Tenant laws in Costa Rica are pro-tenant in that even if a tenant refuses to pay rent they can continue to live in the property until the landlord exhausts all of his or her legal hurdles to evict them, a process than can take years in the worst case scenario. But that may soon change with the passage in first debate of a reform to the Landlord-Tenant law that expedites the process of eviction,...

Jairo Mora proved just how deadly poaching turtle eggs in the province of Limón along Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast has become. “They arm drug addicts with machetes and knives, sometimes even with makeshift or low-caliber weapons, so they can steal the eggs,” Mora told the Costa Rican daily La Nación, adding narco-traffickers pay the thieves with drugs to fuel their addictions. Twenty...

Cutter Sherman. Source: U.S. Coast Guard After a series of previous snubs in 2013 and delayed legislative review, a committee of 42 legislators in Costa Rica gave the green light to vessels from the United States Navy and Coast Guard to dock in the country. These ships, which are part of the Joint Patrol Agreement between the U.S. and Costa Rica to combat drug trafficking in the Atlantic and C...

Source: Fuerza Publica Public surveys commissioned by La Nacion and performed by UNIMER, as well as crime statistics compiled by the Ministry of Public Safety (MSP in Spanish), indicate that security has increased in Costa Rica in the last few years. Although President Laura Chinchilla’s approval rate has plunged to the lowest levels in Latin America -a sad fact she shares with her Brazilia...

The Costa Rica Star recently published an article that explains that the people of Guanacaste are disappointed in the broken promises from Laura Chinchilla over the years, and were going to not allow her into the province. A little after 9 a.m. this morning, Tuesday, July 23, President Laura Chinchilla's helicopter touched down in the plaza of Maquenco in the Canton of Nicoya, thus avoiding pos...

Source: SENASA Costa Rica The metropolitan intervention unit of the National Animal Health Service (SENASA in Spanish) in Costa Rica recently confiscated 179 gamecocks used by a clandestine fighting ring in San Jeronimo of Moravia, in the northeastern outskirts of San Jose. This action was supported by members of Fuerza Publica, the national police force in Costa Rica. Assorted cockfighting...

Around 1995, Rene Castro, during his stint as Minister of the Presidency, kicked the gold miners out of Corcovado National Park on the lush Osa Peninsula. But they are at it again after having returned just months after Castro's stern verdict. Gold is profitable in an era of economic uncertainty and the penalty is minimal. Environmentalists estimate that more than 2,000 truckloads of earth have...

Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla signed a bill on Monday to slash taxes on hybrid cars by 20 percentage points, in a bid to cut fuel emissions in the Central American nation. The 2006 tax will be cut to 10 percent, well below the 30 to 53 percent tax rates levied on vehicles fueled exclusively by gasoline and diesel but still higher than the zero-tax status enjoyed by electric vehicles. ...

The situation is more and more desperate for local fishermen, and here I’m referring to the ones that have a panga (small fishing boat), canoe or an off-board motor. The capitalist model of extraction and commercialization of fishing resources doesn’t allow for recovery, and the mistaken policies of the people in charge of organizing and directing fishing in Costa Rica, Incopesca (the Costa Ric...

Once a year, on July 25th, the whole country turns its attention to Guanacaste and mainly to Nicoya. It is during this single day that the media devote complete reports to the historic annexation to Costa Rica by the Party of Nicoya. But the pretty face of the annexation has another side to it with deeper dimensions that is always obscured by the splendor of the formal events and the presence o...

John Mauro and Amber Kasic call it an “early honeymoon”. The couple recently returned from spending nearly three weeks in Costa Rica, working with survivors of human trafficking. “We both knew that we wanted service to be a part of our honeymoon,” explained Mauro. The pair of high school teachers said they wanted to make the trip before the start of the school year and tying the knot...

Churches throughout Costa Rica are expecting 30,000 people to join in on a march in defense of traditional marriage slated for August. The gathering is meant to counter attack recent legislations allowing same-sex civil unions, abortion, in vitro fertilization and challenges to the ban on the morning-after pill. Organizers are calling for Evangelicals and Catholics to unite against what they...

Article by CentralAmericaData.com with insights from Nacion.com. The Costa Rican environmental authority has only 5 technicians to analyze the viability of infrastructure projects worth billions of dollars to the economy and country of Costa Rica, creating a bottleneck on advancement. Construction of the new container terminal at the Port of Moin can not begin because of lack of approval of ...

