Daily Edition: San José, Costa Rica, August 30, 2005
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Country's Natural Healers
Unite for Education, Support
A team of natural and holistic healers recently joined forces to form the Interdisciplinary Association of Naturalist Therapists and Complementary Disciplines (ASITENA), seeking to raise awareness of alternative medicine throughout the country.
(Click for more)
Turrialba Voters Reject
Hydroelectric Dams
Voters who turned out for an election held Sunday in Turrialba, a town on the Caribbean slope, overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to build hydroelectric dams on the Pacuare River in the area, according to preliminary results revealed yesterday.
(Click for more)
Legislators Seek Greater Equality
for Descendents of Africa
More than 100 legislators from 22 countries are in Costa Rica this week, participating in the Third Conference of Afro-Descendent Legislators of the Americas, with the goal of promoting greater inclusion and equality for those of African descent throughout the region.
(Click for more)
August 30
Audiovisual Techniques
Lessons in lighting with Yashi Shimokawa, of Japan, Aug. 29-Sept. 9 at Centro de Cine, behind INS. Info: 223-2127, 223-0610.
Golf Lessons for the Disabled
Free and permanent program for ages 12 and up at the Marriott Hotel in San Antonio de Belén. Info: José Quesada, 630-9012.
Intercambios
Art performance by Sioned Huws and Massimiliano Simbulla at 7 p.m., Pila de la Melaza at the Contemporary Art and Design Museum, Av. 3/5, Ca. 11/15. Info: 257-7202.
Edited By María Gabriela Díaz
Tico Times Staff
mgdiaz@ticotimes.net
Country's Natural Healers
Unite for Education, Support
By María Gabriela Díaz
Tico Times Staff
mgdiaz@ticotimes.net
A team of natural and holistic healers recently joined forces to form the Interdisciplinary Association of Naturalist Therapists and Complementary Disciplines (ASITENA), seeking to raise awareness of alternative medicine throughout the country.
The association, whose members come from fields ranging anywhere from psychology to acupuncture, aims to educate the Costa Rican public about alternative medicine options and provide a sense of cohesion and support to natural healers.
“More than a joining of therapists, this (association) is the portal of a new culture that is going to take flight here,” ASITENA president Gerardo Chaves told The Tico Times yesterday.
Chaves said the association will be legally inscribed next week but held its first meeting with a group of 10 healers from various disciplines in early August.
The association, growing by one or two new members each day, is now made up of approximately 50 affiliates and plans to meet at least once a month, said Chaves, a somatic educator – or body healer – at Casa de Cultura Alternativa Osiris in San Pedro, east of San José.
Aromatherapy student Andrea Becerra, a member of ASITENA's board of directors, said the association is an “effort for the work of all people who work in alternative and holistic healing to be respected and recognized.”
“(The association) makes me feel grounded and is an acknowledgement that the work I do is serious, without losing sight of its intuitiveness – it is about soul transformation,” said Becerra, who runs a massage studio and sells aromatherapy essences in the western San José suburb of Escazú.
For more information, contact Becerra at 398-1999.
See Friday's print edition or online pdf version for more on alternative medicine in Costa Rica.
Turrialba Voters Reject
Hydroelectric Dams
Voters who turned out for an election held Sunday in Turrialba, a town on the Caribbean slope, overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to build hydroelectric dams on the Pacuare River in the area, according to preliminary results revealed yesterday.
“Ninety-seven percent voted ‘no' against 3%, who voted ‘yes' to the construction of hydroelectric dams,” said Eugenio Guido, coordinator of the Group of Friends of the Pacuare River and co-organizer of the vote.
According to Guido, participation “exceeded 10,000 people,” but the definitive results of the election will not be known until Friday.
The Technical Secretariat of the Environment Ministry (SETENA) recently rejected an environmental impact study on the Pacuare Hydroelectric Project, proposed by the Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE). More than eight years of research have been invested in the project.
Despite SETENA's decision, Turrialba community members say they fear that in the future, ICE or another company will try to build a dam on the river, rich in flora and fauna. Various hydroelectric dams built in Costa Rica have caused environmental damage.
The municipality organized the election with the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE). Approximately 47,000 area residents were eligible to vote, of whom 10,000 are indigenous people who inhabit the area and for whom the Pacuare River is sacred.
The indigenous people share the area with tourists who visits the river for rafting, an activity that generates an important income for the community, and which would be eliminated by the construction of a dam.
-ACAN-EFE
Legislators Seek Greater Equality
for
Descendents of Africa
More than 100 legislators from 22 countries are in Costa Rica this week, participating in the Third Conference of Afro-Descendent Legislators of the Americas, with the goal of promoting greater inclusion and equality for those of African descent throughout the region.
Conference organizer and Costa Rican legislator Epsy Campbell, of the Citizen Action Party (PAC), said yesterday during the inauguration that the activity has “enormous” importance “in making discrimination and exclusion a thing of the past.”
“We are not only acting locally, but internationally, so that the more than 140 million descendents of Africa in America and the Caribbean have the opportunity to live with dignity and with all of their human rights,” Campbell said.
The main objective of the conference, which began yesterday in San José and ends tomorrow in the Caribbean province of Limón, is to launch a Black Parliament of the Americas.
The parliament would articulate politics for the promotion of human rights and the social inclusion of black towns and communities, with the greater goal of strengthening democracy in the region.
For legislator Campbell, the principal problems of black citizens of Latin America are the lack of opportunities, racism, social exclusion and lack of representation.
“Today, millions of Afro-descendent children are born with more certainty of going to jail than college, of being the in the streets than being in schools,” Campbell said.
More than 100 legislators from 22 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as the United States, met yesterday in Costa Rica 's Legislative Assembly for the first day of the conference.
- ACAN-EFE
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