Date: Fri, 28 Jul 1995 13:56:17 -0600 From: cblanca@sol.racsa.co.cr (Hotel Casa Blanca de Ml. Ant. S.A.) Hello out there! (Sorry for a long mail again) The effects of the discrimination wave against the gay/lesbian hotels in Costa Rica are showing up. As you remember, Tourist Minister Ing. Carlos Roesch was stating in an oficial interview in "La Prensa Libre" on 06/17/95 that the gay/lesbian travel is insignificant for Costa Rica and he was saying between the lines that therefore Costa Rica and Costa Rica's image will not suffer any damage for closing the hotels down. Hotel Casa Blanca ever since has had the Migration Police, Tax Office, Towns Adminstration trying to find something to close the hotel! Hotel Colours just now got the same trouble. They got 8 hours to present all necessary documents to run the place (the officials from San Jose's towns administration refused to tell the manager what papers exactly they want to see!!) Please keep the pressure up and protest against the politic of Costa Rica concerning g/l businesses and g/l/b/t Costaricans in general! I know that many people of our own g/l community critized me for writting in the name of the g/l/b/t groups of Costa Rica by stating that I am only abusing this case for making promotion for my place. That's very pathetic and I am very upset about those statements, because in fact we already lost reservations for putting the case to the public (why people cancel, I don't know, the USA are having Jesse Helms etc, and everybody continues visiting the states!) The g/l hotels are threatend to be closed, that means that 80% closet g/l will lose the only few places where they can live freely at least for some few days (remember that even the gay/lesbian beach is threatend to dissapear, but in that case we have support from g/l insiders of the Tourist Ministery). Therefore I kindly ask you to read the following aclaration: What we in Costa Rica are facing is just a part of the new worldwide homophobic wave which seems to be connected with extremly fanatic religous groups and fanatic right extremists (remember always the contract "Concordatio" Hitler's government signed with the Vatican to prosecute jews and homosexuals!!). This worldwide homophobic wave is again part of the general politcal wave which tries to change governments and constitutions all over the world to forbide "free thinking" and "self-determination" (both are the aims of humanism). For that I am sending my opinion on the Costarican and worldwide homophobic threat to the Internet! I feel personally responsible for my gay/lesbian friends in Costa Rica and in the "rest" of the world! Therefore I will use all available time and energy to fight for "free thinking" and "self-determination" against any kind of discrimination. That's the reason why I am politically active in Costa Rica's g/l/b/t groups and that's the reason why I will also take part in the just founded Humanistic Association of Latin America "ASIBEHU" (especially for being fluent in 3 languages). But that's a personal decisison I took as Harald Holler and not as representative of our business. Or better: I need a good running business for being able to dedicate my life to these aims! Beside this, our new political g/l/b/t (consisting of: Gente 10, Deja Vue, Human Right's lawyer Marco Castillo, the founder of the first legally inscribed g/l association: Triangulo Rosa (formerly "Abraxas), manager from Hotel Colours and myself) is just structuring the existing gay/lesbian groups in Costa Rica to avoid that two groups are spending their energy in the same fields like competetors instead of using the energy for other fields. We try to optimize the work of all groups to use our energy as wisely as possible, also considering our pathetic financial situation (I personally spent over 4000 US$ during the last 6 weeks on our fight, just to let you know!). One of our actions will be to call the attention of g/l business owners in Costa Rica to support us finacially. The new g/l/b/t movement will function as communication and support central nationally and internationally. The Internet communication will be handled by the business access of Hotel Casa Blanca. The same access will probably be the first GLAAD OUTLet outside the USA (serving all Central America)! All requests for information will be handled by our movement (we will give us a apropiate name next week). Next week we will elaborate a two page summary of the actual situation of g/l/b/t people in Costa Rica and of the pathetic situation of people with HIV and AIDS in the states owned medical system (no AZT or other drugs) and what Social Security in Costa Rica stated officially to deny the need of AZT or other treatments!! Thanks for your kind understanding and your (very much needed) support, Harald Holler ****************************************************************************** To send a message to the entire list "queerplanet", email queerplanet@abacus.oxy.edu This list is run by the program MAJORDOMO@abacus.oxy.edu. *******************************************************************************