The American capital company Electric Bond and Share, worked under the holding
company model and purchased electric-power industries all over America the continent:
México, Guatemala, Panamá, Chile, Brasil, Cuba, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Argentina. This
company worked through the centralization of the capital funds of many investors under
the control and administration of a small group of shareholders who redirected these
funds to develop companies on a large scale. By this model, the number of investors
multiplied but power continued to be concentrated in the same small group of
shareholders, giving the Holding's organizers control over the subsidiaries with a
minimum of their own investment (Flores, 1993). The limited local private investment
capacity on hydroelectric projects was taken advantage of by the Electric Bond and Share
to establish itself in Costa Rica in 1927.
Historiography has explored the transition to the 20th century from the economic
changes, the ideal of a new social dynamics configuration through the spacial
transformation, and from the discussions over the conceptualization and participation of
the modern state. The electoral processes, agroforestry exploitation industries, the
introduction of the railway as a part of the building of a nation, economic policies, and
business relationships are well-known in History. However, there are a lot of infrastructural
subjects that form part of the development of cities and History has yet to delve into them.
The building of new cities was a scenario of growth, planning, and invention discussions,
but, mainly, they were a space for material projection of the circulating ideas about civility,
progress, and the new direction of man after the industrial revolution. The necessity of
understanding the ideological, administrative, and mentality changes, redirects us to
analyze material vestiges as discourses of a specific period.
For this reason, this article presents an electrical infrastructure administration approach as
a scenario for public policy generation, mediated or disputed by different economic
models for resources administration in the context of the emerging Reformative State.
4
ISSN 1659-331
Electric-Power Industry Nationalization Discourses in Costa Rica (1928-1930)
| Villegas Arce, Priscilla
Revista Estudios, 2023
| Febrero 2023
I Sección: Historia
Since the mid-19th century, as a result of the economic growth produced by the agro-
export model, there was a concentration of capital in the country's large merchants,
exporters, and importers. Their relationship with the new economic activities and their
interest in the modernization of the country led them to take part in a series of
infrastructure construction projects in the capital city. Costa Rica experienced, like the rest
of Latin America, the growth of its urban centers. San José, the capital of this country,
began a process of change, responding to the new demands of the economic and
commercial environment. The new model favored the concentration of businesses and
services in the city, generating a professionalization of the spaces of the modern world.
THE NEW URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE INSERTION
IN SAN JOSÉ CITY