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Accepted Paper:
The anti-ecological peasant. Land reform and forest conservation in contemporary costa rica
Wilson Picado
(Universidad Nacional, Costa Rica)
Elisa Botella-Rodriguez
(UNIVERSITY OF SALAMANCA)
This paper delves into the history of squatters in Costa Rica during the second half of the 20th century. It analyzes the confrontation over land and forest use between the State, landowners, and impoverished peasants since the 1960.
Paper long abstract:
This paper delves into the history of squatters in Costa Rica during the second half of the 20th century. In light of recent studies dealing with land reform and forest conservation in Latin America, it analyzes the confrontation over land and forest use between the State and impoverished peasants since the 1960. It argues that Costa Rica’s land reform -deemed by many scholars as welfarist– took an orthodox approach combining land redistribution with the foundation of national parks. To begin with, the paper focuses on the disputes that arose among the State, landowners, and landless peasants during the implementation of the land reform in the 1960s. Second, it examines the conflicts between the State and the squatters during the creation of national parks between the 1960s and the 1980s. Furthermore, the paper shows the language used by landowners and State officials in criminalizing the squatters’ actions as antidemocratic and antiecological. In contrast, the peasants countered such a narrative with a discourse of “moral ecology” as suggested by historian Karl Jacoby. The study is based on archival sources, newspaper articles, technical reports and specialized literature.