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Buy Nicaraguan: The Expoapen 2009, an export trade fair, opens Saturday in Managua, Nicaragua, drawing dozens of importers from Europe, the United States, Central American and Caribbean countries seeking to do business with Nicaraguan producers and exporters. |
Mario López | EFE |
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Volcano drill: Emergency workers participate Saturday in a simulation of an evacuation in Finca Central, just 7 km from the crater of Costa Rica's Turrialba Volcano. Organized by the National Animal Health Department and the nongovernmental World Society for the Protection of Animals, emergency drills took place throughout the day at a number of farms near the volcano, which has shown increased activity. |
Ronald Reyes | Tico Times |
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| Honduras expels OAS team, gives Brazil 10-day ultimatum |
| Honduras' de facto authorities expelled a delegation from the Organization of American States (OAS) that sought to enter into a dialogue to end the three-month-old standoff that has gripped the Central American country. |
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National Geographic team witnesses
illegal fishing off Costa Rica’s Isla del Coco |
A team of National Geographic researchers and filmmakers have become eyewitnesses to what many scientists consider to be among the major threats to marine biodiversity at Costa Rica's treasured Isla del Coco, a national park 365 miles off the Pacific coast. |
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| Coors Light taps into Costa Rica |
Coors Light is on its way to Costa Rica. The Golden, Colorado-based beer with the slogan “Tap the Rockies” has officially tapped into the Costa Rican beer market, the U.S. company said last week. |
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| Limón revitalization expected to begin in November |
The Costa Rican government assured the people of the Caribbean province of Limón that funding to implement a major project aimed at revamping the province's port city should begin to arrive in November. |
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Pre-Columbian Jade in
C.R.: Mesoamerican Ties |
My last column focused on ancient house and tomb forms, agriculture and the first chiefdoms in the several centuries before and after Christ, and how they seem to have been influenced by Mesoamerica, the lower half of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and the western tip of Honduras (TT, March 27). |
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Honduras expels OAS team,
gives Brazil 10-day ultimatum |
Honduras' de facto authorities expelled a delegation from the Organization of American States (OAS) that sought to enter into a dialogue to end the three-month-old standoff that has gripped the Central American country.
The move signaled a deepening of the crisis not just within Honduras, but between the country's de facto government and the international community, which has tightened diplomatic and economic pressure on the nation since its military ousted President Manuel Zelaya on June 28.
Officials of the administration of de facto President Roberto Micheletti said Honduras was not expecting the visit.
“They came by surprise,” said Carlos López, Micheletti's foreign minister. López said the OAS had been “clearly warned not to arrive uninvited, (but) they did it anyway,” he said, adding that it is within Honduras' “legal authority” to deny entry to any visitor.
One member of the delegation, OAS Special Adviser John Biehl of Chile, was permitted to stay because, according to López, he was “a close collaborator in the mediation in Costa Rica.”
Within a week of the coup, the OAS suspended Honduras' membership and the organization's Secretary General José Miguel Insulza flew to the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa to persuade Micheletti to back down, but failed. The international community and Micheletti have remained stuck in a stalemate ever since.
In an additional act of resistance against international pressure, Micheletti's administration on Sunday gave the Brazilian Embassy 10 days to decide what it will do with Zelaya, whom it has sheltered in its embassy since the deposed leader secretly re-entered into Honduras on Sept. 21.
López said “it was Brazil that broke with the current government (of Honduras),” adding that “if no bilateral relations exist then evidently they have to divest themselves of the shield, and become a private office.”
In response, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said Brazil won't “accept an ultimatum from a coup government.”
Meanwhile, the leading presidential candidates in Honduras' upcoming elections have met with Zelaya and Micheletti separately, and reported back to Costa Rican President Oscar Arias on their talks. The candidates had visited San José earlier in the month to meet with Arias, who has served as mediator in the crisis.
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–EFE |
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National Geographic team witnesses
illegal fishing off Costa Rica’s Isla del Coco |
By Mike McDonald
Tico Times Staff | mmcdonald@ticotimes.net |
A team of National Geographic researchers and filmmakers have become eyewitnesses to what many scientists consider to be among the major threats to marine biodiversity at Costa Rica's treasured Isla del Coco, a national park 365 miles off the Pacific coast.
The group, which arrived in Costa Rica three weeks ago to film part of National Geographic's “Ocean Now” series, filmed a green sea turtle and a yellowfin tuna wrapped in illegal fishing line. The group was able to save the turtle, but when they untangled the tuna, the fish sank helplessly to the ocean floor.