Source: Wikimedia Commons Article 52 of Title V -"Social Rights and Guarantees"- of the Constitution of Costa Rica states that: "Marriage is the essential foundation of the family; it rests upon the equal rights of spouses." As clear and elegant as the above statement is, a civic group in Costa Rica would like to see it change by means of a proposed amendment to our Constitution. The gro...

"Opposite the church, 500 meters north of the cedar tree, the blue house with a wooden porch." In many parts of Latin America, these are not just the directions you might be given by a friendly local, but an actual postal address. Costa Rica, Panama, and Nicaragua are among the countries that use landmarks, such as schools, parks, or even fast food restaurants, to locate houses and businesses i...

The Municipality of Nicoya has contracted several companies to install drainage in areas of Nosara and Samara. In Nosara, the company MABE expanded the road and placed 2,500 cubic meters of material, with a total budget of 5.6 million colones ($11,200), according to the Road Management Technical Unit (UTGV). Meanwhile, in Samara Transportes Falquesa worked on the route from Matapalo to Santo...

Despite various difficulties, the residents of La Esperanza Norte of Nicoya and the surrounding areas will finally have a new high school. The construction is underway with a budget more than 266 million colones ($532,000). This educational project initiated in the year 2000 through an agreement between the local development association and the Ministry of Public Education (MEP). It started ...

Source: MSP Facebook During a recent press conference by the Ministry of Public Safety in Costa Rica, Minister Francisco Zamora announced that Caribbean operations by the National Coast Guard Service and law enforcement have seized 4.6 tons of cocaine so far in 2013.  This is in addition to 1.47 tons of marijuana confiscated off the coast of the province of Limon in Costa Rica. Minister Zam...

There are many exciting things to do in Costa Rica like zip-lining, snorkeling, or horseback riding on the beach. However, nothing will elicit a bigger reaction from locals than discovering their road is finally getting paved. It’s not often this happens, but when it does you can all but hear your neighbors holler “hallelujah” from their porches. The Project Begins The dirt road from Surfsid...

Source: Flickr Creative Commons Yes, espionage and monitoring take place in Costa Rica, but not to the Orwellian extent carried out by the United States. Unpleasant snooping activities in Costa Rica have been revealed in the past; in fact, there is an ongoing legislative effort to either shut down or minimize the National Directorate of Intelligence and Security (DIS), an agency tasked with prot...

A good way to summarize the frantic activity in the days leading up to President Barack Obama's historic visit to Costa Rica back in early May is by the use of onomatopoeia: THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD. Such is the distinct audio signature of a Sikorsky UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter as its massive rotor blades cut through the air, and it is what the skies over San Jose and its surrounding districts sounded l...

News reports of a proposed inter-oceanic canal in Nicaragua to be developed with a sizable investment by China have stirred up geopolitical debate not only in Central America but around the world. Costa Rica has every reason to monitor the situation, but the news reports and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega's rhetoric on the matter are also being followed by international news outlets. An edito...

Approximately 800,000 smuggled tobacco cigarettes are smoked in Costa Rica every day, an estimate that represents a 19 percent increase over the previous year. To get an idea of this quantity and its impact, imagine that a shipping container completely filled with packs of smuggled cigarettes enters Costa Rica every two weeks, with the caveat that the government and the people do not enjoy revenu...

Source: Widecast San Jose, Costa Rica - The senseless and thus far unsolved murder of the young environmentalist and biologist Jairo Mora Sandoval while he protected the delicate ecosystem of Playa Moin in Limon, where leatherback sea turtles massively arrive to nest, has prompted dialog between public officials and environmental protection groups to ensure that Jairo's legacy be continued and h...

ARC Valle del Cauca. Source: Colombian Navy Public Affairs On Friday, June 21st, the Vice Ministers of the Presidency and Public Safety along with the Director of Costa Rica's National Coast Guard Service welcomed the Valle del Cauca, a Colombian Navy patrol boat with a crew of about 100. The Valle del Cauca docked in Caldera for more than 1o days and was set to sail today. A few days later, th...

Although at first sight Brazil and Costa Rica seem to be sharply different nations, these two Latin American countries shared some unfortunate similarities during June 2013. In a recent opinion piece in El Pais, an online publication that often gives a voice to the current government's opposition, journalist and academic Juan Manuel Fernandez C. made four important observations about the ongoing p...

