No le Des a Un Hombre Pescado, Enseñale a Pescar - The Role of Government in Aiding Community Organization

Aaron Smith

Resumen Este estudio se llevó a cabo en el distrito de Puerto Viejo, en el cantón de

Sarapiqui, provincia Heredia del 26 de marzo a 23 de abril, 2003. Se analizó, a través de 30 entrevistas con miembros de instituciones del gobierno y organizaciones comunitarias, la ayuda que el gobierno da tanto a las organizaciones ya formadas como en la creación de organizaciones nuevas. Este estudio se hizo porque hoy día es más importante que nunca que las comunidades formen sus propias organizaciones para poder representar sus intereses para fomentar el desarrollo económico y para comunicar sus necesidades al gobierno. Este estudio encontró que muchas de las comunidades en y cerca de Puerto Viejo ya tienen organizaciones, pero estas suelen padecer de la misma gama de problemas: la falta de participación, la concentración del poder en las manos de unos pocos, la falta de iniciativa, y más importante la falta de financiamiento y capacitación por parte del gobierno. El gobierno puede proveer asistencia para resolver estos problemas. Una solución propuesta es la creación de una institución gubernamental diseñada específicamente para proveer capacitación en la creación, y la administración de las asociaciones bajo la ley 218 como también algunos servicios de extensión, para llenar el vacío dejado por DOCAE y DINADECO en el sistema de apoyo gubernamental de las organizaciones comunitarias. Además, se propone la reclamación de las Asociaciones de Desarrollo al usarlas para promover nuevas organizaciones comunitarias que mejorarán la situación económica de los miembros de la comunidad. Finalmente, este estudio propone un cambio en los currículos educativos para incluir el tema de organizaciones comunitarias con el propósito de enseñar a los niños la importancia de la participación y a la gente pobre que pueden tener poder si actuan en forma unida.

AbstractThis study took place in the District of Puerto Viejo within the Canton of Sarapiqui,

in the province of Heredia from March 26, 2003 to April 23, 2003. The study analyzed, through 30 interviews of members of government institutions and community organizations, the assistance that government institutions give to those community organizations already formed as well as the assistance given in the formation of new community organizations. The basic premise behind this study is that it is now more important than ever that communities form their own organizations to represent their interests, to make possible greater economic development, and to bring their needs to the ears of the government. This study found that many of the communities in and around Puerto Viejo have organizations but they tend to suffer from a similar set of problems: lack of participation and community involvement, a concentration of power in the hands of a few, lack of initiative, and most importantly a lack of funding and government support. The government can provide assistance in solving these problems. One solution proposed is to create a government institution specifically designed for providing training in the formation and administration of Associations under Law 218 as well as extension services, to fill the gap left by DOCAE and DINADECO in the system of governmental support of community organizations. Furthermore, it proposes the reclamation of the Development

Associations by using them to promote new community organizations that will better the economic situation of the community members. Finally, this study proposes a change in the educational curriculum to include the theme of community organizations with the purpose of teaching children the importance of participation and that even poor people can be powerful when they are united.

IntroductionThe founding principle of any democratic government is to serve the interests of its

constituents. Costa Rica has a long history of being very attentive and supportive to the needs of its people. From the 1950’s onward, it has established institutions to provide remedies for the problems that the people faced. Organizations such as IDA, INA, IMAS, MINAE, CNP as well as the local municipal government were designed to deal with the full spectrum of the people’s problems. However, Costa Rica has changed a great deal since the early years of its current democracy. The needs of the people have changed as well. Great strides have been made in the building of community infrastructure, one of the most important government goals in the past. Most communities have electricity, drinking water, roads, schools, churches, and access to phones. Though these problems remain, they are no longer the most pressing needs of the communities. The communities of Costa Rica must struggle, more than ever, with the problems of unemployment, lack of adequate housing, and competing as a small farmer, as well as a host of other problems. However, the capacity of the government to provide social services and economic assistance has been drastically reduced. With the Neoliberalist policy changes of the 1980’s and 1990’s, the focus of the Costa Rican government has shifted away from providing social services and supporting the agricultural sector toward the pursuit of industrial and commercial growth in the global market. The budgets of almost all major social institutions were cut and many were made autonomous of the government. One of the major changes involving farmers was the reduction of the role of the CNP, which had previously acted as the national buyer and seller of the nation’s farm products and had thus subsidized the agricultural sector. Currently farmers must market and sell their produce on their own, in direct competition with huge multinational companies that can exercise monopoly like control over the price, transportation, and processing of agricultural products. As a result, Costa Rica’s small producers have been severely weakened and in many cases have lost their land. Inequality has grown tremendously as farmers have struggled or been forced to seek jobs either in the city or for the big agricultural companies. Poverty has increased and along with it a host of social problems while the government has proven less capable of providing a solution.

The current problems of Costa Rica are well demonstrated in the district of Puerto Viejo (10deg. 26min N, 84deg. 2min W). This rural region possesses a wide variety of economic activities, from large banana plantations to small-scale subsistence farms. There are communities that face extreme poverty and hardship as well as very rich large landowners, often foreigners. To deal with the problems of the citizens in the area, the Costa Rican government has placed offices of many national government institutions, such as IDA, INA, IMAS, MAG, and DINADECO in the city of Puerto Viejo to work in addition to the elected Municipal government and Development Association of Puerto Viejo. Despite the presence of these institutions, rural poverty remains a large problem in the region. Squatter communities have sprung up and new squatters are continuing to invade the land. Clearly, something needs to change. One powerful tool for communities to improve their situation is through community-based organizations. By combining their

resources, groups in a community can become stronger than the members would be individually. They can apply this new force to the problems they face and together come up with solutions that will benefit them all. A Development Association is one example of a community organization initiated by the communities themselves that seeks to work within the community as well as with the local government to solve local problems.

The Costa Rican government has in its history recognized the benefits of community organizations and tried to provide support for them. DINADECO is a government institution designed to provide assistance and training in the formation, administration, and project forming of Development Associations. DOCAE, a department within IDA, provides legal assistance and overall guidance to groups of people trying to construct community associations within the IDA communities. However, the government can do much more to support its community-based organizations. The goal is ultimately to help the communities to organize so they can help themselves.

MethodologyResearch was conducted through a number of information gathering interviews with

members of the communities, community associations, and government institutions. Most were not arranged by appointment but rather by appearing at the office or home and requesting an interview. All interviews were conducted in Spanish. The interview process was conducted in an informal, conversational manner and notes were taken in English. The goal of most interviews was to gather facts, not to make strict analytical comparisons and thus an interviewing schedule was not needed. Interviews averaged about an hour in length but they ranged from 30 minutes to 2 hours. Many government institutions provided their own documents and reports to the interviewer. The nature of the interviews was such that one interview often provided the contacts and information for several other interviews. 30 interviews were conducted in total but some interviewees were communicated with twice.

ResultsThose interviewed consisted of members of government institutions and community

organizations. Thus, it is logical to divide the results into two sections: Government and Community Organizations. The purpose of this scheme is to delineate the roles of each element so that their interaction can later be analyzed.

GovernmentThe members of government interviewed were from a wide range of institutions and

revealed a large numbers of services and programs designed to help the local communities. The purpose of this study is not to restate all the government social and economic programs but specifically the ones that relate to community organizations.

Every government institution has some means in which they interact with the local community. IDA, the Institute for Agrarian Development, has one of the most extensive programs for community development because in essence, that’s IDA’s mission, to create communities. IDA has bought and distributed 42,000 hectares in small lots and parcels in the Sarapiqui region. One IDA community might consist of hundred of these individual land plots. IDA attempts to create strong, economically viable agrarian communities and have historically taken an active role in forming and assisting the communities they created. One tool IDA uses in this mission is a department within IDA called DOCAE, the Department of Organization and Training. DOCAE works only within the IDA

communities and provides training in the organizational and administrative aspects of forming an association.

