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American Legion Post CR10 Meeting
With guest speaker Randall Lindner, post member, accountant and enrolled agent with the IRS, March 3, noon, Bello Horizonte Country Club, Escazú. Info: 2228-6014.

Manuel Obregón Guanacaste Tour
March 3, 8 p.m., La Fulana Cosa, Nicoya. Info: 8389-2031, obregonm@racsa.co.cr.

San José National Band in Concert
March 3, 4:30 p.m., Plaza de la Democracia, San José.

Technology Institute Festival
March 3, features folklore dance show by Tierra y Cosecha Group, 11 a.m., Technology Institute (TEC), Cartago; Play “Our World,” noon, TEC; Modern Dance Show, 6 p.m., Casa de la Ciudad, Cartago; Ángel Castro Trio in concert, 7 p.m., Casa de la Ciudad, Cartago.

Diplomat: René Castro, who has served in ministerial posts in several National Liberation Party administrations and who managed Laura Chinchilla's successful run for the presidency, was named the foreign minister in the new government.

Photo courtesy of Foreign Ministry

President-elect Laura Chinchilla gave the country its first glimpse into her cabinet Tuesday, when she named campaign manager René Castro to head the Foreign Ministry.

Castro, a longtime civil servant who has served in a variety of government posts, will replace Bruno Stagno, who will be Costa Rica's ambassador to the United Nations. The appointment was made in time for the Pathways to Prosperity ministerial summit that begins Wednesday, March 3.

During his acceptance speech at the Casa Amarilla, headquarters of the Foreign Ministry, on Tuesday, Castro said, “I humbly aspire to maintain the high regard (the administration of President Oscar Arias) has earned for Costa Rica in the world in issues relating to peace, disarmament and human rights, which has been the seal of President Arias' administration and of Foreign Minister Bruno Stagno.”

A graduate of the University of Costa Rica, Castro earned a master's degree and a doctorate from Harvard University, in Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States He served as environment minister, vice minister of the interior and transportation and public works minister. He's a frequent lecturer and visiting professor at INCAE Business School in Costa Rica and at Harvard University and has served as a consultant for the United Nations Development Program.

Chinchilla, who said she is using “all the time I have” to make appointments, also named members of her transition team. These include her brother, Adrián Chinchilla Miranda; President Arias' daughter, Silvia Arias; former Tourism Minister Carlos Roesch; and former Finance Minister Jorge Walter Bolaños.

Of the transition process, Adrián Chinchilla said it would be a “civic fiesta ” with ample participation of Costa Rican citizens.

In her first appearance at the Costa Rican Chamber of Commerce since being elected president of the nation on Feb. 7, Laura Chinchilla and her economic team presented their ideas for this and coming years.

Though some sectors of the economy have begun to show signs of recovery in recent months, Chinchilla and company assured listeners that the seeds of stability must be planted first.

“Costa Rica finds itself, surprisingly, in a good position after a type of crisis that we had never experienced, and I think that, thanks to the action taken by the government of President Oscar Arias and thanks to the steps that we have taken in the financial system, we didn't see a dramatic reduction in the gross domestic product (GDP),” said Luis Liberman, Chinchilla's second vice president and a former general manager of Scotiabank. “However, we did see the unemployment rate grow by almost 4 percent. That is not acceptable. So, in our case, we are looking at the things that we need to do to establish the levels of growth necessary for people both young and old to find work and reactivate the economy.”

Liberman explained that, in order to reactivate economic growth, a Chinchilla administration will center economic efforts on three central themes: generating public investment, housing, and the development of small projects within communities and municipalities. Due to a decrease in investment in the country – both foreign and local – several sectors of the country, such as construction, experienced significant drops in production in 2009. Lieberman explained that while foreign direct investment is expected to remain steady, it would be the investment of local businesses and municipalities that boosts production in the ailing sectors.

“We need to promote a series of projects at the local and municipal levels,” he said. “Local projects are much easier than big projects and, more than that, local projects create jobs for local workers while developing the city. We hope that funds will be contributed to these projects in the short term and that this will lead to longer-term development.”

Chinchilla concluded by reiterating that economic opportunity exists in the environment sector, as further development of environmentally sustainable practices are expected to generate more jobs in the upcoming years. Throughout her campaign, Chinchilla mentioned the creation of “green” jobs through improving environmental practices as an aid to increase employment.

“Two of the biggest treasures of this country are the intelligence of the people and the wealth and beauty of the environment,” she said. “And, because of that, we must keep generating wealth by continuing to develop the great opportunity that the creation of a sustainable environment presents.”

For further analysis of Chinchilla's economic plans and the anticipated economic recovery, see the March 5 print and digital editions of the Tico Times.

Just as industries across the board scramble for bits of the government's shrunken public coffers, artists are fighting for their slice of the pie, too. Their struggle could gather momentum this month as representatives from the cultural sector open up the floor for a national dialogue on a proposed Ley General de Cultura (General Culture Law), which its advocates hope will send a lifeline to one of the country's most overlooked sectors.

The cultural contribution to Costa Rica and its economy of culture and the arts is hugely undervalued, according to Elizabeth Fonseca, who is making her final push as legislator to get the bill into congressional debate. Fonseca, of the Citizen Action Party, will lose her seat when new lawmakers take office on May 8.

But organizations such as the alternative theater association Teatro Giratablas and performing arts network Red Costarricense de las Artes Escénicas have pledged to carry on the torch and continue lobbying for the new legal framework for culture and the arts. Fonseca and leaders of these groups spoke to the press on Tuesday at the Spanish Cultural Center in San José's Barrio Escalante, announcing a public consultation on their bid for a new culture law.

State spending once hovered above 1 percent of the national budget but, by 2007, the government had slashed it down to a dismal 0.3 percent, according to Fonseca. A likely pillar of the law would be to improve national arts funding through measures such as offering attractive tax incentives to corporations that want to chip in.

Fonseca's proposal also intends to chip away at what she described as a highly "centralized" administration in the Culture Ministry in San José, advocating greater autonomy for the arts in Costa Rica's seven provinces.

Not everyone's in favor of the legislation. Virginia Pérez Ratton, director and curator at the gallery Teorética who recently won the nation's top culture prize, the Premio Magón, criticized the proposed law last year in an article in the daily La Nación, claiming it would pose a threat to independent cultural expression and could lead to a degree of state ownership of the arts and self-censorship among artists.

During Tuesday's conference, Fonseca fired back and accused Pérez of having an "elitist" idea of what culture is.

To find out what the rest of the diverse sector thinks, the arts associations have been carrying out focus groups to assess the ideas and needs of industry members, from actors to painters to filmmakers, according to Giratablas director Giancarlo Protti.

From May 11 through 13, he said, he will participate in forums at the Spanish Cultural Center on the issue with university students, artists and academics to seek further input.

Anyone interested in information about these activities can write to culturacr@gmail.com.