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Along this paper I study two cases of land occupations at the banana enclave zone of Sarapiquí from 1980 to 2009, in order to know the state's role in political processes of agrarian conflict. The analysis of the peasant's narratives -on land occupation, public negotiation, collective action, discursive and organizational dispositions- problematizes the notions of state's "absence" and/or "abandonment", leading to the conclusion that the state can be absent in its institutional forms when it is understood within the welfare ideal, but selectively present when it comes to judicialization, criminalization and repression; also, is shown that state is found where is least looked for: in peasant's organizational practices and daily desire for legal recognition. Structural adjustment promoted state's institutional reduction, however, reduction wasn't absolute, and this study concludes that such withdrawal occurred in redistributive policies, not in the repressive ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]