Le Monde Diplomatique has a fascinating, and sadly disturbing, article about how Nicaragua’s poor are migrating to Costa Rica to work for better wages as a means to survive.

Many Nicaraguans have abandoned their original trades to work as peons on Costa Rica’s banana, coffee, pineapple, sugar and orange plantations: Costa Rica has been successful in diversifying its labour-intensive agricultural industry. “Starting in January I pick coffee, then I move on to other crops,” explained Niño who, exhausted by the difficulty of working the land at Santa Rosa, crosses the border illegally every year. “Then, like other people around here, I come back to sow frijol (beans). I make at least twice what I could hope to earn in Nicaragua.”

The rising tide of such workers, of course, has lead to problems in Costa Rica.

From this perspective, Nicaragua, with its wars and chronic instability, seems an immature country condemned to poverty. In Costa Rica, the dark-skinned immigrants are often described as violent, ignorant and untrustworthy, as thieves and alcoholics. “No seas Nica” (“don’t be an idiot”) is a common insult. This latent xenophobia, and correspondingly strong anti-Costa Rican feelings in Nicaragua, rises to the surface each time the perennial conflict over navigation rights on the San Juan river turns nasty. But the countries manage to get along, or at least they used to.

Read the full article to learn more about the socio-economic realities of the two countries.