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Costa
Rica's History
Located in Central America: Costa Rica is bordered on the
north by Nicaragua, on the south by Panama, the Pacific
ocean on the west and the Caribbean on the east. During
his fourth voyage to the New World in 1502, Christopher
Columbus landed at "Cariari," known today as Puerto Limon.
Columbus actually named Costa Rica (rich coast) under the
assumption that the land was filled with precious metals.
The earth never yielded gold and silver, but the name was
perfect for the wealth of natural beauty and flawless climate.
The country has a territory of 51,000 km2 and a population
of 5,000,000. Mountains spread from the northeast to the
southeast forming a fertile central valley measuring approximately
3,000 km. At 4,000 foot elevation it has one of the most
perfect climates in the world. The great majority of the
population is concentrated here. The first settlers in Costa
Rica were the Chorotega, Huetares and Brunca or Boruca Indians;
today there are still about 20,000 Indians living here.
Peaceful Costa Rica, has been ruled since 1949 by democratically
elected presidents. The Executive Power is exercised by
the President, a person who must be over thirty years old
and of Costa Rican birth. The constitution prohibits any
army, to maintain peace and order the Civil Guard serves
as a police force. The city of San José was founded in 1848
. Most of its old buildings go back approximately 150 years.The
architecture of churches , cathedrals, and many modern buildings,
is incredibly rich and varied. San José has many diverse
architectural styles and buildings. The streets - "calles"
- run from north to south and its avenues - "avenidas" -
from east to west. Also there is a numbering system for
the streets and calles. The town is divided into four quadrants
by Avenida central and Calle central. All Av. north of Av.
central are odd numbered all south are even numbered All
calles east of calle central are odd numbered and all calles
west of calle central are even numbered.
When Spanish explorers arrived in what is now Costa Rica
at the dawn of the 16th century, they found the region populated
by several autonomous tribes living with relative prosperity
in a land of lush abundance. In all, there were probably
no more than 200,000 indigenous people on 18 September 1502,
when Columbus put ashore near current-day Puerto Limón.
Although human habitation can be traced back at least 10,000
years, the region had remained a sparsely populated backwater.
High mountains and swampy lowlands had impeded migration.
Though the indigenous cultures were skilled in ceramics,
metalwork, and weaving, few signs of large complex communities
exist in Costa Rica.
First
European Arrivals
When Columbus anchored his vessels in the Bay of Cariari
off the Caribbean coast on his fourth voyage to the New
World, he was welcomed and treated with great hospitality
by indigenous peoples. The Native American dignitaries appeared
wearing much gold, which they gave to Columbus. "I saw more
signs of gold in the first two days than I saw in Española
during four years," his journal records. He called the region
La Huerta (The Garden). Alas, the great navigator, Columbus
struggled home to Spain in a worm-eaten ship (he was stranded
for a year in Jamaica) and never returned. In 1506 Ferdinand
of Spain sent a governor, Diego de Nicuesa, to colonize
the Atlantic coast of the isthmus he called Veragua. Diego
got off to a bad start by running aground off the coast
of Panamá and was forced to march north, enduring a welcome
that was less hospitable than the one that had greeted Columbus.
Antagonized Native American bands used guerrilla tactics
to slay the strangers and willingly burnt their own crops
to deny them food. Things seemed more promising when an
expedition under Gil González Davila set off from Panamá
in 1522 to settle the region.
The prospect of vast loot drew adventurers, whose numbers
were reinforced after Vasco Nuñez de Balboa's discovery
of the Pacific in 1513. To these explorers the name Costa
Rica (Rich Coast) would have seemed a cruel hoax Floods,
swamps, and tropical diseases plagued them in the sweltering
lowlands. With few exceptions, there was no gold at the
end of the rainbow.
For the next four decades Costa Rica was left alone. By
the 1560s several Spanish cities had consolidated their
position farther north and, prompted by an edict of 1559
issued by Philip II of Spain, representatives in Guatemala
thought it time to settle Costa Rica and Christianize the
indigenous people By then it was too late for the latter.
Barbaric treatment and European epidemics‹opthalmia, smallpox,
and tuberculosis‹had already ravaged the Native American
population and had so antagonized the survivors that they
took to the forests and eventually found refuge amid the
remote valleys of the Cordillera Talamanca.
Because of this antagonism, intermixing with the indigenous
population never became a common practice for the Spanish.
In other colonies, Spaniards married Native Americans and
a distinct class system arose, but mixed-bloods and ladinos
(mestizos) represent a much smaller element in Costa Rica
than they do elsewhere in the isthmus. All this had a leveling
effect on colonial society. As the population grew, so did
the number of poor families who had never benefited from
the labor of the indigenous people or suffered the despotic
arrogance of criollo (Creole) landowners. Costa Rica, in
the traditional view, became a "rural democracy," with no
oppressed mestizo class resentful of the maltreatment and
scorn of the Creoles. Removed from the mainstream of Spanish
culture, Costa Ricans became very individualistic and egalitarian.