Forming an AssociationThe process of forming an association is long, complicated, time consuming, and

expensive. In 1939, Costa Rica passed law 218, which clearly defines what constitutes an association and the process required of an organization to become officially recognized by the government. Most government institutions only work with Associations that have been registered under Law 218, as a way of ensuring that they only give to groups that truly represent the demands of its constituents. Obviously, the potential for fraud is great when a few people come to the government claiming to represent a large group of citizens and asking for financial or other types of assistance. With its limited financial resources, it is important for the government to spend its time only with the groups that are most in need and most representative of the interests of the community.

If a group of citizens want to form an Association and they live within an IDA community they will usually first contact IDA. IDA officials will then often visit the community and explain the process of forming an Association. To start the Association, a group of citizens must first call together the interested people in the community for a meeting. They usually do this by going door to door and telling people in the community about their ideas for an Association. An Association must consist of at least twelve adults. All the members can be part of the same family. At the first meeting, all those in attendance vote to form a board of directors. This board is comprised of a President, Vice-President, a Secretary, a Treasurer, a Financial Officer, and any number of representatives from the rest of the Association. During this first meeting the members also define the particular rules and regulations of their Association and those rules can vary greatly depending upon the type of Association being created.

The next step is to create a document with the signatures of all those who wish to be members saying that the members accept the committee to represent them. Any one in the community can apply to be a member, though different Associations have different rules about eligibility for membership and membership requirements. An Association can also set up sub-Committees among the members as a way of dividing responsibility. There are three different types of meetings. One is the annual meeting in which the Association's progress over the past year and plans for the next year are discussed and shared with all the members. In the second type of meeting, held once every two years, the members vote for a new board of directors. Every Association must hold these first two types of meetings. The third type of meeting is called an emergency meeting. The Board of Directors can call this type of meeting at any time in order to explain a new project of the Association or to discuss an urgent matter that needs to be addressed.

To be recognized by the government, in other words to be officially registered as an Association, an organization must obtain a Cedula Juridica. A Cedula Juridica is like an identification number for an Association. The Costa Rican government enters the new identification number and the name of the Association in a book of all the Associations in Costa Rica. IDA also has a Legal Department for Cedula Juridicas and assists greatly in the process of obtaining one. An Association must also have an official document called a Personeria Juridica, which lists all the members’ names and addresses. Usually this whole process is too complicated for the Association members themselves and the Association must hire a lawyer to handle much of the legal paperwork. In addition, Associations need

to buy six special books for recording the meetings and for keeping financial records. Altogether, this process is very expensive. IDA officials estimate the total cost at about 80,000 colones for the books, lawyer, Cedula Juridica, and Personeria Juridica. When an Association is located within an IDA community they usually receive assistance from IDA, mainly consisting of help with the paperwork and access to volunteer lawyers, which reduces the cost to 32,000 colones. However, all organizations outside the IDA communities have to pay the full 80,000 colones. It is important to stress that this is a very large sum of money for poor, rural dwellers to pay just for paperwork to be declared an official Association. After forming, an Association can negotiate like a business but in its formative stages it is simply a cost and provides few benefits to its members. Associations created by Law 218 are non-profit organizations, meaning that the members have one vote each but are not share holders and do not earn dividends. The Association can do projects that will improve the economic situation of its members, can accept donations, and can hire employees. However when it dissolves, its financial holdings cannot go to the members but rather must be distributed to other non-profit organizations. The President and other members of an Association do not receive pay but rather work on a volunteer basis. In other words, though an Association may ask for monthly dues from its members, it is not a normal financial investment. If a member decides he doesn't want to be a member anymore, he doesn't leave with a certain share of the Association. Cooperatives on the other hand are more like a traditional business in that members own shares and earn dividends but every member has one vote in the meetings regardless of the number of shares held.

Despite the difficulty of forming an Association, Costa Ricans have formed a huge number of them of all types. According to an official IDA report on the Canton of Sarapiqui, which contains the district of Puerto Viejo, there are 508 registered organizations within Sarapiqui, with only 43 within IDA land. This 508 includes Development Associations, and organizations of sports, education, religion, women, youth, producers, health, the environment, culture as well as other types. Almost all communities in Sarapiqui have a Development Association, a community School Board, a Board of Religion, a Board for Administration of High Schools, a Committee of Sports, and many have a Committee of Aqueducts. With the exception of the Development Association and the two School Boards, all of the communities’ organizations are defined as Associations by Law 218. Simply living within the community and being affected by the issue addressed qualifies a citizen to a be a member of a community’s Associations. For example, anyone who needs water in his home can be a member of the Association of Aqueducts.

After the formation of an Association, significant technical and administrative knowledge is required and IDA's DOCAE can help within this area. DOCAE offers training in the many aspects, including administration and bookkeeping, required to operate a successful organization. One of the biggest problems many organizations face is that their members often have little education or practical experience working in an organizational or business environment. Many of the people in Costa Rica have not graduated from high school and lack confidence in their reading and writing skills. The members of Associations tend to be older citizens and many have spent the majority of their lives working on farms or doing manual labor. Their lives have provided them with a wealth of knowledge and experience, just not the training needed to run an Association. The treasurers often have to be taught the simplest concepts of economics such as

expenditures, income, profit, and interest rates, as well as all the rules of bookkeeping. Most are motivated to learn but it is not an easy process and is often frustratingly slow and boring.

A DOCAE conference held in a hotel in the center of Puerto Viejo on April 10 provided an example of the difficulty of the training process. IDA invited all the Associations within IDA communities in the Canton of Sarapiqui to hear a professional auditor talk about bookkeeping and accounting and treated them to lunch. About 35 members of local Associations, mainly the financial officers or board members, attended. A DOCAE official from San Jose also attended the conference and was very active in answering questions. Booklets were distributed and used extremely simple language and illustrations to explain finance, bookkeeping and administration. Extra bookkeeping sheets were also given out for the Association members to practice recording financial transactions. The whole process required of a financial officer and treasurer was described in great detail. The Association members in attendance asked numerous questions and seemed to struggle with many of the concepts. This conference conveyed the difficult task DOCAE faces in providing the administrative training necessary for an Association to succeed.

From a government point of view, administrative thoroughness and correct bookkeeping are essential to running an Association that can be trusted to represent the interests of all its members and not be corrupt. Every Association, according to Law 218, must hire an accountant to check the books of the Treasurer and Financial Officer every six months. This accountant is often a private professional. Furthermore, the Financial Officer in an Association does not get a vote in the group assemblies but is free to speak about the finance records he keeps. The Financial Officer is thus supposed to maintain some formal separation from the Association and has to report to the private accountant about the Association's financial activities. The accountant's inspections every six months as well as the separation of the Financial Officer are the main mechanisms for preventing corruption and theft of Association funds.

IDA provides a great deal of financial and technical assistance to their communities. It provides DOCAE training as well as a great deal of financial support for building the infrastructure of its communities. IDA constructed many of the homes in the communities that it initiated. IDA also has traditionally paid for the construction of roads, bridges, running water, powerlines, and schools. Unfortunately, IDA states that currently it does not have the resources to pay entirely for many of the necessary elements of community infrastructure. However, rather than thrusting the burden completely on the community for constructing roads, bridges, etc. IDA has begun using interesting financing structures for its community projects. Rather than paying the entire cost of construction, IDA will pay one portion of the total cost and ask the community to raise the other part. For example, in an electrification project in the IDA community of El Progresso near Puerto Viejo, IDA paid one third of the 20 million colones cost, asked the community to pay one third, and got Coopelesca, a private electricity company, to pay the third portion. In some cases, because of the difficulty for the community of raising the necessary funds, the community contribution consisted of physical labor or materials, which the community members are better able to provide. For example, in the IDA community of Rubi, the community constructed three bridges with the financial support of IDA for materials and planning. Often these projects can be carried out by community Associations, and in the case of Rubi the Association of Producers.

