Journalists of La Nación v. Costa Rica (also known as the Parque Viva case) was a proceeding brought before the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice of Costa Rica. It involved a group of employees from the newspaper La Nación who accused President Rodrigo Chaves Robles and Minister of Health Joselyn Chacón Madrigal of violating press freedom. This complaint came after the closure of a recreational park owned by the economic group affiliated with the newspaper, which the journalists claimed was an act of retaliation. Following publications reported that Chaves had been previously sanctioned by the World Bank for sexual harassment, as well as other press releases critical of the presidential and government administration.
The complaint was filed on July 29, 2022, through the figure of the recurso de amparo, processed under file 22-016697-0007-CO, and resolved on October 21 of the same year by judgment 2022-25167, which was made public on December 7.
In the case, the constitutional court analyzed the use or application by the State of indirect restrictions on freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and the protection enjoyed by businesses linked to mass media whose purpose is to diversify their income sources, given the economic debacle experienced by the information industry since the rise of the Internet and especially the migration of advertising to sites like Facebook and Google.
Background
La Nación La Nación is the reference newspaper in Costa Rica, founded on October 12, 1946, with capital of nearly 1 million colones contributed by 188 shareholders, mostly from the agricultural sector, industrialists, and lawyers, including statesman Manuel Jiménez de la Guardia, Manuel de Mendiola Zaldívar, the founder of the Second Republic José Figueres Ferrer, politician and diplomat Gonzalo Facio Segreda, former president Francisco J. Orlich, deputy , and chancellor Rodrigo Madrigal Nieto.
The first president of the newspaper's board was Alfredo Echandi Jiménez (brother of former president Mario Echandi Jiménez), vice president Jaime Solera Bennett; secretary Édgar Odio González; treasurer Manuel Mendiola Zaldívar; and directors José Victory Marchena, Ramón Aguilar Castro, Alberto Cañas Escalante, Roberto Cañas Escalante, and Ramón Herrero Herrero.
La Nación was founded as an independent newspaper with an anti-communist line; however, in the 1970s it supported the constitutional reform of article 89 that eliminated the proscription of the Communist Party.
On October 12, 1978, due to its growing staff and more printing presses, it moved to Llorente of Tibás, which is why it is popularly known as "the newspaper of Llorente," where it has remained since then.
La Nación is part of Grupo Nación, an economic power group whose main shareholders are the Jiménez family and whose members hold shares in important Costa Rican companies, such as the beer and beverage producer Florida Ice & Farm Company (FIFCO). This group is one of the most important media conglomerates in Central America and, before the rise of the Internet, had the greatest concentration of advertising revenue and printed newspaper circulation. It had regionalized with operations in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and Panama, but was diminished over the years.
Grupo Nación came to have a wide variety of media outlets, including three newspapers still in circulation: La Nación, La Teja, and El Financiero; three magazines: Perfil, Sabores, and Más Correr; three radio stations: (104.3 FM), Bésame (89.9 FM), and Qué Teja (91.5 FM), as well as digital platforms for creating websites, ordering food, finding people with similar tastes and interests, and buying tickets for public events. It made two important investments: one in 2014 for building a new newsroom for 2,750 million colones and another in 2015 for 23,000 million colones for the inauguration of Parque Viva.
In 2013, the newspaper reached a conciliatory agreement in court for the case popularly known as "rotativas" where it was accused of tax evasion maneuvers. With this agreement came the dismissal of more than 150 employees and the closure of four media outlets that were part of the group: the sports newspaper Al Día, the newspaper Ahora, the architecture and urbanism magazine SuCasa, and the magazine Soho.
From 2014, its revenues began to decline at an average of 6,031 million colones per year (24%) and it reported net profit losses in 2015 and 2016 of 1,501 million colones and 1,983 million colones, respectively.
In 2014, La Nación issued two bond emissions on the National Stock Exchange of Costa Rica (Bolsa Nacional de Valores de Costa Rica) for 10 billion colones and another for 11 billion colones. Part of those investments were acquired by the pension operators of the Banco de Costa Rica, the Costa Rican Social Security Fund and Banco Popular with maturities in 2024 and 2025.
Parque Viva
Parque Viva is a sports and entertainment center located in Alajuela 6 kilometers from Juan Santamaría International Airport. It is considered the first entertainment center in Central America and was built around the former with an extension of 300,000 square meters (35 hectares), including the Coca-Cola Amphitheater, Circuito Grupo Sur, and Centro Kölbi, with a capacity of 19,000 spectators.
It was acquired in 2013 by Grupo Nación Sociedad Anónima, the corporation of which the newspaper La Nación is part, to diversify its income sources and compensate for the loss of earnings due to the migration of advertising to Internet sites.
The park began operations after obtaining required operating permits in 2015 and, since then, has held nearly 600 events with attendance of nearly 1 million people and equivalent to 63% of concerts held in Costa Rica.
