Costa Rica travel guide

Literature in Costa Rica is still relatively young and lacks the struggles and challenges that inspired many Latin writers. Carlos Fallas is perhaps the best known author: his work Mamita Yunai looks at life on the United Fruit Company banana plantations.

Contemporary writers include José León Sánchez and Carlos Cortez Fernando Contreras, and poetry lovers should seek out Jorge de Bravo.

The 2000 census put the national population at 3.82 million, latest estimate put the population at over 4.47 million – an annual increase of 2.1% – with the overwhelming majority (94%) considered to be white of mixed Spanish descent. The next largest single group is Afro-Caribbeans making up 3%, Amerindian 1%, Chinese 1% and ‘others’ the remaining 1%. Roughly one third of the population lives in the Greater San José metropolitan area and close to half of all Ticos live in the central highlands.

The Afro-Caribbean population is almost entirely concentrated on the Caribbean coast, in particular in Puerto Limón and the towns to the south. Originating in the Caribbean, most arrived from Jamaica to build the railroad and later found work on plantations. Likewise, the Chinese community can trace its Costa Rican roots to the period of railroad construction in the late 19th century.

Estimates for the number of Nicaraguans living in the country either as refugees or temporary economic migrants is as high as 400,000, or 10% of the population. Following Hurricane Mitch in 1998, the Costa Rican government announced a general amnesty to all illegal Central American immigrants living in the country. By June of 2000, 156,000 people had qualified for legal residency papers and 95% of them were Nicaraguan. The policy is intriguing and on the face of it a very generous one since most Ticos blame illegal Nicaraguans in Costa Rica for every affliction to beset the country, from theft and crime to extended periods of unseasonal rain. (The suspicion is mutual, and Nicaraguans believe that Costa Ricans have an elevated sense of self-importance and superiority.)

A significant but unquantifiable influence on the country is the large number of ‘Western’ expatriates who have retired or emigrated to Costa Rica to work. Residency rules stipulate that retired persons need an income above US$1000 a month and that business investment requires a minimum start-up capital of US$50,000. The transportation of ideas, lifestyles and standards of living has an obvious effect in tourist areas. Throughout the Pacific coast, enclaves of German, Italian, Swiss, Canadian and, the most popular, US communities have sprung up, bringing with them all the traits of home – good and bad – and a few new ones that have evolved locally.

The indigenous population has been in steady decline ever since the arrival of Europeans. Those that did not succumb to new diseases, being sold to work in other parts of Central America or subjected to forced labour, retreated to the highland areas of the south. Today there are eight recognized indigenous cultures or tribes: Huetar, Bribrí, Cabécar, Guaymí, Chorotega, Boruca, Guatuso and Térraba, with land protected in 22 reserves, covering 1240 sq miles – just over 6% of the national territory.

The indigenous population has five recognized languages. The northern Chorotega culture were greatly influenced by Mesoamerican cultures and spoke the Nahuatl language of the Maya and Aztecs. The Boruca, Bribrí, Cabécar, Guaymí, Huetar and Guatuso spoke a language with its roots further to the south, which became more complex as the Arawak and Caribe cultures moved in to permanent settlements on the Caribbean coast adding their sounds.

The Bribrí and Cabécar are the only cultures that have been able to keep religious myths pure, outside of major influences from social and cultural changes, with the Sibú being the supreme god and creator of their world.

The Comisión Nacional de Asuntos Indígenas (CONAI – National Commission for Indigenous Affairs) is a government institution created in 1973 to uphold indigenous law. Indigenous affairs should have taken a turn for the better in 1977 when the government created the system of Indian reserves, but the government has retained the land titles and consequently the upper hand whenever an issue relating to land use has arisen. Several hydroelectric projects on indigenous land are in a permanent state of reappraisal. In 1992 the government went one step further, signing the International Labour Organization which ratified the constitutional rights of indigenous people. However, disenchantment is widespread. While the government provides education and health to many indigenous communities, the services are generally provided in Spanish by teachers from other cultures which automatically undermines the fabric of community life.

Indigenous communities are realizing that their best hope of retaining a sense of cultural identity is through fighting for their rights politically. Organizations like Aradikes , in the Buenos Aires area of the western Talamancas, fight for the rights of indigenous communities on several fronts, although it must be said that progress is limited and painfully slow.

It is said that around 90 of Ticos would consider themselves as Roman Catholics, and a small survey of taxi and bus drivers, hotel staff and chance encounters does little to change this perception. Certainly the churches are packed to bursting on Sundays.