One of the most important functions that IDA, as well as other government institutions performs is providing contacts for Associations with government and non-government organizations that can provide funding and training for the members of the Association. One such training institution is INA, the National Institute of Learning. INA offers technical education in industrial and agricultural techniques as well as in diverse skills like working with computers, making handicrafts, cooking, and in business management. A community can solicit INA to come give a course by submitting a proposal for a project that will somehow make use of the INA training and by obtaining 15 signatures. Often times INA officials will come to a community and give lectures on the courses available. INA gave one such informational lecture in El Progresso during the time of this study. INA is an indispensable resource for community Associations because it can help provide the capacity to undertake new types of projects and for the members to expand their means of making money and help their families. As opposed to other government institutions, INA is very well funded. This is due to its importance to Costa Rica's business sector in improving the technical capacity of its workers. INA also offers training to cooperatives, associations, and other types of businesses in administration. However INA does not offer assistance in the formation process itself which according to IDA regional director Carmen Umanzor, "is the hard part"(Umanzor Pers. Comm.). Ms. Umanzor thought that many communities receive training but fail because they do not have a well formed organizational base where many people participate in the work and the members are motivated to take initiative (Umanzor Pers. Comm.).

Another government institution that can provide significant assistance, in particular to farmers, is MAG, the Ministry of Agriculture and Cattle Ranching. MAG gives technical assistance in the whole process of farming: what to plant, where to plant, and how to plant. MAG, begun in 1949, has a long history of providing training for farmers. It will often bring projects and ideas to organizations the MAG officials know or have worked with in the past. MAG's resources are very limited however. For the entire canton of Sarapiqui, MAG only has two agricultural engineers who are constantly kept busy. Due its financial restraints, MAG can rarely work with individuals, but rather focuses almost all its resources on organizations of farmers. MAG will work with an Association to identify one problem the group faces, think about solutions to the problem, analyze the feasibility of the solutions, and then write a proposal to present to financiers. MAG official Jairo Araya believes that the community members generally know about MAG and what it provides and will often seek out MAG for assistance (Araya Pers. Comm.). MAG can also provide contacts with Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO's) that can help finance the projects of community organizations. Mr. Araya will often write the project proposals for community organizations that the organization can send to NGO's that might fund their project (Araya Pers. Comm.). For example, Mr. Araya helped bring in FAO, an NGO based in Holland that receives funding from the United Nations, to finance a project of the Association of Women in El Progresso.

MAG tries to involve many different organizations and institutions in trying to solve an agricultural problem, in what they describe as a Plan for Integrated Action. They try to connect the Associations of Producers with resources from Banks, INA, IDA, the Municipality, CNP as well as MAG. MAG uses a participation methodology for ensuring that all members of an Association are involved and benefiting from the projects. At meetings, MAG officials must observe that all the members are giving their opinions and that the decision making process involves everyone, not just the leaders. MAG has

extension offices in every Canton in Costa Rica and is one of the government institutions most respected by farmers for the technical assistance it can provide. The United States Department of Agriculture is the equivalent of MAG in the United States.

MAG, like almost all government institutions, has very limited financial resources and that is reflected in the state of their offices. Most lack computers and of those that do have computers, none have access to the Internet. Especially in an extension office where being able to quickly find specific information is crucial, Internet would be extremely useful and its absence often limits the work the MAG engineers can do. In addition, the offices are normally small and very spartan, without air-conditioning. Mr. Araya in MAG described having to use his own car and pay for his own gas in order to travel to the various communities he is working with. He often had to pay for the cell phone that he used for his job (Araya Pers. Comm.). A similar situation was found in almost every government institution visited.

In order to preserve and manage the natural environment in which communities live, the government established MINAE, the Ministry of the Environment and Energy. Theoretically, MINAE should have many of the same interests as local environmental groups and the two do work together in some areas. However, in other areas, MINAE may clash with environmental groups and refuse to work with these groups. Despite its rhetoric of conservation, MINAE, is still, like all government institutions, a conduit of national government policy. Sometimes this government policy, like in the case of the Management Plans that allow limited logging on private forests, is more moderate than or even in opposition to the beliefs of many environmental groups.

An important example of the inevitable distance between national government policy and local community demands is the referendum of 2000 that took place in Sarapiqui. The referendum was in reaction to a plan by ICE, the government department of electricity and telecommunications, to build a hydroelectric dam on the Sarapiqui river which runs through Puerto Viejo. A local environmental group, ABAS, the Association of Environmental Wellbeing of Sarapiqui, organized, through the Municipal Government, a vote on a referendum that would make the Sarapiqui river basin a national historic monument.

According to ABAS member Alexander Martinez, the dam would have had a terrible environmental impact on the river and local wildlife (Martinez Pers. Comm.). One of the goals of MINAE is to protect the natural environment so it would seem logical that MINAE would actively support the movement against the hydroelectric dam and the referendum. Yet, according to MINAE workers, MINAE did not participate in any way to mobilize public support for the referendum. The MINAE worker interviewed believed that the main reason for MINAE’s lack of involvement was personal differences between the leaders of MINAE and ABAS. He also stated that ABAS was considered too extreme and that MINAE was supposed to be moderate in that it take into account both economic and environmental issues.

However, after the referendum, which passed with an overwhelming 90 % of the votes, MINAE did begin to work with ABAS in several ways. First, they participate with ABAS and other local environmental interests in a group called the Commission on the Natural Resources of Sarapiqui. This commission works together to do environmental education in schools, to do projects to preserve the forests, as well as to do projects of reforestation. In fact, ABAS actively promotes the Society to Save the Green Macaw, one of the activities sponsored by the commission, which seeks to protect the Tanka Bean tree,

the natural habitat of the Green Macaws. MINAE also participates in a special commission, along with ABAS and the Municipality, which was created out of the Referendum to oversee the Management Plan for the Sarapiqui River Basin. Thus, government institutions, like MINAE, can only work with environmental groups when the policy of the central or local government is the same as those of the environmental groups but not when those two policies diverge. Environmental groups often need to change the policy of the government, with tools like referendums, if they want government institutions to support their projects.

The Costa Rican government has also established institutions with the specific goal of helping the local farming community. One of these institutions is CAC, the Cantonal Agricultural Center. Sarapiqui has its own Cantonal Agricultural Center and so do most of the cantons in Costa Rica, with 58 in all of Costa Rica. The Costa Rican government started the Cantonal Agricultural Centers in 1973 as a part of MAG. They were designed to be organizations of local small and medium sized farmers who could work together to finance their agricultural projects and in some cases buy the produce of the local farmers and negotiate a better price for its sale. However, in 2001, the Cantonal Agricultural Centers were officially made autonomous from MAG and the Costa Rican government. It became an independent organization, though not under Law 218, for the farmers in the community. Currently CACSA, the Cantonal Agricultural Center of Sarapiqui, has 90 active members and 400 indirect members, farmers who have worked with CACSA but are not members. CACSA has access to the National Board of the Reconversion of Production, a government fund that can finance, through credit, agricultural projects. Significantly, only CACs, out of all the community organizations in the country, can receive financial assistance from this National Board. CACSA´s privileged position and former status as part of the central government gives it a class somewhere between government and community.

