Concert
By Árbol de Pie and DJ Domuncolo, electroacoustic fusion, Dec. 28 at 9:30 p.m., Jazz Café, San Pedro.

Neon Body Party
With Dj Monik, ZDan and Dj James, Dec. 28, 9 p.m., Liquid Lounge Bar, Manuel Antonio, 2777-5158.

Allan Aguilar in Concert
With Hits of the 70's, 80's and 90's, Dec. 28, 7:30 p.m., Terrace Launge, Los Sueños Resort and Marina, 2630-4250, 2630-4111.

Motif Inc., a Sunnyvale, California-based outsourcing company, announced they will open a new service center in Costa Rica. The company, which provides customer support, back office processing, research and analytics and online fraud prevention services to Fortune 500 companies, said they intend to invest $2.5 million in the center, which is set to begin operations in January 2010.

“This is a significant milestone in Motif's history,” said Chris Meneze, Motif's president and CEO. “Our new Costa Rica center expands our international footprint and language capabilities, while positioning Motif for further growth.”

Costa Rica continues to be a prime location for outsourcing companies looking to establish bilingual capacity. According to the Costa Rican Investment Board (CINDE), Motif is the 83rd business to operate a service center in the country. Motif announced intentions to hire 100 employees in January and as many as 500 when the center is fully staffed.

CINDE reports that service centers employ 24,000 Costa Ricans.

According to Motif, Costa Rica will become another of the company's global delivery centers, joining those in Ahmadabad, India, and Manila, Philippines. The Costa Rican center will be located in the Heredia free trade zone, northwest of San José.

See the Dec. 24 print or digital edition of The Tico Times for more on free trade zones.

There's a last-minute movement afoot to close bars on Election Day.

A handful of concerned residents have organized a letter-writing campaign to change election rules in time for the Feb. 7 elections, fearing that drunks will interfere with voters going to the polls.

Since 1952, Costa Rica has prohibited the sale of alcohol on national election days to prevent violence stemming from consumption. The law was implemented after the 1948 elections, a five-week period remembered as the bloodiest time in Costa Rican history.

“Voters should be able to vote in peace, without disorder or drunks,” said Gloria Morales, a lead activist in the campaign. “And drunks shouldn't be bribed for votes in open cantinas.”

Legislators approved a new election code in July and decided to sack the clause relating to the sale of alcohol. Now bars are permitted to stay open through the elections.

The legislators who approved the change said the law served no purpose other than to drain potential revenue away from bars and restaurants.

“We think this law is obsolete,” Kattia Monge, aide to Congressman Mario Núñez, who authored the motion to repeal the law, told The Tico Times while the motion was being debated. “And, in reality, it is no longer necessary. We haven't had a violent conflict relating to elections in decades” (TT, May 22).

But Morales is scared about the effect the change may have and doesn't want to take the risk.

“We don't want drunks to stand in the way of the voting,” she said.

The Catholic Church of El Salvador said yesterday that it hopes that 2010 will be a “year of peace,” at the same time that it appears that 2009 will finish as one of the most violent years in that country's history, with a record-setting toll of more than 4,000 homicides.

“This year has been extremely violent … and I hope that, precisely for this reason, next year will be a year of peace” said San Salvador Archbishop José Luís Escobar, in a press conference.

The Archbishop said he hopes that Salvadoran society can arrive at an accord similar to that reached in 1992 that put an end to that country's civil war, which would allow the overcoming of “any ideological or political differences.”

In his judgment, “when you touch bottom and everything seems lost,” then you are “close to a solution.”

According to figures reported this Sunday by the daily Diario de Hoy, the National Civil Police (PNC) recorded 4,240 murders between the 1st of January and the 21st of December, 2009, for an average of 12 per day.

Of this total, 558 were women and 426 were children, the newspaper reported, and added that most of the victims (2,986), “were between 18 and 40 years of age, meaning that they were at the peak of their productive lives.”

Police sources indicated that 70 percent of the murders were related to gangs, which were described as “the principal sources of murders.”

The newspaper report said that the majority of violence was concentrated in 25 municipalities in five of the country's departments. The capital city of San Salvador was the most violent city, with 296 murders during the year.

The government of President Mauricio Funes has put in place a strategy to combat crime involving sending soldiers to the most conflictive areas to support the work of the police.