A particular feature of the Tico Catholicism is the annual pilgrimage on 2 August to the Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles in Cartago to see the revered image of the Virgin Mary. Around 600,000 pilgrims are estimated to make the journey each year.

Nothing reflects better the ability of Costa Ricans to adapt their interests to the moment than sport. Claudia Poll made Olympic aficionados of Costa Ricans overnight after winning the country’s first gold medal in the pool at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996. Although she was unable to repeat the feat at Sydney 2000, she returned home with a couple of bronze medals won in the 200-m and 400-m freestyle and still had the streets lined with welcoming crowds. Disappointingly Athens and Beijing failed to produce any medals. And by the way, don’t tell the Costa Ricans, but Poll was born in Managua, Nicaragua.

What Costa Rica lacks in literature it makes up for in a thriving theatrical and contemporary dance scene. The golden age of the theatre was the 1970s, when Chilean and Argentine playwrights lived and worked in Costa Rica to escape the right-wing regimes of the time. Their influence on professional and amateur groups in San José has helped them reach some of the highest levels in Central America, a tradition maintained by the requirement for local theatres to perform at least two plays a year written by local playwrights. Some of the best theatre productions are performed by the Compañía Nacional de Teatro, but also keep a look out for smaller amateur productions which tackle every subject from classics to contemporary comedy.

For dance, which performs in the Museum of Contemporary Arts and Danza Universitaria and Danza Una in the Universidad Nacional de Heredia.

In the 1940s tensions between agricultural and urban forces rose to boiling point and the eventual outbreak of civil war. The elections of 1940 awarded the presidency to Rafael Angel Calderón Guardia of the Partido Republican Nacional (PRN). Calderón favoured government intervention in social and economic affairs and marked a slight shift in the liberal tradition. His early reforms were unsuccessful but raised the suspicions of many landowners, and in a small band of modernizing liberals that prompted the idea it was the structures and institutions of governments (not just the policies) that needed to be changed for the good of the country overall. Costa Rica’s early declaration of war against the Japanese and shortly after with Germany and Italy earned Calderón the greater criticism that he had overstretched the position of a country without the means to defend itself. One vocal critic of Calderón was José Figueres Ferrer, a landholder with sympathies towards the modernizing factions, who denounced the president. Figueres was promptly exiled to Mexico. Calderón’s social intervention increased with a swathe of reforms called the ‘Social Guarantees’ which improved job security, proposed health insurance and introduced a moderate series of land reforms. With the criticism of Calderón’s opponents escalating and with elections approaching in 1944, Calderón tried to shore up his political support. The church gave tacit support to his social reforms and the reintroduction of religious instruction in schools. An unholy alliance was created when rumours of a coup pushed Calderón into the arms of the renamed and toned down Communist Party, thus gaining valuable support of labour movements which promptly led to the introduction of a minimum wage, an eight-hour working day and trade union rights for workers. While the reforms further ostracized the ruling elites, young professionals and liberal modernizers, opposition to communism was widespread and growing.

After two years in exile in Mexico the vehemently anti-communist Figueres returned in 1944 to find the Communist Party still playing an increasingly significant role in national politics and with no direct political heritage of his own, he formed an allegiance with Calderón’s adversaries.

Calderón himself was constitutionally barred from standing as president for a second term in the election that same year, but his PRN puppet candidate, Teodoro Picado Michalski, was voted in, and held the presidency till 1948. Civil liberties were increasingly restricted through the Picado presidency and unrest rose to new heights when government forces killed two protesters. Picado promised to abide by the outcome of presidential elections in 1948, but few were convinced. Figueres, calling on Central American allegiances he had made while in exile, planned for military intervention if democratic elections failed.

The elections of 1948 set Calderón against Otilio Ulate Blanco who occupied the anti-Calderón ticket. The election produced a victory for Ulate but, as feared, alleged voting irregularities led Congress to award the presidency to Calderón.

Figueres decided a military uprising in defence of democracy was justified and began a brief but bloody civil war. His Army of National Liberation, supplemented with soldiers and weapons flown in from Guatemala, made rapid progress from San Isidro de El General, via Limón and eventually to Ochomogo, outside Cartago. The decisive five-week battle resulted in 2000 deaths before government troops surrendered in April 1948.

