Governing party candidate Laura Chinchilla swept to an election victory Feb. 7 that will make her the first woman president of the Central American nation.

Chinchilla, a protege of Nobel Prize-winning President Oscar Arias, campaigned on a promise to continue the government's free market economic policies.

Arias' economic policies brought Costa Rica into the Central American Free Trade Agreement with the United States and initiated trade relations with China after a 63-year association with Taiwan.

The 50-year-old mother of one teenage son has promised to increase grants for poor students, expand pensions for the poor and open day-care centers to support working mothers.

As a female president, she would follow an increasingly common trend in many Latin American countries: Argentina, Chile, Nicaragua and Panama have all elected women as presidents.