Hotel near San José Airport

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If you come to San Jose, Costa Rica or have to leave the country, our recommendation is to spend a few nights in San José near the airport.
San Jose is the capital of the Central American country Costa Rica and has around 288 000 residents. It is additionally the capital of the district of San José and the largest city of the country.

The majority of visitors to Costa Rica come initially in the capital San Jose. Site visitors are traveling from here to the beaches and the Pacific, the Caribbean and the nationwide playgrounds.

Although the resources of Costa Rica seems to be quite loud and stressful, there are lots of means to enjoy the city. Watch in the playgrounds or on the steps of the “Plaza del la Cultura” the bustle life or go to among the several galleries. In the facility of San Jose, there are several pleasant coffee shops and dining establishments. Among the most popular is the Cafe Parisienne at the Grand Resort Costa Rica.

It is advised browse through a theater, cinema, or among the numerous specialty restaurants at night. For evening life in San Jose then goes actually begins: bars, nightclubs, clubs, and casinos, there are countless in this bustling urban area.

Best Hotels in San Jose Costa Rica

San Jose is worth it to spend a number of nights. So check and compare rates to find the best hotels in San Jose Costa Rica.

San Jose is the capital of the Central American country Costa Rica and has around 288 000 inhabitants. It is also the capital of the province of San José and the largest city of the country.

Most visitors to Costa Rica come first in the capital San Jose. Visitors are traveling from here to the beaches and the Pacific, the Caribbean and the national parks.

Although the capital of Costa Rica seems to be very loud and hectic, there are many ways to enjoy the city. Watch in the parks or on the steps of the “Plaza del la Cultura” the bustle life or attend one of the many museums. In the center of San Jose, there are many cozy cafes and restaurants. One of the most popular is the Café Parisienne at the Grand Hotel Costa Rica.

It is recommended visit a theater, cinema, or one of the many specialty restaurants in the evening. For night life in San Jose then goes really begins: bars, discos, nightclubs, and casinos, there are countless in this bustling city.

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Hotels in Jaco Costa Rica

As soon as a stereotypical tired coastline community, Jaco was. But it wasn’t long prior to Jaco Seaside’s excellent waves began to draw foreign surfers in exponential numbers, specifically due to the Costa Rica coastline’s closeness to the San Jose (less compared to 2 hours).

In addition to the internet users came the requirement for night life. Now, Jaco is Costa Rica’s wildest celebration beach, and a top destination for land-lubbers and wave-worshippers alike.

Playa Jaco is the closest beach to San Jose, the Central Valley and is one of the most explored seaside locations in Costa Rica. The seaside is a 2.5 mile (4 km) strip which provides world renowned surfing and more.

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Alajuela Costa Rica Hotels

With modern facilities, regional appeal and a close proximity to the international airport, Alajuela is a practical base for sightseeing in the Central Valley. Costa Rica’s second biggest urban area, Alajuela keeps a rural environment where locals relax on front porches welcoming passersby, and mango season incites a dynamic celebration city diverse. Boasting a film theater, shopping center, web cafes and lots of purchasing, Alajuela has all the frills of a modern-day urban area, however relocates at a gentler speed and is less complicated to navigate than close-by San Jose.

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Find San Juan del Sur hotels on the beach:

This coastline, which has a nearly ideal “U” form, is bordered by hills. Below, site visitors can find among the most renowned seaside towns of the country: San Juan del Sur. The sand of this seaside is not white as the one we could locate in the Caribbean, but it clearer than in the Pacific.

Watercraft rides to see bordering seasides, sporting activities angling, scuba diving, aquatic digital photography, wale watch, canopy tours and a stressful nightlife is located in this location. Swimming is feasible many thanks to the tranquil waters, but is worth stating that there are a bunch of watercrafts on the bay.

The town of San Juan del Sur is located on the coastline. The town has actually been functioning to improve the tourist facilities, making it among the most total destinations of the country. Site visitors can delight in a fantastic assortment of fish and shellfish while being in a restaurant close to the sea, and the heat of the different lodgings of the area.

On top of that, San Juan del Sur has the centers of a typical town: stores, postal workplace, Web, health and wellness facilities, language institutions, police terminals, workshops, to name a few.

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Hotel San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua

San Juan del Sur is the most popular travel and vacation destination on Nicaragua’s Pacific coast and offers a lively mix of local culture and tourist amenities. Direct access to a wide variety of activities such as surfing and fishing along with beautiful beaches and exciting nightlife makes San Juan del Sur the ideal location for your Nicaragua vacation. And with numerous hotels, resorts, vacation rentals, shops, and restaurants, you’re sure to have a relaxing and enjoyable stay. Visit this lovely beach town and experience for yourself the natural beauty, friendly people, and local style that make it so unique.

