Published on www.ticotimes.net
By Alex Leff
Tico Times Staff | aleff@ticotimes.net
Costa Rica elected Laura Chinchilla to be the country’s first woman president Sunday in a festive election day that proved to be a major victory for the incumbent party of President Oscar Arias, of the centrist National Liberation Party (PLN).
Chinchilla, 50, who had stepped down as Arias’ vice president last year to campaign for president, garnered nearly 47 percent of the vote, with 70 percent of the votes counted by 11 p.m. The result confounded most analysts’ expectations and surpassed Chinchilla’s ranking in the polls, which sank to 41.9 percent in a Unimer survey published last week in the daily La Nación.
Ottón Solés, candidate of the center-left Citizen Action Party (PAC), earned just below 25 percent of the vote as of 11 p.m., while the right-wing Libertarian Movement’s (ML) Otto Guevara garnered 21 percent.
After campaigning under the slogan
Publicado: 8 February 2010
0 Comentarios
I bet you don’t know where this picture was taken. It’s a restaurant in the heart of La Antigua, Guatemala, Central America’s amazingly restored colonial showcase. Antigua was once the capital of Spain’s Viceroyalty in this part of the New World, and the Spanish quickly forced the local Mayan populace to convert this valley into a government center worthy of admiration. The city was abandoned, however, after a massive earthquake in 1773 left much of Antigua in ruin, forcing governors to move the capital to Guatemala City. Over the last 35 years, Antigua has enjoyed a resurgence and, after being declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979, the Guatemalan government has invested heavily in the city’s restoration, reconstruction and security.
Today, there is no other place like it in the region, not Granada in Nicaragua, nor San Cristobal de las Casas en Chiapas (Mexico), nor Panama City’s Casco Antiguo. Municipal regulations regarding construction are very strict, in order to preserve the architectural continuity in this city of adobe walls, cobblestone streets and bursting bougainvilleas. So ingrained is the style, in fact, that this fast-food franchise located just off the main square has masked their red-headed spirit of joyful eating so much that, if it weren’t for the telltale beeps, sizzles and smells coming from behind the counter, I would have no idea that I had entered the most famous restaurant chain in the world.
Critical travelers might complain that Antigua has, unlike the other destinations I mentioned above, transformed from a working Guatemalan city into a tourist trap servicing only the well-heeled international set. This is a valid argument. In the very central business district surrounding the Parque Central, you will not find anything catering to the locals. No hardware store, no school supply shops, no barber shops. Instead, there are jewelery shops specializing in hand-crafted, high-priced silver and jade pieces. Restaurants sell beer for three times of what a local joint would consider decent. Peddlers park outside of curio shops and tour agencies, hawking cheap wares to unsuspecting gringos. Gaggles of camera-toting tourists in tank tops and bemused grins snap digital souvenirs of their brief encounter with Guatemala. Meanwhile, much of Guatemala is mired in abject poverty and ethnic conflict. Antigua looks like a polished playground for tourists, an alternate reality in Guatemala.
I have felt this way before. But now, during my third venture into this city over the last nine years, I have come to see Antigua in a different light. While the previously paragraph is certainly a valid interpretation, one can also view the glass as half full. Antigua’s relatively vibrant economic environment allows local designers, artisans, entrepreneurs and creative types to explore their arts. There are some truly unique boutique stores here that simply do not exist anywhere else in the country that one might call more “authentic.”
Additionally, just outside of the main historic heart, Antigua becomes markedly Guatemalan. Businesses cater to a local crowd; the sprawling municipal market teems with vendors, offering a colorful display of locally directed commerce; schools vibrate with the energy of Guatemalan youth.
The governent’s efforts to preserve the city have indeed produced some interesting fruits. Many of the colorful cultural traits that you find throughout Latin America are absent in Antigua: cars here do not honk their horns; loudspeakers mounted on pickup trucks are silent; architectural aberrations and poorly planned parking lots do not exist; sidewalks and streets are uniform, clean and well-maintained; and the city center is safe to walk, day and night.
My new-found enjoyment of this level of services is perhaps due to having lived in this part of the world for nearly a decade. That’s ten years of glorious chaos and haphazard planning. Antigua shows me that, with a few regulations and a little enforcement, a more pleasant (to me, at least) urban environment can be achieved, with relatively little sacrifice.
