A stroll on election morning through San Jose and surrounding areas from Escazu to San Pedro and up to the mountain community of Asseri
Costa Rican election volunteers, 300,000, were early risers on Sunday, February 7, 2010. However, voters were not up early this year, said a security service employee. For this election, nearly 3 million citizens were eligible to vote. Polls were opened for voting at 6 a.m. and closed at 6 p.m. Nine candidates aspired for presidency among them Ms. Laura Chinchilla (Partido Liberacion Nacional). This is the first time a female candidate wins the presidency in this country. She served as Vice-president to Oscar Arias, the outgoing president and Nobel Peace Prize winner. She had two strong opponents: Otto Guevara Guth (Movimiento Libertario) and Otton Solis Fallas (Frente Electoral Patriotico Progresistas).
My first stop this morning was at Laura Chinchilla’s call center in San Antonio de Escazú at 8 a.m.
Escazú is home to many embassy residences including the U.S. Some consider Escazú the “Beverly Hills” of Costa Rica. But for today, it is also the home to one of many political call centers around the country — three people operated this one. It opened November 2 in order to identify and drive voters without transportation to schools on Election Day.
All top contenders for the Presidential position, including Chinchilla, promised the same: to fight crime — a serious problem in Costa Rica.
According to local media documenting this event this evening, Costa Ricans have conducted themselves well during this electoral process. For example, some cars cruised around the city carrying the flags of many political parties. Below is a photo documentary of what Costa Rica looked like this morning.
During my stay in Costa Rica I’ve been volunteering for several organizations — working six days a week. I’ve been asked to produce a historical documentary for a non-profit organization’s 70th anniversary. We are near the end of the researching and interviewing process for the mini-documentary. For this project, we’ve been running around the San Jose metropolitan and suburban areas. I’ve met many Costa Ricans and foreign residents. I’ll be doing my last interview, hopefully this Wednesday. Last Sunday, early in the morning after a photo shooting for this project, I decided to do a dry run and check out the location for my last interview. I found, an environmental paradise. A bird sanctuary with over 4,000 species, said the owner of an organic coffee plantation and vineyard. I also found a huge lizard, I walked near an active African bee hive and saw from a distance a crocodile. All of which I photographed! I ate anise leaves and grapes while I hiked the trails of this paradise — perhaps a story will come out of this once I finish the documentary in February.
René Pérez, known as “Residente” along with his producer, Eduardo Cabra, “Visitante,” of rap group Calle 13 are the winners of numerous awards including five 2009 Latin Grammy, among them, for the best urban album and best short video categories – La Perla with Ruben Blades.
In Las Vegas for the 10th anniversary, Calle 13 swept Latin Grammys 2009, and along with him Luis Fonsi, Wisin y Yandel, also from the U. S. island territory of Puerto Rico. Mercedes Sosa from Argentina won Album of the Year, Omara Portuondo, 79-year-old Cuban singer, won Best Contemporary Tropical Album, and Italian singer Laura Pausini won Best Female Pop Album.
Pérez says, on a video at his website, that as a child his parents could not afford a home on 11th street when the 6th sibling, a sister, was born in 1990s. So they moved to 13th street. They lived in a gated community, El Conquistador de Trujillo Alto, across from a baseball park where they played daily. Perez says at his web site that it was their ticket to leave the neighborhood. Ironically, he says, the baseball team they later integrated was called the “Raperos,” the rappers.
Pérez got the idea for their nicknames, Residente and Visitante, from entering his gated community as a residente and Cabra as a visitante.
Calle 13 sings to the struggle of the middle class, who is not poor enough, nor rich enough, but suffers much. He also sings to the beauty that is at times overlooked such as a “gordita,” lovely chubby woman, with a mini skirt. He says they are inspired by what surrounds them including crime. The controversial group poetically sings their raps about social injustice and what they perceive is wrong with society. Controversy is no stranger to them due to their political and social messages and stand, which is clear in their lyrics and outside stage. Pérez, 31, has been on the news for critiquing of Luis Fortuño’s, Puerto Rico’s governor, administration that has taken measures due to recession by cutting nearly 20,000 government jobs. This led to large protests unseen in Puerto Rico for decades. Pérez has also criticized other Latin American governments and even wrote, “Querido FBI”, a song directed to the FBI.
