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Car Check Protests Quelled By Christine Pratt
Tico Times Staff
cpratt@ticotimes.netThe tension of possible violence to come remained in the air this week, even though burning roadblocks erected all over the country to protest the July 15 start-up of mandatory vehicle technical inspections had been cleared by tear-gas-wielding riot police.
Protestors, who object to a monopoly granted private Spanish/Costa Rican firm Riteve SyC to conduct the technical inspections, used a burning bus chassis, trees, earth, sand and debris to blockade several points along the Inter-American Highway and other roads July 15 and 16.
The most violent and longest-lasting demonstrations took place in the Central Valley coffee community of San Ramón, near the Caribbean-slope town of Guápiles (along the Braulio Carrillo Highway at the Toro Amarillo River bridge), in the southern mountain hamlet of El Empalme, in nearby Los Santos and, farther south, in Las Juntas de Pacuar, near San Isidro de El General.
In the San José area, police also resorted to force in he western district of Pavas and the southern mountain town of Tarbaca to disperse gathered groups.
Despite the protests, inspections began, as scheduled, in nine of the promised 11 inspection centers nationwide. Waiting periods far exceeded the promised 15-20 minutes per vehicle, but Riteve spokesmen attributed the delays to brand-new staff, motorists arriving at the centers without appointments, and computer problems that halted inspections at several centers between 30 minutes to an hour (see separate story).
Riot police firing tear gas managed to clear the roadblocks by noon Tuesday. Demonstrators responded to the police action by hurling rocks, temporarily retreating and then reestablishing new blockades. Apparently weary and with dwindling numbers, protestors finally faded into the surrounding countryside.
Police confiscated a handgun and a series of homemade firebombs made from beer bottles containing gasoline and fitted with wicks. Police blamed an exploding "molotov cocktail" for a fire that destroyed a thatched-roofed roadside bar near San Isidro. Protestors blamed the fire on police tear gas canisters fired at the crowd, but police say the canisters don’t get hot.
According to the Public Security Ministry press office, police arrested some 175 protestors for resisting arrest, hindering public services, illegal use of firearms, and armed aggression. Most were released hours later, after they were officially identified for police. Public Security Ministry officials confirmed that 48 of the detainees would be charged.
The Costa Rica Red Cross reported that some 111 demonstrators, bystanders and police officers received medical attention to counter the effects of tear gas and for injuries caused by flying rocks.
At press time, the roads were open, but dialogue between the government and protesting sectors had not begun, and some of the country’s powerful public-employee union leaders were threatening to join the demonstrations if a settlement wasn’t reached.
Protestors were apparently led by ATICOS, an association of auto-shop owners who insist the inspections should be carried out by Costa Rican shops, not the Spanish multinational Riteve.
Former Congressman Célimo Guido of the now-defunct Democratic Force Party met with protest planners in San Ramón, and told the daily La Nación that he and other participants took part not only to protest the Riteve-administered inspections, but also because "Gringo warships are allowed to dock here, a free-trade agreement with Canada is about to be approved that will make the farm sector disappear, part of the concession to the Paquera Ferry will be given to Barceló (a Spanish multinational hotel firm), and a private foreign monopoly is being created, called a technical inspection."
But apparent efforts to draw a bigger crowd by opening the demonstrations to additional issues – much the way the 2000 "Combo" protest used the proposed privatization of the Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE) to unite an array of interest groups and paralyze the nation – fizzled, when ATICOS and other sectors shied away from the violence.
On Tuesday, Television’s Channel 7 News interviewed an anguished young father who had been pelted by rocks near San Isidro when he asked protestors to allow his family, carrying a tiny casket bearing their deceased newborn daughter, to cross protest lines en route to a nearby cemetery. . .
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