Yes, English is widely spoken. Prices downtown are out of reach for the average Guatemalan, and foreign influence is palpable. This is nothing new for Antigua, built with Mayan labor at the behest of Spanish conquistadors. Today, even though McDonald’s has joined the party, Antigua feels more Guatemalan than ever. Spanish and indigenous languages are much more prevalent than anything else, and bars and restaurants have mainly local patrons. Antigua is very much a part of Latin America’s history, and a visit here would be quite instructive as to how that history has developed through today, a reflection of Guatemala past, present and future. It’s a living monument, one that will evolve as the country grows and changes. Today, at least, I do not lament those changes. I embrace them, in the way one might accept a sports stadium in one’s neighborhood. It’s not necessarily good or bad. It just is what it is.
Publicado: 5 February 2010
1 Comentario
Tomado de www.nacion.com
Plan de cooperación Sur-Sur
Especialistas de Bután y Benén se encuentran en el paés capacitándose
Costa Rica se beneficia conociendo las ventajas de comer estos animales
Publicado: 2010/02/03
El Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad (INBio) entrena en estos déas a cientéficos de Benén y Bután en la clasificación y cultivo de insectos y hongos.
Mientras en Bután (paés asiático vecino de India y Nepal) los hongos juegan un rol muy importante en la alimentación, en Benén (paés africano entre Togo y Nigeria) la tradición es comer insectos.
La traba que enfrentan es la carencia de conocimiento para aprovechar mejor hongos e insectos, seleccionándolos y cultivándolos.
Según explicó Manuel Zumbado, encargado del proyecto en el InBio, el conocimiento de esta institución en la materia está siendo traspasada a los cientéficos foráneos para que posteriormente puedan aplicarlo en sus paéses de origen.
Publicado: 3 February 2010
1 Comentario
There is a band of machete-toting vigilantes wandering the streets at night in San Pedro de la Laguna, Guatemala. They try to keep the streets clean of criminals. Except that these vigilantes see crime and vice in all those who do not share their Evangelical faith.
Many small towns in Guatemala have formed their own public safety vigilante squads. The police tend to be poorly staffed, trained and equipped, thus leaving towns in need of justice-dispensing. This usually works out pretty well. Here in San Pedro, however, the local goons have taken it to another level by shaking down local Catholics and randomly shutting down bars and restaurants they deem too sinful.
[caption id=”attachment_335″ align=”alignnone” width=”300″ caption=”Above, a sign on a bar/restaurant near my hotel. It reads: THE OWNER OF THIS BUSINESS IS GOD. WE ARE ONLY ADMINISTRATORS. The earth and its fullness, The world, and those who Inhabit it, are the Lord
Publicado: 1 February 2010
3 Comentarios
En abril de este año se iniciará la nueva misión CARTA
La Universidad compró un pequeño avión no tripulado para tomar datos
Agencia espacial aprovechará los viajes para calibrar sensores de satílites
Publicado: 2010/02/01
A partir de abril próximo, un avión no tripulado, de apenas 10 kilogramos, sorteará las nubes ticas, llevando a bordo alta tecnologéa para conocer desde el aire el estado de los réos, bosques, volcanes y clima de nuestro paés.
Esto será parte de la iniciativa CARTA-UCR, un proyecto de cooperación bilateral entre la Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR) y cuatro centros especializados de la agencia espacial NASA: el Centro Espacial Kennedy, el Goddard Space Flight Center, el Centro de Investigaciones Ames y el Laboratorio de Propulsión a Chorro.
El CARTA-UCR buscará darles continuidad a dos misiones anteriores, cumplidas en el paés en el 2003 y el 2005, en las que participaron expertos de NASA y de varios centros de investigación ticos, como el Centro Nacional de Alta Tecnologéa (Cenat), la UCR y la Universidad Nacional (UNA).
Sin embargo, esta tercera misión pretende ser permanente y, con ello, abarcar más áreas de investigación durante todo el año.
Equipamiento. El pequeño avión de la UCR llegará al paés el próximo mes y tiene a bordo varios aparatos: entre ellos, cámaras fotográficas digitales de alta definición, aunque estas solo capturan dos dimensiones (ejes
Publicado: 1 February 2010
0 Comentarios