‘Don Pepe’, as Figueres later became known, assumed the position of head of state for a period of 18 months leading the Junta of the Second Republic. Against expectations, he retained many of the reforms of Calderón and extended them further. Power was prised away from the ruling elites by nationalizing the banks controlled by the coffee oligarchy, creating the Costa Rican Electrical Company, public bodies to administer health insurance, public utilities and social security and increasing taxes. The army was abolished and a new constitution extended suffrage to women, blacks and indígenas and created the Supreme Electoral Tribunal to remove the possibility of electoral fraud. With the new constitution designed to redistribute power away from established elites and eliminate institutional corruption, Figueres stood down in 1949, peacefully handing power to the elected president Ulate.

The new settlers had hardly made an encouraging start and the absence of labour and mineral wealth placed Costa Rica in a colonial no-man’s land. The Spanish system of administration was both regional and tiered. Costa Rica answered first to the Audiencia of Guatemala which included land from Chiapas in Southern Mexico to the southern border of Costa Rica and ultimately to Spain. Costa Rica’s size did not warrant her involvement in the detailed financial administration of empire and the province deemed too remote to manage at distance. Apart from taxes and salaries, which were collected and paid from Nicaragua, Costa Rica was left to govern herself without much interference.

Left to her own devices and to fend for herself, the small size of the Costa Rican population limited the development of an internal market and the aspirations of settlers were quickly lowered. Brief moments of optimism broke the gloom. Mules bred in the north were fattened in the Central Valley before heading to Panama to shift cargo across the isthmus supply route. In Guanacaste, cattle were raised and slaughtered for tallow and leather, planting the seeds of ranches throughout the region. Small concentrations of cacao plantations rose up around the Caribbean port of Matina, responding to a demand around the Caribbean and in Venezuela, and were actually encouraged and promoted by the governor Diejo de la Haya Fernández (1718-1727). But in general opportunities were rare and the outlook bleak. For a brief time in 1709, money was so scarce that the cacao bean was temporarily used as currency.

A two-pronged military missionary expedition to the Talamanca region to extract forced labour from the remaining indigenous population culminated in the last significant indigenous uprising in 1709 and the eventual execution of the leader Pablo Presbere. The absence of labour, the growth in cacao production and trade with the Caribbean created the first wave of Afro-Caribbean migration as slaves were imported from Jamaica. However, by the 1750s, the demand for cacao, and consequently slave labour, had fallen due to increased competition from regions throughout the Caribbean.

On the eve of independence the population of Costa Rica had grown to 63,000 – still easily the smallest of the provinces of the Audiencia de Guatemala and just one 20th of the total. (The province amounted to little more than the principal settlements of Cartago, Heredia, San José and Alajuela.) Following the near decimation of the indigenous populations, the mixed race mestizo population of Costa Rica had more Spanish blood than those of neighbouring countries with less than 10 of Costa Ricans being able to trace a pure Spanish heritage, the friction between the Costa Rican born and the Spanish born and bred authorities lacked the heat found in some Latin American countries. This mutual disinterest between ruler and ruled could hardly be illustrated better than when independence for the nations of the Central American isthmus was granted on 15 September 1821. Such was the significance of the lost to the motherland and the importance to Costa Rica, the notification of independence is reported to have taken a month to arrive from Guatemala City.

Independence created problems for Costa Rica which were to impact on the country for almost 20 years. Mexico declared independence a few weeks before the Central American provinces. General Agustín de Iturbide invited the provinces to join a Mexican Empire, which sent the four towns of Costa Rica into a tailspin. Cartago and Heredia favoured joining the Empire, while San José and Alajuela preferred federal relations with the Central American provinces or better still, complete independence. A brief civil war broke out in late 1822 in which the republican forces of San José and Alajuela emerged victorious, and domination by Mexico was rejected. While the fighting was in vain, as Iturbide’s imperial aspirations collapsed in early 1823, it did expose the rivalry between the towns of the Central Valley.

With the disintegration of the Mexican Empire, Costa Rica joined the newly formed Central American Federation. As the prospects for peaceful integration through this fledgling Federation waxed and waned with varying degrees of violence, the people of Guanacaste chose to secede from Nicaragua in 1824. Meanwhile in Costa Rica the conservatives of Cartago and Heredia resented the recent victory of San José and Alajuela, and the rivals fought over the dominance of the nation in a series of regional quarrels. In desperation, in 1834 the head of state José Rafael de Gallegos approved the somewhat bizarre Law of Movement which rotated the capital seat every four years. But the conflicts continued and Gallegos resigned to be replaced by the forceful leader Braulio Carrillo Colina, who firmly established San José as the capital.

Population of the Americas began somewhere between 40,000 and 15,000 years ago, when mankind first crossed the Bering Straight from Asia. A slow southerly migration steadily peopled the continent, and evidence suggests that humans first appeared in what is now Costa Rica roughly 10,000 years ago.

