Using songs and dance, anti-CAFTA supporters hold massive protest.

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica -- Around 100,000 Costa Ricans descended on downtown San Jose this past Sunday in a massive rally protesting the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) with the United States.

The scene was colorful, as the peaceful protest featured bands and speakers trying to rally the people for the upcoming national referendum, scheduled for Oct. 7, that will decide whether the nation enters the agreement.

Reuters estimated 100,000 people manifested, while the EFE news agency put the total number at 150,000. La Nacion, one of the papers here, did not have an estimate.



This week is the home-stretch of the political and economic debate that has consumed this nation for the past year and the rally was a show of force for the side opposing CAFTA.


Meanwhile, President Oscar Arias has promised to abandon CAFTA if the trade agreement negatively affects Costa Rica.

Here are a few pictures and videos. More pictures can be found here.




Protesters danced their way to opposition:


Anti-Cafta March In Costa Rica - The best video clips are right here

Near the end of the rally, they sang the national anthem:


Anti-Cafta March In Costa Rica - The funniest videos are a click away

OH MY GOD!!! GIANT ANTS!!! COCKROACHES!!

My roommates and I were fascinated by ants eating a cockroach.

Trabalenguas

I've always been fascinated by tongue twisters. Maybe because I mumble a lot.

I asked my German and French-speaking Swiss roommates to say some in their languages:

In German:



In French:

Sounds of Costa Rica

The two men below were playing folk songs at a restaurant in San Jose.



In the former capital of Cartago, I encountered a band playing Peruvian music, er, but covering an Abba song.

Sounds weird, but the band was just catering to tastes in Costa Rica, a country that loves crappy 80s music.

La Cucaracha Si Puede Caminar

(A post delayed due to the untimely death of my laptop.)

Last night, I had my sporadic spout with insomnia.

I think it was for good reason. When I got up to check the time (3:30ish a.m.) I saw my first cockroach in Costa Rica.

And I feel at home.

Years ago, back in Guatemala, my family – my mom at least – had a declared war against these pesky insects. It was quite the production to exterminate the seemingly invincible spiky-legged creatures.

We tried fumigation. It didn’t work. We tried using our shoes. That can get messy.

Finally, my mother found this chalk that apparently was Chinese made. Yeso Chino.

I haven’t a clue what chemicals where in that thing.

But it worked. We lined the house with chalk. And cockroach corpses appeared magically.

I remember once we had to clear out the entire kitchen. The cockroaches liked to live in the cupboards and drawers where we kept cooking pans and plates.

Chalk in the cupboards.

Chalk in hallway.

Chalk everywhere.

I’m pretty sure someday I’ll get cancer from this Chinese chalk.

But at least, my family won the war.

Pura Vida

Everywhere, Costa Rica -- Some things I have had to be re-accustomed to:

1. Ants.

An ant colony lives somewhere near the pantry-area of the home I live in. If bread, cookies, or any kind of food are not properly sealed, then the ants have a feast.

While I'm all for keeping thousands of ants happy, I must say that on a couple of occasions, I just wanted to eat bread.

But ants and I go way back.

Back in Guate, many ant colonies called our patios home. I was fascinated by these holes in the cement where ants streamed out.

Sometimes I would put lines of sugar somewhere around the hole. That would bring out the ants, and they would have a feast.

Unfortunately that also brought out other ants from other colonies.

Massive ant colony battles ensued.

2. Sidewalks.

Sidewalks in Costa Rica are not made for strolling. Your life could be at risk -- in the shape of a giant hole in the middle of the sidewalk.

The infrastructure of this country, like many still developing, is horrible. And that includes lack of maintenance of sidewalks that are filled with holes, gaps, cracks, and roots, making a walk, not a walk but a concentration game.

People have died, by the way, from these dangerous sidewalks.

3. Shower

Hot shower here comes from an electric heater (with wires and all) placed right above the shower. While I don't know how many people have been electrocuted by this method of warming water, I will say it takes forever to heat it.