However CACSA also has limited resources and does relatively little for the community as a whole. Only 90 farmers are active members, far fewer than the about 3,000 farmers in the canton of Sarapiqui, though anyone can be a member if they pay the initial 10,000 colones fee. This fee might be prohibitively high for some farmers but one that most could pay if they knew about CACSA and thought it had something positive to offer. Despite its semi-government status, CACSA does not do anything to promote itself to the local farming community that it is intended to serve. Rather it seems content, as the President stated, to maintain the economic levels of its few members (Porras Pers. Comm.). Also, despite its privileged status, CACSA has received funding from the National Board of the Reconversion of Productivity only once due to large amounts of paperwork and bureaucracy and a lack of initiative on the part of the members. In the defense of CACSA, there have been some very beneficial projects done for its members. In three different projects, they distributed 120 hectares of plantain to 37 farmers, 47 hectares of spices and green peppers to 47 farmers, and cattle to 36 different farmers. However, the difference between CACSA’s original goal of helping all the agricultural producers in the Canton and the benefits it presently offers is striking.

A similar situation can be found at the semi-autonomous government organization of CNP, the National Council of Production. CNP has had a long and very significant role in Costa Rica´s history and in the history of its agricultural producers. Before the late 1980´s, CNP provided a central buyer and seller for many of Costa Rican´s agricultural products. The CNP would buy much of the produce of the farmers, in particular grains, for

a very good price and then sell it to the national market or export it. When the market price for the produce was low, the CNP would buy it from the farmers at an artificially high price, in essence subsidizing Costa Rica’s farmers and protecting Costa Rica´s food sovereignty. It is difficult to state how important the CNP has traditionally been to Costa Rica’s farmers. It was a safety net that maintained the small farmers of Costa Rica and preserved the small agrarian tradition that Costa Rica treasures. During the 1980’s the Costa Rican government, facing an economic crisis, decided to accept huge aid packages from United States and European international aid programs such as AID, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the International Monetary Fund. However, in order to receive this aid the Costa Rican government had to accept certain “structural adjustments”, a euphemism for policies that supported the ideology of Neoliberalism. One of the changes demanded was a cut in the role of the CNP, so that it would no longer buy or buy less of many of the types of produce it had formerly purchased from the nation’s farmers. Costa Rica also sharply reduced many of its former tariffs on imported agricultural goods. In essence, Costa Rica´s government abandoned its small farmers and opted instead to import much of its food from the world market, though primarily the United States. The restriction of the role of the CNP was devastating for Costa Rica’s small farmers.

Currently, the CNP has a semi-autonomous position. According to CNP employee Rodolfo Segura Montoya, the CNP is just a council, not a full-fledged government institution like IDA (Montoya Pers. Conn.). As a result, it gets far less funding than it needs and provides relatively little services to local farmers. CNP mainly provides financing for third grade organizations, huge conglomerates of farmers that might cover all of one type of produce in a region, and acts as their auditor. The commitment of these third-grade organizations to the interests and needs of small farmers is questionable but they often are the main buyers from local farmers. It is nearly impossible for small associations of farmers to get any funding from the CNP. The CNP no longer buys any of the produce from the farmers or provide subsidies, but it does provide some funding for the local Cantonal Agricultural Centers. The previously mentioned CACSA project of financing about 200 hectares of different agricultural crops and cattle was funded primarily by CNP. CNP is also the main financier of the local farmers’ markets that can be found in many of Costa Rica’s communities, including many neighborhoods in San Jose. CNP and CACSA are currently working on a project to create a farmers’ market in Sarapiqui so that the farmers of that area can sell directly to the consumer rather than through intermediaries.

One element that almost every community possesses is a Development Association. A Development Association is in effect the local government of a community at the level below the municipal government. The Costa Rican government, established in 1967, an institution called DINADECO specifically designed to work with the Development Associations by providing training, assistance, and oversight in the formation process and administration for the communities possessing or seeking to form a Development Association. DINADECO, the National Board for the Development of the Community, works only with Development Associations, not other types of Associations and organizations within the community. Development Associations are defined by Law 3859 and have the stated goal of serving all the interests of the citizens within the specific boundary lines of that Development Association. A Development Association must have at least 100 members to start so theoretically this implies that Development Associations serve a broader constituency then the Associations of Law 218, which are required to have a minimum of 12 members. Normally from the formation of a Development Association

will spring other types of community organizations, like an Athletics Committee, School Board, or an Organization of Aquaducts for example. The Development Association is the foundation upon which a community is built and has traditionally worked with projects of community infrastructure. Health care, education, roads, potable water, transportation, electrification, telephone wires are some of the services that Development Associations have helped provide for their communities. DINADECO has provided help for the Development Associations in a number of ways. Like Associations under Law 218, Development Associations need Personeria Juridica and Cedula Juridica to be officially registered and DINADECO can help greatly with this process. After the Development Association is formed, DINADECO also provides assistance and training in legal work, bookkeeping, administration and in the formulation of new projects. DINADECO also acts like an auditor to check the Development Associations’ finances and prevent corruption. Development Associations, importantly, receive a great deal of financing for projects from the Municipal Government , far more than other community organizations. The Municipal Government also relies on the Development Association as its conduit to the community, as a way of learning what the community needs and of informing the communities of what projects they are planning for the future.

However, the difference between DINADECO's stated functions and its actual impact is large. In the canton of Sarapiqui, which contains 80 Development Associations, there is only one office of DINADECO and a DINADECO official is only there one time per week. Furthermore, now that most communities have well established Development Associations, DINADECO no longer assists very much with formation and thus its role has shrunk without expanding into other areas. DINADECO is also, like other government organizations, highly underfunded and this accounts for its limited availability to Development Associations. Puerto Viejo and the surrounding communities provide a very telling example of the problems with DINADECO and the Development Associations. The Development Association of Puerto Viejo began in 1975 and was given a very large jurisdiction that included Christo Rey and a number of other nearby communities. However, as is often the case, the Development Association of Puerto Viejo mainly served the interests of the city of Puerto Viejo where the Development Association is based. Furthermore, its membership, despite the fact that anyone from the surrounding communities can be a member, is primarily from the city of Puerto Viejo. Some members of these ignored communities have come to DINADECO stating that they wanted their own Development Association to represent their interests and to receive direct financing from the Municipal Government. However, according to Law 3859, no other Development Association can be formed within the boundary of a pre-existing Development Association unless some community within the boundary feels its interests are not being served, in which case it can petition the existing Development Association to shrink its jurisdiction to make room for another Development Association. However, the community of Christo Rey has not submitted that paperwork required for this change and as a result can not form a Development Association. The community of Christo Rey badly needs to make improvements in its basic infrastructure, such as building roads, bridges, and installing running water, and it needs funding from the Municipal Government to accomplish these necessary projects. However, because of this bureaucratic dilemma, they have been unable to form a Development Association, the main type of organization that the Municipality finances. The jurisdiction of the Development Association of Puerto Viejo could also be reduced by the Development Association itself in a simple meeting. However, this

recourse has not be utilized either. Though a large part of the problem is a lack of initiative on the part of the community, the fault also must fall to DINADECO for failing to adequately push the communities to follow a simple procedure so that a new Development Association can be created. Perhaps if DINADECO came to the Puerto Viejo more than once a week, this problem would have already been solved and projects would be underway to provide the necessities to Christo Rey and the other nearby communities.

