According to the spin in AM Costa Rica, this will be the Chinchilla Administrations ‘defining moment,’ much as the CAFTA/TLC trade agreement was for President Oscar Arias. It’s so early in her administration that I can’t say this will be THE defining moment, but it is certainly important. For those of us who are old
[continue reading...]

If you have done any reading about Costa Rica, you have heard it called the ‘Switzerland of Central America.’ It has a nice ring to it. The ‘Switzerland of anywhere’ sounds great, especially if you can yodel. Way back in my college days, I took a class in Political and Economic Geography. It wasn’t all
[continue reading...]

Dollarization From Wikipedia: Dollarization occurs when the inhabitants of a country use foreign currency in parallel to or instead of the domestic currency. The term is not only applied to usage of the United States dollar, but generally to the use of any foreign currency as the national currency. There has been a lot of
[continue reading...]

On Thursday, March 25, 2010, President-elect Laura Chinchilla announced the creation of a new ministry, the Ministry of Social Welfare and Development. The stated aim of this new ministry is to sort out and reorganize the dozens of current programs designed to fight poverty. Poverty in Costa Rica? According to official statistics, Costa Rica has
[continue reading...]

Is China the ‘next big thing?’ The government of Costa Rica seems to think so. Of course, China has always been a pretty big thing. But now that Costa Rica has jumped on board, THE SKY IS THE LIMIT! It doesn’t seem so long ago that Costa Rica and Taiwan were strolling down lovers lane,
[continue reading...]

We’re not talking about a part of the body, we are talking about the official currency of Costa Rica, the Colon. It’s pronounced coh-LOAN, by the way. And since one Colon can’t buy anybody anything, people here talk about Colones (coh-LOAN-eez). It takes a lot of nerve for a guy who never even took an
[continue reading...]