elsewhere:

  A.M. Costa Rica                    Consultantes Río Colo.
  Apartado 12909-1000           SB 11 
  San José, Costa Rica              P.O. Box 025292
  (506) 223-1327                    Miami, FL 33102-5292
 

The last and choicest mountainside 35.387 m2 (8.7 acres) development property offered at wholesale price Only $28 per square meter with easy bank & owner financing! Breathtaking 270º views Central Valley, Ciudad Colón, unpolluted fresh air & climate only 8 minutes from FORUM Office Center, quick access Prospero Fernando Freeway, shopping, new hospital, 20 minutes to San José. Zoned and ready to go. Contact Captain Haines, globaltrade@racsa.co.cr Tel (506) 249-4758 Fax (506) 249-1559 

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Although Latin Americans prefer democracy over any other political system, effectively combating the problem of corruption is a major challenge in consolidating democracy in the Western Hemisphere, says Cesar Gaviria, secretary-general of the Organization of American States.

Gaviria warned in remarks at an anti-corruption conference in Nicaragua that corruption undermines the legitimacy of democracies. Gaviria cited a study released in April by the U.N. Development Program that revealed that 90 percent of Latin Americans believe corruption in the region is worsening, and many view corruption as the biggest national problem in their countries.

The Organization of American States quoted Nicaraguan President Enrique Bolaños, who hosted the conference, as calling for greater political will and moral commitment to increase international cooperation in order to prevent countries in Latin America from becoming a "sanctuary for corrupt individuals."

The Inter-American Anti-corruption Convention, the first treaty of its kind in the world, has been ratified by the United States and 30 other countries.

Participants at the Managua conference examined concrete ways to enhance their anti-corruption efforts, the Oreganization of American States said. Participants considered measures to strengthen cooperation among law enforcement authorities, deny safe haven to corrupt officials, strengthen domestic laws related to extradition and the seizure of assets, and promote legislation to allow repatriation of public assets that have been stolen.

The conference attracted many officials from Costa Rica. Former president Miguel Ángel Rodríguez will replace Gaviria as secretary general in two months.

With an estimated 36.5 million people of working age in the world infected with HIV, the disease is expected to have a severe impact on national economic growth rates, according to a U.N. labor agency.

In a press release announcing its first global analysis on how HIV/AIDS affects the work world, the International Labor Organization said HIV is destroying human capital and weakening the capacity of workers to produce goods and services. The agency studied 50 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. The release was issued Monday.

The impact of HIV/AIDS on workers is two-fold, the labor organization said. While tens of millions of people have already died, millions more sick people are dropping out of the labor force. This forces active workers to bear more of an economic burden in the workplace and at home caring for the infected, it said.

Women are particularly affected by HIV/AIDS as 

In addition, young women are showing the largest increases in HIV-prevalence rates, it said.

The education and health sectors in developing countries will be severely affected by HIV/AIDS as the rate of dying educators and health care providers increases, the labor organization said. Children will suffer from a lack of care from sick or deceased parents and may be forced to drop out of school and seek work, it said.

However, the organization said, the workplace offers an "ideal medium" for a comprehensive approach to preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS.

"Work provides a venue — the workplace — where talking about HIV/AIDS is especially relevant, where prevention skills can be directly transmitted, and where treatment can be exceptionally productive," said Odile Frank, report coordinator. 

MEXICO CITY, México — President Vicente Fox's wife, Marta Sahagun, has publicly announced that she will not seek the presidency when his term ends in December 2006. There was widespread speculation that the first lady would try to succeed her husband.

The short official announcement, made at the presidential palace, Los Pinos, by the first lady herself, ends months of speculation that she would run for the top job. She said she wanted to confirm that she will not be a candidate and will go home with Fox to the family ranch when his term expires at the end of the year. He is constitutionally barred from seeking a second term.

Opinion polls clearly showed that she would have featured very strongly in the next presidential election in 2006. Only the left-wing mayor of Mexico City, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, is currently more popular.

Unlike most Mexican first ladies, she has not chosen to stay out of the limelight. She has even launched a high-profile charity called Vamos Mexico, or Let's go Mexico. However, the charity is now being investigated by the attorney general amid accusations that money from the national lottery was wrongly directed to its projects. 

Critics have accused her of using the charity as a 

She has also come under criticism from the man who, until a week ago, was President Fox's official spokesman, Alfonso Durazo. He resigned last week and in his letter accused Ms. Sagahun of constantly meddling in the day-to-day running of the country.

