I haven’t see this anywhere in the mainstream press: the Financial Times had a piece on Feb, 27th (yeah, sorry, it sat on my desk and I just liberated it from the pile) which reported that the Central American Free Trade Agreement might be headed for tough times in Costa Rica:

The leader of Costa Rica’s second largest political party has vowed to obstruct efforts to ratify a 2004 free trade agreement between Central America and the U.S.

Otto Solis, a left-wing presidential candidate for the Citizens’ Action party (PAC) said that CAFTA, as the agreement is known, would “bankrupt Costa Rica’s agricultural sector” and that fundamental changes to the text would have to occur before the treay could be deemed acceptable.

So, once again, hope beckons from the South.