Another important organ of the Costa Rican government is the Municipal Government. Every Canton in Costa Rica has its own Municipal Government which is popularly elected and generally comprised of a Municipal Council and a Mayor as well as a number of lesser officials. The Municipal Government interacts with local community organizations in a number of different ways. Usually the Municipal Council will work with the Development Associations within the Canton to determine the peoples’ needs and to educate the communities about the current or future projects of the Municipal Government. At other times, officials from the Municipal Government will simply go to a community and hold meetings in which they describe ideas they have or try to learn what the community wants. The Municipal Government will rarely give financial assistance to individuals. To use their scarce resources most efficiently, the Municipality will almost only work with registered organizations, organizations with a Cedula Juridica and Personeria Juridica. Sometimes community organizations work with the Municipal Government to finance different types of projects, mainly for building infrastructure, not creating economic opportunity. Help with community infrastructure is very important. Roads, bridges, community centers, and schools are critically important to a community and the Municipality can help with the construction of them all. Even when communities have their basic infrastructure needs met, a few improvements can make a difference. For example, a highway runs through Puerto Viejo on which many children and adults, who have to walk or ride their bicycles on the road, have been struck and killed by automobiles. The community has voiced concern over this issue for a long time and finally the Municipal Government is constructing sidewalks along the sides of the highway. This simple change will make a large difference in the quality of life of the communities in and around Puerto Viejo. The Municipal Government, perhaps because of its higher visibility, is one of the most respected and most well known government organizations. Individuals from the surrounding communities will often visit in order to present a plan or ask for assistance. Most community members do not first think to go to their local Development Association or other community organizations for assistance, in large part because the Municipal Government has more money but also because of less general knowledge about the community organizations. Yet, the Municipal Government can generally not help the individuals that come to it because it simply does not have the resources.

General Results on the GovernmentThe government institutions within the district of Puerto Viejo were surprisingly

accessible and easy to contact for interviews. Officially, government offices only reserve Mondays for talking with the general public. However, many government officials were open to talk on other days in the week. Most of the offices only had a few employees and though they were very busy it wasn't difficult to talk to them and at the least arrange a time for a future interview. The Municipal Government seemed to have the biggest problem with bureaucracy, with the most difficulty in arranging interviews. This is perhaps due to

the fact that the Municipal Government is inundated with local people requesting meetings and it needs a bureaucracy to preserve order. Most government officials when asked about the community said that they only worked with community groups that were well organized. They attributed many of the problems of the community to a lack of initiative and vision on the part of the community. A common idea was that the Costa Rican people have developed a dependent mentality from the many years of the twentieth century during which the Costa Rican government offered many services and gave large subsidies and handouts to the rural communities, even if they were not producing efficiently. However, the government workers interviewed claim that their budgets have been cut and they can no longer provide the services and close attention they provided in the past. However, the mentality of Costa Rica's citizens is still one of dependence and hoping for a handout. This, mentality, government workers reasoned was to blame for communities’ lack of success in forming stable organizations to meet their own needs. This faulty mentality, they claimed, was also behind the lack of participation in many organizations and why a few people seemed to do all the work. Another problem mentioned was difficulty in administration. Community members would start an organization but due to personal disagreements, or corruption, or sloppy bookkeeping, the organization would ultimately fall apart. Government officials all believed that the citizens knew about the Government institutions and the services provided by those institutions. When asked how the mentality of dependence on the government could be changed most responded that it was a very slow process where Costa Ricans do not receive assistance and learn they need to succeed on their own. This seems like quite a harsh path for the communities to follow. Very few government officials offered any ideas as to how the process of changing the community's mentality could be accelerated.

All government officials were quick to stress the limited nature of their institutions’ duties toward the community. “That's not our job”, was a typical response. Many were also quick to state that their institution didn't have the financial resources to deal with a particular issue. Some were also quite defensive and not willing to accept blame for not giving sufficient help to a community. All of these responses are reasonable and to be expected but they paint a picture of government institutions that know the communities are suffering and are seeking to reduce their own liability. This is in stark contrast to the utopian visions under which many of these government agencies were created in the earlier part of the twentieth century. IDA, for example, used to pro-actively seek out land and create new communities, often with cooperatives. Now it is reduced to responding to squatter land invasions and working within its already created communities. In essence, the role of the Costa Rican governmental institutions has been reduced from creating a better society to cleaning up the mess left by Neoliberalism.

Community Organizations The second aspect of this study was to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the local community organizations in and around Puerto Viejo and the ways in which they interacted with government and non-governmental institutions. Five local organizations were interviewed. These interviews centered on how the organization began, how it was being administered, its plans for the future, and the assistance it had received from the Costa Rican government.

The first organization interviewed was a Women’s Association located in El Progresso, a former squatter community nearby Puerto Viejo. The leader of the group was

a local woman named Marta Mesen who had extensive knowledge about the process of forming an Association as well as many connections with government officials. Ms. Mesen had acquired her knowledge and connections, not through education or any privileged position, but rather through her own initiative. She had gone to government offices, made friends with government officials, and collaborated with the government on projects in the community. As a result, Ms. Mesen had a significant amount of power in the community and was often able to draw on government resources.

Ms. Mesen was able to provide a detailed description of the process required to form an Association. She was aware of the legal department within IDA that could assist in the process of obtaining a Cedula Juridica. She also understood that without registered status as an Association, that no government institutions would help a community organization (Mesen Pers. Comm.). The impetus for the formation of the Women’s Association came when IMAS arranged for the National University of Costa Rica to come into the community and give a course on women's self-esteem. The people from the National University explained to Marta Mesen that the group needed a Cedula Juridica and explained the process of obtaining one through IDA. Ms. Mesen believes that many people in the community do not know or understand the process of forming an Association and thus many do not find the help they could from the government (Mesen Pers. Comm.). Currently, the Women’s Association is working on projects to start a restaurant, a chicken coop, and a store for the handcrafts the members make. Many of the members in the Women's Group make macramé ornaments or paintings for sale, crafts they learned from an INA course given to the women in 1999. The Women's Group also receives significant financial and project support from FAO, the NGO previously mentioned in conjunction with MAG. One project FAO funded for the Women’s Association was a project to buy goats for the members to provide milk for their families, an especially their children. That project was partially successful and now several members have goats that produce milk they can share amongst the members. As previously stated, the connection between FAO and the Women’s Association was arranged by a MAG worker, Jairo Araya.

At this point, it is logical to talk about the role of leadership in an Association. Many Associations have a leader, like Marta Mesen, that is the driving force behind the Association. This person can originally come from outside or within the community but importantly, learns to find and use the tools of power in a community. The leader has the initiative to learn how an Association is formed and where an Association can receive financial assistance and uses this information to advance the interest of the group, and often his own interest as well. The group often becomes dependent on the leader for her knowledge and for her capacity to work hard and accomplish things. Ms. Mesen described a situation in her group where she does the vast majority of the work and has the majority of the government contacts. When she asked other people to participate and visit a government office in San Jose, for example, they often responded that they had never done that before and that Ms. Mesen should go because she knew the people there (Mesen Pers. Comm.). Thus, the rest of the members have become dependent on their leader.

There are many dangers for this type of group, where one or a small number of leaders have all the knowledge and do all the work. When the leader is effective and working towards the best interests of the group, a great deal can be accomplished. Often a group can be faster and more efficient because only a few people are involved in the decision making process. This is the same advantage a dictatorship has over a democracy. However, the danger to a group is when the leader begins to work toward his own self-

interest and not the best interest of the group. This type of corruption is very common in Associations. The leaders discover the sources of assistance for the group and use that assistance to help themselves. Many community groups have been destroyed by corruption or charges of corruption and this is an inevitable result when power is not shared within a group. To be fair to the leaders, power is often thrust upon them by the laziness and lack of initiative of the rest of the members. Oftentimes the work is overwhelming for the leaders and despite their efforts to distribute the work the other members refuse to participate.

