Eighty students from across Costa Rica participated in a photo course designed to explore the theme of poverty in everyday life. The photographs will be on display at the National Museum this weekend until Sunday, Sept. 27.
The world "witnessed an historic reduction in global poverty" over the first decade of the century, with those considered "middle income" nearly doubling, according to the Pew Research Center. But Costa Rica's middle class — and that of most other Central American countries — shrunk over the same time period as a percentage of those countries' total population.
Between beaches and rainforests, visitors to Costa Rica can now tour one of San José's most well-known slums. Organizers hope the tours will offer perspective on the country’s persistent 20 percent poverty rate.
Over the years, Laflur has built a swimming pool, erected concrete walls, fixed toilets and swept the patio at the Drink Bar — the type of hard manual labor that feeds his five children and that is far harder to find in his native Haiti. But his daily routine, and the livelihoods for hundreds of thousands of Haitians, has been put at risk by new immigration rules that intend to oust Haitians who don't have documentation to stay in the Dominican Republic, even those who were born there
They buy 10 Porsches a day and travel the world by private jet, toting their Louis Vuitton bags and leaving behind a faint scent of Chanel. They are Latin America's super-rich, and they are multiplying faster than anywhere in the world.
The Associated Press reported Tuesday that the head of the Dominican Republic's immigration agency, Army Gen. Ruben Paulino, said his agency will begin patrolling neighborhoods with large numbers of migrants on Thursday. "If they aren't registered, they will be repatriated," Paulino said, according to the AP.
The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) named Costa Rica among 72 countries (of 129 evaluated) that achieved the Millennium Development Goal of cutting in half by a 2015 deadline the number of residents living in situations of hunger.
Once a thriving colonial harbor under British protection, and used for the export of coconut, banana and lumber, Bluefields now has a worn-down look of old wooden houses rotting away in the tropical heat.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – President Francois Hollande arrived in Haiti on Tuesday to boost France's role in what was once its richest Caribbean possession but is now a desperately poor nation with a bitter colonial legacy.
The new "accommodation centers," as a report by Agence France Presse dubs them, are part of the Qatari government's attempt to upgrade living conditions for the hundreds of thousands of migrants toiling in the tiny, petro-rich kingdom.
