Historically, the country's small f

Historically, the country's small farmers have been more literate, healthy and prosperous than their counterparts in the rest of Central America. The absence of extreme poverty is the main reason Costa Rica has not experienced the violence common elsewhere in the region. But now the elimination of a whole class of farmers producing essential foodstuffs is eroding what former President Oscar Arias called 'the base of our democracy'.

The process began in the early 1980s. Costa Rica was technically bankrupt, in the midst of recession and saddled with one of the highest per-capita foreign debts in the world. At that moment the country's desperation for foreign aid was matched by the US Government's anxiety to recruit it in Washington's campaign to topple the Sandinistas in neighbouring Nicaragua. As a result, by the mid-1980s Costa Rica had become the world's second largest per-capita recipient of US economic aid (after Israel).

But there were strings attached. Costa Rica had to adopt a structural adjustment program. And here the World Bank took the lead. According to government officials, it was the World Bank that developed the guidelines of structural adjustment, led the negotiations and put up much of the money. Then, through cross-conditionality, the International Monetary Fund, the US Agency for International Development and the US Caribbean Basin Initiative bound Costa Rica even tighter to structural adjustment measures. Those measures included lowering of real wages, subsidizing of export industries and opening the economy to foreign imports and investments.

- See more at: http://newint.org/features/1990/12/05/eat/#sthash.7rULI2zd.dpuf