An Association with such an unbalanced participatory structure also faces the risk of becoming ineffective should the leaders leave the organization or decide to stop working. This type of organization is never sustainable because if the leaders should leave, no other members have the knowledge or contacts to fill the vacuum of power. Thus, the organization, which might have been helping many members who were not participating, simply withers away and the members no longer receive the benefits. Furthermore, the time, effort, and money needed to begin an organization are great and thus the likelihood of forming another Association to take its place becomes very small. Many community members also develop the idea that Associations don't work or are corrupt or that personal problems are too frustrating to overcome. It becomes even more difficult to organize in the future.

Another community association interviewed was ABAS, the Association for the Environmental Wellbeing of Sarapiqui. ABAS fought for and passed a referendum in 2000 to make the Sarapiqui river basin a national historic monument. Two members of ABAS, Alexander Hernandez, one of the leaders, and Juanita, a staff member, were interviewed and discussed their future and current plans as well as their interaction with the local community and the government. According to these interviews, there was almost no assistance given by the government to ABAS (Martinez Pers. Comm.). There was also a great deal of animosity toward MINAE, which those interviewed portrayed as working toward the interests of logging companies, not the environment. Much of ABAS's funding came from another Dutch NGO, Hivos, which gives money for projects, runs classes in organizational logistics, and funds environmental education programs. ABAS is also very involved in a project to protect the Green Macaw by protecting the Tonka Bean tree on which it feeds. ABAS, like other groups has strong leaders, Mr. Martinez and a women named Rosio, who provided much of the knowledge about the formation and administration of an Association as well as experience in environmental education.

Another Association interviewed was the Association of Peasants, located in El Progresso but concentrated in the area of large land parcels across the Sarapiqui River from the majority of the small homes in the community. These parcels have an interesting history. They were part of the Gerika Farm that was invaded in 1993 by squatters. IDA settled the land dispute by buying the land from the supposed owner and then selling it to the majority of the squatters for a very small amount. However, the inhabitants of the parcels region, who had considerably more hectares (5 hectares and up) then those who had received lots (about half a hectare), refused to pay IDA and as a result they did not receive formal title to the land. The original squatters then sold many of the parcels and the land has since switched hands numerous times. Almost all of the current landowners bought the land for significant amounts of money from others. Many have land elsewhere where they live and some are quite wealthy. The dilemma for IDA is that they own the title to the land and they don't want to give it to the current landowners. IDA has a responsibility to the help the rural poor, not the wealthier class that currently own much of the land, and

furthermore it would cost IDA a great deal to simply give away the land they paid so much for. However, IDA is also reluctant to have the current landowners removed because of public opposition to this practice. IDA’s solution to this problem has been to largely ignore the parcels region and give it less assistance.. Services have been much slower in coming to the parcels’ side of the Sarapiqui. The inhabitants only received electricity in January 2003 and they still lack phone lines. The Association of Peasants was created in 1997, 4 years after the land invasion, as a way of representing the inhabitants of the parcels region and El Progresso. The current president, Ricardo Perez Hernandez, was interviewed for this study. He stated that IDA, despite the fact that the squatters had never paid for title to the land, gave the Association a great deal of help (Hernandez Pers. Conn.). The Association of Peasants is currently working with IDA on a project of planting pepper and IDA paid for the roads and electrification project in January 2003. The Association of Peasants had also received assistance from a government fund for community projects, ODESAC, in order to finance the construction of a needed primary school in the Parcels area. The Association of Peasants effectively acts like a Development Association for El Progresso, though without the access to Municipal funds, severely limiting its effectiveness. Mr. Hernandez also explained that much of the conflict between the squatters and IDA stemmed from a lack of communication (Hernandez Pers. Comm.). According to Mr. Hernandez, IDA bought the land from the Gerika Association, those claiming right to the land, in 1998 and didn't inform the community of the purchase until more than a year later when it told the landowners they were expected to pay something for the land (Hernandez Pers. Comm.). Perhaps if IDA and the community had communicated better a compromise could have been reached prior to the purchase. At the very least, IDA could have held off their purchase of the land until they were sure the community would pay something. Instead, IDA owns right to land that they will never get paid for, and unless they decide to remove the current inhabitants off the land, will eventually have to simply give the land away for free to people who are not the most needy. This is a perfect example of how a lack of communication between the community and the government results in a situation where no one wins, the farmers don't obtain title and IDA wastes a great deal of money. Community organizations are the ideal conduit for communication between government and community but only if they are utilized and not ignored.

In interviewing Mr. Hernandez, it was learned that he is also an active member of ABAS, the president of the Association of Aqueducts in El Progresso, and participates in community committees in the Municipal Government. Mr. Hernandez is a perfect example of a type of person found throughout Costa Rica's communities. While it is true that Costa Rica has many Associations and other community organizations, this does not mean that the Costa Rican people, as a whole, actively participate in their community organizations. As Mr. Hernandez demonstrates, many of the organizations in a community are comprised of the same, few, hard working and civic-minded people, while the majority of the community does not participate at all. Those that do participate are volunteers and mainly do so because of the personal satisfaction they gain from helping the community and being involved. However, this situation of a few people doing all the work in a community, like the example of a small group doing all the work within one organization, is not stable and ultimately not the best solution for a community. Many community members must participate in their community and not just a few in order for a number of points of view to be represented, for power to be diffuse, and to ensure the long-term sustainability of the community.

Another organization near the parcels region represents the interests of a new group of squatters who have invaded land directly next to El Progresso. The President of the Squatter Committee is Isabel Mesen, the older sister of Marta Mesen, president of the local Women's Association. This squatter community began to form in March of 2003 when a few squatters began clearing the land, which the Chinese owner was not farming, and in less than two weeks, 130 families had set up tiny shacks made up mainly of wood poles and plastic tarp for covering. The owner's whereabouts are unknown and because he has not come to complain about his land being invaded, the squatters have not faced legal problems. Squatters have been a major problem in Costa Rica's recent history with the dramatic increase in the urban poor and those who desperately need land on which to live but don't have the money to afford a home. IDA has often had to deal with land invasions and the subsequent conflicts with the owner. Settling these land conflicts has become one of IDA's main functions. Due to public support for helping the poor, IDA has been reluctant to forcibly remove the squatter communities. In the case of El Progresso in 1993, the government forcibly removed the squatters with bulldozers before IDA decided to buy the land because of public outcry. Unfortunately, squatting has also become a business in Costa Rica. In the case of this new squatter community, very few families sleep on their plot at night because they live in other homes nearby with greater amenities. Many are from El Progresso, a former squatter town itself, and plan on selling the free land for a profit, often to Nicaraguans. In fact, El Progresso, which was bought by IDA to provide land for poor Costa Ricans, is now primarily Nicaraguan, with much of the land being sold several times. The new squatters, if they already home a home and land, are not the people that IDA is intended to help.

The current Squatter Committee's main function has been to divide the land into the same sized lots. The Squatter Committee has also tried to contact IDA as well as BAMVI, another government institution designed to provide affordable housing for the poor, but they have not received a response. The Squatter Committee has a lawyer who works in Puerto Viejo and has given them limited help with the paperwork but is supposedly only serving on a volunteer basis. Currently the squatters are merely waiting to see what the government will do as they slowly develop their houses by adding tin walls and roofs. The community does not have sanitation, electricity, running water, or roads. Squatters represent a profound failure on the part of the government to communicate with the community about their need for housing and land, and the fact that the government has not yet entered into a dialogue with the current Squatter Committee is not a promising sign for the future. Perhaps part of the problem is that the Squatter Committee has not yet completed the process of becoming an official Association. Certainly, the legitimacy of the Squatter Committee would be improved in the eyes of the government if it obtained the registered status of an Association.