Source: http://www.sanjuandelsurguide.com/

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Panama is the southernmost nation in Latin America. It is approached the west by Costa Rica and Colombia to the eastern.

Panama is understood for the Panama Canal. Nevertheless, Panama has more to offer compared to simply the channel. Panama carries the Caribbean and on the Pacific coast, gorgeous seasides, and the nation teems with national parks and exotic rain woodlands. Panama is a haven for birds and specifically popular amongst birdwatchers.

Nevertheless, water sporting activities enthusiasts and nature fans will marvel in Panama at their cost.

Panama is the most southern country in Centra America. It is approached the west by Costa Rica and Colombia to the eastern.

Panama is understood for the Panama Canal. Nevertheless, Panama has even more to provide than merely the channel. Panama has on the Caribbean and on the Pacific shore, lovely beaches, and the nation is complete of national forests and rain forest. Panama is a haven for birds and particularly popular amongst birdwatchers.

Nevertheless, water sporting activities enthusiasts and attributes fans will certainly marvel in Panama at their expenditure.

Panama is the most southern country in Centra America. It is approached the west by Costa Rica and Colombia to the eastern.

Panama is understood for the Panama Canal. However, Panama has more to offer than simply the stations. Panama has on the Caribbean and on the Pacific coastline, attractive seasides, and the nation is full of national playgrounds and exotic rain woodlands. Panama is a heaven for birds and especially prominent among birdwatchers.

Nonetheless, water sporting activities enthusiasts and attributes enthusiasts will certainly marvel in Panama at their cost.

Panama is the most southern country in Centra America. It is surrounded on the west by Costa Rica and Colombia to the eastern.

Panama is known for the Panama Canal. Nonetheless, Panama has additional to supply than merely the channel. Panama carries the Caribbean and on the Pacific coastline, gorgeous coastlines, and the nation is full of national playgrounds and tropical rain forests. Panama is a haven for birds and particularly prominent among birdwatchers.

However, water sporting activities enthusiasts and nature enthusiasts will wonder in Panama at their expenditure.

Lago de Nicaragua (Cocibolca), Granada (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Spectacular volcanoes, palm-fringed beaches, idyllic lakes: When it comes to natural beauty, Nicaragua does not have to hide behind the better-known neighbor Costa Rica.

Nicaragua has just about everything Costa Rica has also: volcanoes, jungles, Jungle Rivers, unspoiled wilderness, Caribbean beaches. In addition, even more. Nevertheless, the Central American country in the shadow of the great tourist brother. While the „Switzerland of Central America ” has discovered the tourism has long been a major source of income, the neighboring countries have not only caught up.

Inland, Nicaragua has the largest lakes in the region: the Xolotlan Lake, on whose shores the capital, Managua spreads, and to the south of Lake Cocibolca. The body of water that extends over a large part Südnicaraguas, reached from the visitors from Managua by car in an hour.

The city of Granada, next to Leon, a former capital of the country’s most famous city is at this lake. Before the visitor gets hit in the city, but well worth a visit to the Masaya Volcano, rising from its huge crater sulfur steam.
In Granada, visitors will discover one of the finest centers of Spanish colonial architecture: churches, museums, and palaces with magnificent tropical gardens can be found in the city center. The town owes its importance to its position on the lake, which is connected via the San Juan River to the Atlantic. More and more buildings are built to fancy hotels. For many years, U.S. seniors come here to have more of their pension.

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The stars and stripes are once again fluttering brightly in front of the U.S. embassy in Havana. But in the darker recesses of the building, the chore of mapping a route towards a full normalization of relations is just getting started.

Today I witnessed #history. After 54 years the #American flag flys in #Havana #Cuba .. #Merica #StarsandBars

A video posted by O.P. (@therealomarp) on Aug 14, 2015 at 8:06am PDT

Obstructing the path forward is the monstrous 55-year-old U.S. trade embargo. Though presidents Obama and Castro have made great strides to reestablish diplomatic relations over the past 10 months, taking things to the next level means dealing with the elephant in the room: a nearly $7 billion pile of unresolved U.S. property claims.

This is where things get tricky. The Cuban government’s expropriation of U.S. properties in the 1960s was the original raison d’être for the embargo, whose function was later expanded to include loftier considerations for democracy and human rights. Some of those stipulations, laid out vengefully in the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, probably won’t happen anytime in the coming hours — especially the U.S.’ insistence that both Castro brothers step aside to allow an imagined electoral democracy to flourish on the island.