Pérez, besides being a musician and pianist, is also a musical producer. His work has been encouraging to independent musicians since Calle 13 started as an independent group of urban and alternative music.
As a child on Bergen Street, in Brooklyn, NY, I had so many dreams. One of them was of becoming a hairdresser. At five or six, I would tease, comb and spray my mother’s hair. She never complained, no matter how tangled and messy I made it.
Several years later, I changed my mind and wanted to be a fashion designer. I designed clothes for my fashion dolls and sewn them. I dreamed of owning many Barbie dolls. I only had two fashion dolls and none were Barbies – we couldn’t afford it, my dad said.
Instead I had Stacy and Skippy, two of Barbie’s five sisters. Stacy was a gift from my cousin’s aunt. Skippy, which was my dad’s gift, had long blond hair that I would wash, comb and set. I designed their clothes and many times even hand sewn them. Once I entered one of them on a school contest, and she won! I won! Soon after, my interest in fashion design faded, but not my love for my dolls, which I kept at my parents’ house until they died.
These dolls had been my companions since I was perhaps 7. I married them to my brother’s GI Joes and their Chief Cherokee boy dolls. When I was 8, I wrote tiny Barbie-size books for them and prayed with them.
As I got older, my dreams changed as fast as a revolving door at a busy building. But I was fortunate. I worked hard and stayed focused. Many dreams came true.
Childhood home decades later (Margarita Persico photo.)
On the summer of 2009, I fulfilled another dream – to see my early childhood home. In July, I stood in front of the building after being away for decades.
The brownstone building was almost unrecognizable, now covered by a huge oak tree. The wrought iron fire escape balconies seemed the same, but the fence was new. The aluminum trashcans that once stood in front of the fence were now replaced by rubber ones, placed behind the new and longer wrought iron fence.
The building’s exterior looked fresher and cleaner. The windows on the first floor were now protected with handsome wrought iron bars. The number on the door was professionally placed, instead of the white hand painted number on the brownstone’s doorframe.
Money has given the neighborhood a new life. The cars on the street were modern; some were luxury vehicles and others sporty. Bikes lined fences nearby. The train station on the corner of Bergen and Smith Streets was all that it’s left that exuded familiarity. Where Fidel, the Cuban exile, had his ‘colmado,’ grocery store, a residential building stood. Two grocery stores now serve the neighborhood – one, organic, across the street and another adjacent to the train station.
The neighborhood has long been gentrified. Now fancy stores and up scale restaurants replaced the mom and pop businesses. I wondered how the growth happened. Did neighbors resist? I could not help but parallel the changes to mine — a long journey of struggles, hard work and returning back to the States from Puerto Rico where I spent a decade. A few weeks before visiting my beloved neighborhood, I graduated with a master’s degree in liberal arts, journalism from Harvard.
And like in the dream days of childhood with my fashion dolls where I wrote for them, now I write for others and about other people’s dreams – and accomplishments.
I’m in love with roses. I like them in all shades — red, peach, pink, yellow, white … and even green, which I once saw in Manatí, Puerto Rico.
I’m also enamored with garlic. I use garlic in everything I can — salad dressings, vegetables and even juices. Yes, you read correctly. I juice carrots, beets, celery, ginger and tons of garlic. I drink this concoction especially when there are sick people around me, or I’m starting to fill ill. Garlic is my medicine. I grew up eating garlic, and since childhood it became my natural antibiotic, antifungal, anti-vampire.
But roses loving garlic is something I realized only a decade ago. I heard about it somewhere and started planting garlic bulbs next to my roses. Since then, “roses love garlic” became my gardening mantra.