In her statement Monday, the first lady said that she has never intervened in decisions that belong only to the president of the republic. 

No woman has ever been president of Mexico, a fact that Ms. Sagahun also alluded to in her statement. Mexico, she said, is ready to be governed by a woman. 

Meanwhile, former Mexican Energy Minister Felipe Calderon said he plans to run for president in 2006.  Calderon said Sunday at a rally here that he will seek the nomination of Fox's National Action Party. 

Calderon resigned his post in May, one day after President Fox criticized him for appearing at an event attended by supporters of a presidential bid by him in 2006.  The former energy minister described Fox's criticism as unjust, saying it prevented him from continuing in a job that requires support, authority and a capacity for dialogue. 

TUCSON, Ariz. — Biologists from the University of Arizona here are teaming up with health officials from the Mexican state of Sonora to learn more about the mosquitoes that carry dengue and West Nile viruses and about the disease-causing organisms. 

The reported number of dengue fever cases in Sonora has been increasing in the last several years, and the disease appears to be moving north. The dengue fever season in Sonora is seasonal and peaks mid-October after the summer rainy season.

The university team will travel to Hermosillo, the capital of Sonora, later this week to give public health officials a workshop on trapping and identifying various species of mosquitoes. The team will collect mosquitoes in Hermosillo, Guaymas and Navojoa.

Dengue fever is sometimes called "break-bone fever" because the disease is so painful. One form, dengue hemorrhagic fever, is fatal in about 5 percent of patients. Currently there is no vaccine against the disease. 

"The way to look at it is, dengue is an enemy," said Therese Ann Markow, director of the university’s Center for Insect Science and regents' professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. "The idea is to get to know your enemy well in order to know its weak spots." 

Professor Markow is collaborating with Sonoran health officials, Dr. Francisco Javier Navarro Gálvez, director general of Servicios de Salud de la Comunidad, and Dr. J. Gerardo Mada Velez, director, Enfermedades Transmisibles por Vector y Zonosis.

The newly formed University of Arizona-Mexican research collaboration will investigate the ecology, genetics and distribution of various mosquito species in Sonora and of the four types of dengue virus and its close relative, West Nile virus. 

"The ecology, distribution and genetics of the mosquitoes and the viruses need to be studied simultaneously to understand how they interact to cause disease," Professor Markow said. 

Other university members of the team are Michael Worobey, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, Frank Ramberg, an assistant research scientist in the Department of Entomology, Sergio Castrezana, an ecology and evolutionary biology graduate student, and Joel Vergara, an entomology graduate student. 

In May, Professor Markow offered employees of the Servicios de Salud de Sonora the opportunity to attend a university course on the insect biodiversity of Sonora. She expected one or two people to come to learn about identifying insects and said she was astonished when 13 people showed up, eager to spend days staring at insects through microscopes.

As a result, she initiated this joint research project on disease-carrying mosquitoes and the viruses they transmit.

The professor said the Sonoran health department is keen to control and prevent the diseases but has limited expertise and resources in some areas.

"That’s where we come in," she said. "We can provide training. The big things are how to identify the mosquito species that transmit the diseases and 

which molecular techniques can detect the viruses." 

"Part of the problem is no one has done a mosquito inventory in the State of Sonora," Professor Markow said. The Arizona-México collaboration will remedy that by doing a complete survey of the species of mosquitoes in Sonora. 

Project members will trap mosquitoes widely throughout Sonora, identify them and test them for the viruses. 

In addition to testing the mosquitoes for dengue and West Nile viruses, the researchers will test blood collected from patients to identify which strains of the dengue virus caused the infections. 

Sonora once had only two types of the dengue virus but now all four are found there. According to Worobey, that means people have an increased risk of getting dengue fever a second time because, although having one bout of dengue fever makes a person immune to the one type, the person is still susceptible to the other three.

It's only during the second infection with dengue virus that the person has about a 5 percent chance of developing the even nastier, hemorrhagic form of the disease. In dengue hemorrhagic fever, the person's blood vessels start to leak, causing bleeding from the nose and mouth. Of those people who get the hemorrhagic form of dengue, up to 5 percent will die, Worobey said. 

Joaquin Ruiz, the dean of university’s College of Science, said, "Teri Markow's efforts, both in educating ecologists from México as well as better understanding the transmission of these diseases, is important not only for Sonora but also for Arizona." 

Professor Markow and Ruiz will visit México City in August to talk to representatives from the National University of México and from the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia, México's federal agency to fund research in science and technology, about expanding the scope of the project within Sonora.