Children look out a window from inside the newly opened #U.S.Embassy, at the end of a #flag raising ceremony, in #Havana, #Cuba, Friday, Aug. 14, 2015. U.S. Secretary of State #JohnKerry arrived Friday morning in #Havana for an historic ceremony to raise the #U.S.flag over the restored embassy in the Cuban capital. CREDIT: Ramon Espinosa/AP Photo. SEE MORE at ABCNews.com #abcnews

A photo posted by ABC News (@abcnews) on Aug 14, 2015 at 9:18am PDT

But the real rub is going to be settling the 7,028 certified U.S. property claims. And at a 6% annual interest rate — one that has already tripled the original tabulated claim of $1.8 billion — the sooner that debt gets settled the better.

“This has to be addressed — it’s U.S. law and it’s a real issue,”  says Cuba expert Ted Henken, president ex officio of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy.

Henken thinks it behooves both countries to treat the matter with a touch of urgency. He says Obama, who’s “swinging for the rafters” in his final year in office, has the political capital to negotiate an acceptable compensation deal with the Cuban government, which also wants the matter resolved because an island full of disputed property titles is a lousy way to attract foreign investment.

In the topsy-turvy world of business mergers and acquisitions, the leading U.S. claimant could soon be Staples Inc, after the office supply chain finalizes its purchase of rival Office Depot, which, oddly enough, currently holds the original certified claim by the Cuban Electric Company. That claims alone, originally valued at $323 million, could now be worth more than $1 billion after 45 years of interest.

Rounding out the top 10 list of U.S. claimants are mostly former telecom, sugar, mining and oil corporations, many of whose names have been forgotten in history. The only easily recognizable claimants left in the top 10 are Exxon and Texaco.

Henken says the trick to settling those claims will be finding a price point that satisfies everyone without strangling Cuba’s fragile economy in the process. Henken thinks a deal where Cuba pays $.10 on the dollar would be as good as the U.S. claimants — corporations and individuals alike— could realistically hope for.

“The Cuban government wants to deal with this too, but the devil’s in the details,” Henken told Fusion.

Cuba also has a series of counterclaims against the U.S. government. The island nation already tried — unsuccessfully— to sue the U.S. in Cuban court for damages caused by the embargo, which started in 1960. Cuba estimates its total economic losses from the embargo are now north of $1 trillion, according to its most recent annual report to the UN last year.

Cuba also has a property claim of its own. President Raul Castro said just last month that a full normalization of relations with the U.S. won’t be possible until the U.S. hands over the U.S. navy base at Guantanamo Bay.

While both governments will bring their list of demands to the negotiating table, the U.S. has shown it’s not willing to simply forget about past claims just because they’re 50 years old. And Cuba’s cash-strapped condition probably won’t prevent Uncle Sam from trying to squeeze blood from a turnip. Just ask Nicaragua.

Earlier this month, the U.S. finally closed the books on its “Section 527” property claims office in Managua, after pulling $1.3 billion in indemnifications out of the post-war Central American economy to compensate thousands of U.S. and Nicaraguan citizens whose properties were confiscated by sticky-finger Sandinista officials in the 1980s. The “Section 527” program, which spanned two decades and four Nicaraguan governments, successfully collected compensation for more than 28,000 property claims “through various means, including returning the property, exchanging property, and indemnification with government bonds,” according to the embassy’s Economics Counselor Gary Clements.

Nicaragua, the second poorest economy in the hemisphere, will continue making payment on those bonds for the next 14 years.

“The lessons learned in Nicaragua could be applied in Cuba,” former Nicaraguan attorney general Alberto Novoa Cuba told me. But, he added, Nicaragua 1993 and Cuba 2015 are two very different countries. “Nicaragua had a broken economy and the country was deeply polarized, so it was not in the same conditions as Cuba today,” he said.

Cuba’s monolithic government is in a much stronger position to negotiate with the U.S., Novoa said. Plus, Cuba is less afraid to walk away from the table if the terms become too tilted in the U.S.’ favor.

Is there a win-win?

The challenge for the U.S. is to resolve the property claims in a way that’s win-win, without making life worse for ordinary Cubans, says Patrick Borchers, who served as the principal investigator on a 2007 USAID-funded study on U.S. property claims against the Cuban government. But that’s going to require some creative thinking, considering Cuba has only $.02 on the dollar in hard currency to resolve the U.S. property claims, Borchers says.

If handled smartly, resolving the property claims could help Cuba kickstart its economy by creating a positive climate for investment and job creation, the lawyer says. But if it’s handled punitively, the whole thing will blow up in everyone’s face and force Cuba to pull the plug.

