Authorities found tonnes of cocaine stashed inside a shipping container of decorative canopy plants
Police in Costa Rica seized more than five tonnes of cocaine bound for the Dutch port of Rotterdam in the country’s largest ever drugs bust, officials said.
Authorities on Saturday found the cocaine in Costa Rica’s Caribbean port of Limon, stashed inside a shipping container of decorative canopy plants bound for the Netherlands.
Continue reading...The songwriting storyteller recorded thousands of cassettes for visitors to Cahuita, his paradise town in Costa Rica. Now the race is on to rediscover them
‘Welcome to Cahuita town, welcome one and all,” Walter Ferguson sings on the song Cahuita Is a Beautiful Place, offering an invitation to drink some rum and listen to calypso in this corner of Limón, Costa Rica. Its charming lyrical bounce and layered guitar sounds like the work of more than one man, although it is his work alone – and a song that might never have been heard if not for a project aimed at locating the thousands of one-of-a-kind cassettes that Ferguson recorded at home for friends and visitors wanting to take home a piece of this “beautiful place”.
In the run up to Ferguson’s 100th birthday in May, his son Peck (the 10th of Ferguson’s 11 children) and Swiss calypso fan Niels Werdenberg have spent two years on a labour of love: the Walter Gavitt Ferguson Tape Hunt. Their goal is to track down these lost gems, digitising songs that, in 2018, the Costa Rican government designated part of the country’s cultural heritage.
Continue reading...Costa Rica has become a precarious refuge for thousands of Nicaraguan exiles. In the streets of San José, they continue to feel President Ortega’s reach
This project was produced by Dawning, an organization devoted to investigative journalism. It is an independent effort, self-funded, non-partisan and non-ideological, in the tradition of journalism in the public interest.
Forty years ago, Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo hid together in safe houses around Costa Rica’s capital while waiting for the imminent fall of the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza. Today, thousands of their exiled compatriots hide in the same city, San José, awaiting the fall of the presidential couple.
Continue reading...Pressure grows on two-time Costa Rica president as former Observer journalist speaks out over alleged assault in 1990
Oscar Árias, the Nobel peace laureate and two-time president of Costa Rica, is facing mounting accusations of sexual misconduct after a criminal complaint alleging assault was filed against him.
Four women have now said they were assaulted by Árias. The complaint, filed by an unnamed activist, was followed by public allegations by Eleonora Antillon, a Costa Rican journalist, who said she too had been assaulted by Árias in the mid-80s, when she was working for his campaign.
Continue reading...Former president of Costa Rica denies claim from nuclear disarmament activist that he sexually assaulted her in 2014
Oscar Árias, the Costa Rican former president and Nobel peace prize laureate, has been enveloped in scandal after a sexual assault complaint was brought against him by a nuclear disarmament activist.
Árias denied the allegation, saying he has never acted against the will of any woman and has fought for gender equality during his career.
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