Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

This article describes the analysis of the implementation of a group didactic activities in Portuguese courses at the UCR on its Western campus. The design of these activities followed the theoretical and practical considerations of the Communicative Approach and aimed at helping the learners achieve a higher level of comprehension and communication in Portuguese. Through a questionnaire, the students expressed their perception on the pedagogical method during the classes, and the researcher identified the degree of knowledge acquired.  The results show that there was a significant increase in student motivation and participation, which suggests that facilitating this process in a more assertive, dynamic, and significant way allows teachers to implement better and more effective didactic proposals in future classes.

The objective of this article is to analyze the definition and dynamics of the production and export sector of organic pineapples in Costa Rica. Who answers the question of what is the situation of the organic pineapple sector in Costa Rica?. The collection of primary and secondary information was used, as institutional questions and the productive sector, as well as official statistics. The article reviews the legal and institutional framework and the evolution of the production and export of organic pineapple. In addition, an contribution is made in the updated identification of the national producers to export, as well as in the analysis of positive and negative factors internally and externally that affect the sector.

El objetivo de la Revista Pensamiento Actual de la Universidad de Costa Rica es difundir la investigación científica y promover la reflexión académica en diversos campos del quehacer universitario.

The paper present the book of Jean Luc Marion intitled Prolegomena to Charity, an analysis of each study is present, to comprehend the global caracter of the work. At the end, it focus in principal categories of the oeuvre, as Charity, Love, Crisis, and Christ, in the context of 30 years of publication.

The use of the paraquat pesticide has been widely used around the world and Costa Rica has not been the exception due to its success to treat weeds and their easy availability in the market; with the drawback of being toxic to the environment and human. The objective of this bibliographic review is to unify the existing knowledge of paraquat focused on Costa Rica in order to expose some of the consequences caused by the pesticide. The methodology used was the collection of information through tools such as databases, internet and e-mail. The investigation concluded that it is necessary to reinforce the information used by people who manipulate paraquat to avoid poisoning, in addition to highlighting the need to improve regulations and compliance with the decrees established in our country regarding pesticides.

Atualmente, camponeses e moradores de pequenos municípios marcadamente rurais da região da Serra da Canastra, no Estado de Minas Gerais, no Brasil, que têm na produção e comercialização de queijos artesanais uma das bases de sua economia, veem seus modos de vida ameaçados diante de restrições sanitárias e ambientais que chegam à região, sobrepondo-se a práticas e saberes culturalmente estabelecidos. Buscamos neste artigo apontar como algumas leis e normatizações, impostas a partir de saberes administrativos e de técnicos especializados, chegam ao espaço cotidiano dessas famílias e podem trazer efeitos opostos aos pretendidos, levando à desestruturação de modos de vida que vinham permitindo maior preservação dos recursos naturais. Uma das consequências é o agravamento dos incêndios florestais, assim como o fortalecimento de modelos industriais de produção agropecuária, que acarretam uma perda geral de biodiversidade.

With the objective of reducing the number of forest fires, many countries promote prevention campaigns, mainly during the fire season. Communication programs are also developed as part of the overall prevention campaign, although they continue to be implemented after the conclusion of the campaign. The objective of this paper was to prepare a communication program on forest fire prevention in the Paján sector, Manabí, Ecuador. For such purpose, Paján inhabitants were surveyed, and the political, legal and institutional framework was analyzed regarding the use of fire and forest fires. The resulting program must be executed within the next five years, and its general objective is to help the population direct their behavior towards a lifestyle that decreases activities causing forest fires. The main parts of the program are: background, vision, guiding principles, general objective, specific objectives, actions, means, programming of actions, responsible agents and collaborators, possible target groups, public directly interested in the program, and implementation mechanisms.

The establishment of the Chilean forestry model based on monocultures of fast-growing species was possible not only thanks to the concentration of land and public-private investments to establish an extractive industry aimed towards export, but also through a shift in fire use in the territory. This article reviews the historical role of fire in the establishment of forestry extractivism in southern Chile. Foucault’s notion of discipline is useful in explaining how the exclusion of the use of fire was and is discursively supported, by means of the dissemination of environmental messages to local populations, while state and private capital favor the expansion of tree plantations with severe socio-environmental impacts for local communities. In this article I show how fire prevention campaigns seek to establish and subjective and emotional discipline that guarantees the accumulation of capital associated with forest extractivism.

his article analyzes wildfire dynamics regarding fire ecology in the Guanacaste Conservation Area, which is the largest area of tropical dry forest in Costa Rica. Over the last two decades there have been fires in the conservation area, with the highest recurrence in the El Hacha, Murciélago, and Santa Elena sectors. Contrary to the expectations, the years of greatest fire damage do not coincide with El Niño events. Evidence is presented of the vulnerability of certain vertebrate groups and the adaptive responses of certain plant species to fires. The impact of fires is discussed within an integrated fire management framework considering adaptation of certain species, plant succession, and habitat differentiation. It is concluded that fire suppression in habitats with fire dependence and recurrence should be analyzed in more detail to ensure the conservation and resilience of several biodiversity components in this ecosystem.

Despite the fire is the least studied impact among the current disorders affecting tropical American palms, the Arecaceae family is ideal for studies of resilience and impacts. The present study was the first to quantify and describe the postfire palm resprouting in the Amazon rainforest. We tested a set of juveniles and mature individuals of 10 palm species, to assess which morphological characteristics are related to postfire mortality or resprouting, so the aim of this study was to 1) record the possible response strategies of understory palms to fire disturbance; 2) compare the postfire responses between underground-stemmed and aerial stem species, and 3) compare the postfire responses between species with and without clonal ability. For all species of palm trees subjected to this experiment, the fire was not capable of eliminating all individuals, and after ~140 days after fire, we found that aerial stems had more basal sprouts than underground stems. Underground-stemmed species had more apical regrowth than for the aerial stems species. The number of resprouting individuals is greater in clonal species than in non-clonal species. Therefore, we conclude that palm species in the western Amazon have differential responses to fire impact.