“I hope that whoever handles this has the foresight to see that the worst possible outcome would be if life got worse for ordinary Cubans because that would give all the of the Castro apologists the right to say, ‘I told you so: Uncle Sam had it in for you all along’,” Borchers said.

The day of reckoning will eventually come, he said, but it remains anyone’s guess when it will happen and what it will look like.

“The issue can’t be ignored forever — that’s not a realistic possibility,” the Cuba expert says. “The question is how fast is this going to go? I’ll be shocked if it’s dealt with in less than two years, but I’ll be equally shocked if it’s not dealt with in the next 10 or 20 years.”

This story first appeared in Fusion.

Elena Scotti

Bad cow

Central American authorities are spending more time than usual eyeballing the backsides of bovine this week, following a Honduran media report that claims drug cartels are using cattle to hoof drugs north to Mexico.

A recent article published in the Honduran daily La Tribuna reports —with rather curious precision— that each narco cow can carry between 88-132 pounds of carefully packaged cocaine in its intestines. The cattle are reportedly purchased in Nicaragua, back-loaded with drug packets somewhere along the early stages of the route, then lumber northward — presumably with a slight hemorrhoidal limp—followed by their stinky-handed minders.

It’s a dirty job, but it’s a résumé-builder for those on a certain career path.

You want to put what where?

La Tribuna’s article is admittedly weakly sourced. But they’re not the first ones to propose the narco-cow hypothesis. Last November, The Central American Federation of Meat Producers, during its electrifying annual gathering in Managua, warned that drug cartels are infiltrating their industry. Federation president René Blandón told anyone who would listen that drug traffickers are using livestock to smuggle cocaine from Nicaragua to Mexico, passing through Honduras and Guatemala en route.

Unfortunately for Blandón, the yearly meet of the Central American Federation of Meat Producers doesn’t draw a ton of press, so his worrisome message fell mostly on a roomful of empty chairs.

Even the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) says it doesn’t know about the fabled narco cows of Central America, but agents say the allegation doesn’t surprise them either.

Special Agent Eduardo Chavez, who works at DEA national headquarters, told me that no conceived method for smuggling drugs is too “far-fetched,” because narcos have “all the time in the world to think of creative ways” to move their product. Plus, he noted, drug traffickers have already proven that they have no scruples about sticking drugs to uncomfortable depths inside people and animals— including puppies.

No calf is born bad, but sometimes they fall in with the wrong herd

The Miami DEA office says they’ve seen enough drug-smuggling attempts to not be surprised by anything. “Drug traffickers are very creative, and they will do whatever they need to do to get the drugs to their destination,” said special agent Mia Ro.Special Agent Eduardo Chavez, who works at DEA national headquarters, told me that no conceived method for smuggling drugs is too “far-fetched,” because narcos have “all the time in the world to think of creative ways” to move their product. Plus, he noted, drug traffickers have already proven that they have no scruples about sticking drugs to uncomfortable depths inside people and animals— including puppies.

Then again, Sauceda says, authorities aren’t exactly looking inside cows for drugs. “We have X-ray machines to search vehicles, but not animals,” he said.

Nicaraguan cattle farmers are also dubious. Santiago Castillo, president of the Nicaraguan Federation of Cattle Farmers, which exports some 8,000 head of cattle to Honduras each year, says it’s highly unlikely that drugs are being inserted into bovine in his country.

“In Nicaragua we have a lot security in the countryside; the police and military have a permanent security plan that is coordinated with the cattle industry 365 days a year,” Castillo told Fusion in an email. “So unless there’s any evidence of cases here, I think it’s a matter for the Honduran authorities to investigate.”

The quickest — and perhaps most dignified — way to get a large quantity of drugs into a cow would be to do so surgically. But it’s a risky procedure. Castillo says performing any major abdominal surgery on a cow would cause a wound that needed time to heal, and leave a telltale scar on the animal’s hide.

So that leaves just one way in, which involves lifting the tail and wrinkling the nose. But even then there’s the risk that the animal’s body will reject the foreign implant, leading to infection and illness. And if one of the drug packets leaks or bursts inside the cow’s intestines, it would almost certainly kill the animal, or perhaps send it into orbit as it tries to jump over the moon.

In any event, the next time you eat a peculiarly seasoned steak, then find yourself up until 5 a.m. licking your gums and bragging in a rapid, breathless voice to anyone who will listen, you might want to ask your butcher where he sources his meat.

This story was first published in Fusion.

The horror. The horror.