Early human settlement developed in this intermediate zone without a single dominant cultural group. The region was very much at the boundary of a north-south divde, taking its influences from both the Maya civilizations of modern-day Mexico and from several smaller groups in South America.

Farming, which began in earnest around 1000 BC, is the greatest indicator of this division. The Chorotega people, who lived in the northwest of Costa Rica on the Nicoya Peninsula, present day Guanacaste, were the largest and most advanced tribe in the country at the time of conquest. Arriving from Chiapas in southern Mexico around the 13th century, they cultivated beans and maize and developed a tradition of ceramics influenced by the Mesoamerican cultures of the Maya and later the Aztec. However, people on the Caribbean coast and in southern regions were more influenced by South American cultures, leading to the dominance of tuber cultivation, in particular yucca or manioc. Likewise, the dominance of jade, an influence from the north, waned with the decline of the Maya between 500-800 AD, allowing the influence of gold from cultures of the south to emerge.

With increased food supplies, social organization and hierarchy developed to manage the increased populations. Regions of Costa Rica were divided into cacicazgos which were the basis for exchange of goods within the country and further afield. Rivalry and competition were intrinsic to the hierarchy, and dominance of an area was directly related to military ability and population. Likewise, dominance relied on the creation and development of strategic alliances to overcome and dominate the enemy.

Archaeological evidence of early settlements in the country are scarce. The largest single pre-columbian site in the country is the Guayabo National Monument, close to Turrialba, which is believed to have been ruled by a cacique or shaman. Inhabited from 1000 BC to 1400 AD, the economy of Guayabo was based on agriculture, hunting and fishing. The reasons for abandoning the site remain a mystery, as do explanations of the country’s other main archaeological remains, the stone spheres found dotted around the Diquis Valley in the south of the country.

On the back of the prosperity of the late 19th century and the increased affluence for the agricultural elites, an increasingly educated populace enlarged by considerable migration from Spain, Germany and Italy, and ever-greater hardships for plantation workers and the urban working class sowed the seeds of resentment in the early years of the 20th century. The constitution was nudged gently towards direct elections and eventually produced President Alfredo González Flores (1914-1917). When he proposed the liberal reforms of a state bank and direct taxes as gestures towards reducing growing inequalities and tackling problems with the public finances produced by falling coffee prices, González lost popular support and was ousted in the military coup of Federico Tinoco Granados in 1917. Events conspired against Tinoco as the US withdrew support for the regime and loss of German markets due to World War I crippled public finances still further. By popular consent he was removed from power in 1919.

When Guardia instigated the construction of the railroad link from the Central Valley to the Atlantic coast, the simple logic was to speed up and reduce the cost of transporting coffee to European markets. Guardia contacted Henry Meiggs who had experience of railroad building in Chile and Peru. Almost £4 million was borrowed from British banks to finance the construction.

The first tracks were laid in 1872, but due to mismanagement and corruption, construction was regularly delayed. The task actually fell to Meigg’s nephew Minor Cooper Keith who completed the line in 1890, having managed to secure some generous concessions along the way in return for taking on the debts of the railroad. Keith moved in political and social circles that enabled him to negotiate a 99-year lease on the railroad, purchase land for banana cultivation alongside the track and marry the daughter of former president Castro Madriz. In the process of construction over 4000 workers died and labourers from China, Italy and then from Jamaica were recruited to work on the railroad. By the time the railroad opened in 1890 foreign capital had gained a strong foothold in the Costa Rican economy, the economic profile of the country had shifted and the social make-up of the country had been dramatically altered.

Following the divisions of civil war and global economic expansion after the Second World War, Costa Rica enjoyed a period of extended growth. Ulate’s presidency set the country on a sound economic footing and embarked on infrastructure developments. With the unifying anti-Calderón forces removed, Figueres founded the Partido Liberación Nacional (PLN).

The strength of Figueres’ character, and the absence of any meaningful opposition handed Don Pepe the presidency with an overwhelming mandate. Investment in public bodies and services was funded by increased taxes on the United Fruit Company and individuals with higher incomes. However, the tax increases lost Figueres popularity and finally the presidency to Mario Echandi Jiménez (1958-1962) of the Partido Unión Nacional (PUN), but the PLN still strongly influenced congress and Echandi was unable to reduce the spending deficits incurred by Figueres on the programmes.

