Demoperfectocracia was the word used by the famous Costa Rican writer, Yolanda Oreamuno, to refer to the Costa Rican political system of the 1930s. The ironic meaning of the term was not accidental: at the time, various intellectuals and politicians doubted that Costa Rica was a democracy, an approach that was recovered and emphasized, starting in the 1980s, by different social researchers.The perspective that guides this book is very different: it starts from the fact that, between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, Costa Rica underwent a decisive transition towards a pre-reformed democracy, during which periodic and competitive elections became the nexus fundamental between popular demands and public policies. The long-term result of this connection was a socially oriented political system...

La presente obra explora temas como la arquitectura y el mobiliario de las casas en la época de la independencia y las dificultades que se enfrentaban los escritores costarricenses de finales del siglo XX y otros temas sociales y políticos de la época...

This work presents a proposal for a new research agenda for the rural areas of Costa Rica, based on new contexts, challenges and concepts, and with a series of public policy recommendations for the rural Costa Rican world...

In 1907, the city of Heredia became the epicenter of the most important religious conflict experienced by Costa Rica in the 20th century. A complaint that the theory of evolution was taught in the Lyceum of that city, unleashed an increasingly intense confrontation between the Catholic congregation and the circle of young radical intellectuals articulating around the writer and educator Roberto Brenes Mesén. In the course of this process, Costa Rican society, to the alarm of the government of Cleto González Viquez, was the scene of popular mobilizations in defense of the faith, excommunications and burning of impious texts, while Catholic morality was systematically questioned based on sexual abuse attributed to priests. For a moment, it seemed that the country had gone back in time, and that the ghosts of 1884 were present...

This book outlines the historical antecedents of genetic erosion by monocultures and other predatory activities promoted by transnational corporations; the responses to this problem and the analysis of various international treaties that encourage the aggressive expansion of such corporations...

An analysis of the origin of the existing explanations about the social reform promoted by the government of Rafael Ángel Calderón Guardia in Costa Rica from 1940-1943...

The roads less traveled tell the behind the scenes of some of the most important decisions and actions that redefined the foreign policy of Costa Rica, under the second administration of President Óscar Arias Sánchez (2006-2010). Additionally, this book includes a chapter that addresses relations with Nicaragua, our most uncomfortable neighbor...

Latin American public institutions of higher education, in particular Costa Rican ones, face important challenges: the enormous task of looking at themselves with a greater critical sense to propose and enable organizational and functional changes that ensure a greater social impact in their substantive work, the urgent need to have secure mechanisms that make possible its financial sustainability in the long term, within the framework of instituting more transparent, systematic and participatory processes of accountability and, finally, the political-social consideration of this, as a good social public and a human right, whose primary responsibility falls on the State...