Academic literature on the topic 'Costa Rica – Economic conditions – 1948'

With the end of the war came a partial reversal of the devastating decline associated with the cocoa collapse, paralleled by a profound reconfiguration of class relations. The pre-war bipartisan political structure (Liberals and Conservatives) was replaced by a myriad of new political parties, expressing the divisions within the ruling elites, the rise of Left political parties as a result of growing proletarianization (Maiguashca 1992: 200–1) and, most importantly, the emergence and spectacular growth of populist movements. New forms of class struggle would emerge out of this maelstrom of change, each expressing itself through a mixture of new and old languages, symbols, and activities. It is not surprising, for example, to hear ‘San Lenín’ called upon for assistance alongside saints of the more traditional variety (Maiguashca and North 1991: 99–100). The ferment of this rich mix of class relations through which daily life was organized at the time the world was on fire wrought the conditions from which the post-war intensified water conquest would emerge. Indeed, the turbulent but lean years of the 1940s were followed by the banana bonanza decade of the 1950s. The United States’ fruit corporations, their plantations struck by Panama disease, moved their centre of operations from marginal Central American and Caribbean exporters to Ecuador. It was not only a cheap location, but the Panama disease had not yet moved that far south. In addition, President Galo Plaza Lasso used his excellent relationships with the US United Fruit Company to promote banana production in Ecuador (Nurse 1989). The spiralling demand for bananas from the US fruit companies converted the coastal area of the country (La Costa) into large banana planta tions with their associated socio-ecological relations (Armstrong and McGee 1985: 114; Larrea-Maldonado 1982: 28–34; see also Schodt 1987). While in 1948, banana export receipts amounted to only US$2.8 million, this figure reached US$21.4 million in 1952 and US$88.9 million in 1960, accounting for 62.2% of Ecuador’s total exports (Hurtado 1981: 190; Grijalva 1990; Cortez 1992). By the mid-1950s, the country had become the world’s leading banana exporter. This manufactured ‘banana bonanza’ was organized through a new political economic and ecological transformation.