Senegalese drumming
Badu N'Diaye with Ensamble Etnico, 10 p.m., Jazz Café, San Pedro. 

Editus in concert
At San Isidro del General Catedral, 7 p.m.  

Actors' corner
To honor Mexican playwright Emilio Carballido, readings by actors Luis Diego Solórzano, Melvin Méndez, María Bonilla, Elvia Amador, Milena Picado, Abelardo Vladic and Álvaro Martínez, 7 p.m., Vargas Calvo Theater, behind National Theater. Info : 2256-1612.

Art show: José Miguel Rojas
Ensayo sobre el rostro , or “Essay About Faces,” at the Culture Center of Spain.

A nationwide transportation strike that had shut down Nicaragua for 12 days came to an end Saturday morning following an announcement by President Daniel Ortega that the government would offer a $1.30 subsidy for every gallon of diesel fuel sold to taxis and buses.

With the new subsidy, which is being applied at 60 participating Petronic and Shell gas stations across the country, Nicaragua went from having the most expensive diesel in Central America to having the cheapest, now at $3.15 for taxi and bus drivers. Some 75 percent of Nicaragua's transportation sector uses diesel fuel.

Ortega said that Venezuelan funding under the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) would cover 30 cents of the subsidy, but he did not mention where the other dollar would come from, raising new concerns about the transparency of his administration's finances.

Ortega announced several other initiatives for the transportation sector, such as the importation of 25,000 new tires, brake systems and motor oil. He said Nicaragua will also install electronic passenger counters on inter-urban buses and 3,000 kits to convert taxis from gasoline to more cost-effective gas-fueled. The transportation cooperatives will be able to buy this equipment at cost, with ALBA-funded financing options over a determined period, Ortega said.

The president's Friday night speech – his second national address in three days – was not all good news. Ortega also announced another price increase for gasoline and diesel for the rest of the country, putting a gallon of gasoline above 100 córdobas ($5.20) for the first time ever. Super now costs 102 córdobas ($5.30) a gallon, and diesel 98 córdobas ($5.10).

That announcement will most likely increase the cost of food prices yet again this week.

While the transportation strike has ended, the situation in Nicaragua remains precarious. Drivers of tractor-trailers did not receive the subsidy they had asked for, and diesel prices were not frozen as part of the subsidy. That means that as pump prices continue to climb, the $1.30 subsidy will lose its value over time.

Read this Friday's Nica Times, an eight-page publication of The Tico Times, for more on this story.

Put'er there: Laura Chinchilla, Costa Rica's vice president, greets Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom, during a meeting in Peru between Latin American leaders and Spain's foreign minister, Miguel Ángel Moratinos (seated left from Chinchilla), and Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Chinchilla and other officials represented Costa Rica while President Oscar Árias nursed his irritated vocal chords.

Alberto Martin |EFE

Costa Rica lobbied European authorities for greater access to the EU market this weekend at a summit in Peru for heads of state from Latin America, Europe and the Caribbean.

Vice President Laura Chinchilla, representing President Oscar Arias at the two-day summit, asked Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and European Parliament President Hans-Gert Pöttering  for speed and fairness in negotiations over a free-trade agreement between Central America and the European Union.

The free-trade deal is the most controversial part of a larger accord that includes political dialogue and EU development aid to Central America. Costa Rica and its neighbors are demanding greater and quicker tariff reductions than the EU has been willing to give – especially on agricultural goods such as bananas and pineapples. Costa Rica also asks that negotiations finish by the first semester of 2009. 

“Costa Rica and the Central American countries want to make clear to the EU that we won't pay dearly for a second-class agreement,” Roberto Echandi, head of the Costa Rican negotiating team, told the daily La Nación.

Also at the summit, some 60 delegations held discussions on inequality, poverty and social harmony, according to a Casa Presidencial press release. Heads of state discussed strategies to deal with surging food prices, and Zapatero pledged to create a fund to ensure that the region's poor have access to water.

In a speech about global threats to the environment, Chinchilla emphasized Costa Rica's tree-planting campaign and its pledge to become carbon neutral in 2021 – more than a decade after Arias leaves office.  

Arias could not attend the summit because his vocal chords are seriously irritated. 

By Nick Wilkinson
Tico Times Staff | nwilkinson@ticotimes.net

Costa Rica's commission to investigate the nation's involvement with leftwing Colombian guerrilla fighters has approved a motion to also probe homeland links with the other side of Colombia's struggle, its rightwing paramilitaries.

The Legislative Assembly formed the commission in April after a controversy erupted over comments by then-Public Security Minister Fernando Berrocal in March when he said certain “political sectors” in the country are linked to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Within three days, President Oscar Arias fired Berrocal – a mere 24 hours before he was scheduled to report to the assembly about these political sectors.

Within a week, some legislators, many of whom were angry with Arias for sacking Berrocal before his testimony, created the commission.

Lawmaker José Merino, the last Socialist standing in the assembly and the only member of the leftist Broad Front Party with a seat, filed the motion to expand the commission's scope.

Merino's name is mentioned in the 387-page stack of documents collected by Berrocal and submitted to the assembly, allegedly detailing the FARC links. But the legislator has played a prominent role on the commission, often picked to raise the first question and famously rounding off long monologues that sometimes lead to a question.

Merino alleged Berrocal's documents could be a smokescreen to hide politicians' ties to the paramilitaries, not just FARC.

Berrocal has since disavowed the fact Merino's name appears in the document and said the lawmaker's involvement with FARC in the late 1990s was legitimate because it was authorized by then-President José Figueres as part of a legitimate peace initiative. This, he said, was before FARC metamorphosed into a drug-running cartel and abandoned its revolutionary identity.

The commission has until July to complete its investigation and report to the entire Assembly. But they could easily expand their mandate by a majority vote.