The Tico Times Online Daily Page

Daily Edition: San José, Costa Rica, January 19, 2004

DISAPPOINTED FAITHFUL: Daisy Cortez, 75, went to Heredia's courthouse last Wednesday to show her support for Catholic priest Father Minor Calvo. Calvo lost his appeal and will remain in jail for his suspected involvement in the 2001 murder of radio journalist Parmenio Medina.
TT/photo Tim Rogers

Priest, Businessman Lose Appeals
Catholic priest Minor de Jesús Calvo and businessman Omar Chaves will remain behind bars for the remainder of their six-month preventive prison sentences, following Appeals Court Judge Luis Gerardo Bolaños' decision late last week to reject their appeals.
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PERSONAL REPORT
Palmares: A Disaster Waiting to Happen
The annual 10-day festival in Palmares is billed as fun for the whole family, with clowns and amusement-park rides for youngsters, and bars, discos and live music for the older crowd. But the focus of the Palmares festival is definitely on drinking, and drinking to excess.
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January 19

Dave Chiarapa Art Exhibit
From Driftwood to Art, Jan. 19-24, Costa Rica-North American Cultural Center in Barrio Dent. Info: 207-7551.

Paper Sculpture Class
Class for teens ages 13-17, Jan. 19-23, 2-4 p.m., Costa Rican Art Museum in La Sabana Park. Info: 222-7734.

Vacaciones Felices Camp
Camp for kids ages 5-12 includes meals, activities, T-shirt and materials, 8 a.m.-5 p.m., Jan. 19-31, Children's Museum, Av. 9, Ca. 4 in San José. Info: 258-4929, ext. 113-114.

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Priest, Businessman Lose Appeals
By Tim Rogers
trogers@ticotimes.net

Catholic priest Minor de Jesús Calvo and businessman Omar Chaves will remain behind bars for the remainder of their six-month preventive prison sentences, following Appeals Court Judge Luis Gerardo Bolaños' decision late last week to reject their appeals.

The two Costa Ricans were arrested Dec. 28 on suspicion of intellectual involvement in the 2001 murder of radio journalist Parmenio Medina. Calvo's and Chaves' respective lawyers, Moisés Vincenzi and Alvaro Jiménez, filed a series of habeas corpus motions before the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court (Sala IV) and legal appeals in the Heredia Appeals Court (TT, Jan. 9, Jan. 16).

Both legal channels have now been exhausted. Calvo and Chaves will remain in jail while the Prosecutor's Office continues its 30-month-old investigation into Medina's death.

Neither Calvo nor Chaves has been formally accused of committing a crime, but under Costa Rican law a suspect can remain under a preventive prison sentence based on what the judge deems to be "probable" involvement.

Although details of the investigation will remain confidential until official accusations are presented by state prosecutors, the so-called "golden witness" who fingered Calvo and Chaves as the intellectual authors is jailed Colombian suspect John Gilberto Gutiérrez, who told prosecutors in November that he was contracted by the two to find gunmen to kill Medina. The testimony given by Gutiérrez, who is serving a preventive prison sentence for an unrelated kidnapping case, contradicts testimony he gave to police in 2001, while he was briefly detained for his suspected involvement in Medina's murder.

Calvo's lawyer Vincenzi told The Tico Times he believes Gutiérrez provided his latest testimony in exchange for immunity or some other form of preferential treatment.

In a separate court ruling Thursday in Heredia, Gutiérrez's six-month preventive prison term for the kidnapping case was reduced to three months, according to the daily La Nación.

Vincenzi said he is conducting his own investigation of the murder with the aim of exonerating his client. He denied reports that he and fellow defense counsel Jiménez are working together on a common defense strategy, insisting: "I am Father Minor's lawyer, and I have nothing to do with the defense of Chaves."

Medina was the voice and producer of the satirical and investigative radio program La Patada (The Kick). He was shot to death outside his home July 7, 2001, after receiving death threats from unidentified callers who warned him to stop his investigative reports of financial irregularities at the Catholic radio station Radio María (TT, July 13, 2001).

