Free Documentary Presentation
“La Isla de la Juventud,” Cuba, June 10, 7 p.m., Sala Calle 15, Ca. 15, Av. 2.

R&Beats in Concert
Jazz, el soul, el funk, June 10, 9 p.m., Jazz Café, Escazú. Info: 2288-4740.

Photography Exhibit
By Projecto Simbiosis, opened through June 12, at Edificio de Filosofía y Letras, of Universidad Nacional, Heredia.

A top-tier producer of medical devices opened its second production facility in Costa Rica Tuesday, with an elaborate ceremony held to commemorate the investment, including a presidential tour of the production lines to top off the event.

With its second building – located in the Propark free-trade zone near Alajuela, northwest of San José – Boston Scientific has close to doubled its original 2004 investment in Costa Rica, with the new facility's price reaching nearly $30 million. The company, which already employs 1,700 workers in its operations here, is also expecting to double the number of employees in the coming two years, said Jorge Perera, the company's vice president of operations in Costa Rica.

The jobs cross the educational spectrum, ranging from highly specialized engineering positions to the trained, technical positions that would involve piecing together the intricate devices for which the company is known worldwide. About 60 percent of employees work technical jobs that don't require a university degree, while the other 40 percent are positions that require higher education, Perera said.

President Oscar Arias spoke at the opening ceremony of the reputation for innovation of not only the company, but of the city of Boston, where he attended Boston University.

“(Boston) is a city where it's not important the hat on top of your head, but the ideas inside it,” Arias said. That is now a reality here, he said, after years of investment in education.

Arias' remarks were echoed by Boston Scientific's vice president of operations based outside the United States, Gary Hicks.

“We picked Costa Rica to build this plant because this country offers a skilled, well-educated population,” he said. “And that is very important for us. We view it as much as an investment in people as in facilities.”

Boston Scientific – based out of Natick, Massachusetts, in the U.S., established its first plant in Costa Rica in the Global Park free-trade zone near Heredia, north of the capital, in 2004. The Costa Rican facilities are the company's largest producers of specialized equipment for treating diseases along the gastrointestinal tract, which runs from the mouth to the anus.

The company has almost 29,000 employees worldwide, with 15,000 different products made in 26 plants across the globe. The company is the largest manufacturer of “non-invasive” equipment, and supplies the equipment to almost every country across the globe, said Hicks.

See the June 12 print or PDF edition of The Tico Times for more on this story.

Costa Rica's coastline may be small and less populous in comparison to other Latin American countries, but its waters seem to indicate otherwise.

According to a press release from Casa Presidencial, Costa Rica's coastal waters are home to 6,777 different species of marine life, which makes up 3.5 percent of the world's known marine species.

These numbers are the result of a study by the noted University of Costa Rica (UCR) researcher Jorge Cortés and the German expert Ingo Wehrtmann, who consulted more than 50 marine specialists and published the findings in the recently published book “Marine Biodiversity of Costa Rica, Central America.”

At a press conference on Tuesday, Cortés said an important part of the research was the comparison of Costa Rica's coastline with other Latin American countries.

“The diversity of this country is much higher per square kilometer than other nations such as Brazil, Colombia and Chile,” Cortés noted in the press release.

All three countries far surpass Costa Rica's 1,290 kilometer (801 mile) coastal boundary.

While the study spells good news for Costa Rica's reputation as the world's focal point for biodiversity, Randall Arauz, president of the Marine Turtle and Restoration Program (PRETOMA) said the announcement throws a load of accountability onto the country's shoulders.

“It just shows again the (degree of) responsibility that Cost Rica has to have. Political decisions should be oriented towards decisions of saving this biodiversity.”

The government of Nicaragua has granted political asylum to Peruvian indigenous leader Alberto Pizango, who is wanted in Peru on charges of inciting violent protests over oil exploration rights in the Amazon.

Pizango is charged with sedition after allegedly leading an indigenous group in protest over Amazon land usage rights. The protests turned violent last weekend when police tried to break up a roadblock, resulting in more than 50 deaths, according to wire reports.

Pizango, who has been hiding in the Nicaraguan embassy in Lima since Monday, was granted asylum Tuesday by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, according to Sandinista Front founder and Nicaraguan Ambassador to Peru Tomás Borge.

Borge, who is currently in Managua, told local media outlets that Pizango's case “has all the characteristics of a political issue” and is under review by the Organization of American States and Peruvian Congress.

“Our (only) alternative, taking into account the spirit of solidarity (Nicaraguan) President Daniel Ortega holds with those who supposedly (suffer) political persecution, is to offer political asylum to Alberto Pizango,” Borge said.

Foreign policy experts say the issue of asylum is very politicized in Latin America.

Emilio Alvarez, Nicaragua's former foreign minister, told The Nica Times that the Pizango case is “definitely politicized” and in line with “leftist government's defense of people who feel exploited.”

However, Alvarez did not rule out that Nicaragua's decision was in part a tit for tat response to the Peruvian government's decision to recently grant asylum to Venezuelan opposition leader Manuel Rosales – a decision that was harshly criticized by the government of Hugo Chávez, Ortega's closest political ally.

Alvarez added that Nicaragua appears to be gaining an international reputation itself for granting political asylum to controversial figures. Last year, President Ortega gave asylum to four alleged guerrillas and sympathizers of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia following the bombing of a jungle camp in Ecuador by the Colombian military.

But not everyone is coming to Nicaragua seeking refuge. Some are fleeing.

Nicaraguan journalist Georgina Lupiac recently became the second Nicaraguan this year to be granted political asylum in the United States after she convinced a U.S. Immigration Court that she was a victim of political persecution in Nicaragua and that her personal safety was in danger if she returned home.

The other Nicaraguan woman granted asylum in the U.S. earlier this year was a former campaign volunteer for opposition candidate Eduardo Montealegre who was attacked by a Sandinista mob in the post-electoral violence, according to a report on the Web Site worldnetdaily.com.

Former Sandinista Deputy Foreign Minister Victor Hugo Tinoco said all asylum cases are different and need to be judged individually. He said the impact of the Pizango case on Nicaragua's foreign relations will depend on the Peruvian government's reaction.