Through the 1960s and 1970s, despite healthy growth in the economy, successive governments battled to balance the books which needed to fund a burgeoning welfare sector and social security system. Investment in education, health and infrastructure saw the number of public sector employees expand to 33 of the working population, making the state the single largest employer and fuelling the development of an increasingly urban society. Banana exports and coffee prices grew rapidly, providing increased tax revenues through the state banking system. Tax incentives incubated a domestic manufacturing industry, to move away from the vulnerable exposure to commodity prices.

Beyond the city, small farmers struggled to adopt the efficient technologies of larger landholdings and many left the land for the bright lights of the city, focusing even greater pressure on the provision of public services in the city. At the same time, agricultural expansion led to widescale deforestation with the loss of almost 50,000 ha annually between 1963 and 1973 – the highest rates in the world at the time outside the Amazon Basin.

The return of Don Pepe to the presidency from 1970-1974 saw the continuation of PLN policies to invest in public services. The oil crisis of 1973 deflated the economic growth bubble of Costa Rica and after a brief rise in coffee prices in the mid-1970s, the drop in revenues from poor commodity prices and the global economic recession exacerbated the difference between public spending and income. The presidential term of Daniel Oduber Quirós (1974-1978) marked not only the first continuation of power within the same party but a continued deficit in public finances. Under the presidency of Rodrigo Carazo Odio (1978-1982), the economic crisis worsened as annual inflation reached 90, the economy shrank and relations with international lending agencies were stretched to the limit. During Carazo’s administration public foreign debt rose to US$3 billion. In September 1981, with debt repayments already suspended, Carazo reluctantly agreed to austerity measures imposed by the IMF in return for a reduction in public spending and price controls.

With the Nicaraguan revolution to the north, Luis Alberto Monge Alvarez (1982-1986) was able to negotiate a financial aid package from the ally-seeking US that trod the difficult line between structural adjustment of the economy and avoiding complete social meltdown. First attempts at reducing the large number of public employees made minimal inroads. Despite pressure from the US which came with large sums of money to prop up the economy, Monge declared Costa Rica’s neutrality in the Nicaraguan conflict and managed to avoid being drawn directly into events north of the border. With increasing pressure from the US, Oscar Arias Sánchez (1986-1990) proposed and successfully negotiated a Central American peace plan between Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. It seems entirely appropriate for a country that had disbanded its army almost 40 years before to be the seedbed for a regional peace process that eventually led to elections in Nicaragua, and discussions between governments and rebels in El Salvador and Guatemala. Arias Sánchez received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for his efforts.

By 1987 the country’s burgeoning national debt had risen to US$4.7 billion – more than the country’s gross domestic product. The challenge facing governments of the 1990s was to reduce public spending and reschedule debt repayments while somehow managing to hold on to the education, health and social security benefits that made Costa Rica stand out from most countries in Latin America.

In 1990 Rafael Calderón Fournier of the Partido Unidad Social Cristiana (PUSC), the son of the 1940s reformist president Calderón Guardia, won the presidency and introduced austere measures that restricted public spending and introduced limited trade liberalization. One casualty was the closure of the Atlantic railroad 100 years after it had first opened, although any debate on the subject was finally terminated by the huge earthquake which hit the Caribbean lowlands in 1991, taking the railroad permanently out of action. The broader social impact was dramatic, and with some 38 of Costa Ricans judged to be living below the poverty line in 1993, labour protests increased accordingly.

The early 1990s also marked a greater focus on the potential for tourism, and the introduction in 1993 of quotas for banana exports to the European Union began a trans-Atlantic trade dispute that set Brussels and Washington on an economic collision course at the cost of uncertainty and job losses in the Costa Rican banana industry and other global producers .

José María Figueres Olsen of the PLN, continued the difficult readjustment from 1994-1998, repeating history by following a Calderón administration as his father Don Pepe had done almost 50 years previously. Plans to minimize the pain of restructuring were quickly shelved by the collapse of the Banco Anglo Costarricense, the country’s oldest bank. The loss of confidence rocked the economy, which drifted into recession in 1996. Figueres proposed a new range of reforms which tinkered with the restructuring of debts, the sale of two state banks and the privatization of RACSA, the state-owned telecommunications company. Most reforms never materialized due to Congressional obstruction and Figueres left office with some of the worst popularity ratings in Costa Rican history. However, he is credited with the stabilizing impact of removing the link between the economic and electoral cycle and attracting the US microprocessor Intel which opened a manufacturing plant in the central highlands in 1998 with an investment totalling US$500 million.