RIO SAN JUAN, Nicaragua — “This is the bullet ant,” says Victor Manuel Diaz, pointing at a tree branch with the tip of his machete. “If you get bit once, it hurts horribly. If you get bit twice, you could go into anaphylactic shock. If you get bit seven times or more, you could die. So don’t touch any trees without looking first.”

Into the jungle.

With those slightly unnerving words of advice, we trudged off—hands mindfully at our sides — through the thickening mud of a long-forgotten guerrilla trail leading into one of Central America’s meanest jungles.

Nicaragua’s Indio Maiz Reserve is a savage land of curious sights: trees that bleed milk, roots that pour water, and colorful frogs filled with murderous thoughts. Our goal was to bushwhack through the dark jungle in under five hours and — if our guide could find his way through the disorienting bush — return to sunlight on the banks the Rio Sarnoso, a remote tributary that’s home to crocodiles and the occasional freshwater bull shark.

Gabriela Panuela/ Fusion

The entire southeastern corner of Nicaragua is a land fraught with mystery and danger, and in doses that have inspired madness among foreign adventurers for centuries. Which is why it was the perfect place for my friend Warren Ogden’s “Apocalypse Now” bachelor party, a three-day river excursion into the wilds.

“Bachelor parties are the perfect excuse for bringing together friends from different phases of your life,” Warren, 38, told me, twirling his mustache in what appeared to be the early stages of river dementia. “And if you put men together in difficult circumstances, it forges a bond. The army has that part right.”

Trees that bleed milk.

Warren wanted a bachelor party that was exotic, memorable, and adventuresome. And in 2015, a strip club bachelor party is none of those things. So we had to go deep into the jungle to find something new.

Warren didn't want to have a normal bachelor party

As a veteran member of Nicaragua’s gringo expat community, Warren is the kind of guy who has a hard time organizing events without some elaborate theme that invariably embarrasses half of the people involved. With him, Friday afternoon beers have a way of turning into lakeside ninja fights, and Saturday nights devolve into Zorro rescue missions to save some unexpecting female backpacker from an unperceived danger in Granada’s Central Park. He once got me to dress in a full-body lion suit and sit glumly at the end of a crowded bar drinking beers by myself, while he giggled manically at the concerned glances of other patrons.

So when it came time to organize his second bachelor party — the kind that precedes a second marriage— nothing less than over-the-top would do. He enlisted fellow expat Skip Tuckerson, who has a devious mind for detailed planning and conspiring against his friends, and hatched the Apocalypse Now river expedition, with just enough Roman candles and bottles of rum to be considered wildly irresponsible.

It was one of those loosely themed, slightly nostalgic, just-south-of-40s bachelor parties — the kind made famous by Dana Saint’s epic Rambo-themed bachelor party, which made the rounds on YouTube earlier this year. Our version was far less scripted and less theatrical, but more perilous.

Just traveling down the river cautiously can be dangerous. Crocodiles lurk in the shallows, sharks swim by unnoticed in the murky waters, and mosquitoes plot to infect you with chikungunya. Not to mention the bullet ants, which are also called “assassin ants,” or, more terrifyingly, “24,” because that’s how many hours you’re on deathwatch after getting bit.

The bullet ant

The river itself hides many secrets from the past. The Rio San Juan, for those interested in a bit of history, has played a leading role in some of Central America’s wilder moments over the past 400 years. The infamous pirate Captain Henry Morgan (of rum fame) sailed up the river to attack the colonial city of Granada in the 1660s; in 1762, nineteen-year-old heroine Rafaela Herrera successfully defended Nicaragua from British invasion by firing a cannonball into the chest of a slow-ducking British commander; the California Gold Rush days prompted a bizarre personal war between American filibuster William Walker and U.S. industrialist Cornelius Vanderbilt; and in the 1980s revolutionary hero Eden “Comandante Cero” Pastora led his band of contra guerrillas in brazen attacks on Sandinista-controlled river towns.

One of Vanderbilt's old steam engines

Today, the bottom of the river is littered with a telltale collection of pirate rum bottles, cannonballs, sunken steamships, and AK-47 bullet casings. But the jungle surrounding the river remains as dense and untouched as it was when Mark Twain traveled through in 1866 and marveled at the sight of monkeys and parrots living outside of cages.

After our 13-member bachelor party— the latest excursion of addle-brained gringos to take on the river — traveled for two days down the San Juan, we arrived at an unmapped island known as Diamante, which is just a shock of bamboo protruding from an alluvial mud bank that formed around the carcass of one of Vanderbilt’s steamships that ran aground in the rapids back in 1848. The giant steam engine lays rusting on the edge of the island, one of the many metallic ruins the “Commodore” left scattered about the river when he finally decided he’d had enough of Nicaragua and bugged off in the late 1800s.