I’ve had rose gardens for years and numerous times. While trying to grow chemical free roses, I’ve experienced mold setting on my rose bushes more than once. They got white dusty mold on their leaves, but most got black spots fringed with yellow rings known as “diplocarpon rosae,” a fungus. As the disease spreads, the leaves turn yellow and fall. Humid and wet weather makes it worse for roses, which love drier climate. Therefore, whenever I start to see my roses developing any type of fungus, I plant a garlic clove next to the bush. As a vampire fearing garlic, the fungus usually retreats.
There is a scientific explanation for that, according to the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC).
“Laboratory studies suggest that large quantities of fresh, raw garlic may have antiparasitic properties,” states UMMC on its web site. “Fresh garlic contains allicin, which is reported to have antibacterial, antiviral, and antifungal properties.”
That is what has been protecting my roses. But garlic can work as great medicine not only for roses, but also for us.
“Garlic has been used as both food and medicine in many cultures for thousands of years, dating back to when the Egyptian pyramids were built,” reports the UMMC.
Garlic benefits cardiovascular disease, common cold and cancer, states the organization.
Garlic has been keeping me healthier, I’m sure. And as expected, did wonders for my roses here in Costa Rica, my new home. Last month I planted a garlic bulb next to each of my four miniature rose bushes on my window planters that developed the black fungus spots. And it worked — the fungus is already gone, and the garlic plants are growing.
Now I have four garlic plants, and soon I’ll also have homegrown garlic for my pesto. Voilà!
Thursday, Oct. 15, government strikers shut down the city of San Juan, Puerto Rico, leaving it empty, but the government district of Old San Juan was crowded with peaceful demonstrators, reported several news medias. In a rally protesting against Puerto Rico Governor Luis Fortuño’s decision to cut nearly 17,000 government employees. Bishops, government employees, graphic artist and other workers protest on the decision to eliminate lower tier jobs such as janitors, school counselors, etc. instead of top salary personnel accusing government of class bias. The decision of cutting workers instead of reducing hours is due to a $3.2 billion deficit in this U.S. territory. The employment cut raises fears of an unemployment rate of 17 percent in a territory where over 20 percent of employees work for the government. Adding more pain and disappointment to a 4th year recession where new government has not been able to keep election promises and some accuse of lack of compassion by firing lower paid workers. [To read more see link below.]
President Obama’s health care plan advances, though it is not the final vote yet. The Baucus Bill, named after Senator Max Baucus, who crafted the bill, passed the Senate Finance Committee this afternoon with a 14 to 9 vote. Only one Republican voted with the Democrates, Olympia Snow, Maine. The next step of several is the Senate. This Bill, if passed, would insured 94 percent of legal U.S. residents. The cost would be nearly $830 billion in 10 years. But the health insurance industry is concerned with afordability and in a recent report states that this health care bill would cause private insurance premiums to increase.
What a beautiful tribute to a mother and family! From perhaps a stranger or a spiritual brother in the faith to Katherine Jackson. The music, relaxing and part of Michael Jackson’s maternal upbringing of peace and love.
President Barack Obama win’s Nobel Peace Prize for his “extraordinary efforts,” said Thorbjørn Jagland, Norwegian Nobel Committee, which includes Obama’s mission towards “a world without nuclear weapons,” added Jagland this morning.
Below links to video reports on President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize, the awarding ceremony, President Obama’s reaction and an analysis by BBC:
Later this morning President Obama said he is ‘Surprised’ and ‘Humbled’:
Angel Rivera’s life changed on Dec. 24, 2007, when he was rushed to the hospital. He had excruciating pain just below his stomach.
He was diagnosed with fatty pancreas disease and diabetes. His blood glucose was measured at 994; it was supposed to be less than 100.
Rivera was surprised. According to his medical record, the cause of the illness was alcoholism, but he said he had only drunk an alcoholic beverage once in his life and did not like it.
“Just a sip with my father, when I was 14,” he said.
Instead, he believes another vice was the culprit.
Childhood home decades later (Margarita Persico photo.)
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