In 1998 a politically disillusioned electorate handed the presidency to the US-trained economist and lawyer Miguel Angel Rodríguez of the PUSC. Economic progress continued in the first two years, with the number of tourists exceeding one million for the first time in 1999, and the benefits in the growth of high-tech manufacturing beginning to filter through. A programme of reforms pursuing the opening up of the telecom, electricity and insurance sectors to private investment was initially supported by Congress but eventually led to widespread public protest and the plans were shelved. Traditional products of coffee and bananas also took a battering as commodity prices and industry developments dramatically reduced the value of exports. Global factors also highlighted the frailty of the economic market with the brief surge in the price of oil in 2000 threatening to crush economic progress, the global downturn in the high-tech market threatening to undermine the recent successes of the fledgling industry in the country, and the unpredictable impact of events in New York and Washington on 11 September 2001.

One political success of the Rodríguez government (1998-2002) was the resolution of an ongoing border dispute with Nicaragua. A long history of problems created a heightened sense of tension along the San Juan River, with Costa Rican police forces patrolling the river. The solution states the southern bank of the San Juan River is the boundary, with Costa Rican officials having right of navigation.

The 2002 elections had a similar feel to 1998, with the mainly two-party system of the PLN and PUSC running on poverty busting tickets disrupted by the Citizen’s Action Party candidate Otton Solis. With no candidate getting at least 40 of the vote, the run-off election saw Abel Pacheco elected with 58 of the votes, in a historically low turnout.

President Pacheco’s election promise to continue with free market reforms and create at least 40,000 jobs a year struggled as the low coffee and banana prices and economic slowdown in the US and the wider world continued to create problems at home. Pacheco pointed to inefficiencies and a lack of coordination in the public sector as the main problem. A three week strike in May 2003 highlighted the problems facing the country as energy and telecommunications workers striked over privatization plans which seem set to be an obstacle to significant changes in the sector. Teachers joined the strike and three ministers ended up resigning.

Regionally, Costa Rica signed up to the principles of the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) in January 2004 which will see duties on trade reduced. While politicians and economists believe CAFTA will improve trade, local objections built steadily in Costa Rica with large rallys and campaigns setting out the views that US products would undermine the Costa Rican economy. In October 2007 a national referendum narrowly decided in favour of ratifying the treaty. Internationally Pacheco’s presidency also broke the Costa Rica’s peaceful traditions supporting the 2003 military intervention in Iraq. Popular protests eventually forced Costa Rica to withdraw its name from the list of countries supporting the war.

Elected as the first head of state by Congress in 1824 Juan Mora Fernández governed over a period of economic stability which saw the construction of state schools and houses, the founding of the national mint and government promotion of coffee cultivation. Following the introduction of coffee at the end of the 18th century its importance to the economy grew steadily and by 1829 coffee had overtaken cacao, tobacco and sugar to become the nation’s major source of foreign revenue. When Braulio Carrillo Colina became head of state in 1835, he encouraged cultivation of the coffee industry still further, donating publicly owned land to anyone who would plant it with coffee trees, and constructing of roads to bring coffee to market.

The breakthrough for Costa Rican coffee occurred in 1843, when an English captain, seeking ballast for his return journey to Liverpool, took on board sacks of coffee beans. The cargo was well received in England and Costa Rican coffee no longer stopped in Chile to be blended with inferior beans, but was shipped direct to Europe. This boom in coffee production and exports to Europe funded social developments for much of the 19th century.

When Carrillo declared himself dictator for life in 1841, his conservative opponents sought out the Honduran General Francisco Morazán Quesada, the former leader of the Central American Federation, to remove Carrillo from office. Morazán’s tenure as head of state was briefly popular until he imposed direct taxes with the aim of funding a Costa Rican army and relaunching his ideal of the regional federation. He was overthrown and later executed in San José’s Central Park.

Morazón’s execution cleared the way for a number of developments which were a result of liberal enlightenment that balanced the vested interests of the coffee elite, with a belief in improved education, public works and more efficient government.

A new constitution in 1844 unsuccessfully attempted to introduce direct election, removing the process from the meddling of a Congress dominated by influential families. In 1847 Congress named the youthful 29-year-old José María Castro Madriz the first president of the republic. Castro officially declared Costa Rica a republic in 1848, drawing a line under the perennial discussions amongst the ruling classes on the subject of joining the Central American Federation. Castro’s wife, Doña Pacifica, is credited with designing the national flag. As a co-founder of the University of Santo Tomás in 1843, Castro stressed the importance of education and, as a believer in democracy, encouraged free speech and freedom of the press. But while his achievements appear noble, his reforms eventually trod on the toes of the barely established coffee elite and he was replaced.

