JANUARY 24, 2007

A WHALE of a Cause: A coalition of 12 environmental groups yesterday blew up a giant blue whale in downtown San José’s Culture Plaza to call for the Costa Rican government to protect these marine mammals by supporting international efforts to ban commercial whaling.

WORKS of Generosity: These artificial respirators that keep patients alive at Calderón Guardia Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit in San José are some of the many gifts the Japanese Embassy has bestowed upon Costa Rica though its Assistance to Community Projects program. Yesterday, the embassy offered the press a tour of projects it has supported around the San José area.

Costa Rican authorities worked with the Peruvian and Ecuadorian consulates yesterday to find a way to repatriate 57 migrants the U.S. Coast Guard found stranded at sea Monday after an unsuccessful attempt to illegally migrate to the United States.

A giant inflatable blue whale bounced around one corner of downtown San José’s Culture Plaza yesterday, catching the attention of passersby and enticing children to jump on it. Although this festive attraction looked like something rented for a kid’s birthday party, it was intended to transmit a serious message: Costa Rica should support international efforts to protect whales from being hunted by the Japanese government.

Officials from the Nicaraguan Tourism Institute (INTUR) yesterday announced they will forge ahead with efforts to promote their country as a travel destination for Central Americans, especially those from Costa Rica, El Salvador and Honduras.

Shipwrecked Migrants to be Repatriated

By Blake Schmidt
Tico Times Staff | bschmidt@ticotimes.net

Costa Rican authorities worked with the Peruvian and Ecuadorian consulates yesterday to find a way to repatriate 57 migrants the U.S. Coast Guard found stranded at sea Monday after an unsuccessful attempt to illegally migrate to the United States.
  
The migrants were held at an Immigration shelter in San José yesterday as authorities coordinated with Peruvian and Ecuadorian authorities to fly them home.
  
Migrants told The Tico Times they paid as much as $11,000 per person for a spot on the boat.

The smugglers "told us the boat would be comfortable, but it was very small," said Angel Alvarracín, an Ecuadorian man who had planned to take the boat from Ecuador to Mexico and then travel across the United States border by foot with his 10-year-old son Cristian. Some of the smugglers robbed his cell phone and what cash he had on him before escaping after the boat's engine failed, he said.

A U.S. Coast Guard ship rescued the abandoned migrants, and the Prosecutor's Office of the Pacific Puntarenas province has filed charges against three Peruvian men accused of human trafficking.

See this Friday’s print or electronic edition of The Tico Times for more on this story.

Groups Unite to Support Costa Rica’s Whales

By Amanda Roberson
Tico Times Staff | aroberson@ticotimes.net

A giant inflatable blue whale bounced around one corner of downtown San José’s Culture Plaza yesterday, catching the attention of passersby and enticing children to jump on it. Although this festive attraction looked like something rented for a kid’s birthday party, it was intended to transmit a serious message: Costa Rica should support international efforts to protect whales from being hunted by the Japanese government.

Twelve international and Costa Rican environmental organizations united to bring the big whale to San José yesterday, one of several actions they’re taking to encourage the Costa Rican government to rejoin the International Whale Commission, an organization dedicated to whale conservation that opposes plans by Japan to resume commercial whaling for meat and scientific purposes.

Costa Rica has been behind on its dues to the commission for 20 years and must pay up to be able to vote to stop Japan from hunting, explained Damián Martínez, a marine biologist with Fundación Keto.

“There are towns on the Osa Peninsula (in the Southern Zone) that live from the tourism whales bring to the area, and these migratory whales could become the victims of hunting if Japan’s plan goes through,” Martínez explained. “Costa Rica would lose.”

A yellow sign attached to the inflatable whale sent a message to President Oscar Arias to make rejoining the commission a priority. “Mr. President, are you going to defend our whales?” it read.

“We want people to know that Costa Rica has whales that are born here that could fall under the hands of the Japanese if the government doesn’t take actions to protect them,” said Luis Diego Marín, president of the Association for the Preservation of Wild Flora and Fauna (APREFLOFAS).

Greenpeace, the Costa Rican Federation for Environmental Conservation (FECON), Marviva and the World Society for the Protection of Animals are among other groups that have united for the cause.

Nicaragua Targets Central
Americans To Promote Tourism

Officials from the Nicaraguan Tourism Institute (INTUR) yesterday announced they will forge ahead with efforts to promote their country as a travel destination for Central Americans, especially those from Costa Rica, El Salvador and Honduras.

These countries are “priority markets with high potential,” said INTUR president Mario Salinas during a press conference yesterday.

During 2006, Nicaragua invested $26,000 to promote itself in Costa Rica and received 92,300 Tico tourists who spent $24 million.

In El Salvador, Nicaragua invested $15,000 in promotion last year and received 114,000 Salvadoran tourists who spent $30 million, while 150,000 Honduran tourists visited their southern neighbor last year, spending $36.5 million, Salinas said.

In addition to trying to entice more Central American tourists to visit, Nicaragua plans to position itself to become a hot destination for people from the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain.

Another niche Nicaragua is out to capture are foreign retirees; in the past two years, 128 retired people have been given residency there, and they invest an average of $1.5 million per year, Salinas said. Nicaraguans residing in the United States are another group the government plans to encourage to come back and vacation.

Nicaragua is behind other Central American countries in terms of tourism, but it plans to “catch up as soon as possible,” he said.