In 2015, the Ministry of Health granted the park the sanitary operating permit, renewed in 2019 until 2024.
Rodrigo Chaves Robles
Rodrigo Chaves Robles is a Costa Rican economist and former career official of the World Bank. He was Minister of Finance from 2019 to 2020 during the government of Carlos Alvarado Quesada and, after his forced resignation, ran for president with the Social Democratic Progress Party, winning the first and second rounds of the 2022 presidential elections with an anti-establishment discourse.
On January 29, 2022, during a political rally, Chaves promised to "cause the destruction of the corrupt structures of La Nación and Channel 7", both reference media in Costa Rica. Later during his presidency he made repeated verbal attacks on traditional media calling them "scoundrels", "political hitmen" to several journalists and on one occasion comparing them to rats.
Nine days after assuming the presidency, media revealed that the president's chief of staff, Jorge Rodríguez Vives, ordered public institutions' press directors to limit information flow to the press, stating not to see it as "censorship" but as "absolute discipline".
Chaves received a warning from the in October 2022 after journalist Vilma Ibarra Mata, director of the program "Hablando Claro" on Radio Columbia, reported violations of rights to freedom of speech and freedom of the press after five hierarchical sources within the government told her that then Communication Minister Patricia Navarro Molina had sent via WhatsApp to all ministers and executive presidents an order to urgently suspend all state advertising in Amelia Rueda, La Nación, , and Channel 7.
In May 2023, the Constitutional Court condemned the State for Chaves' verbal attacks on the press during the conference after the Council of Government on January 9, where the Executive was questioned regarding allegations of using trolls to attack journalists and deputies. That day the president referred to several communicators as "political hitmen", "wretches" and "gossipy people" which for the court was an "unjustified excess" that could promote harassment against the alluded media and journalists.
Closure of the park
On July 5, 2022, Health Minister Joselyn Chacón Madrigal received an anonymous complaint regarding structural conditions of buildings and raising complaints about traffic collapse on surrounding routes to Parque Viva when mass events were held there, requesting definitive closure until a solution was found.
That same day, Chacón urgently requested from the Ministry of Public Works and Transport (MOPT) a technical opinion on access streets to Parque Viva and forwarded the complaint to the corresponding regional direction, where one hour later a physical-sanitary inspection was carried out in which the accused problems were not found, concluding that installations met adequate internal conditions.
On July 7, 2022, the Technical Advisory Committee on Mass Gatherings of the agreed with the affirmative vote of authorities from that ministry, the Ministry of Public Works and Transport, Fire Department, , and to propose a sanitary closure order for mass events against Parque Viva and require a remedial plan for traffic problems affecting the area when events with large attendance were held. The next day the Ministry of Health issued the sanitary order suspending the operating permit.
The newspaper La Nación highlighted that the park closure occurred two days after the President of the Republic attacked the media regarding bonds issued by the company in the stock market and partly acquired by the Pension Operator of the Costa Rican Social Security Fund. Grupo Nación Board President Carlos González said the closure decision was "surprising" and they did not understand it since only 10% of park activities fell into "mass events" category, so the measure affected theme park, racetrack, amphitheater, sports, cultural, fairs, and exhibitions activities. Days later it was revealed that technical reports supporting the closure were issued after the closure order.
The park closure implied changing location for concerts by Flans and Pandora in July, Jesús Adrián Romero, Danny Ocean, and Ana Gabriel scheduled for September, and Sebastián Yatra on December 2.
Press conference of July 13, 2022
The President of the Republic and officials of institutions requesting the establishment closure defended it by presenting at the press conference after the Government Council session on July 13, 2022 videos showing ambulances and fire vehicles unable to transit due to traffic collapse on streets surrounding Parque Viva during events there.
Public Force Director Daniel Calderón Rodríguez said a medical evacuation supported by police took more than an hour, while Fire Department General Director Héctor Chaves León stated that in the last five years the institution had attended 4,955 incidents in communities of San Antonio, El Roble, Ciruelas, and La Guácima in Alajuela Province (neighboring Parque Viva) and response times were affected by traffic congestions in the vicinity.
Minister of Public Works and Transport Luis Amador Jiménez explained that Parque Viva had no direct highway access so the adjacent street collapsed with 1,000 vehicles, while land use permit as amphitheater according to Federal Highway Administration standards implied displacement of about 6,667 vehicles, leading him to conclude that Parque Viva should never have received operating permit. He added that Grupo Nación had presented a proposal to quadruple park size and build access from National Route 27, but that would mean that highway would also collapse due to vehicular traffic.
For his part, the president dismissed allegations that park closure constituted an attack on freedom of the press and stated that "it enjoys good health and has a government that will defend it at all costs". He also accused Costa Rican correspondents of international media echoing Parque Viva closure of having "defamed this blessed homeland".
Constitutional Chamber