And because I am always somewhat behind in the mornings, I take the showers cold.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, cold showers wake you up, and help fight the heat in the morning.

Sometimes, after a humid, hot, sweaty, and overall disgusting day, a cold shower feels nice.

Chiqui Chiqui

In the late 1980s, a new music genre emerged in Costa Rica that just seems to underline that the 80s were a bad time for everyone.

They call it Chiqui Chiqui, and I have no idea what that means. The movement (haha) spawned a slew of cheap music videos such as the one above called "Canchis Canchis."

The songs are silly, often giving nicknames to women or things. There was one about a love pill that featured angels and a giant pill. Others included chorographed dancing, and clothes that made James Brown look like a monk.

I saw Canchis Canchis on a bus on my way to a beach, but it wasn't the first time I had heard this song. When I was a kid in Guatemala, I remember Canchis Canchis was my brother's favorite song (his horrible music taste continues to this day). We had it recorded on a cassette tape that was lost during the move north.

It was weird, hearing a song that I had not heard in years.

So enjoy, a piece of my forgotten childhood.

UPDATE: After a few more listens, I think the song is about copulation. Or blondes. Or both.

Like most Latin Americans, Costa Ricans love their PDA

These lovebirds were, of course, next to a church.

El niño y la playa.

Tamarindo, Costa Rica.

THEY ARRESTED A GRINGA!!!

The pictures above were plastered on the front page of Diario Extra, a sensationalist newspaper in Costa Rica, which also happens to own the largest circulation.

The story is about an American woman who, apparently, had relations with teenage boys down here. The story has it merits, but I just thought the use of these pictures were hilarious.

But that's just how Diario Extra does it. Every day the front page features one picture of a soccer game, a bikini-clad woman, or/and a bloodied person.

Reminds me of Univision.

The story goes on to say that the woman "pranced around in her underwear with the shades open, driving all the men in her neighborhood crazy."

Casi en Guate: Snarling dogs plus metal equals security

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica -- The large German Sheppard snarling at me from behind the metal gate made me feel at home.

Recently, I took a stroll through a neighborhood near San Jose’s city center called Amon.

It’s a ritzy neighborhood.

Here, the architecture of houses was influenced by the French. For a while in the 1800’s, Costa Ricans were enamored with all things French.

Their red, white and blue? French inspired.

While the houses here are pretty, they don’t compare to the grand old colonial mansions found in Guatemala City.

That’s because the Spanish crown largely ignored Costa Rica during the colonial period. There wasn’t anything here worth killing Indians over or Indians to kill. Those grand mansions were not erected. Not enough gold or silver to fund them. The Spanish weren’t thinking eco-tourism back then.

Back in Amon, I noticed the extreme security methods Costa Ricans take to keep thieves out of their homes.

It’s the same in Guatemala.

Almost every house has heavy metal gates with sizeable locks.

Front doors are metal. Then those doors are protected by more metal.

It pays to be a welder here.

Barbed wire decorates the tops of concrete fences.

And guard dogs, ready to pounce on an outsider, snarl behind gates.

I make light of it, but it’s a phenomenon caused by fear.

Fear of everything you own taken from you.

Fear of your life being taken with a gun or a knife yielded by masked men lurking in the night.

The paper's staff photographer was robbed a gunpoint in the middle of the day -- in the middle of the street.

The other day, the news featured two young men stabbed, another shot dead and a girl found buried.

Violence here is not as bad as in Guatemela, where more than 15 people are killed every day on average. Of those crimes, 98 percent go unsolved.

About 10 percent of the almost four million Costa Ricans furnish a fire arm for self protection. Those are the registered guns.

There are about 6 murders per 100,000 people in the country. But those statistics are from 1998, and the people here say things are getting worse now.

Break-ins, muggings, and assaults are a reality in Costa Rica. And people protect themselves from them as best as they can. However they can.