With tents pitched snuggly in several inches of mud and pants tucked tightly into shin-high muck boots, we made camp around a fire on jungle hammocks and some makeshift bamboo furniture fashioned by our Nicaraguan guides, who were extremely handy with machetes and prevented the headline: 13 gringos die on the Rio San Juan.

This jungle root pours water like a faucet (with a rare cameo by Nica Dispatch water bottle)

We then ventured off further down river, past the Machuca Rapids, to explore the jungle by paddleboard, canoe, and motorboat, and fish for prehistoric-looking tarpin — zero of which we caught. All along the river, we were greeted by howler monkeys, caiman, and hook-beaked tropical birds whose names I don’t know.

Warren's canoe gets flipped after a 'pirate' attack

We also caught glimpses of nature’s more violent side: A dead dog that got pulled under the dark waters by a crocodile, but bobbed back to the surface to get ripped apart by vultures when our boat approached to investigate; and the horrid remains of an anteater that got torn to pieces by —judging by the carnage and pawprints— a very large wildcat.

But as was to be expected, we 13 fools ended up being the most dangerous animals in the jungle. From mid-river pirate attacks that inadvertently sank Warren’s canoe, to jungle ambushes with Roman candles, to Chris’ backflips off jungle vines into a murky river, we were certainly the greatest risk to our own wellbeing.

Our wonderful and life-saving Nicaraguan guides, whom we befriended in the process, could only shake their heads in mild disbelief that — after more than 400 years — the Rio San Juan continues to hold such a strange and bewitching allure on deranged, Kurtzian gringos.

The horror. The horror.

This story first appeared in Fusion.

A little Pollo Campero can go a long way to bringing peace to El Salvador

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — A greasy 12-piece combo of fried chicken isn’t always the smartest menu choice. But in this case, the double Promoción Súper Campero was all about preserving my health.

I was cabbing across San Salvador cradling two soggy-bottom boxes of chicken parts to make a prandial offering to the leaders of the Pandilla 18, one of El Salvador’s two main gangs. I was told not to come empty-handed.

“We always start every round of peace talks by eating Pollo Campero,” Salvadoran gang whisperer Raul Mijango told me after arranging the interview. “So bring eight pieces of chicken.”

I brought 12. Plus a sizable side of soddened fries and 2 liters of Pepsi.

I was on a mission to talk to gang leaders about their country’s spiking murder rate. El Salvador is lurching towards its worst levels of violence in decades. The gang truce that momentarily quieted the guns in 2012-’13 is now a fading memory as the army launches an aggressive military offensive with three new rapid response battalions.

The country’s murder rate in the past few months has reached levels not seen in El Salvador since the darkest days of the country’s civil war, which claimed 75,000 lives between 1980-1992.

For a country that fought so hard to implement an institutionalized peace process 25 years ago, the government’s addlepated rush to find a military solution to the gang problem is baffling. It’s even more befuddling when you think that the ruling FMLN came to power democratically, thanks precisely to the gains of El Salvador’s peace process.

“In no moment was he in contact with Ebola patients,” the U.S. embassy said in statement, following a live broadcast by government health workers claiming the exact opposite.

The embassy said the staffer, whose identity has not been released, was fully examined by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta after coming back from Africa and prior to his return to Nicaragua.

“The CDC was in direct contact with Nicaraguan authorities and told them of the staff worker’s imminent return to Nicaragua, and confirmed that he did not have any symptoms of the disease,” the embassy’s statement reads. “The staffer continues to not have any systems related to the disease.”

The embassy added that it had informed Nicaraguan health authorities about the trip two weeks ago, and they had approved his return to Managua afterwards.

Nicaraguan officials, however, are suddenly affecting high alert for an Ebola outbreak in the Central American country.

The Sandinista government today issued an alert for the Ebola virus and established a public-health perimeter around the house of the U.S. embassy staffer who recently returned from Liberia.

Nicaraguan health workers said the 51-year-old diplomat has been restricted from leaving his home while the Sandinista government of President Daniel Ortega tries to coordinate his removal from the country and return to the U.S.

“We want to inform you about the entry to our country of a 51-year-old North American citizen, who works at the Embassy of the United States in Nicaragua, and who was in health installations for Ebola patients, something that he confirmed,” government health official Dr. Carlos Sáenz said during a Monday afternoon press conference broadcast on live TV by government media.

