The Legal Situation

In accordance with the Indigenous Act of 1977:
"The indigenous reserves are unalienable and unprescriptable, non-transferrable and exclusively for the indigenous communities that inhabit them" (Article 3).
As the situation in Rey Curré demonstrates, no government has put this law into practice.

In 1992, Costa Rica signed Convention 169 of the International Labour Organization (OIT). This convention established that the government must "consult with the interested people, through appropriate procedures and in particular through their representative institutions, every time they anticipate legistlative or administrative measures capable of directly affecting them".
The works mentioned in the section About Rey Curré have been undertaken without prior consultation with the people they affected.