Calvo was the founder and voice behind Radio María and Chaves was the moneyman who bankrolled the station. Radio María went off the air several months before Medina's murder.

No court date has been set for a preliminary hearing.

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U.S., C.R. Authorities to Meet
About International Adoptions

The U.S. State Department's top official from the Bureau of Consular Affairs, Maura Harty, will travel to Costa Rica to meet with Child Welfare Minister Rosalia Gil in an attempt to establish better controls on international adoptions, reported the daily South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

The visit will follow up a meeting held between Harty and Gil last November. Although no date has been announced for the visit, it was confirmed by U.S. State Department on Friday, a week after Florida child welfare officials closed a Coral Springs international adoption agency with links to an unregulated adoption agency in Costa Rica that was closed by officials last September, following the discovery of nine Guatemalan babies there (TT, Sept. 26, 2003).

Harty's Central American visit, which will include a stop in Guatemala, is being described as "routine" by the U.S. State Department.

During the Sept. 20, 2003, raid on the unregulated Costa Rican adoption office in an apartment in La Uruca, San José, one Honduran and five Guatemalans - including the mother of one of the children - were arrested, along with lawyer and banker Carlos Hernán Robles, who was found guilty in June 2001 on 17 counts of embezzlement in connection with the collapse of the Banco Anglo Costarricense, the country's oldest state bank (TT, June 22, 2001).

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PERSONAL REPORT
Palmares: A Disaster Waiting to Happen
By Tim Rogers
trogers@ticotimes.net

The annual 10-day festival in Palmares is billed as fun for the whole family, with clowns and amusement-park rides for youngsters, and bars, discos and live music for the older crowd. But the focus of the Palmares festival is definitely on drinking, and drinking to excess.

Over the years, this celebrated party has become a disorderly affair that would seem only fun for the whole family if your whole family is 19-year-old drunks who like to be crammed dangerously tight with thousands of other drunks into tight spaces with loud music, inadequate access to bathroom facilities, and obnoxious DJs repeatedly yelling: "Let's hear from all the partiers!"

Even during the early hours of the afternoon, it is difficult to sell Palmares as a family event. People can be seen lying on the ground drunk from about 2 p.m. on.

Apart from the excessive MTV-spring break atmosphere (which many people like), Palmares is a potential disaster waiting to happen, because of the crowd sizes and the lack of safety and security controls.

The promoters, who have erected enormous scaffolding, multi-level discos, apparently have no qualms about shoehorning dangerously large crowds into their hastily constructed, temporary discos. No one is patted down for weapons before entering the bar, and apparently no one is carded. The only entry requirement is money.

Several times during Saturday night's festivities, the situation inside the three-level disco, sponsored by Heredia's Tragaldabas, got admittedly frightening, with a crowd that was probably 30% larger than any reasonable limit.

During several instances, the crowd was so thick that no one could move (I am not talking about slow plodding through a crowd, literally no one could move) and the staircases that provide the only exit from upstairs were completely log-jammed.

No bathroom facilities were in the disco, making people testy as they tried to push through the unmoving crowd to make it to the portable toilets outside. Had someone pulled a knife or started a fight inside the bar, or had any panic situation broke out, people would have been trampled.

The crowd also put visible strain on the shaky interlocking pipe scaffolding of the disco. As people jumped up and down to Cumbia music, the bar shook as if there were a 6-magnitue quake. The pipes were visibly swayed and the heavy ceiling strobe lights swung ominously.

And yet the doormen continued to take people's money and try to usher them into the bar, even though they didn't fit.

Outside, the situation was not much better, as an estimated crowd of 20,000 crammed together, making it near impossible to move.

Getting back to San José from Palmares is another dicey adventure, as evidenced by the 96 automobiles detained by transit police just in the first three nights of the festival because their drivers were drunk behind the wheel.

What has become of this once-great festival is a shame. But that's what happens when events are promoted primarily by party organizers and booze retailers, without proper controls.

Perhaps better controls will be put in place, as a typical Costa Rican reactionary measure, after partygoers get trampled to death, or after a shanty disco collapses and kills dozens.

But that seems like an unnecessary price to have to pay.

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Wednesday October 26, 2005