|
News
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
We welcome your suggestions
and contributions to make this the
'best' daily news source in Costa Rica! Send your comments to:
Send your
letters to editor at:
>
EXCLUSIVE! <
Tuesday
28 January 2003
|
|
|
TLC Agreement
protest
By:
Federico
Here's my report, not as an objective reporter, but as a what I saw,
what we encountered, and my own editorial comments.
As members of THE UNITED INVESTORS of COSTA RICA we went to the
Intercontinental Hotel at 9AM to pass out our leaflet in English and
Spanish to delegates attending the conference and to any other members of
the public who were there. There were no assemblies of people outside the
entrance to the hotel at that time.
We were stopped at the entrance of the hotel by two men in suits without
any special identification and asked why we were entering the hotel. The
driver said we were going to have breakfast. Then a suit asked to see the
drivers passport. Amazing - to be asked for your passport to have
breakfast at a public hotel! We proceeded to park the car and entered the
main entrance of the hotel.
All around the parking lot and other areas of the hotel were Tico police,
about 75 to 100 of them including three mounted police. I looked to see if
the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were behind the trees being held as back
up, but didn't see any.
I entered the hotel while the other members of our group waited outside. I
asked at the front desk where the CAFTA conference was being held and was
told that registration was to the right and around the corner. At a long
table were women behind placards with countries names: USA, Nicaragua, el
Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and quite frankly I don't
remember whether I saw any for Panama or Belize.
In my poor Spanish I asked the woman at the USA section who didn't speak
English if I could register for the conference and she pulled out a long
box with delegate badges and asked my name and I said I hadn't
pre-registered - that is as well as I could get the message across. At the
same time a gentleman came up to register and I asked him if he was from
the US and he said yes. I told him I had a leaflet that pertained to the
conference and asked him if he could pass them around for me and he said
sure, so I gave him about 25 leaflets.
Then again, in my mixed up Spanish I asked each woman behind the country
placards if they could give the leaflet out to people as the registered and
each took about 25 - they were all very pleasant. Another woman came up
and in English said she was working with the press so I gave her another
25 leaflets.
I then looked around for other targets of opportunity while deciding it was
not cool to just generally pass out the leaflet in the general lobby when a
large gentleman with a couple tags around his neck came up to me and asked
what I was doing. I told him that I had information that we wanted to
distribute to the delegates and gave him one which he didn't bother to even
look at.
I asked him who he represented and he then asked me my name which I told
him. I then pressed him again who he was and what was his position as I
looked at his tags. He didn't want to answer, but finally he said he was
from the US Embassy. I asked him what was his position there and he didn't
want to answer, but finally said he was head of security. His name plate
said Jorge Espinoza and he spoke perfect US English, so I have to assume
his is a Latino from the US working for the local Embassy.
Then he asked me if I had my passport since it was obvious to him by then
that I was from the States. So I said sure, he is my passport which he
immediately took out a pen and begin to write my name and passport number
on the leaflet. I told him that I was the Chair of the UICR Central
Committee and his strange response was "that sounds like a communist
organization".
My response to that was that I was from Berkeley, California and had been an elected member of the Alameda County Democrat
Central Committee as well as a member of Congressman Ronald Dellums
Executive Committee when he was the Chairman of the Armed Services
Committee. He didn't seem to be impressed and began to tell me that the
hotel was private property to which I responded that I was clearly aware of
that.
In so many ways his body language indicated that he did not want me to stay in the hotel, so I made a graceful exit outside to where my friends
were waiting. All of this took place in about 15 to 20 minutes which was
pretty good considering I wasn't wearing a suit but had on my usual attire
of total khaki with a brown baseball cap and carrying my black
briefcase. I guess I got by because I'm now 66 and don't look like a young
anarchist!
We drove out of the hotel parking lot and went across the street to the
mall for a cup of coffee and talked about the whole scene for about an
hour. When we came out we heard a lot of commotion and saw that many
people, about 200 or so, had gathered at the entrance to the hotel with
banners and flags. Most of the people were young and were from many groups
representing Trotskyite's, Anarchist, and other political groups that I
could not identify. We began to pass out our leaflet randomly and they
accepted them with many people coming over to get them from us. They were
surprised to see Gringo's passing out leaflets and were very friendly
towards us.
I decided to pass out the leaflet to the police and many of them were
surprised and remained stiff, but about 1 out of 5 accepted them with a
smile. This of course was a brazen strategy since I'm sure their officers
didn't approve. We mixed with the protestors for about an hour as they
chanted and marched around the sidewalk. Then we departed the scene
feeling that we had gotten our message out both inside and outside the
conference to the best of our ability."
Federico
Pensionado with 40 years as a political, community, and union
activist
Note:
UICR is up to 88 members - so moving on and so far members must like
the style of the group.... to date.
UICR WEB groups at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UICR_Brothers
and
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UICR_Cuban
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
