Real corruption in Costa Rica

Given the recent discussions, it only seemed appropriate to point out some real issues with the corruption in Costa Rica. Poor treatment of the indigenous people. From Inside Costa Rica:

In what appears to be the latest attack on the Indigenous of Costa Rica involving land claims issues, security guards of Italian businessman, Idolo Augustine Mastronei, violently removed a group of Bribri families in the Talamanca region of Costa Rica according to Intercontinental Cry.
...
As a precautionary measure, the nearly 10 Bribri families, who were clearly unlawfully removed their lands, are now forbidden to return home or tend to their harvest.

This is a removal of basic human rights. If anyone has this business man's email, I would like to write him a letter.

and this has to do with tourism, how???

if you want this man's email address, you will have to search for it like the rest of us. better yet, why don't you come on down and look him up and give him a piece of your mind in person!

can we not get into a long and sordid discussion of the rights of indigenous peoples when we all know what has happened to them all over the world? not only that -- this is just the beginning of the story and we don't know what will happen on page 2.

It seems a little hypocritical that bribing a cop receives so much criticism on this forum but indigenous people being taken out of their homes is not worth discussing...

And yes, I realize that this subject deviates from the typical, "how does my 12-day itinerary look?" post.

being arrested for bribing a traffic cop is an appropriate topic for a tourism forum because some tourists would be inclined to do this so it's just a warning.

removing indigenous peoples from their land is not an appropriate topic for this forum. maybe we could then discuss the investors in a ponzi scheme here who are still trying to get their money back.

and yes, this forum is actually for people who want to ask about their travel here.

someone was critical of your stance on bribing traffic police, ludwip. just get over it. people criticize stuff here all the time.

I wasn't aware this was a tourism forum, I thought it was a travel forum.

Glad to see this mentioned. I read about it first thing this morning and couldn't believe it.

to me that is interesting information. In 2009 I was illegally detained, (mildly) physically abused, and robbed by the Police of Puerto Viejo following an incident in Hone Creek, which is very close to BriBri. In fact, I was directed by a lawyer to go to the government office in BriBri to file a "denuncia". I was not arrested - I had committed no offence (although I was repatedly told that I had done). The reason for my abduction was that I had witnessed said police beating on a local. I must say that the police seemed very comfortable with the whole process of beating up locals in the middle of the street, abducting foriegn nationals and having their petty power-trip ways. They seemed quite expert, in fact. Following all this I went to a clinic in Hone Creek and the English-speaking doctor told me he was "sick and tired" of examining people who said they were victims of police brutality.
When they returned my belongings to me and all grins about their job well done, told me to get going, I left the comiseria, walked 30 meters, and encountered the smell of marijuana wafting through the air.
That smells like corruption to me.
It seems to me there are real issues with corruption around BriBri (why wouldn't there be - there are everywhere else?) - so be careful - CR has a reputation for stability that the other CA countries don't have, but that's a thin veneer around BriBri.
I'm with ludwip on this one, wiremu - I don't think the forum's guidelines would exclude this kind of dicussion.

LP guide book, 9th edition, Oct 2010, chapter on The Culture, boxed text page 45, titled Endangered Cultures, touches on the government policies regarding indigenous people in Costa Rica.

Lonely Planet is not famous for its anti-corruption or anti-environmental descecration positions. I quote:

"The Honduras & Bay Islands Lonely Planet features a Green Iguana, tethered in preparation for sale or consumption on its front cover. The Green Iguana is a protected species in Honduras and this is both an illegal and cruel activity. Once a Green Iguana is captured the tendons are cut out of the back legs and used to tether them together. Pregnant females are particularly valuable and so their stomachs are tied to prevent them from laying their eggs. They may be left in a pile, alive, until they are to be sold or eaten.

There are wonderful conservation efforts all over Central America to protect this species. Lonely Planet should do the right thing. They should withdraw all copies with this cover and make a sizeable donation to Green Iguana conservation in Honduras. They should not be profiting by promoting their book with a photograph of an illegal and cruel activity. Will they be putting photographs of dolphin slaughters on the next cover of their Japan edition?"

They also permit a certain element to advocate the wholesale extermination spiders and snakes.

It's a travel guide not a cookbook. Get over it.
http://www.amazon.com/Lonely-Planet-Honduras-Islands-Country/dp/174059150X/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1311132312&sr=1-7#reader_174059150X

OP. Don't waste your time e-mailing the business man. Here is the reply.

