ABSTRACT
The Great Depression fundamentally altered the role of the Costa Rican state. In order to mitigate the worst effects of the collapse of the country's export markets, the state fully abandoned its liberal principles and entered the economic arena. The Junta de Custodia de la Propriedad Enemiga and the Labor Code created two national corps of inspectors with significant powers and authorization to operated in each of the country's provinces and cantons. The Second World War rapidly accelerated the process of state intervention in the economic life of the country. The war, by profoundly disrupting export markets, and prompting the formation of international and national antifascist fronts, effectively destroyed the political basis of the country's previous ruling alliances. The rupture in the country's elite order caused by the disenfranchisement of the ethnic German and Italian populations converged with the developments of the 1930s to make a political alliance between the state and the working class possible.
