Latin American Film Festival
“Changuarín:maestro de generaciones” (Changuarín: a Master for the Ages), Panama, tonight; “Un día sin sexo” (A Day Without Sex), Peru, tomorrow; “Miranda regresa” (Looking Back), Venezuela, Oct. 29; “Cuando rompen las olas” (When the Waves Break), Colombia, Oct. 30; all shows at 4 and 6 p.m., Variedades Theater, Calle 5, Avenida Central/1, 2222-6108.

Halloween at White House Hotel
Haunted house, through Nov. 1, 6-11 p.m. San Antonio de Escazú, 600 m south of cemetery. 2288-6362, www.whitehousecostarica.com

Mundoloco concerts
Electro Band and Dan Robinson, electro hip-hop, 10 p.m., Jazz Café, San Pedro. 2253-8933.

Martes por la Noche Concerts
Violin and piano, Oct. 27; clarinet concert, Oct. 28; guitar concert, Oct. 29, all at 7 p.m., UCR Music School, Room 107, San Pedro.

The Costa Rican health minister and a group of congressional members have proposed a legislative initiative before the Legislative Assembly to legalize the use of the emergency contraceptive known as the morning-after pill.

Currently, there are no legal statutes that regulate the selling of the pill in Costa Rica, and the authorities' objective is to distribute it free of charge via the Social Security System (the Caja).

In declarations published in the daily La Nación, Heath Minister María Luisa Avila explained that the pill is not a means of abortion, as the Catholic Church and other opposition groups claim.

“What the pill does is inhibit or delay the release of the ovule and prevents fertilization,” she said, adding that if the egg is already fertilized, the medication does not affect it, and as such, does not terminate a pregnancy.

Eight legislators from various parties backed the ministry's position, but were met with strong opposition from other lawmakers.

Congresswoman Ana Elena Chacón, from the Social Christian Unity Party (PUSC), said that opposition to this method of contraception is due to a “double standard” and the “prejudices” of many people.

According to Chacón, the use of this method of contraception would enable a reduction in the rate of teen pregnancies, which currently account for 20 percent of births in Costa Rica.

On the other side, evangelical legislator Guyón Massey maintained that the pill is a means of abortion and that he will categorically oppose the measure to legalize it in Costa Rica.

The bill is currently being debated in a legislative commission, but, according to Chacón, could be up for vote on the assembly's floor by next year.

A free-trade agreement between Panama and Costa Rica will take effect next month, and tariffs will drop beginning in January, the Foreign Trade Ministry (COMEX) announced Friday after a visit by Panamanian President Martín Torrijos.

The treaty, signed in August 2007 and ratified by the Legislative Assembly earlier this month, will allow 91 percent of Costa Rican exports to Panama to cross the border duty-free immediately. With a few exceptions, the remaining products will lose their tariffs over three to 17 years. The treaty also allows the Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE) to offer services in Panama, exempting ICE from laws restricting other state telecom providers.

“The best way to protect people from the inevitable fluctuations in the economy is to open our markets and diversify our production,” President Oscar Arias said at a press conference Friday with Torrijos. “We respond to fear and desperation with more free-trade agreements, more foreign investment and more incentives for the products we export.”

In other news, Torrijos said he may call on Central American countries for technical help on a $5.25 billion project to expand the Panama Canal. Still, he added, the state would fill as many jobs as possible using Panamanian labor.

MANAGUA, Nicaragua – Leaders from the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS) opposition party yesterday publicly backed Eduardo Montealegre in his run for Managua mayor, according to political sources.

MRS leaders, including Edmundo Jarquín, ex-Sandinista guerrilla Dora María Téllez, former lawmakers Victor Hugo Tinoco, Enrique Sáenz and Hugo Torres, endorsed Montealegre yesterday, citing the Liberal Constitutional Party candidate's opposition to the “dictatorship and persecution” by President Daniel Ortega's administration and his Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) party against their political opposition.

Lawmaker Hugo Torres pointed out that figures of national pride such as the poet and priest Ernesto Cardenal and singer-author Carlos Mejía Godoy “are still vilified and abused” by the Ortega government.

“This is the same Somocista attitude that we Sandinistas encountered when we were fighting against the (Anastasio) Somoza dictatorship,” said Torres, who served as foreign minister under the first Sandinista government from 1979 to 1990.

The MRS leader added that the Ortega administration has also threatened civil society human rights organizations, including lawyer Vilma Núñez de Escorcia and her management team; journalists Carlos Fernando Chamorro Barrios, Sofía Montenegro, Patricia Orozco and others; and the Civil Coordinating Committee, a citizen movement that includes some 600 nongovernmental organizations, social movements and individuals.

Téllez stated, “We are not supporting Eduardo Montealegre under the table, nor do we have a policy of throwing stones and hiding our hands (‘ tirar la piedra y esconder la mano' ). The MRS in Managua and throughout the country is calling on everyone to vote against the dictatorship.”

Téllez also asked PLC lawmakers not to approve a proposal for constitutional reform that would permit Ortega to be reelected to the presidency, should it be presented in the parliament.

Jarquín, MRS coalition coordinator, emphasized that the support for Montealegre and his running mate Enrique Quiñonez was not personally motivated, as some media outlets had stated, but that the decision had been made unanimously by MRS leadership.

“One cannot say that there is conflict between revolution and counterrevolution, because, for starters, there is no revolution in Nicaragua, if not a regression to the worst forms of dictatorial governance that we are all too familiar with,” said Jarquín.

Montealegre, for his part, said that he maintained solidarity with the MRS in light of the Supreme Electoral Council's June 11 resolution that invalidated the party's legal status, excluding it from current electoral contests, a move he attributed to “ Ortegan violations and abuses of power.”

Montealegre also said that he would not support a constitutional amendment that would permit Ortega's reelection.

Nicaragua will hold municipal elections in 146 of 153 districts on Nov. 9. Elections in the other seven municipalities, all in the North Caribbean, will take place Jan. 18.

Montealegre holds a slight lead of 36.4 percent in the race for Managua mayor over FSLN candidate and former boxing champion Alexis Argüello, who has 32 percent support, according to a poll published last week by the Nicaraguan group, MyR.