Costa Rica

Human settlement in what is now Costa Rica reaches back thousands of years. By the time of European contact the territory lay at a cultural crossroads, a bridge across which goods, peoples, and ideas passed between the Mesoamerican civilisations to the north and the chiefdoms of Colombia and the Andes to the south. Dozens of small indigenous groups inhabited the land, organised not into great empires but into ranked societies of village and clan. They worked gold and jade, traded across long distances, and developed distinctive ceramic and lapidary traditions shaped by their position between two great cultural spheres.

In the low-lying deltas of the Diquis region in the country's south-east, chiefdom societies flourishing between roughly 500 and 1500 CE produced one of the most remarkable archaeological legacies of the pre-Columbian Americas: an assemblage of more than three hundred stone spheres. Ranging from a few centimetres to about 2.57 metres across and ground to near-perfect roundness without metal tools, the spheres were set in deliberate arrangements within settlements of mounds, paved areas, and burial grounds. Their precise meaning, use, and method of production remain only partly understood.

The settlement sites of Finca 6, Batambal, El Silencio, and Grijalba-2 preserve this culture in situ, the spheres standing where their makers placed them. In 2014 UNESCO inscribed the Precolumbian Chiefdom Settlements with Stone Spheres of the Diquis on its World Heritage List, the first cultural site in Costa Rica to receive the distinction. The inscription recognised the spheres as unique testimony to the complex social, economic, and political systems of these chiefdoms, a monumental achievement of a society that left no written record but a legacy carved in stone.

Turning points

1. c. 500-1500 CECulture & Ideas

   Diquis chiefdoms and the stone spheres

   Chiefdom societies in the Diquis delta carve more than 300 near-perfect stone spheres and build settlements of mounds and paved precincts.

   [12] [13]

2. 2014 CECulture & Ideas

   UNESCO World Heritage inscription

   The Diquis settlements with their stone spheres become Costa Rica's first cultural World Heritage Site, recognised as unique evidence of pre-Columbian chiefdom societies.

   [12]

Christopher Columbus reached the Caribbean coast in 1502, during his fourth voyage, at a time when the land was home to numerous small indigenous tribes. Gifts of gold brought by the indigenous people gave rise to the name Costa Rica, the Rich Coast, in expectation of mineral wealth. That promise proved hollow. Conquest and disease devastated the indigenous population, yet the Spaniards found no rich mines, and permanent settlement came only slowly. The town of Cartago, founded in 1563 in the temperate Central Valley, became the colonial capital and remained so until 1823.

Theoretically governed by the captain general of Guatemala and the bishop of Leon in Nicaragua, Costa Rica was in practice ignored by both. The absence of precious metals meant few taxes were collected from the ticos, as Costa Ricans are known, and the crown invested little in roads or institutions. Distant, sparsely populated, and lacking a large subjugated indigenous labour force, the province developed differently from its neighbours. Settlers eked out a subsistence economy based on crops such as cacao and tobacco, working their own land rather than depending on great estates and bound labour.

From this poverty and isolation grew a society of comparatively egalitarian smallholders, a heritage later mythologised as the root of Costa Rican democracy. The province was peripheral to the wealth and conflicts of the empire, and its small population, concentrated in the highland valley, lived modestly and apart. When the structure of Spanish rule in Central America finally gave way in the early nineteenth century, Costa Rica entered independence as a quiet, agrarian backwater on the southern edge of the isthmus.

Turning points

1. 1502 CEColonisation

   Columbus reaches the Rich Coast

   On his fourth voyage Columbus lands on the Caribbean coast; gifts of gold inspire the name Costa Rica, the Rich Coast.

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   [1]

2. 1563 CEColonisation

   Founding of Cartago

   The Spanish establish Cartago in the Central Valley as the colonial capital, which it remains until 1823.