Below is a excerpt from the book "Ayn Rand Answers". This came from a Q and A session following her Address To The Graduating Class Of The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, March 6, 1974.

Now, do you have a travel topic?

I think it's a perfectly legitimate (and under-reported) travel topic to provide information on the history of the places to which people travel, including ugly history such as how the destination came to be occupied by tourism-oriented development in place of its indigenous peoples, and including recent history in the same vein. For superficial guidance on which places serve the best umbrella drinks, one can just read a guidebook. A lot of travelers, and I'm one of them, want a deeper sense of the places we visit.

As to Ms. Rand, I think her anthropology was as reductionist, self-serving, and false as the rest of her philosophy.

There are travel options in the Reserva Talamanca and around Bribri that directly benefit the indigenous people of the region. Certainly they can use tourists dollars in this economically depressed area not only for day to day living but their struggles to try and preserve culture against multinational mining and oil interests, banana and pineapple growers, hydroelectric projects and people such as this fine Italian gentleman. The list goes on. This sad scenario is still unfortunately repeated around the world.

Corruption in Costa Rica? It's the way things get done here. No surprise there.

I agree with Wiremu points about the relation this article and issue has with travel, as well as the fact its a far cry from bribing a cop in the scheme of things. That said, as Paul says, there is a ugly side to every country and its racist, prejudices and minority under representation and human rights abuses, which on the caribe coast of all of Central America and much of South America, a distinct abuse by governments against indigenous peoples is well documented and an ongoing issue for almost all the countries.

When I explored this area in the article, it was 2005, I drove to Bribri and hired a local guide to escort me to the Talamanca indians reservations, I had called the day prior and was all set, I arrived at 8am and he met me at the cafe next to the bank, but then told me he had to go to San Jose as his mother was very ill there, and handed me a map, with his cell and his name written on it. Off I went to discover the peoples living somewhat in current times, as many had running water and electricity, though the majority of the tribes are well hidden in remote areas of the park and outsiders are not welcome. I dont think the Indians were even represented in the legislature in the capitol then, as far as getting funds for roads, schools, clinics and having a say on how the country managed, or protected their lands. This changed a few later, though I dont know what benefits it has paid to the indigenous peoples.

Anyway, on my voyage thru these hot dusty and gravel backroads, I got very lost, so I picked up a policeman walking on the road and got my bearing and arrived in a small town some 20KM from Bribri, and was toured the area by his sister. I then headed back, and got lost again, as there are no signs, you kind of pick the road with the most wear/tire tracks figuring its the most popular/frequent route. As I was lost as could be but not caring, I came across a mother/daughter walking and offered a ride to get my bearings, lucky for me the daughter, in her 30's I figure, was a doctor in Hone Creek and now had a navigator all the way back, after we dropped mom at a small town. I felt I was going in circles at this point, but anyway, this DR was partially fluent in English, so we chatted about basics, the the needs of the clinic in Hone Creek. When we arrived I got a 5 start tour with 2 other DR's, its a very nice clinic for a remote area near the end of the road on the caribe coast.

One thing she mentioned was the issues they had with emergency patients due to violence, I was not sure if this was from Pt Viejo and the crack/drug issues, or just violence in general. The plantation workers she said were the main issues, they are poor, living in near poverty, and many are migrants from Panama and even Nica. Drinking and Drugs were the culprit.

I now I can see the story above being true, and the local police treating these people like dirt, on the otherhand, we have all heard the horror stories of squatters and locals taking foreigners land by threat, force, and even murder.

That Italian is a SOB!

The MOON guidebook has covered this area and issues since 2001 in the book, so a good guidebook will touch on the ugly side of a culture, which is part of the layers of a society.

Thanks for the report Tim. I have been wanting to visit Bribri for a while but it's a long drive to get over there. I was surprised about hearing this news. Before reading this article, I hadn't seen anything else like this in Costa Rica. In my experience, I have found property ownership rights were pretty well established in Costa Rica. I have been reading the book Mamita Yunai to improve my spanish grammar and gain some more understanding about the history of Costa Rica. It revolves around indians in Talamanca and their rights around the early 1900s. It covers a lot of what you are mentioning. Basically, poor health care, and a lot of alcohol and corruption.

But, that was in the 1900's. I was thinking that this lifestyle or level of maltreatment was mostly over with (probably ignorance on my part). It sounds like Bribri is far off the beaten path and worth visiting.

Article on Eviction & Land ownership

Thanks for the link stating officers of the judiciary were present (government sanctioned). Quite different from a businessman sending in armed thugs to do his dirty work.