This is the first suspected case of Ebola reported in Nicaragua. A previous suspected case in Honduras turned out to be a false alarm.

This story originally appeared on Fusion.net

Plaza Inter, Nicaragua’s oldest modern shopping mall, said it decided to cancel Saturday’s show to quell controversy following this week’s pushback on Facebook. Mall administrators insist the annual event, which pit bikini-clad 6-10 year old girls against one another on the catwalk, was never intended to be exploitative or sexually suggestive.

“This is not prostitution, it’s just family entertainment,” said Plaza Inter’s Miriam Garcia. Garcia said the mall has held the same competition every year for “many years,” but this is the first time there’s been any controversy — something she attributes to recent sexual-abuse scandals and Nicaraguans’ growing level of online activism.

“We made an administrative decision to cancel the event to avoid any more polemic,” she said.

Garcia defended Plaza Inter as a “responsibly and family-friendly” shopping center. The little girl swimsuit competition, she said, is a harmless event that belongs in the same category as other talent contests organized by the mall, including drawing competitions, singing contests, and the annual Halloween costume show.

Children’s rights advocates disagree.

Another local organization, known as the Quincho Barrilete Association, took its protest a step further by organizing a social media campaign that excoriated the event as a violation of young girls’ “psychological and emotional integrity.” The group called on corresponding government organizations to step up and do their jobs to protect children’s rights, rather than “accept this type of contest as normal behavior.”

The government—spurred to action by the collective cry of social media —emitted a few audible harrumphs of its own, affecting a sudden level of concern that it never expressed during the previous eight years of children’s swimsuit competitions. The congressional commission on children’s rights denounced the swimsuit show as a violation of Nicaraguan law and international conventions safeguarding children’s rights. The ministry of the interior sent a stern letter to Plaza Inter with an ominous list of laws that they could be violating by holding the competition. Garcia said Plaza Inter’s lawyers didn’t think the event was outside of the law, but decided to call it off anyway.

The fact that the government acted and mall administrators capitulated shows the persuasive power of social media — even in a country like Nicaragua, which has the lowest Internet connectivity rate in Latin America.

The scandal also suggests a slowly evolving sensibility in a part of the world with a demonstrated tolerance — and, indeed, appetite — for bikini competitions featuring pre-pubescent girls.

On the other hand, the swimsuit scandal doesn’t appear to have led to a greater enlightenment so far. Plaza Inter says it still plans to hold next month’s annual baby diaper crawl.

Oh well, baby steps.

This article first appeared on Fusion.net

Nicaragua’s sudden interest in purchasing a squadron of MiG-29 fighter jets from Russia could trigger a pointless arms race between one of the smallest and one of the largest militaries in Latin America.

Nicaragua says it wants combat jets to fight the war on drugs. But that argument has failed to convince anyone. Instead, skeptics wonder if Nicaragua’s efforts to purchase military aircraft isn’t somehow tied to its canal plans, or — more likely yet— an effort to assert a stronger military presence in disputed Caribbean waters bordering Colombia.

Though Nicaragua has legal claim to Caribbean waters out to 200 miles off its eastern shore, Colombia has all the naval muscle in the area — a fleet of 232 ships, including submarines and battleships. Nicaragua, meanwhile, has only a few dozen coastal patrol boats, which are basically suped-up pangas equipped with spare parts stripped off of intercepted drug boats.

Nicaragua’s acquisition of a few Russian MiGs wouldn’t shift the balance of power with Colombia, but it would give the government of Daniel Ortega a much louder presence over its troubled waters.

Nicaraguan Brigadier General Adolfo Zepeda says other countries have nothing to worry about. He says the fighter jets — Nicaragua’s first modern combat planes since the former Somoza dictatorship sold off its P-51 Mustangs and F-47 Thunderbolts in the early 1960s—will be “strictly for defensive” purposes in the drug war, and never used as “attack jets.”

Military experts, however, say Nicaragua’s argument lacks cogency for two reasons. Firstly, fighter jets are are not used to fight the war on drugs; and secondly, they are precisely offensive weapons.

This story first appeared in Fusion. Read full story here.

Anti-canal activists in several dozen farming communities along the canal route are circulating petitions asking parents to boycott the 2015 school year, which starts next Monday.

Community leaders in San Miguelito claim soldiers have been using rural schoolhouses during students’ summer recess as makeshift barracks to militarize the countryside and quell anti-canal protests. Though the army has recently withdrawn from the area, residents fear the soldiers could return at any moment and occupy the schools again. And parents don’t want their kids around when that happens.

