February 21, 2008

Tourist pull: Andrew Cohan, consultant for HVS Global Hospitality Services, spoke to The Tico Times about hotels he's assessing in Costa Rica, where he said the trend is now to stratify comfort and luxury level beyond the traditional five-star rating. Cohan was one of the participants yesterday at the Costa Rican Tourism Investment Summit which finishes tonight at the Hotel Real Intercontinental southwest of San José.

Harmony Reforma | Tico Times

Death of an institution: Costa Rica's Museum of Shapes, Spaces and Sounds, an institution aimed at the disabled museumgoer that was shuttered in October, will cease to exist. The Culture Ministry says that, rather than marginalize disabled people into using just one museum, its responsibility is to bring people with disabilities into the fold of all of the country's museums, making such mainstays as the National Museum more accessible.

Harmony Reforma | Tico Times

7th CAFTA bill gets green light

Lawmakers approved in initial debate the seventh of 12 bills required, in some form, to implement the Central American Free-Trade Agreement with the United States (CAFTA). The bill, which cracks down on intellectual property violations, must still pass a second vote to become law.

Foreign Minister Marco Vinicio Ruiz will meet with Deputy U.S. Trade Representative John Veroneau next week to seek an extension on a March 1 deadline for entering the treaty.

Since Fidel Castro first fell ill, his day-to-day leadership role has been replaced not only in Cuba, but also in grander geopolitical terms as the historic figurehead of the Latin American revolution. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, in many ways, has moved himself into the top spot on the totem pole and is now the de facto leader and reference point, even in Nicaragua, where President Daniel Ortega seems to defer to Venezuela's leadership more so than Castro's.

However, though weighing in later than leaders of other nations such as Venezuela and Costa Rica, Ortega yesterday issued a statement paying high praise for the aging, ailing revolutionary.

“Fidel will continue being the indisputable leader and moral authority of the Cuban people,” Ortega said describing what he called a man of “universal transcendence,” according to newswire ACAN-EFE.

“Ideas don't disappear when a person dies,” he said, but added that “furthermore, I don't think Fidel's going to die.”

Yet despite waxing almost spiritual about the resignation of the long-time communist icon, Ortega's praise of late has begun to falter, say observers, and has drifted somewhat southward, to Venezuela.

What's more, the statement at the San Salvador press conference clearly echoed a speech earlier by Hugo Chávez.

Former Sandinista Vice President Sergio Ramírez noted in a recent interview with The Nica Times that Castro and Cuba seem to now play second fiddle to Chávez and Venezuela.

Though Ortega symbolically “gifted” his 2006 electoral victory to Castro and promised the Cuban leader that the revolution will continue, political commentators have rumored that the relationship between the two was strained recently over Ortega's controversial alliance with the Catholic Church, which has led to a blanket ban on therapeutic abortion in Nicaragua.

In the past year, Ortega has referred to Castro mostly in historical terms – almost in the past tense – calling him a brother and the father of the revolution. Castro is often a point of reflection on the past, and the role he played in helping the Sandinistas in the 1970s-'80s.

Analysts consulted by The Nica Times this week don't seem to think Castro's announcement would have much of an impact on the Sandinista government project or the greater revolutionary movement in Latin America.

Emilio Alvarez, former minister of foreign relations, said that Castro's decision has more to do with Cuba's internal institutional situation than it does with the communist island's relations with other countries. Alvarez says that even though brother Raúl Castro appears to be the more “flexible” of the two, the dictatorship is too entrenched to open up much, and Cuba's relations with other countries won't likely change.

“Change won't come to Cuba until both of the Castro brothers disappear,” Alvarez told The Nica Times.

Edmundo Jarquín, former presidential candidate and leader of the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS), said Castro's announcement only makes official something that has been known for a long time. The historic leader stepping down from his post, he said, most likely won't take the wind out of Ortega's sails in Nicaragua.

“Daniel Ortega is inventing a revolution in Nicaragua where there isn't one,” Jarquín said, adding that this new phase of “Sandinista revolution” has more to do with Ortega and Chávez than it does Castro.

Alvarez, meanwhile, claims that Chávez hasn't exactly been able to fill Castro's shoes.

“Chávez admires and wants to copy Castro, but he hasn't had the same success as Castro, who has a complete dictatorship, compared to Chávez, who is faced with a strong opposition.”

For Tico Times' recent coverage on Costa Rica's reaction to Castro's resignation, click here: http://www.ticotimes.net/dailyarchive/2008_02/0220081.htm

Costa Rica's health officials seek cure for
malnutrition, starvation among nation's youngest

Costa Rica's health authorities this year are setting out on a bold plan: End starvation among the country's youngest, most vulnerable inhabitants by 2012.

Considering this country's health care system, “we shouldn't be registering deaths because of hunger or severe malnutrition,” Rosa Novygrodt, director of the nutrition office at the Public Health Ministry, said at a press conference yesterday.

“Our plan is zero deaths from hunger by 2012,” she said.

National statistics indicate that starvation in Costa Rica has been declining in recent years. In 2004, nine children died from hunger. In 2005, the number was five and in 2006, it dropped to three.

However, malnutrition is on the increase. Sixty-five children in Costa Rica suffered from malnutrition in 2005, rising to 77 in 2006. These totals only reflect the numbers of children who were cared for by doctors.

The ministry is most concerned about children age 5 and under, it said.

Its plan, still awaiting a budget, is intended to promote breastfeeding and to build new, and improve existing, medical facilities for the poorest families.

A new report reveals glaring inequalities in electoral participation, as well as access to education, health services and modern amenities among Costa Rica's 469 districts.

Social development in the Central Valley and in tourist towns on the Pacific coast is vastly greater than in the border regions and on the Caribbean coast, according to the report, released this week by the Ministry of Planning (Mideplan).

“This is a crucial moment to keep the country from becoming a bipolar…society (with) entire geographic areas and social groups left behind,” said sociologist Jorge Mora, a former rector of the National University (UNA) in Heredia, north of San José.

To gauge social development, the ministry measured electricity consumption, Internet coverage, abstention in local and national elections, child mortality, school infrastructure, second-language education and access to potable water. Researchers counted the number of underweight children and babies, adolescent mothers, school dropouts and single-teacher schools.

Chirripó, an indigenous district east of San José, had the lowest social development, while Asunción de Belén, northwest of San José, had the highest.

Ministry official Mario Robles said the report would help the 81 municipalities better distribute resources to their districts. It will also help President Oscar Arias' administration decide where to target scholarship programs and build roads and schools, he said.

“The society has to squeeze the juice out of these studies,” said political expert Constantino Urcuyo.