“The last three days, we have witnessed firsthand what is killing the oceans,” team researcher Enric Sala wrote on the project's blog. “It was like waking up from the most wonderful dream to the crudest reality.”
Fishing is prohibited inside the park's boundaries. Still, hundreds of miles of illegal fishing lines and thousands of hooks are found inside the protected area every year, according to the National Geographic group.
The Coast Guard and non-governmental groups operate patrol boats to protect the island from poachers and illegal fisherman, but conservationists have consistently criticized the Costa Rican government for not doing enough to protect the park.
Ocean Now is a “project to study the last healthy, undisturbed places in the ocean.” Follow the team's Isla del Coco experience at http://ocean.nationalgeographic.com.
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| Coors Light taps into Costa Rica |
By Adam Williams
Tico Times Staff | awilliams@ticotimes.net
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Coors Light is on its way to Costa Rica. The Golden, Colorado-based beer with the slogan “Tap the Rockies” has officially tapped into the Costa Rican beer market, the U.S. company said last week.
Molson Coors Brewing Company announced that it is teaming with distributor Agencias Feduro, based in San José, and will begin to sell the “silver bullet,” a nickname for the silver Coors Light can, in upcoming weeks.
"We are proud to partner with Agencias Feduro (Costa Rica) and excited about the opportunity to bring the world's most refreshing beer to beer drinkers in this beautiful country,” said Paul Mendieta, Molson Coors managing director for Mexico, the Caribbean and Central America, in a statement Thursday.
“We intend to continue growing our business internationally, particularly in this region of the world," Mendieta said.
Coors Light will be sold in supermarkets, convenience stores, bars and casual dining restaurants throughout Costa Rica. The statement from Molson Coors said they chose to enter Costa Rica due to the country's growing interest in “light” beer. Molson Coors anticipates that light beer will soon make up 30 percent of the beer market in Costa Rica.
The Coors Light bottles and cans in Costa Rica will feature the image of snow-capped mountains as the backdrop to the imprint of the Coors Light name. The bottles will incorporate the “Cold Activation” technology introduced by Coors Light in 2007. The snow capped mountains on the Cold Activation Bottles become blue when the beer is chilled and “cold enough to drink.” The feature is made possible by a thermochromatic ink that is included in the bottle label.
The entry into the Costa Rican market is the latest relationship created between Coors Light and Latin American countries. Coors Light is currently distributed in Mexico and Panama and will launch in Trinidad and Tobago and Curacao Bonaire in upcoming months. Molson Coors said sales of Coors Light jumped over 35 percent over the last year in Mexico and over 150 percent in Panama.
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| Limón revitalization expected to begin in November |
By Chrissie Long
Tico Times Staff | clong@ticotimes.net
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The Costa Rican government assured the people of the Caribbean province of Limón that funding to implement a major project aimed at revamping the province's port city should begin to arrive in November.
An $80 million loan from the World Bank, that aims to kindle investments of up to $900 million from private sources, was assigned to the project by President Oscar Arias in June with the aim of renovating the port city to make it more livable, attractive and safer.
At the time of Arias' commitment, many long-time Limón residents remained skeptical, as their seaside community has historically suffered from the neglect of the central government in San José.
But Marco Vargas, the minister of interagency coordination, has been meeting with a slew of people both within and outside the city of Limón in order to ensure that funding will be on-line in November.
Calling the project a priority, he stressed that both the revitalization of the city and the port modernization is a cornerstone government program. “The President has said repeatedly that Limón will never be a forgotten province,” Vargas said.
Most recently, Vargas established an Institutional Coordination Committee to support overall coordination of the project, which includes among its members the finance minister, the Limón port authority chief, and the mayor of Limón, among others.
Manuel Dengo, “who has extensive experience implementing projects of this size worldwide,” has been appointed to be the project's chief engineer, according to a statement from Casa Presidencial.
Vargas also met with representatives from 12 institutions involved in the project to review funding and objectives, which include a wide variety of initiatives from the construction of a new road to reroute some of the 18-wheelers that transport goods to and from the port, rehabilitation of an old train yard and renovation of the city's central park.
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Pre-Columbian Jade in C.R.: Mesoamerican Ties |
By Rod Hughes
editorial@ticotimes.net |
My last column focused on ancient house and tomb forms, agriculture and the first chiefdoms in the several centuries before and after Christ, and how they seem to have been influenced by Mesoamerica, the lower half of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and the western tip of Honduras (TT, March 27). This time, let's focus on what else was going on in that time period in Costa Rica, and why that early northern influence gave a Mesoamerican aspect to those peoples who occupied the country some 2000 and more years ago: lapidary work in jade or similar hard, greenish stones.
