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Algiers or bust: Lubna Azabal, left, and Romain Duris play French-Algerian Bohemians who visit the North African country in the 2004 film “Exils,” the curtain raiser for Costa Rica's European Film Festival showing tonight at 8 p.m. at Artecine Lindora cinema, on the highway between Santa Ana and San Antonio de Belén. |
Courtesy of Pyramide Films |
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| Costa Rica lawmakers to amend troublesome CAFTA bill |
Presidency Minister Rodrigo Arias called on lawmakers yesterday to approve as quickly as possible the last bill required to implement the Central American Free-Trade Agreement with the United States (CAFTA). |
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| AMCHAM blames Ortega gov’t for violence, unrest in Nicaragua |
| GRANADA, Nicaragua – The Nicaraguan-American Chamber of Commerce (AMCHAM) yesterday came out with its strongest criticism to date of the government of President Daniel Ortega in “energetically condemning” Saturday's violence by Sandinista groups that prevented an anti-government protest march in the northern department of León. |
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| Citibank completes bank takeover in Nicaragua |
With the goal of strengthening Nicaragua's credit card market, U.S. financial group Citibank has finalized the process of integrating into the national financial system by converting Grupo Financiero Uno to Citibank de Nicaragua. |
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| Sex workers arrested in Jacó, seven deported |
Costa Rica authorities have deported seven of the more than 70 alleged sexual workers arrested Friday night in the central Pacific town of Jacó, the Public Security Ministry's Special Investigations Unit (DIE) said yesterday. |
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When the Saints Go
Marching in San Ramón |
A colorful parade of saints lined up along the aisle of the church in San Ramón during the last weekend of August as the city celebrated its patron saint's day with an old Spanish custom: la entrada de los santos, or the parade of the saints. |
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Costa Rica lawmakers to
amend troublesome CAFTA bill |
By Gillian Gillers
Tico Times Staff | ggillers@ticotimes.net |
Presidency Minister Rodrigo Arias called on lawmakers yesterday to approve as quickly as possible the last bill required to implement the Central American Free-Trade Agreement with the United States (CAFTA).
The bill, intended to strengthen intellectual property rights, was struck down by the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court (Sala IV) because lawmakers had not consulted the indigenous community on a clause that would affect them.
A congressional committee yesterday voted to delete the problematic clause and pass the bill again. The entire process could take six weeks to three months, said Oscar Núñez, faction head for the National Liberation Party (PLN). The timeline depends on whether the anti-CAFTA Citizen Action Party (PAC) again challenges the bill's constitutionality before the Sala IV.
Either way, Costa Rica will miss an Oct. 1 deadline for entering the pact, an extension already granted by CAFTA partners from an original February deadline. President Oscar Arias will ask for another extension in a meeting Wednesday in New York City with U.S. President George W. Bush and other Central American presidents. |
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AMCHAM blames Ortega gov’t
for violence, unrest in Nicaragua |
By Tim Rogers
Nica Times Staff | trogers@ticotimes.net |
GRANADA, Nicaragua – The Nicaraguan-American Chamber of Commerce (AMCHAM) yesterday came out with its strongest criticism to date of the government of President Daniel Ortega in “energetically condemning” Saturday's violence by Sandinista groups that prevented an anti-government protest march in the northern department of León.
AMCHAM, which has been criticized by some for not playing a more active role in speaking out against the Ortega administration, blamed the “violent and irresponsible actions” of Saturday afternoon on groups “linked to the official government party.” The business chamber said the Sandinista violence was in violation of the constitutional rights of all Nicaraguans to express themselves and protest publically, peacefully and civically.
A planned protest march by the left-wing Sandinista Renovation Movement was stopped before it started Saturday morning, when hundreds of pro-Ortega Sandinistas – many wearing masks and wielding weapons – blocked all the entrances into the city of León to stop traffic and prevent protesters from arriving to the march. Many passengers were harassed and terrorized as masked men with sticks and machetes boarded buses and searched vehicles for protesters that Ortega has labeled as “traitors.”
The pro-Ortega group then clashed violently with riot police, resulting in several injuries. So far no one has been arrested.
AMCHAM said that the violence perpetrated by the “minority” Sandinista groups is taking the country “each day further from the policies of national reconciliation” promised by Ortega.
“The people of Nicaragua have won the right to live in democracy, without fear of those who try to intimidate others who don't think the same way they do,” the business chamber said in its release.
AMCHAM called on the National Police and the Prosecutor's Office to take the necessary steps to punish those responsible for Saturday's violence, which resulted in five injuries and property destruction.
The business chamber called on Ortega to act responsibly and to work toward a true national dialogue to “avoid a return to the situation experienced in the 1980s” during the first Sandinista government.
As of yesterday afternoon, Ortega, who was preparing for a trip to the United States, had not commented on Saturday's violence. The president is scheduled to address the United Nations General Assembly today. |
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| Citibank completes bank takeover in Nicaragua |
With the goal of strengthening Nicaragua's credit card market, U.S. financial group Citibank has finalized the process of integrating into the national financial system by converting Grupo Financiero Uno to Citibank de Nicaragua.
Citibank, which acquired Nicaragua's Grupo Financiero Uno in 2006, already operates in neighboring Honduras and El Salvador.