That can mean buying a huge German Sheppard that will show its finely sharpened canines to any passerby.

Why Google will never map San Jose

SABANILLA, Costa Rica -- If I were to get directions on Google from my mother’s house in Bellevue to the Space Needle, it would start like this:

- Head north on 119th Ave SE.

Continue like this:

- Take exit 167 on the left toward Seattle Center

And end like this:

- Turn right at John St

Now, if there was a Google maps option for Costa Rica, and say I'm leaving the office to go see a room to rent, it would have to start like this:

-Go to the municipality building in Curridabat.

Continue like this:

- From the "muni" go 500 meters south. Then 25 meters east.

And end like this:

-It's the yellow house with two floors.

Yep.

For some reason, Costa Ricans don’t really use numbers, streets or avenues in giving directions.

They give directions by using landmarks – like the nearest gas station or a bar – to locate a desired destination.

God only knows how many people live by a Shell.

Even some seasoned taxi drivers are left confounded.

I guess knowledge of the metric system is key here. Apparently a block is 100 meters. So 500 meters is five blocks or half a kilometer.

It went for me like this once: “Take Sabanilla road. From the gas station called the Harvest, go 200 meters south. It’s the pink house 10 meters past the guard gate.”

I got there, and was greeted by more than a half dozen pink houses. And four guard gates.

Try ordering delivery on the phone.

“The hostel is on the west side of the court, at a dead-end street.”

40 minutes later the delivery guy calls. He's lost, and I have to say:

“It’s 200 meters south of the restaurant Nuestra Tierra.”

Imagine being the programmer with the task of programming a Google map of San Jose.

He’d have to be a former taxi driver, a really knowledgeable taxi driver.

La Lucha es en las Calles

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica -- It says George Bush is an assassin and calls Americans Nazis.

It says no to the United States. Yes to Costa Rica.

It tells America to leave this country alone.

Anti-American graffiti in San Jose's city center is sprayed on houses, businesses, and public parks.

It's everywhere.

The graffiti is part of the political and economic debate that most Costa Ricans have been consumed by for the past year:

The ratification of CAFTA, the free trade agreement with the United States.

President Oscar Arias and the government are in favor of entering the agreement. Arias attempted to fast track a measure ratifying it through the Costa Rican government earlier this year.

But the upheaval from dissidents was so loud -- including widespread protests, source of much of the graffiti, in February -- that Arias conceded, and called a public referendum scheduled for early October.

American officials -- with strong support from the White House -- began negotiations with Central American nations in 2005 on this trade agreement, a sort of mini-NAFTA.

Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras have joined.

Translated, the trade agreement is the Tratado de Libre Comercio or TLC.

People aren't shy to express their opinions on the matter here.

Around the city, some businesses and houses have stickers with "Si TLC!" One hardware store had a huge banner in support of it on its front.

But the young, especially, have expressed their opposition using graffiti, which has been sprayed all over San Jose's walls, sidewalks and light posts.

Anti-American feelings are clear. Anti-Bush sentiments are even clearer.


Curiously, these young ones compare Americans to Nazis, something I haven't figured out why. It seems they think the agreement has racist undertones, and call it "neoesclavitud" or neo-slavery.

They want "skinhens" out of Costa Rica.

Another spray said "no to communism."


So far, the people I've talked to -- taxi drivers and vendors at a crafts market -- are against it.

They hear I'm from Guatemala, and they asked if it worked there. I say what I know: that many sweatshops have opened, and those are owned by foreigners.

And that many Guatemalan businesses are being killed by the onslaught of bigger, richer American companies.

Costa Ricans will soon get a chance to decide about CAFTA. It will be the first nation in Central America to let the people decide whether to enter a trade agreement.

But for now, graffiti all over the city reminds Ticos that many of their young want America to "fuuk off."

La Lucha es en las Calles...The Fight is in the Streets.

My feelings exactly.