Free Poetry Recital
Feminine poetry, 7 p.m., Casa Azul, 150 m. north, 25 east of UNA, Heredia.

Film Festival Cinema Avant Garde
Features U.S.A. shorts “Window Water Baby Moving” (1962, 19 min.); “Night Music” (1986, 4 min.); “Mothligth” (1963, 4 min.); “Kindering” (1987 3 min.) and “The Dante Quartet” (1987, 6 min.), 6 p.m., Contemporary Art and Design Museum, CENAC.

Costa Rican President Oscar Arias said yesterday the U.S. financial crisis will cause increased poverty in Latin America.

“If such a big, powerful economy has difficulties, that is clearly going to affect Latin America, which is very dependent on the United States,” Arias said in an interview on San José's Radio Monumental. “If the United States is poorer, it will buy fewer products from us, the companies will invest less, and fewer tourists will come here.”

The effects of the crisis are already being felt in Costa Rica because Lehman Brothers investment bank, which has declared bankruptcy, was financing an $800 million tourist project that will no longer be carried out.

The U.S. House of Representatives yesterday voted down a plan for a $700 billion bailout of troubled Wall Street firms, though legislative leaders said they will keep trying to pass some kind of rescue for the financial sector.

While agreeing that the U.S. government should help the financial sector, Arias criticized the ease with which such huge sums are available for the financial crisis yet “how difficult it is to increase aid for the development” of poor countries.

He noted the $700 billion, added to $300 billion the U.S. has already given some companies to save them from bankruptcy, represents 10 times more aid than the world gives to developing countries populated by some 1.4 billion people.

Arias said leftist-ruled Venezuela provides “four or five times” more aid to Latin America than Washington does.

“That's the truth, and I'm not making any value judgment,” Arias said a day after U.S. Ambassador to Costa Rica Peter Cianchette was quoted in the daily La Nación as being “surprised” at Arias' recent praise for Venezuela's Hugo Chávez.

“(Chávez) has put into practice projects to finance petroleum sales to countries that buy oil from Venezuela and, for better or for worse, if that is an advantage for the people of Costa Rica, I'm going to join PetroCaribe because I was elected to protect Costa Rican interests,” Arias said.

PetroCaribe is an initiative under which Caracas supplies crude on generous terms to 17 developing nations in the Caribbean and Central America.

Cianchette also said he hoped Costa Rican membership in PetroCaribe “would not lead to other situations.”

“Membership in PetroCaribe means nothing more than that. It does not mean joining ALBA,” Arias told Radio Monumental, referring to the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, Chávez's regional alliance.

Costa Rica's Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court (Sala IV) ordered two more public agencies to provide information requested by citizens.

The court ordered the Foreign Trade Promotion Office (PROCOMER) to provide to Erick Gómez information relating to a company called Las Brisas, which operates in a free-trade zone.

And it ordered the University of Costa Rica (UCR) to provide to Albán Bonilla information about staff salaries.

The rulings also ordered PROCOMER and UCR to pay the legal fees for the individuals who filed requests for injunction ( recursos de amparo ) after the agencies declined their requests. The agencies must also admit they were wrong in denying the information requested.

The penalties for violating the court's order range from three months to two years in prison for the agencies' directors or fines ranging from 20 to 60 days' worth of their salary.

“The high court in its injunctions makes evident (these agencies) violated the right to information,” states a court press release.

Sala IV has been active in the last several months ordering the government to comply with Article 30 of the Constitution.

The court recently ordered the Oscar Arias administration to provide the press with documents relating to secret bond agreements with China.

Article 30 “guarantees” free access to information from government entities about “matters of public interest,” except when they relate to “state secrets.” The article does not further define either term.

MANAGUA, Nicaragua – Evoking former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, Managua mayoral hopeful Eduardo Montealegre spoke before a crowd of some 15,000 supporters Sunday to launch his campaign, calling on all voters to unite in their opposition to President Daniel Ortega.

“President Ortega, tear down these billboards,” Montealegre said, referring to the monstrous pink Sandinista billboards covering the capital city, and remembering that Reagan called on former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall 21 years ago.

Representing the Liberal Constitutional Party, Montealegre, a former banker, finance minister and presidential runner-up to Ortega in 2006, is taking on Sandinista mayoral candidate and former three-time boxing champion Alexis Argüello, whom Montealegre claims is unfit for the job.

“The mayor's office is not a boxing ring. We need a qualified person with experience to administer resources,” Montealegre told the crowd gathered in the Plaza de la Fe.

The rally was originally scheduled to be held in Managua's Plaza de la Revolución, but the Ortega-controlled Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) denied permission without explanation, even though Argüello's campaign is scheduled to hold a similar rally there next Saturday.

Montealegre urged all anti-Ortega sectors of society, which together represent a clear majority, to unite with him against the Sandinista leader on Election Day, Nov. 9.

Yet not all of the opposition is on board. The Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS), which had its party status canceled two months ago by the CSE, has not endorsed Montealegre because they say that would be legitimizing an election they claim is a sham due to the “illegal” ban preventing them from participating – something they have been challenging before the national courts.

Some in the MRS have already called upon their supporters to vote null in the upcoming vote – a situation that some analysts claim could favor Argüello. The MRS has already announced it is going to take its case before the Inter-American Court on Human Rights since Nicaragua's Supreme Court did not rule on its case before the Sept. 28 official start date to the campaign.

The U.S. Department of State, which has called on the Nicaraguan government to allow international observers for the elections – a request that was denied – acknowledged the official beginning of the campaign and urged the government to “ensure that all Nicaraguans are provided the opportunity to participate in free, fair and transparent elections.”

The State Department also renewed its call for independent observers.

Sandinista candidate Argüello is the only candidate who has come out against international observers, echoing Ortega's position.

Argüello told The Nica Times in a recent interview that he plans to win the mayor's office with “60 percent” of the vote and will immediately start to implement an “aggressive new model” of government that he calls “socialist.”

“If you like it or not, we're going to develop a new model,” Argüello said.

See the Oct. 10 issue of The Nica Times for the full, exclusive interview of Argüello.