Community organizations also have the potential to initiate economic projects and increase the prosperity of its members and the community in general. An interesting example of this potential is the Communal Bank, in which community members invest their own limited resources and then make small loans to members of the community that are paid back with interest. The advantages of the Communal Bank are that they grant greater economic opportunity for members of the community who might not be able to receive a loan from a normal bank or don't want to put their property up as collateral for a loan. The investment will also generate yearly revenue for those who merely invest in the bank as a dividend paid out to the stockholders. The money stays in the community and the

economic multiplier effect increases the prosperity for many. Furthermore, borrowers are more likely to pay back their neighbors then a distant government institution that might also be providing credit. Melvin Cerdas, the treasurer of BANNASA, a Communal Bank, was interviewed in the IDA community of Nazareth, about an hour by bus from Sarapiqui. The impetus for this organization came from a representative of a communal bank in FINCA, a national association of communal banks. BANNASA, begun in 1999, has 19 active members, all from the community, and total capital of about 900,000 colones. Currently, BANNASA has made 9 separate loans of about 100,000 colones each to nine members of its organization. All the members own the stock of the bank and receive yearly dividends from the profits that come from the interest paid back on loans. The interest paid on loans, 27%, is about the same as that of a normal bank but is still relatively high. Despite this interest rate, almost all the loans have been paid back. The true benefit of a Communal Bank is that with an investment of a small amount, in this case 30,000 colones of stock is necessary to take out a loan, a community member can borrow 100,000 to do an economic project. Though 100,000 colones is not a large amount, covering about the price of one calf, it is significantly more than producers would have to invest on their own. BANNASA is operating effectively, though still at a small scale, without government assistance and it is still in the process of working with a lawyer to obtain its Cedula Juridica and become a registered Association. It represents an exciting example of what community organizations can provide for their members.

As previously discussed, the Development Association acts like a local government to communicate the needs of the community to the Municipal government and to create projects to develop the community. Development Associations exist in communities throughout Costa Rica and as previously mentioned, receive training from DINADECO. In the Canton of Sarapiqui there are 80 Development Associations for a population of about 45,000 people. The President, Eliezer Santana, of the previously mentioned Development Association of Puerto Viejo was interviewed. He did not mention the conflict over jurisdiction that the DINADECO regional director, Alvaro Lopez, said was preventing El Progresso and other nearby communities from forming their own Development Associations. Mr. Santana said that DINADECO had helped with the formation of the Development Association but he mentioned that the help DINADECO currently gives is very limited. A DINADECO official only came to Puerto Viejo from the office in Heredia once a week in order to serve all the Development Associations in Sarapiqui. He also said that DINADECO was underfunded and offered very little help with logistics or legal work. Mr. Santana believed that DINADECO needed to be available three or four times per week to give all the help the Development Associations needed (Santana Pers. Comm.).

Mr. Santana described a number of projects his Development Association had completed and was working on. Almost all projects involved infrastructure in the nearby communities, such as building schools or rural electrification. Almost none of the Development Association’s resources were devoted to economic projects. Mr. Santana also stated that the Development Association had access to and was aware of numerous organizations and government institutions that could provide funding for projects, such as the Japanese embassy, Hacienda, ICE, and most importantly the Municipal Government (Santana Pers. Comm.). Despite the obvious potential of the Development Association to represent many interests in the community, Mr. Santana described a situation where few community members know about or participate in the Development Association. He ascribed this situation to a mentality in the community of independence and aversion to

Associations. He said there are sources of help to the farmers, such as the Cantonal Agricultural Center, which the people don't utilize because they don't know about them or don't choose to get involved. Mr. Santana did not have many ideas about how to change the mentality of the community members or inform them. He only said it was a very slow process and that the government and Development Associations needed to work to inform the communities of the need to participate (Santana Pers. Comm.). However, the Development Association only has 113 members out of a community of 16,000 so obviously the interest group it best represents, its members, comprises a very small proportion of the community. Thus, the incentive of the Development Association to work to involve other people in the community, in other words to dilute the power of its current members, is limited.

DiscussionThe 30 interviews conducted reveal communities in desperate poverty who need

some sort of change to make their lives better. The problems in these communities range from drug addiction to lack of potable water to the need for a new bridge. Perhaps the most important problem and the most direct cause of the communities' poverty is economic. Many people are either unemployed or work in very poor paying and unhealthy jobs, such as working in a Banana plantation. Other community members own and farm their own land but are unable to sell their produce at a decent price and thus remain in a cycle of debt and poverty. The Costa Rican government needs to do more to help their communities for two main reasons. One is a civic responsibility of those in government to represent and serve the best interests of the people and not a elite minority. Due to structural adjustments pushed by the International Monetary Fund and to changes in Costa Rican economic policy, the gap in Costa Rica between the rich and the poor has grown tremendously. The Costa Rican government has a responsibility to aid this new class of poor people, many of whom were displaced from their agrarian homes, because it is a class that the Costa Rican government has itself created.

The second reason that the Costa Rican government must better serve its communities is one that unfortunately might hold greater sway among the politicians than civic responsibility and that is gaining votes and staying in power. Poverty has a number of negative effects on the economic and social situation of Costa Rica as a whole and it can reflect poorly on the current government, ultimately hurting that government at the polls. Poverty seems to increase the problems of drug addiction, violent crime, teen pregnancy, depression, and a host of other social problems. One of the great advantages Costa Rica has in Latin America, in terms of attracting tourists, is that it is viewed as a relatively middle class society, with an effective democracy and a stable social situation without much violence or crime. The existence of extreme poverty, which is becoming more and more common, is undermining Costa Rica's reputation as a haven in Latin America and thus diminishing its tourism potential. Costa Rica's tourism industry, which is one of its largest and one of those most coveted by the government, is being damaged and will continue to be hurt if the government does not deal with the problem of poverty. Furthermore, a very poor population generally has less time to devote to education and thus the quality of Costa Rica's workforce, which is widely touted as very capable and has attracted a great deal of foreign companies to Costa Rica, will inevitably decline and with it Costa Rica's economic advantage over other Central American countries. Costa Rica will also lose the potential to develop its own industries if the quality of its workforce continues

to decline. Costa Rica risks becoming yet another Latin American country that completely relies on foreign companies for poorly paid, menial, manufacturing and agricultural jobs that mainly benefit the foreign companies, not the economy or people of the country.

Furthermore, poverty is very expensive for a government to deal with. Basic welfare programs become more necessary. Thus, rather than giving to people so that they raise themselves and form their own sustainable economic livelihood, the government often has to give to the same person many times. The recipients’ situations are so depressed that the government’s assistance does allow them to escape from poverty but only just keep them alive. Thus, they develop an attitude of dependence on the government. The government also needs to divert more resources to law enforcement, fighting drugs and violent crime, and more money to building jails to house its own citizens. It also needs to divert more resources to protecting the environment because people in dire poverty will not object to clearing the trees on their property if it is the only way to pay for their food. In addition, poor people, because many lack preventative care and are more prone to health problems, put a much greater strain on Costa Rica's health care system, which in a nationalized health care system decreases the quality of care for the middle class as well. The overall result is an increase in government expenditures (for dealing with poverty and its related problems) accompanied by a loss of revenue and opportunities for development of the economy (due to a decline in tourism, a loss in Costa Rica's potential to attract foreign capital, and a decline in the ability to develop its own industries with an educated workforce). The combination of an increase in government costs and a decrease in economic growth will have a very negative overall effect on the quality of life of Costa Rica's people. Damage to the economy and quality of life generally hurt a government at the polls. Costa Rican politicians must address the problem of poverty in the communities if they want to continue to be elected or else risk the ascension of politicians who will address poverty.