“The soldiers were using the schoolhouses as military bases in between patrols,” community organizer Freddy Orozco told Fusion in a phone interview. He said the soldiers would “come and go” from the schoolhouses, and the kids, who witnessed the repression of the protests, were frightened to see their classrooms taken over by armed soldiers.

The Nicaraguan Army denies the allegations.

“The Army of Nicaragua does not use school installations for military purposes,” Army spokesman Colonel Manuel Guevara told Fusion. “And we have not had any military personnel in any community of San Miguelito since Jan. 10.”

Residents, however, insist soldiers evacuated their municipality just last week, in response to the boycott efforts.

Now, instead of attending the first day of classes on Feb. 9, more than a thousand mothers and their truant children are planning to march on San Miguelito instead. Local leaders say the community will make its decision on Monday about whether to enroll their kids in school this year, or retreat to their homes and prepare to defend their land.

“Nobody is going to leave when they order us off our property, so we know the army is going to come back at any moment to try to force us out like animals,” says 33-year-old farmer José Sequeira, a father to five school-age children.

Sequeira says he’s ready to endorse the education boycott because, as the petition states, “We can’t talk about education as a right when [the government] is violating the right to private property and putting everyone in the area in a position of helplessness.”

This story first appeared on Fusion.net

Nicaraguan canal spokesman Telemaco Talavera seems to have inadvertently admitted that the Sandinista government doesn’t know the exact route of a $50 billion canal that will bisect Nicaragua.

During a confrontation with a Nicaraguan student studying abroad in Madrid, Talavera refuted her claim that 60,000 campesinos will be affected by the canal, saying “That means someone has the route more clearly defined than we do.”

Nicaraguan university student Alejandra Espinoza today challenged Talavera about the “enormous concerns” in Nicaragua over unanswered questions about the “social, political, economic and environmental affects” of the $50 billion Chinese canal planned in Nicaragua. In doing so, she presented Talavera with a bundle of papers that she said contained “more than 60,000 signatures of people who will be affected” by the canal. The stack of papers also included copies of the 32 constitutional challenges filed on behalf of 182 Nicaraguans opposed to the canal project.

Talavera answered with thinly veiled indignation, saying that he welcomes Espinoza’s opinion because dissent is welcome in a democracy. But he insisted that the 60,000 number is wrong, unless, of course, someone understands the canal route better than he does. (So far, however, Talavera hasn’t demonstrated that he has an entirely clear grasp on the canal path either).

Talavera said that Espinoza was right that the canal would have a “great social impact” on the country in that it will create jobs and “more resources for education, health and infrastructure.”

He note that 61% of Nicaraguans are in favor of the canal, and insisted — with a slightly reddening face — that the Chinese canal will have a “positive net effect” on the environment.

Comandante Ruben

(posted Jan 26, 11:15 pm) —Nicaragua’s opposition Independent Liberal Party (PLI) today called on President Daniel Ortega to work towards finding a peaceful solution to growing political violence in the northern mountains of Jinotega after a weekend attack with a mysterious backpack bomb killed three alleged rearmed contras in the municipality of Pantasma.

A communiqué from an alleged rearmed contra group known as the FDC-380 claims that six “guerrillas and an unknown number of civilians” were killed when a cellphone packed with C-4 was detonated remotely in a plot to kill rearmed contra leaders known as Comandates Aguila and Sereno. The communiqué blames the the Nicaraguan Army for planting the bomb.

Nicaraguan media puts the death toll at three.

Pantasma

The Army denies any involvement in the case and said the investigation is being handled by the police, according to La Prensa. Security experts, however, claim the whole thing stinks of similar military intelligence operations in the 1990s, when the army hunted down and exterminated rearmed rebel groups following Nicaragua’s civil war.

Archbishop Leopoldo Brenes said last weekend’s incident in Pantasma reminds him of similar incidents when “rearmados” were killed with “telephone bombs” in Matagalpa in the 1990s.

Opposition congressman Eduardo Montealegre said the backpack bomb in Pantasma is proof positive that the government knows there are rearmed contras operating in the mountains, even though they deny it publicly. The attack, he said, had all the trappings of a professional operation.

“Common criminals don’t send a military-grade bomb in a backpack to detonate with a remote control,” Montealegre said during a press conference Monday.

Former contra commander Oscar “Comandante Ruben” Sobalvarro called the assassination of the rearmed contras in Pantasma an act of terrorism. He said that the backpack bombing shows Nicaragua’s public security forces have already lost control of the situation.

“An armed institution at the service of public security can’t be bombing campesinos and innocent people who have nothing to do with armed groups,” he said. “We didn’t even see this activity during the years of war.”