   ↗See the data

   [1] [4]

Figures of the era

When Central America proclaimed its separation from Spain on 15 September 1821, Costa Rica was drawn into events largely beyond its control. It joined the brief Mexican Empire, then in 1823 helped form the United Provinces of Central America, adopting the federal constitution of 1824. Juan Mora Fernandez, elected the nation's first head of state in 1824, gave the young polity a measure of order: he founded schools, established a judiciary and roads, and above all encouraged coffee cultivation by granting free land to those who would plant it. Disenchanted with the federation's chronic strife, Costa Rica withdrew in 1838.

Coffee made the republic. From the 1840s a constant stream of oxcarts carried beans from the Central Valley down to Pacific ports and on to Europe, and the wealth it generated created a powerful planter elite while financing the institutions of an independent state. In 1848 Costa Rica formally declared itself a sovereign republic. Its early politics, though dominated by a coffee oligarchy, developed a comparatively stable and orderly character, and by the close of the century the country had begun to hold elections widely regarded as the first free and honest contests in Central America.

Sovereignty was tested in the mid-1850s when the American filibuster William Walker seized power in Nicaragua and threatened the whole isthmus. Costa Rica joined the other Central American states in the National War of 1856-57 that drove Walker out. From the campaign emerged the country's most cherished patriotic legend, the young soldier Juan Santamaria, honoured ever since as a national hero. By the 1880s a new export, the banana, was taking root on the Caribbean lowlands, reshaping the economy once more.

Turning points

1. 15 Sept 1821Independence

   Independence from Spain

   Central America, Costa Rica included, declares independence from Spain; the province soon joins the Mexican Empire and then a regional federation.

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   [1] [2]

2. 1824 CEPolitics & Power

   Juan Mora Fernandez, first head of state

   Costa Rica's first elected head of state founds schools and courts and promotes coffee planting through free land grants.

   [14]

3. 1838 CEPolitics & Power

   Withdrawal from the federation

   Disenchanted with the strife of the United Provinces of Central America, Costa Rica severs its federal ties and charts an independent course.

   [1] [2]

4. 1856-1857War & Rupture

   National War against William Walker

   Costa Rica joins Central America in defeating the American filibuster William Walker; the soldier Juan Santamaria becomes a national hero.

   ↗See the data

   [10] [11]

Figures of the era

The banana transformed the Caribbean lowlands. From 1872 the American entrepreneur Minor C. Keith built railways and planted bananas to serve the line, and in 1899 his interests merged into the United Fruit Company, which became a dominant economic and political force across Central America. Costa Rica thus came to rest on two great exports: highland coffee, grown by a settled landowning class, and lowland bananas, cultivated on foreign-owned plantations worked largely by Afro-Caribbean and immigrant labour. The contrast shaped the country's society, geography, and politics for generations.

Politically, Costa Rica matured more peacefully than its neighbours. In 1890 it held what is widely considered the first free and honest election in Central America, inaugurating a tradition of orderly, competitive succession unusual in the region. The franchise widened, public education and a literate citizenry expanded, and despite occasional coups and disputed votes the rule of law and civilian government took firmer root than almost anywhere else in the isthmus. By the early twentieth century the country had earned a reputation for relative civility and stability.

That reputation was shaken in the 1940s. Reformist governments under Rafael Angel Calderon Guardia introduced a labour code and social-security system, but amid economic strain and bitter partisanship the politics of the decade grew polarised. The crisis came to a head over the presidential election of 1948: when Calderon's faction, having lost, sought to annul the result and bar the victor Otilio Ulate from office, the country was plunged into armed conflict.

Turning points

1. 1872 CEEconomy & Trade

   Minor Keith and the banana railways

   Minor C. Keith begins building railways and planting bananas, ventures that in 1899 merge into the United Fruit Company and reshape the Caribbean coast.

   ↗See the data

   [9]

2. 1890 CEPolitics & Power

   First free election in Central America

   Costa Rica holds what is regarded as the first free and honest election in Central America, beginning a long democratic tradition.