When Juan Rafael Mora Porras rose from the coffee aristocracy to become president in 1849, the role of the coffee elite in society and the economy was established and influenced the development of the nation through the defining years of the 19th century.

The growth of the nation was facilitated by the excellent reputation of Costa Rican coffee in Europe. While the majority of smallholdings were family owned – a fact that is still true today – a brief crisis between 1847 and 1849 assisted the coffee barons to add to their wholesale role by acquiring property. Simple economies of scales exacerbated the differences with every trade cycle and an ever stronger coffee elite increasingly influenced society. The arrival of Porras as president in 1849 marked the beginning of the rule of the coffee barons which lasted until 1870. Liberal government policies continued to improve the general well-being of the nation while nurturing the coffee industry.

With every shipment of the golden bean to Europe, vessels returned from Europe with an increasing supply of European goods. Styles of fashion, entertainment, architecture and culture – exemplified in the extravagance of the Teatro Nacional paid for by a direct coffee tax and inaugurated in 1897 – all took their lead from Europe. For Iván Molina and Steven Palmer, contemporary Costa Rican-US historians, it is the ‘European disposition’ of the new coffee elite that saw the introduction of liberal ideals to Costa Rica.

However, the continued domination of the political and economic future of the country by the coffee families led to the coup of 1870 which gave General Tomás Guardia Gutiérrez the presidency. Guardia ruled as an authoritarian dictator determined to break the power of the coffee barons, redistributing land from some of the larger landowners and introducing taxes on personal wealth. He introduced a new constitution in 1871 which extended the voting to an electoral college and abolished the death penalty. But his programmes continued the liberal tradition of extending education, stimulating trade and encouraging greater production of coffee and sugar. Guardia also initiated the construction of the Atlantic railroad.

Guardia succeeded in breaking the power of the coffee families, only to replace them with his own nepotistic successions. On Guardia’s death in 1882 his brother-in-law Próspero Fernández Oreamuno ruled as president until his death in 1885, when his brother-in-law Bernardo Soto Alfaro took the presidential position. But despite continuing the dictatorial style, Soto introduced free and compulsory education, the national library, the Red Cross and promised to abide by congressional elections at the end of his term in 1889. With freedom of the press, the first truly honest and open election in Costa Rica’s history took place. Soto set himself up as the victor, but lost.

The Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus introduced European influences to the country when he dropped anchor off the coast of Puerto Limón at Isla Uvita on 18 September 1502. After 17 days exploring the coastal area, teased by the prospect of Indians decorated in gold, Columbus and his men moved south, calling this section of the coast of ‘Veragua’ costa rica – the rich coast. The precious metal never materialized in significant quantities but rumours travelled far and fast at the turn of the 16th century.

For almost 60 years the Spanish made half-hearted attempts to settle the region, with the primary intention of taking rich pickings of gold and easy labour, only to be hampered by difficulties. The conquest of Central America was launched from Panama to the south, and following Cortés’ successful defeat of the Aztecs, from Mexico to the north. Using Panama as a base Diego de Nicuesa, appointed governor of Veragua in 1508, launched the first attempt to establish a settlement in Costa Rica on the Caribbean coast. Nicuesa’s expedition foundered off the coast of Panama and ground troops attempting to march north endured sickness, hunger and encountered hostile tribes who denied the Spaniards food and slaughtered the invaders when the opportunity allowed, eventually forcing them to retreat. In 1513 the governor of Darién in Panama, Vásco Núñez de Balboa, led his forces across the isthmus and became one of the first Europeans to see the Pacific Ocean. Following the difficulties of colonizing the Caribbean, the focus now shifted to the Pacific coastline. Coastal explorations of the Pacific coastline reached the Nicoya Peninsula and by 1522 Gil González Dávila had established good relations with the Chorotega people. After a foray that continued further north to Nicaragua and Honduras, Dávila returned to Panama with a cargo of gold and equally importantly, the souls of several thousand converted Chorotegas. However, a couple of years later, when Francisco Fernándo de Córdova established the first Spanish settlement of Villa Bruselas to the north of present day Puntarenas, the site had to be abandoned within three years as a result of starvation and further attacks from the Chorotega.

Despite the successes, the pattern of exploration, settlement and desertion continued as Spanish attempts at forced colonization met with resistance. Not until 1561, under orders from King Philip II of Spain, was an attempt at conquest successful, when Juan de Cavallón managed to cross the territory from east to west for the first time, establishing a permanent settlement in the northwest of the central highlands at Garcimuñez. But it is Juan Vásquez de Coronado who receives the credit for establishing the first truly permanent settlement in the central highlands. Forging temporary alliances and utilizing rivalries between different indigenous groups – a technique that proved successful for Cortés in Mexico and Pizarro in Peru – Vásquez de Coronado founded Cartago in 1563. He established a settlement of reasonable size in the relative comfort of Cartago which had plenty of fresh water and fertile volcanic soils for agriculture and was away from the sweltering heat and fetid coastal waterways of the Caribbean.

