In 1871 the American entrepreneur Minor Keith won a contract with the government of Costa Rica to build a railroad from the capital city of San José to the port city of Limón. The project would modernize the country and increase exports, like in Chile and Peru, following the industrial expansion of the U.S. But before the Costa Rican railroad was complete in 1890, the government defaulted on its payments and renegotiated a deal which gave Keith’s company 800,000 acres of tax-free land along the railway and a 99-year lease on its operation.
Continue reading “Banana Craze”The Repatriation of the White Cube
A beautiful new art center opened on a Friday evening last month. 2,000 people attended the opening. The building was designed by a major architecture firm. There’s talk of gentrification. And it’s in Lusanga, Democratic Republic of Congo.
Les Paradis, Rapport Annuel
In the summer of 2016, 11.5 million documents from the world’s fourth largest offshore banking law firm were leaked by an anonymous source, exposing financial and attorney-client information of more than 214,000 offshore companies. The Panama Papers, as they are known, reveal some of the complex structures that allow the extremely wealthy to exploit offshore banking and shell corporations to commit fraud, tax evasion, money laundering, and other crimes.
Biennale de La Biche
The art world’s newest biennale is also the smallest. On an uninhabited Caribbean island, works by 14 artists comprise In a Land of, the inaugural edition of the Biennale de La Biche.