Citibank de Nicaragua, with its new cash machines and other financial services inherited from Grupo Financiero Uno, will attend to 140,000 clients in Nicaragua, including 1,200 employees nationwide, according to the daily La Prensa. |
-Nica Times |
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| Sex workers arrested in Jacó, seven deported |
By Alex Leff
Tico Times Staff | aleff@ticotimes.net |
Costa Rica authorities have deported seven of the more than 70 alleged sexual workers arrested Friday night in the central Pacific town of Jacó, the Public Security Ministry's Special Investigations Unit (DIE) said yesterday.
The workers, most of whom women, were caught without their passports or proper identification at night clubs known to attract mostly foreigners engaging in sexual tourism, DIE Chief Rodolfo Jiménez said.
Apart from the seven deportees – five Nicaraguans, one Dominican and a Cuban – the other workers later managed to provide documentation and walked.
Prostitution in Costa Rica is legal for those over 18. But, a Public Security Ministry statement said Sunday, police are “working against sex trade exploitation … especially if minors are involved.”
“We're now confirming intelligence information we gathered – about status, income, duration of stay – of all the women we're investigating,” Jiménez said of the Friday operation. “(Almost) all of them presented documents that appear to be legal,” Jiménez said.
One woman went free when a Transit Police officer claiming to be her boyfriend showed up to prove she was residing here legally. “He arrived (at the police station) in uniform, driving a tow truck,” Jiménez said.
Jacó is notorious for its underground sex industry. Last November, The Tico Times reported that Immigration police suspected that Dominicans in the central Pacific town were recruiting women from the Dominican Republic to train at an “international prostitution school.” |
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When the Saints Go Marching in San Ramón |
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A colorful parade of saints lined up along the aisle of the church in San Ramón during the last weekend of August as the city celebrated its patron saint's day with an old Spanish custom: la entrada de los santos, or the parade of the saints.
This year, 53 venerable statues of saints came from surrounding parishes and organizations in this western Central Valley coffee canton. The statues, some old and valuable, were borne on platforms decorated with flowers, carried on the shoulders of men and women from the parishes or groups. Each saint was accompanied by a band playing music, some traditional, some religious.
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| Saints Alive! The parade of the saints is an annual tradition at the San Ramón church. |
Joan Bougie | Tico Times |
This was a festival, nothing grim about it. There was St. John the Baptist carrying his long staff, the Virgin of El Carmen, the Virgin of Ujarrás and the Virgin of the Angels, a replica of the national shrine in the basilica in Cartago, east of the capital. St. Barbara, the patron saint of firefighters, was accompanied by a fire truck. The Holy Family came along with saints Gabriel and Raphael, the archangels. The images will remain in the church for nine days, or a novena, with daily Masses dedicated to the different parishes, explained Daniel Vargas, San Ramón's young and energetic pastor.
The principal saint of this event, of course, is San Ramón Nonato, and his statue, dressed in the red cloaks of a church official, had a special platform in front of the altar decorated with streamers in red and white.
San Ramón is the patron saint of pregnant women and newborn babies, Vargas said. He was born in the 1200s in Spain. His mother died giving birth to him, and he was delivered and adopted by a man named Ramón Cardona, who gave him the name Nonato, or “no birth.” At the age of 19, young Ramón joined the Fathers of Mercy, an order of priests dedicated to buying slaves to save them, and he went to Algeria, where slavery flourished. When funds ran out to buy more slaves, Ramón offered himself in place of a slave until more funds were available.
Pope Gregory IX wanted to honor the young priest by making him a cardinal, but with his health compromised during the episode of slavery, Ramón died on the way to Rome, at the age of 36.
The annual celebrations attract visitors from all over Costa Rica, because los ramonenses provide a week full of civic, religious and cultural activities. This year's included a zoo full of farm animals so that young city dwellers could get to know them. There were oxcart parades, folk dances, a sculpture contest, a band parade, theater and the reopening of the regional museum, displays of organic products and plants, and lots of traditional food under a thatch-roofed pavilion that spanned the entire street. A city that works together can produce a first class party.
“This is a family event to bring people together,” Vargas said. “With thousands of people filling the streets of San Ramón, no car thefts, assaults or vandalism were reported. And no alcohol was sold.”
San Ramón was first settled by the Maleku indigenous group. During the colonial years, the area was considered to be “the interior,” and prisoners and undesirables were sent here as punishment. In the early 1800s, expansion from Palmares, another western town, brought settlers into the area. Early residents Ramón Solís and Ramón Rodríguez placed the new town under the protection of San Ramón, and in August 1854 it officially became a city.
San Ramón became known as a literary and cultural center in the 19th century, after a priest of that era published an epic poem that scandalized citizens for not giving full support to the church, and which was read across the nation. This literary effort drew other poets and writers to San Ramón, giving it a reputation for arts and letters.
Leading statesman and founder of modern Costa Rica, José “Pepe” Figueres, was born in San Ramón in 1906. His home across from the church is now a cultural center. A branch of the University of Costa Rica is located here, and its professors and students add to the cultural life of the city.
And every year, during the last week of August, the whole community comes together to celebrate their patron saint's day, Aug. 31.
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