History of Latin America II

Marianela Jimeniz “Costa Rica Elects 1^st Woman President in a landslide” (2010)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/07/AR2010020701135.html

Over the weekend, former Costa Rican vice-president Laura Chincilla was elected as the first female president. Chinchilla is the fifth woman from Latin America to be elected for president.  Chinchilla promises to continue the same policies that her predecessor Oscar Arias policies of free market trade policies, which have helped Costa Rica to be a successful nation, were the rest of Latin America has not been so lucky.

Under Arias administration, Costa Rica was opened up to trade with both United States and China. Arias also managed to keep up trade negotiation during the political turmoil in June of last when Mauel Zeluga was thrown out of office due to a coup.  Supporter of Arias say that by opening up Costa Rica to the world market, that Costa Rica was able to pad itself from part of the current global economic crisis. From a certain perspective this is true, as Costa Rica has done very well during the current global recession.

Contenders though argue that Chinchilla and Arias policies favor big companies to help boost the economy which hurt the overall economy of the nation. By this the mean Costa Rica is relying too much on large foreign companies to provide for the economy, and the nation should be focusing on being more self reliant. From a historical prospective this makes a lot of sense. Historically we have seen or the past couple weeks how United States during the 19^th Century repeatedly exploited Latin America. Most recently we have discussed Cuba and the United States and business financing of Cuba was large part of United States interest in Cuba. Part of that discussion was how dependent Cuba was on the United States and United States was main importer of their main crop sugar cane.

What this comes down to though is taking risk. Costa Roca by opening itself up to possible exploitation by both United States and China is a big one. So far it seems to have paid off rather well, as it has remained stable economically. Whether this trend will continue remains to be seen, and it will most likely help define whether Laura Chinchilla will have a successful run as president of Costa Rica.