SOCIAL FRACTURES AND IDEOLOGICAL CHIAROSCURO: COSTA RICA IN THE SECOND GOVERNMENT OF ACCIÓN CIUDADANA

Abstract

The start of the Acción Ciudadana Party’s second term, in the government of Costa Rica, is preceded by significant changes. In this article, we will approach three aspects: first, the effects, on society, of the interrelation between the local economy and the transnation- alization of capital; second, the gaps associated with the crisis of ideological thought and the continuity of conservatism; and, finally, the decline of the stabilizing role of the middle strata, both socially and politically. In this correlation of factors, we analyze the weakening of civil society and the social, political, cultural and territorial fractures that divide Costa Rica into very unequal societies. The background of these rearrangements is not only economic and political but ideological; neoliberalism is strengthened as a complex of doctrines that guide economic logic, but also the adhesion of these creations to ideological elaborations that condition collective sensibilities (deterioration of social cohesion, disaffection with institutions and messianic reenchantment of the masses).