If I resisted eviction a policeman would show up at my door and if I didn't follow instructions there would be a gun pointed at me.

If someone is breaking the law let the courts sort it out.

Howard, I think you are missing a fundamental point in this thread. There is some pretty serious corruption in the government. Whether they were government officials or hired mercenaries doesn't justify what happened. Based on some other people's comments in this thread, it sounds like corruption is pretty heavy in Bribri compared to some other places. The article that Tim shared also pointed out ways to help. It also showed how the readers of the article could file a complaint to the president if they felt that some injustice was being done...

We need a cause de jour branch on this forum. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhaDtSBmIrI

If you're gonna share irrelevant youtube videos, at least make it worth people's time.

Indigenous rights, reptile rights for Green Iguanas and snakes, animal rights for dolphins,insect rights for spiders. Rap music? And then badmouthing Ayn Rand.

This thread has some legs.

Talk about indigenous peoples problems?

Spoke with a you European donating time with a tribe of about 1000 people. The government is started a hydro-electric project in their area.

They have started to dig the river bypass tunnel for the dam. That's how you start a dam.

The older people want it stopped, the younger people are not sure. I think it goes to a vote. The government could get some support with some extra compensation.

I bet the courts move slower than the tunneling.

He said they want to transmit the electricity to California. They need to cut a swath all the way up there through Mexico for the electric lines so we can run our washer, dryer and air-conditioners during the day time.

Hope Erin Brocovic and the anti nuclear power generation plant activists are happy. It might be this one
http://www.costa-rican-real-estate.com/2010/10/el-diquis-hydroelectric-dam-in-costa-rica/

What a world, what a mess

Whereas spiders are not insects, they are endowed by the Creator with only unalienable arachnid rights. Agreed, this thread has legs.

#20 I've seen enough discussion of plans to develop the hydropower potential of the Terraba to believe it's for real. Lake xArenal's a hydropower impoundment, isn't it? Transmitting to xCalifornia, though, is a paranoid fantasy. Too much energy is lost as heat over distances like that, the 630 MW mentioned in the linked article is big but nowhere near enough to justify the cost of such a line, the conductor itself would be at risk of theft (crazy, but it's happened in Tanzania), and at least for now xCalifornia, xMexico, and most of xTexas are each basically electrically disconnected from each other.

#22 That explains why I couldn't find any info to confirm the California connection but it has the makings of a world class urban myth.

I talked to a Maleku man up around Arnel. He had the facial features of a SW United States Indian.

I was on a truck ride with a Guaymi woman and her children near Puerto Jimemez and they had the facial features of a Chinese or someone from Tibet. Slight facial features.

Do some of the Indigenous look pure Asian or is it more likely a result of inter-marriage?

All indigenous people of the western hemisphere Americas have ancestors who crossed the land bridge from Asia making any similarities in look very possible with people living now on that continent. Distant relatives might also have originated in Africa at the dawn of man. But...

Miscegenation is good for the nation.

There's also some intriguing new evidence -- both genetic and pottery patterns -- of Japanese landing in Peru perhaps 1,000 years ago. I can't remember where I read about this recently, but found this link when I googled for it just now:

http://www.peruviantimes.com/08/genetic-evidence-links-peru%E2%80%99s-ancient-mochica-culture-to-japanese-siberian-and-taiwanese-peoples/1277/

As I vaguely recalll the article I read, the ocean currents they may have followed would suggest a first landfall in Central America.

at the departure lounge of guatemala city airport a woman was showing off her adopted baby. she commented on its asian features, as if she didnt have a clue. my explanation was received with a bewildered stare followed by silence. i thought everybody knew.

This family was 100% Asian. There were 20 local people in the truck and I wasn't the only one sneaking a peek at them. The mother was also very pretty.

Back to Iguanas. I was in the 8 Latitude bar in Golfino clutching my copy of Atlas Shrugged and pounding down beers with the owner. He said a few years back there were large numbers of iguanas around but they have largely disappeared.

They were very friendly and he treated them like pets, fed them at his house. He thinks an influx of birds are eating the young ones.

He misses them very much.