Renewing your Costa Rican drivers license has been streamlined, depending on the time and day, you can be in and out in less than two hours. A kind reminder that foreigners must be legal residents in order to get a Costa Rican drivers license. 1. The first step in the process is the medical exam. The exam is quick and reported electronically, meaning the doctor enters the “dictamen medico” ...

This is a real time video of US President Barack Obama landing in Costa Rica at the SJO International Airport. ...

Source: TheCostaRicaNews.com Government officials from Central America and Mexico gathered in Costa Rica this week to discuss strengthening trade and strategies on the “war on drugs,” which is also a focus for the regional Central American Integration System (SICA) summit with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto on February 19-20. Costa Rican Foreign Minister Enrique Castillo identified a p...

Source: TheCostaRicaNews.com The president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, in Costa Rica on Wednesday the country's president, Laura Chinchilla, and move forward in strengthening the relationship of the EU with Latin America. The delegation of the European Union (EU) reported in a statement that Schulz, after meetings in Costa Rica and Panama will travel to Colombia on Thursday an...

A Costa Rican journalist avoided a libel lawsuit after retracting accusations she made against the brother of President Laura Chinchilla, Adrián Chinchilla, in an August 2012 article published in the newspaper La Nación. Following the retraction, the court decided it was unnecessary to try journalist Vanessa Loaiza for libel since she withdrew her claim before the legal procedures against her c...

Why not entrust a binational group of private businessmen the development of a region where poverty is currently the only truth? EDITORIAL Recent statements by a former minister of Costa Rica explain much of the underdevelopment of Central American countries. Under the heat of chauvinism and patriotism put forward by leaders during electoral campaigns and by officials who are simply not q...

Haiti President Michel Martelly met this weekend with Costa Rica President Laura Chinchilla on the sidelines of the EU-CELAC Summit in Chile. The talks focused on several topics, including environmental issues, according to a statement from the National Palace, including proposed environmental cooperation between Haiti and Costa Rica. Costa Rica is currently the rotating Chairman of the Cent...

The Constitutional Chamber of Costa Rica has rejected a petition against a series of economic sanctions for insurance companies defined in the law that regulates the market. ElfinancieroCR.com reports that the action was raised on May 7, 2012, by the Office of the Ombudsman. According to the arguments presented by the chief of the Ombudsman, Ofelia Taitelbaum: "Some clauses of Articl...

Costa Rica, Mexico and Colombia have opened talks with U.S. officials to prepare for the legalization of marijuana in some U.S. states, Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla said Wednesday. Chinchilla, one of the world leaders attending the World Economic Forum in the Swiss Alpine resort, said concern over the easing of drug laws stems from the growing number of U.S. states with medical mariju...

WASHINGTON | Wed Dec 19, 2012 10:17am EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama would veto the House Republican "Plan B" tax proposal designed to avert January 1 tax hikes, the White House said on Wednesday, saying the plan does not meet Obama's test that spending cuts not fall overwhelmingly on the middle class. "The President urges the Republic...

By Mark Felsenthal WASHINGTON | Wed Dec 19, 2012 9:13am EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Vice President Joe Biden will lead an effort to craft policies to reduce gun violence in a plan President Barack Obama was to lay out Wednesday amid calls for action after the massacre of 26 people including 20 children in a Connecticut elementary school. Obama was...

By Arshad Mohammed, Anna Yukhananov and Tabassum Zakaria WASHINGTON | Wed Dec 19, 2012 6:28am EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Security at the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya was grossly inadequate to deal with a September 11 attack that killed a U.S. ambassador and three others because of failures within the State Department, an official inquiry found...

By Thomas Ferraro and Richard Cowan WASHINGTON | Tue Dec 18, 2012 6:12pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans tried to wring more tax-rate concessions out of the White House on Tuesday as political maneuvering intensified over an agreement to keep the U.S. economy from tumbling off the "fiscal cliff" next year. Markets rallied on hopes for a de...

By Doug Palmer WASHINGTON | Tue Dec 18, 2012 6:02pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Tuesday pressed forward with plans to slap steep punitive duties on wind turbine towers imported from China at prices deemed unfairly low, even as officials welcomed a high-level Chinese delegation for trade and economic talks. The U.S. Commerce De...