Albino Vargas

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Albino Vargas is a syndicalist leader in Costa Rica.

Vargas is the secretary general of the Public Employees National Association (Asociación Nacional de Empleados Públicos, [ANEP]http://anep.or.cr/). He also writes a column every Wednesday in Diario Extra (published in Costa Rica). In recent years he has attracted attention for his opposition to the Central America Free Trade Association (CAFTA), organizing protests and demonstrations. Costa Rica signed CAFTA in 2004 but, as of August 2006, the legislature had yet to ratify the agreement^[1].

Recent protests and demonstrations organized by Vargas have attracted fewer than 10,000 people each. .[1] He has been described as a "irrational, selfish and an individual that does not like to dialogue about the issues."^{[citation needed]}

Vargas rejects the democratically elected government of Costa Rica, declaring that he believes in the "democracy of the streets". [2]

He is perceived as a lazy leader on the syndicalism environment who promotes false nationalistic ideals; basically sustaining the concept that Costa Rica doesn't need any relationship with other countries and USA wants to control the country as "they did" to other Latin American countries, he continuously sells the idea of the self-sufficient country in the global context. His only perceived interest is to protect the privileged system established primarily for the public sector employees. This sector of Costa Rica employees, have a list of benefits not available to workers from the private sector.

Costa Rican lawmakers and the judicial system just recently have started to legislate and ruling against this unbalanced system.

He's against foreign west hemisphere based investors and he only wants to protect the state-owned public services system, Monopolies have given control to the CR Government to own the most lucrative public systems: water, electricity, insurances, telecommunications, internet and even alcoholic beverages. This individual has freely taken the position of speaking for the supposed majority of the Costa Rican population.

Costa Rica is negotiating a free-trade agreement with U.S. The treaty (CAFTA) would bring down the most strong state owned monopolies and theoretically improve working conditions to most of the population.