March 31, 2008

Heeya!: This taekwondo presentation was one of the highlights of yesterday's National Day of Sports in San José's Sabana Park.

Ronald Reyes | Tico Times

Public Security Minister Fernando Berrocal agreed to step down from his post by midnight yesterday amid controversy he sparked by saying certain Costa Rican politicians may be linked to the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Berrocal outraged members of the government with a March 15 speech in which he suggested a tip-of-the-iceberg scenario after police raided a couple's home in Heredia, north of San José, and found an estimated $480,000 in alleged FARC money locked in a safe. Authorities are expected to begin counting the highly brittle bills today.

Police were tipped off to the stash by information gathered from computers seized in Colombia 's March 1 attack on Ecuadorean territory that killed FARC's No. 2 in command, Raúl Reyes.

Berrocal alluded to information in those laptops that he presumed would show a lot more of Costa Rica 's FARC connections.

“The relations don't only go with the mafia organized to run drugs,” Berrocal said, “but with some political sectors of this country that have lost a sense of reality.”

Legislators, the country's chief prosecutor and its president urged Berrocal publicly to release a list of politicians tied to FARC, if such a list existed.

Berrocal days later attempted to clarify his statement, claiming such a list does not exist and that he never said it did. However, he maintained that FARC has infiltrated this country on a large scale.

“After a serious process of reflection,” reads a statement that emerged yesterday from President Oscar Arias' Casa Presidencial, “it was agreed that, to protect the interests of the country, Berrocal Soto will serve as (security) minister until the current Sunday, March 30.”

At the time of writing this report it was unclear whether the security minister would stand before the Legislative Assembly today as requested to divulge information on FARC in Costa Rica.

For his part, Berrocal said he is leaving the post “with a clean conscience” after reaching a mutual agreement with the government.

“We agree that it is bad … for this subject to become politicized,” said Berrocal.

“The president neither asked for my resignation nor did I resign. We've reached the conclusion that this is what's best for the country.”

-ACAN-EFE

Some 1,348 U.S. passports were stolen in Costa Rica during the 2006-2007 fiscal year – equal to almost four a day, the daily La Nación reported.

As of the March of this year the number has already reached 556, according to the report, which cited information from the U.S. Embassy of Costa Rica.

Tourists are the principal victims of such theft, the report said, but U.S. residents here too have been affected.

The figures put Costa Rica among Italy, France and Mexico as the countries reporting the highest incidence of U.S. passport theft.

Authorities recommend keeping a photocopy of your passport, including one of the page showing a valid entry stamp, at all times.

A passport from the United States can gross up to $7,000 on the black market.

By Alex Leff
Tico Times Staff | aleff@ticotimes.net

MONTEVERDE – Picking a line of bass notes with his thumb and bright flutters of high notes on the three bottom strings with the other fingers of his right hand, Felipe Carvajal commenced a concert Friday night of flamenco in this tiny Costa Rican town in a mountainous cloud forest.

The 20-year-old guitarist's left-hand fingers sprawled and scattered across the neck of the instrument like a startled daddy longlegs.

Intermittently, a voice came from another man, only seven years older than Carvajal, seated beside the guitarist on a wooden box drum, or cajón, saying “ olé ” – the age-old call invoked by gypsies of southern Spain who spawned the genre.

Sitting on and playing his cajón, Yamil Jaikel was dressed just as Carvajal in a black button-down, black slacks, black shoes and had his long dark hair tied back in a ponytail. The two boldly reached for Andalusian musical purity.

This was not a smoky Spanish tavern with wine stained tables, but rather an outdoor amphitheater in Monteverde, in green wilderness of the country's north-central region. And singer Elena Zelaya, who for the next song took to the stage along with two other musicians and a dancer, did not sing as though she'd just smoked two packs of filter-less cigarettes as so many of flamenco's most celebrated cantaores do. New to the genre, she later admitted, Zelaya's alto voice had been sweetened by Latin traditions from closer ashore.

It took some imagination on the part of the audience – a mix of visitors and locals at the concert in the second weekend of the Monteverde Music Fest.

But once Aida Vargas, the band's dancer, or bailaora, arose and began to stomp her feet, throw her arms and spin aggressively, and Jaikel and another percussionist, David Solano, worked up a rhythm frenzy on their box drums, and Zelaya's voice achieved an almost Middle Eastern-sounding cadence, the Costa Rican band Soloflamenco put things in perspective.

Was it flamenco a la Tico? The San José-born band members would like to think not.

Nicaraguan exports to the United States have surged 35.5% in the first two years of its U.S. free-trade agreement.

Nicaraguan goods sold to U.S. buyers in 2005 grossed $243.4 million. That was before the agreement, known as CAFTA, took effect. In 2007 exports to the United States were worth a total of $328.3 million, according to Roberto Brenes, who heads Nicaragua 's Center for Promotion of Exports and Investment.

CAFTA commenced for Nicaragua in April 2006. Brenes said two years later the country has seen trade growth on at least 18 products, mainly agricultural and agroindustrial.

U.S. investment in Nicaragua has also continued to rise, Brenes said, from $35.9 in 2005 to $83.5 in 2007.