The Costa Rican government already offers some services to its communities through its institutions. These services can generally be divided into two categories: capital and educational. The capital services offered are the financial donations and investments that government institutions can make in the projects of community organizations or for the community in general. The educational services available include offering classes as well as giving training in the formation, administration, and bookkeeping of a community organization. However, the resources available to these government institutions are highly limited. The government needs to decide how it wants to best distribute its resources for maximum effectiveness and efficiency.

SolutionsBased on the results of this study, the government needs to redistribute its resources

away from capital services and toward educational services. As many institutions stated, financial investments of the government in the community rarely have the desired effect of a sustainable elevation of the economic situation of the community as a whole. Often the financial assistance helps only a small portion of the community and other times the money is simply wasted on things other than development by the community. This is not an efficient use of the government's limited resources.

More efficient, and more effective, would be increased government investment in educational services for the community. The title of this study states in Spanish, "No le Des a Un Hombre Pescado, Enseñale a Pescar", which means "don't give a man a fish,

teach him to fish". The analogy to the community and their organizations is clear. The government should teach the communities how to create their own livelihood, rather than merely giving a handout which will only last a short time. The main way the government can accomplish this is by training the organizations of the communities themselves in the process of operating an effective organization. DOCAE and DINADECO provide a useful example for the role the government should try to play in the development of community organizations. However, neither does enough.

Institution 218One of the biggest flaws is the "hole" in the system of training. No government

institution exists to provide organization training for those Associations outside IDA communities. The Costa Rican government should create a new institution specifically designed to assist all Associations under Law 218. For this study it will be called Institution 218. The precedent for this type of institution is DINADECO which trains the organizations created by Law 3859, the Development Association. It is a logical step for a government committed to supporting community organizations to make training available in a systematic way to every Association, not just those few within IDA communities. In the Canton of Sarapiqui, those Associations within IDA communities only comprise 43 of the 252 Associations created under Law 218. DOCAE provides beneficial services but it needs to be joined by this proposed Institution 218 to serve those Associations outside the IDA communities.

Institution 218 would to work to solve many of the problems that Associations currently face. It could provide lectures on bookkeeping, finance, and administration. It could provide cheap legal assistance or connections to pro bono lawyers, drastically reducing the cost to an organization of becoming an Association. Institution 218 could also provide advice on organizational structure and administration with the goal of helping Associations to create a structure that will encourage the sharing of responsibility and the involvement of many people in the decision making process. This new government institution could also explain to Associations the benefits as well as the best methods of communicating with the local communities and encouraging new people to become members. Finally, Institution 218 could provide extension services to Associations to connect them with government institutions, NGOs, and other Associations that could provide capital and educational services to the Association. Currently, those Associations that receive some type of financial assistance from an NGO are normally just lucky in that one of their members knew the NGO or had some special contact in a government office. Unfortunately, most small Associations are not lucky enough to have those types of connections. With Institution 218, all Associations, not just those random few, could have access to a database of organizations that could provide funding for their projects or training for their members. Institution 218 could help give every community organization an equal opportunity to succeed and by the benefits of its services encourage the communities to form new Associations.

Revitalizing the Development AssociationsAnother way in which the Costa Rican government can improve their service of

community organizations is by revitalizing the Development Associations. The Development Associations were begun in an era where the chief needs of the rural communities were infrastructure. Now the central needs of the communities have become

more economic. Creating jobs, providing economic opportunity, and giving support to the small rural land owner have become the most important issues for communities. However, Development Associations have not evolved to solve those type of problems. Very few Development Associations throughout the country even attempt projects to increase economic development or work to solve the economic problems of farmers. These farmers often don´t have the money to plant and usually find it very difficult, if not impossible to find a decent market for their produce. Community organizations, like Cooperatives or Farmers Associations, can help solve these types of problems by increasing the economic power of farmers to buy farming supplies at a cheaper price and to sell in larger quantities directly to the consumers. According to Article 38 of Law 3859 which lays out the Development Associations duties, a Development Association has the purpose of promoting the organization of the population in proper entities for development, such as cooperatives, youth centers, civic associations, sports clubs, labor unions, and other entities for providing community service. The failure of Development Associations to promote these organizations can largely be attributed to DINADECO, whose job it is to inform Development Associations of the potential for community organizations and to provide assistance in that regard. It is possible that Development Associations, being similar to political entities, should remain outside the sphere of business to protect them from the temptation of corruption. However, that doesn´t mean they shouldn´t be actively involved in coordinating and promoting the economic projects of the community. Ideally, DINADECO should train one person within a Development Association to be the promoter of community organizations. This person could be called a Community Development Advisor, and could help provide extension services and ideas to the people in the community who are considering starting an organization. The Community Development Advisor could describe the process of forming an Association, provide contacts with legal assistance, connect those community members to Institution 218, as well as provide contacts with other government institutions that provide capital services. The Community Development Advisor could also help provide information about innovative types of organizations, such as communal banks or cooperatives. DINADECO would play a central role in training these Community Development Advisors and could use them to gauge the successfulness of community organizations in those areas.

A Transformation in EducationThe Costa Rican government would also greatly improve the effectiveness of

community organizations by providing education at an early age about the role of community organizations and the ways in which they can serve the interests of the students and the community. Almost all of the institutions interviewed described a mentality of dependence on government handouts and aversion to participation in a group. They said this mentality was encouraged by the period from the 1940´s to 1970´s in which the government provided a great deal more support to the communities, often asking little of the communities themselves. In an era when the national government can´t provide the same level of services, it is necessary to change this attitude if communities are truly to enrich themselves through their own organizations. The best way to change this mentality is through an educational system that teaches a knowledge of community organizations, an appreciation for their power for improving the lives of community members, and the need to participate. Costa Rican´s must learn that in order to succeed they must work with other members of their community and that the road to success is too difficult to walk alone. One

possible technique for teaching this attitude and also revitalizing the Development Associations, would be to include units in the lesson plan in which the students learn how the Development Association works and what it does for the community. Problems of participation and motivation will only be solved when the children are taught that they must participate if they want power and they must be motivated if they want to improve their economic situation.

Finally, this study has shown that communities need their own organizations if they want to prosper in the modern era of government. The government needs to encourage the process of forming and administering community organizations through a well-organized system of training and extension services and through changes in its educational curriculum, as well as by expanding the services it currently offers for the community. The larger goal of community organizations is not just to maintain or slightly improve the quality of life of the community through small-scale projects. Hopefully, these community organizations will go on to do much more. They will realize the similar overall interests of diverse communities, will join together in federations, and challenge the government policy that made them poor in the first place. Community organizations can be tools for social justice and they can help to change the world for the betterment of the vast majority of citizens who have been living in poverty. Communities have the potential to shape the world in which they live if only they would work together to seize the power they deserve.

References

IDA Regional Office of Heredia. IDA General Informational Packet for the Canton of Sarapiqui. 2003.

Executive Decree # 25409-G: The Regulations of Law 3859 About the Development of the Community. 1998.

Personal Communication-

Juanita-staff person for ABAS: 3’27Alexander Martinez-ABAS: 3’28Marta Mesen Aroyo-President of Women´s Association: 3’31Jairo Araya-MAG: 4’1Carmen Umanzor -INA: 4’1Isabel Mesen- President of Committee of Squatters: 4’3Jaime Porras- President of Agricultural Center of the Canton of Sarapiqui: 4’4Sandra Hernandez-IDA: 4’7Ricardo Perez-Pres. of Association of Peasants: 4’8Eliezer Santana-President of Development Association of Puerto Viejo: 4’9Rodolfo Segura Montoya-CNP: 4’10Melvin Cerdas-Bancocommunal: 4’22

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all my teachers and classmates for their support and ideas for this project. I would also like to thank all those who were interviewed for graciously answering my questions. I would also like to thank Elizabeth and Carlos Vargas for giving me food, shelter, and cariño for the month I stayed in their home.