Independence
Independence from Spain came on the coattails of Mexico's
declaration earlier in the same year, on 15 September 1821.
Independence had little immediate effect, however, for Costa
Rica had experienced only minimal intervention during the
colonial era and had long gone its own way. In fact, the
country was so out of touch that the news that independence
had been granted reached Costa Rica a full month after the
event. A hastily convened provincial council voted for accession
to Mexico; in 1823 the other Central American nations proclaimed
the United Provinces of Central America, with their capital
in Guatemala City.
After the declaration, effective power lay in the hands
of the separate towns of the isthmus. The four leading cities
of Costa Rica felt as independent as had the city-states
of ancient Greece, and the conservative and aristocratic
leaders of Cartago and Heredia soon found themselves at
odds with the more progressive republican leaders of San
José and Alajuela. The local quarrels quickly developed
into civic unrest and, in 1823, to civil war. After a brief
battle in the Ochomogo Hills, the republican forces of San
José emerged victorious. They rejected Mexico, and Costa
Rica joined the federation with full autonomy for its own
affairs. Guanacaste voted to secede from Nicaragua and join
Costa Rica the following year.
The 1860s were marred by power struggles among the ever-powerful
coffee elite supported by their respective military supporters.
General Tomás Guardia, however, was his own man. In April
1870 he overthrew the government, and thereafter he ruled
for 12 years as an iron-willed military strong man backed
by a powerful centralized government of his own making.
The shift to democracy took place in the election called
by President Bernardo Soto in 1889‹an event commonly referred
to as the first "honest" election, with popular participation
(women and blacks, however, were still excluded from voting).
To Soto's surprise, his opponent José Joaquín Rodriguez
won. The citizens rose and marched in the streets to support
their chosen leader after the Soto government decided not
to recognize the new president. The Costa Ricans had spoken:
Soto stepped down.
The
20th Century
The 1940s and their climax, the civil war, mark a turning
point in Costa Rican history: from paternalistic government
directed by traditional rural elite to modernistic, urban-focused
state craft controlled by bureaucrats, professionals, and
small entrepreneurs. The dawn of the new era began with
Rafael Angel Calderón Guardia, a profoundly religious physician
and a president (194044) with a social conscience. In a
period when neighboring nations were governed by tyrannical
dictators, Calderón promulgated a series of farsighted reforms,
including a stab at land reform (the landless could gain
title to unused land by cultivating it), establishment of
a guaranteed minimum wage, paid vacations, unemployment
compensation, progressive taxation, and a series of constitutional
amendments codifying workers' rights.
In 1944 Calderón was replaced by Teodoro Picado in an election
widely regarded as fraudulent. Picado's uninspired administration
failed to address rising discontent throughout the nation.
The country was polarized, and tensions mounted. Street
violence finally erupted in the run-up to the 1948 election,
with Calderón on the ballot for a second presidential term.
When he lost by a small margin to his opponent Otilio Ulate,
the government claimed fraud. Next day, the building holding
many of the ballot papers went up in flames, and the calderonista-dominated
legislature annulled the election results. Ten days later,
on 10 March 1948, the "War of National Liberation" plunged
Costa Rica into civil war.
"Savior
of the Nation"
The popular myth suggests that José María ("Don Pepe") Figueres
Ferrer‹42-year-old coffee farmer, engineer, economist, and
philosopher‹raised a "ragtag army of university students
and intellectuals" and stepped forward to topple the government
that had refused to step aside for its democratically elected
successor. Actually, Don Pepe's revolution had been long
in the planning; the 1948 election merely provided a good
excuse.
Supported by the governments of Guatemala and Cuba, Don
Pepe's insurrectionists captured the cities of Cartago and
Puerto Limón and were poised to pounce on San José when
Calderón, who had little heart for the conflict, capitulated.
The 40-day civil war had claimed more than 2,000 lives,
most of them civilians.
Figueres then returned the reins of power to Otilio Ulate,
the actual winner of the 1948 election and a man not even
of Don Pepe's own party. Costa Ricans later rewarded Figueres
with two terms as president, in 195357 and 197074. Figueres
dominated politics for the next two decades. He died on
8 June 1990, a national hero.
In February 1986 Costa Ricans elected as their president
a relatively young sociologist and economist-lawyer named
Oscar Arias Sánchez. Arias's electoral promise had been
to work for peace. Immediately, he put his energies into
resolving Central America's regional conflicts. He attempted
to expel the counter-revolutionary forces, or contras, from
Costa Rica and enforce the nation's official proclamation
of neutrality made in 1983. Arias's tireless efforts were
rewarded in 1987 when his Central American peace plan was
signed by the five Central American presidents in Guatemala
City‹an achievement that earned the Costa Rican president
the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize, a distinction in which the whole
nation justly takes pride.
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