   [1]

3. 1948 CEPolitics & Power

   Disputed election sparks civil war

   The annulment of the 1948 election to bar president-elect Otilio Ulate triggers a brief but bloody civil war.

   [6] [7]

Figures of the era

When the Legislative Assembly annulled the 1948 election and moved to reinstall Rafael Angel Calderon Guardia, Jose Figueres Ferrer, who had stockpiled arms on his farm near Cartago, rose in revolt in support of the president-elect Otilio Ulate. His forces, which would later become the National Liberation Party, launched a successful rebellion in a brief civil war that cost roughly two thousand lives, the bloodiest episode in twentieth-century Costa Rican history. Calderon's government, despite backing from the Nicaraguan strongman Anastasio Somoza, capitulated within two months.

Figueres headed a governing junta for some eighteen months and used the moment to refound the republic. The constitution his regime promulgated in 1949 made the country's most consequential and enduring decision: it prohibited the establishment or maintenance of a standing army. The same charter extended suffrage to women, strengthened the independent electoral tribunal, abolished institutionalised racism, nationalised the banking system, and created powerful autonomous state agencies to drive development and welfare.

Having reshaped the state, Figueres handed power to the rightful victor, Otilio Ulate, in 1949, honouring the election his rebellion had defended. Figueres himself would return as elected president, and the National Liberation Party he founded became a pillar of the new order. The abolition of the army, far from leaving Costa Rica defenceless, freed resources for education, health, and social spending, and became the foundation of the country's later identity as a stable, demilitarised democracy.

Turning points

1. 1948 CEWar & Rupture

   Figueres leads the civil war

   Jose Figueres Ferrer leads an armed uprising in support of president-elect Ulate; the two-month war kills about 2,000 people before the government surrenders.

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   [6]

2. 1949 CEPolitics & Power

   Constitution abolishes the army

   Figueres's junta promulgates a new constitution that bans a standing army, grants women the vote, and nationalises the banks, then hands power to Ulate.

   [6] [7]

Figures of the era

In the decades after 1949 Costa Rica became a byword for democratic stability. Power alternated peacefully and regularly between parties, the social-security and education systems expanded, and the country avoided the dictatorships and civil wars that scarred its neighbours through the Cold War. Its standing as a peace-broker reached its height in the 1980s, when President Oscar Arias Sanchez devised a regional peace plan for the wars then convulsing Central America. Arias and the other regional leaders signed it in August 1987, and that year he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

From the 1970s conservation became a national mission. A national park system created in 1970 grew to protect about a quarter of the country's territory, sheltering tropical rainforest, cloud forest, and dry forest, and safeguarding a biodiversity that includes a remarkable share of the world's known species. Ecotourism flourished around reserves such as Monteverde and Corcovado, and the protection of forests became, for many landowners, more rewarding than clearing them. The once agrarian economy shifted toward services, technology, and tourism, with the green republic as its brand.

Into the twenty-first century Costa Rica has sustained its reputation as one of the most stable, peaceful, and democratic nations of the Americas, governed without a standing army for more than seventy years. It contends with the familiar pressures of inequality, public debt, and regional migration, yet remains a small country of outsized influence, holding together the threads of its history: the egalitarian smallholder past, the coffee and banana economies, the disarmed democracy of 1949, and the modern ethos of peace and environmental stewardship.

Turning points

1. 1970 CEEconomy & Trade

   National park system created

   Costa Rica establishes a national park system that grows to protect roughly a quarter of the country, anchoring its conservation and ecotourism economy.

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   [3]

2. 1987 CEPolitics & Power

   Oscar Arias wins the Nobel Peace Prize

   President Oscar Arias Sanchez is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the Central American peace plan signed by the region's leaders in August 1987.

   [8]

3. 2014 CECulture & Ideas

   Diquis spheres named World Heritage

   UNESCO inscribes the Diquis chiefdom settlements and their stone spheres as Costa Rica's first cultural World Heritage Site.

   [12]

Figures of the era