Despite Vásquez de Coronado’s less bellicose approach to settlement, he too faced problems of indigenous uprisings. The energy and resources of the governor was all but depleted and the city nearly abandoned in 1568, when the next governor Perafán de Ribera arrived with extra supplies, manpower and enthusiasm for the pursuit of precious metals and conquest. The Talamanca people resisted his attempts at pacification, and plans to settle in the southern region were quickly abandoned.

With Cartago finally secured, the division of land between settlers began. While land was divided between Spanish gentry and commoners, the relatively low indigenous populations and the absence of mineral wealth in any substantial quantity denied the landholders many of the comforts afforded those in other parts of the Spanish empire. While the gentry provided leadership in municipal government, the reality was that most settlers were simple farmers, forced to work the land themselves. Some historians suggest this is the bedrock of the liberal sentiments that created the social advances and democratic traditions of modern Costa Rica.

Costa Rica is promoted as a model of conservation with national parks protecting 11 of the country and just over one quarter of the national territory falling within a protected status category of some kind.

The country has undergone a dramatic turnaround within recent decades. From the 1940s to the 1970s it had some of the highest rates of deforestation in the world, clearing at a rate that would have stripped the entire country by early in the 21st century. Fortunately the efforts of a dozen or so national and international individuals – among them such guiding lights as Mario Boza, Archie Carr, Leslie R Holdridge, Daniel Janzen and the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS) who have been successful in highlighting the extraordinary nature of Costa Rica’s flora and fauna. Coupled with some rather timely falls in commodity prices, the government moved away from state-sponsored land clearance for ranching and agriculture, favouring instead the creation of the national parks system.

The evolution of protected parks began in 1970 with the creation of the National Parks Service (SPN). The latest reorganization completed in 1995 divided the entire country into 11 regions creating a National System of Protected Areas (SINAC – Sistema Nacional de Areas de Conservación), which is administered as part of the Ministry for the Environment and Energy (MINAE – Ministerio del Ambiente y Energía).

Costa Rica, considering its size, contains more species of plants and animals than any other country in the world. Indonesia holds the world record for the number of mammal species (515) in any one country, as Colombia, with 1721 species, does for birds. However, these two countries are, respectively, around 37 and 22 times the size of Costa Rica, so you would have to travel a lot further to see the same number of animals than you will in tiny Costa Rica. With around 12,000 plant species, 870 bird species (600 or so resident), 205 species of mammals, 215 reptiles, 160 amphibians, 130 species of freshwater fish and some 360,000 insects, the country is home to between four to five per cent of the world’s terrestrial species.

In comparison, the USA, about 183 times the size of Costa Rica, has a total of only 996 species of birds and mammals combined, while the UK (about five times the size of Costa Rica) has a mere 284 species of mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians combined.

Costa Rica’s amazing biodiversity is partly due to its geographical situation in the centre of the two huge continental masses, partly because it is a barrier between two oceans, and also due to its wide variety of landscapes, including mountains, valleys, coastal plains and prairies. In addition, though wholly within the tropics, Costa Rica has a climatic diversity.

Much of the country’s wildlife remains only in the small, but numerous, national parks and reserves which protect over 25 of the country. Elsewhere, most of the forest, home to the majority of the animals, has been cut down and replaced by agricultural land.

Economically the country is undergoing a slow revolution, with every year bringing a steady shift away from traditional agricultural production, and a move towards tourism, the electronic services economy and manufacturing.

The national economy experienced strong growth in the last years of the 1990s with growth of 8.4% in 1999 and an average of 4.6% from 1992-2002. Global economic downturn produced growth of just 1.1% and 2.8% for 2001 and 2002 respectively. GDP growth of 5.9% and 8.2% in 2005 and 2006, are expected to be followed a slow down to 4% in 2008 and 3.1% in 2009.

The president is the head of state and government, elected for a four-year term. Two presidential terms must pass before re-election is permitted. Legislation is passed through the single-chamber Legislative Assembly with 57 deputies who, like the president, hold their positions for four years.

The current president, Oscar Arias, of the Partido Liberación Nacional (PLN – National Liberation Party) assumed the presidency in February 2006. The next elections will be held in February 2010.