Costa Rica Partners with New Mexico

Police from the U.S. state of New Mexico are in Costa Rica collaborating with their counterparts here as part of the U.S. government’s Sister States program, according to a statement from the Public Security Ministry.

A conference inaugurated yesterday in San José marked the first formal event following the signing of an agreement between New Mexico and Costa Rica last year to become partners.

Experts in anti-drug operations, border control, natural disasters and police communication from New Mexico are in town for the conference this week. They will meet with Costa Rican police to look for ways to cooperate and share information.

Public Security Minister Fernando Berrocal and U.S. Ambassador Mark Langdale presided over the opening ceremony of the conference, which runs through Thursday.

The Sister States program was started to pair U.S. states with foreign countries to “establish long-term relations on all levels of society and strengthen mutual interests,” the statement said.

Currently, 50 countries around the world have sister states, including 17 Latin American countries.

Recently I picked up a wonderful new attachment for my PDA, called Intelect-Inside, which, when pointed at a subject within 15 meters, is able to capture and display the unexpressed thoughts of that person. A few days ago I went to a quasi-government office. I arrived at opening time and while I waited, having nothing better to do, I pointed the thing at a young employee who was sitting at a nearby desk.

What follows here is the sequence of his thoughts, translated from pachuco Spanish to English:

Whoof! Made it just in time. Stupid new security service! Why do they have to check employees coming in and going out? Yesterday afternoon they almost found the staplers. I’ll have to stop doing that before I get caught.

Don’t these privatized people ever rest?

I know the kind of thing Security is trying to catch in the mornings. They stopped Elberth from the Filing Department from bringing in his bottles of guaro. That’s goodbye to his little business! He’s going to feel the drop in his income… I bet he won’t be able to afford Rosita any more…

Hey, maybe I’ll be able to pick up with Rosita myself. Nah! With the stapler, paper punch and scissors business going phut, I wouldn’t be able to afford her, either. Stupid new security service!

But I daren’t take up with Rosita anyway – Stupid Carmen would immediately tell my wife.

Where is Stupid Carmen, anyway? I know! She must be in the bathroom putting on her face. Uncanny, the way she arrives back at her desk exactly one minute before the jefe walks in.

Uh oh. There’s the messenger from Metropolitana. I mustn’t meet his eye! Maybe if I ignore him, Sánchez will attend to him. Boy, Sánchez is really trying for a promotion – he was actually working when I arrived. What’s he trying to do – show the rest of us up? Stupid Sánchez!

Mustn’t raise my eyes! Hmm, my shoes need waxing. They haven’t been cleaned since the new guards stopped the shoeshine lad from coming in. Now everyone has dirty shoes and we don’t have those racy magazines any more, to pass the while away. Stupid security service!

The new privatized cleaning service is good! They cleaned the dust from my outbox. I wonder if I should make two piles of the stuff in my inbox? The one pile is likely to topple over. Should I put the files in alphabetical order to expedite things when someone needs something? Nah! Too much trouble. Let ’em wait while I riffle through.

Ooh, there’s Rosita! Yoo hoo, Rosita! Wow, I love it when she stretches backward like that. Heck! I caught the eye of Metropolitana – but he just smiled and looked at Rosita.

I think that blouse is one she bought from the Nica. The Nica hasn’t come back since the new guard service started – they probably stop him from coming in. I saw him lurking outside yesterday – luckily he didn’t see me. I don’t like those shirts very much, anyway, so why should I pay for them? Maybe I should grow back my moustache. No, I can’t grow it back because then the lottery chap would recognize me, and I owe him more than I owe the Nica.

Hmm, that man’s here to see the jefe – I’d better pretend to be working. Boy, the dust between the files in my inbox is terrible. I think I’ll go to the infirmary later and pretend to have hay fever, and maybe they’ll give me some more of that allergy medicine I sell to my brother-in-law.

Here’s the file I told the guy from Cosmopolitas I had processed and sent to the Evaluations Department. Stupid Cosmopolitas guy, with his shrill voice and horrible haircut – I hope he got properly messed up! But I must be more compliant or he won’t repeat the nice Christmas present this year.

Ah, here comes Stupid Carmen – so the jefe will be arriving any moment. I’d better keep looking busy. But I mustn’t look up – Sánchez still hasn’t attended to Metropolitana.

We should turn the desks around so we don’t have to face the counter and “see” the people who are waiting. But if we turn the desks around, the people at the counter would see our computer monitors, and that’s no good! I wonder where I can get the new version of Free Cell?

Stupid Carmen hasn’t said “good morning” to me. In fact, she hasn’t even looked at me. Who does she think she is? Boy, I’d really like to nab her stapler, paper punch and scissors, and then see her squirm! But she locks them in her desk whenever she’s away from it. Stupid Carmen! What does she think I am, a thief? It’s not as if taking staplers, scissors and paper punches were really stealing – nobody around here cares about that sort of thing.

Where’s the jefe? I want his newspaper. I’m sure La Liga won, but I want to check the final score of last night’s game. Stupid ICE and its power cuts – it should be privatized! But if they privatize ICE we will follow right behind, and that would be really terrible – I don’t know what I would do! And all these other poor people. Except Sánchez – he would find a new job right away, curse him! I really should try to get into the hierarchy of the union and become one of the Untouchables.

There’s the guy from Profesionales. Maybe he knows how the game ended up. But I’d better not ask him – he may want me to do something for him, and now it’s now only 20 minutes before my first coffee break, so I can’t take on any more tasks.