Living Fossils

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/221392/living-fossils/thomas-sowell

Oddly I used to stay at a hotel in NYC where the housekeeping staff was mainly Tibetan, the women were very slight in nature like an Asian, but had the skin color of more a Euro/Asian Turk/Mongolian, including freckles, but the forehead and brow line was most similar to American Indian/Eskimo. Now being in China a month, I see great variations here in Shanghai of Chinese peoples, my wife can almost always guess which areas they are from, from Uzbeks to Mongolian, Sichuan to Ughir. She also notes the Korean physical features as well as Japanese, she tends to get confounded as you get closer to old Siam, Thailand/Burma/Laos and the Khmer in Cambodia/Vietnam. Fillapinos and Malaysians/Indonesians are easy. The far western tribes in on the border with the Stans are far more Near Eastern/Greek/Turkish looking.

Just to put into context how things get done in CR, or lack there of, see below from yesterdays AM Costa Rica. This is the same area as discussed above.

Police who responded to open up the Caribbean highway Tuesday met firebombs, rocks and burning tires at four locations. The Fuerza Pública said that 10 persons had been arrested.

The protest began Monday night on Ruta 36 and was triggered by expectations of efforts to evict those in residence at two hotels in Refugio Nacional de Vida Silvestre Gandoca. One is the Hotel Las Palmas, operated by Complejo Turístico Punta Uva S.A. The other is the adjacent Hotel Suerre.

The Hotel Las Palmas, operated by Jan Kalina, has been fighting the government since 1993, and Tuesday was the second time that he was evicted from the premises. The government has alleged substantial environmental damage as well as the fact that the hotel is in the national refuge.

The hotel complex is about three kilometers from Punta Uva. The well-manicured grounds of the hotel included extensive beach. Many improvements had been made by the hotel operator.

Many in the crowds that maintained the blockades are residents of the Caribbean who have property in the maritime zone. Many of the homes there predate the maritime zone law that makes their dwelling illegal. They fear that they will be next with the evictions. But they also were fortified by criminal elements that came from Limón Centro.

The burning tires sent columns of smoke into the air. The Instituto Costarricense de Turismo said it provided help for tourists who were evicted from the Las Palmas and others in the area who were delayed by the blockades. The institute did not give a number. Traffic was backed up two kilometers, police said.

The tourism institute said it set up tents with bilingual attendants to help tourists.

Blockades were in Hone Creek and near Cahuita, said police.

The Las Palmas case appears to have touched about every court in the land from the Tribunal Contencioso Administrativo y Civil de Hacienda to the Sala IV constitutional court.
It was the Sala IV that froze government efforts in October 2005 to evict Kalina and his staff. At that time the then-minister of environment, Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, said that the hotel would be turned over to the tourism institute for a national tourism school. The luxurious hotel is some 1,500 square meters of structures.

Kalina was back in the hotel shortly thereafter, and the tourism school idea was not mentioned again. Park rangers occupied the hotel Tuesday. It will be demolished.

The order of eviction that was executed Tuesday was signed Oct. 13, 2009. It survived appeals.

The main concerns were environmental damage done when the hotel was constructed, the illegal cutting of trees, building in the public zone of the maritime strip, building drainage to affect wetlands, blocking ditches and destructions of coral.

In addition to the Fuerza Pública and the Unidad de Intervención Policial, a number of government agencies were involved, including the Cuerpo de Bomberos. About 140 persons were believed involved in the blockades. Officials were quick to note that the evictions from the hotel had nothing to do with the cases of the long-time residents in the maritime zone in Puerto Viejo and Cahuita. These, too, are complex cases.

I spoke with my sister about the Chinese/Asian looking family in Costa Rica and SoloHobo's observations in China. Her husband is writing a scientific book about evolution and she was able to simplify the subject for me.

Indigenous in the Americas are 100% Asian. The perception of what a 100% Asian should look like is related to one's life experiences.

When any race migrates the forces of evolution kick in. Some people do better in certain geographic zones than other and those are the ones more likely to populate an area. They might have different facial appearances from people in other areas.

The variation of facial appearance within China or within the Americas are good examples. Norwegians and Italians generally don't look alike.

Regarding Chinese looking people in Costa Rica, she suspects intermarriage with Chinese at a more recent date.

I also wondered why the Costa Rica Caribbean blacks look so different from blacks I am familiar with in Southern California

These articles help

http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_09/community_01.html

http://www.everyculture.com/Middle-America-Caribbean/Chinese-in-the-English-Speaking-Caribbean-History-and-Cultural-Relations.html

Interesting newspaper article
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60C16FB395512738DDDAB0994D0405B868CF1D3

Definitely agree with you all... There is a website that presents a list of the same type of people you are talking about... Politicians and businesses and their effect on vulnerable communities and ecosystems... the cream of the crop:

www.estrellascosteras.com

Eva