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| Jumpin' Jade! this large (33-centimeter) clamshell-shaped pendant is one of the best Olmec jades known, found at a burial ground in Tibás with other early local artifact including. |
Photos courtesy of Michael Snarskis |
It has long been one of archaeology's enigmas: How could it be that more jade pendants, many of the highest quality, have been found in Costa Rica than in all of Mesoamerica, where the jade-carving tradition began and flourished for the first time, in the Olmec civilization of Mexico's Gulf Coast?
The reverence and esteem for jade artifacts began in Mesoamerica, even before the first Olmec civilization. There, it took the form of pendants, tiny free-form sculptures and even masks and small vessels before 1200 B.C. The importance and sacredness of jade artifacts cannot be overestimated – it was by far the most prestigious material controlled by the high-ranking social strata, with strong religious overtones.
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| The classic avian axe-god jade pendantt. |
Photos courtesy of Michael Snarskis |
Among Mesoamerican cultures, especially the Maya, jade symbolized water, fertility and young green maize plants; it was seen as the holy symbol of salvation in the real world, and only the highest-ranking personages owned and displayed the best jade pendants.
This same conception of jade was held in Costa Rica, perhaps even more strongly, in the centuries around the time of Christ. Whereas Maya jades often portrayed ceremonial or mythic scenes, carved in low relief, Costa Rican jades, like Olmec examples, stressed iconic images of different birds or human shamans, most often situated above a symbolic polished axe, the tool of primary clearing of agricultural plots, to fell trees and split logs used as a wedge. The continuity between Mesoamerican and Costa Rica jade symbolism is notable; agriculture and the control of its products was the basic underlying motif.
Most pre-Columbian jade carving in Costa Rica took place in the country's northwest quadrant – Guanacaste-Nicoya – and also the central and northeast Caribbean watershed. The central highlands were also included, but to a somewhat lesser degree. It is interesting to note that the northwest Costa Rican jades, between about 400 to 500 B.C. and A.D. 400, were primarily rather stiff and imposing axe-gods, mostly avian and human motifs. Some of the human effigies even seem to show curlicues that, in Mesoamerica, were always interpreted as speech scrolls – that is, the shaman or chief was depicted making a pronouncement. Further, the imported Olmec and Maya jades found in Costa Rica (mostly by looters, unfortunately) have tended to be found in that part of the country.
In the Caribbean watershed, jade carving styles and symbolism were different, frequently emphasizing openwork complex carvings with double or triple aspect symbolism. But they also produced the typical axe-god form, in many different stones.
What is Social Jade?
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| An owl-head ceremonial mace head from the Guanacaste province. |
Photos courtesy of Michael Snarskis |
For several decades now, archaeologists have realized that much of the lapidary corpus known from Costa Rica around the time of Christ is not actual jade (mineralogically, only jadeite and nephrite are true jade). In fact, the only fairly close, scientifically confirmed source of all colors of true jadeite is, so far, the Motagua River valley of Guatemala.
Other similar hard green stones were used with great frequency in Costa Rica – serpentine, chalcedony, opal, quartzite and others, even including black slate, which in the tombs oxidizes to a light green and is much softer than jade. The greenstone symbolism was key. Even though lesser stones constitute much of the Costa Rican lapidary complex, the best-carved, largest and most sophisticated examples have been shown by mineralogical analysis to be true jadeite, implying a thriving trade in crude jade or axe-shaped blanks from Mesoamerica to Costa Rica.
A still-to-be-solved enigma is the geological presence in Costa Rica's far northwest corner – the Santa Elena Peninsula – of a suite of naturally occurring minerals that, in other parts of the world, are associated with true jadeite. At present, I am one of those archaeologists who believes (like many before me) that there was a source of jadeite in that part of Costa Rica, today either exhausted or beneath sea level. The sheer quantity of superior-quality Costa Rican jades makes this hypothesis worthy of continued investigation.
Dr. Snarskis guides tours to Guayabo, an ancient city and ceremonial center near Turrialba, and to all local museums. Queries may be directed to snarskis@racsa.co.cr or phone/fax 2235-8824. See his Web sites at www.archaeocostarica.com and www.arqueocostarica.net. Reserve tours at Costa Rica Outdoors Travel Division, www.info.costaricaoutdoors.com or call toll-free from North America at 1-800-8308-3394.
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