- Government and society
- Cultural life
Of all the Central American countries, Costa Rica is generally regarded as having the most stable and most democratic government. Its constitution of 1949 provides for a unicameral legislature, a fair judicial system, and an independent electoral body. Moreover, the constitution abolished the country’s army, gave women the right to vote, and provided other social, economic, and educational guarantees for all of its citizens. Throughout the 1970s and ’80s Costa Rica managed to stay relatively peaceful compared with its war-torn neighbours. It has one of the highest literacy rates (more than nine-tenths) in the Western Hemisphere and a solid educational system from the primary grades through the university level. Several renowned universities and an active network of bookstores and publishing houses tend to make San José the nucleus of intellectual life in Central America. Because of the country’s peaceful reputation and its commitment to human rights, several nongovernmental organizations and pro-democracy foundations have their headquarters in San José. Costa Rica is also known for its strong commitment to the environment and for protecting its numerous national parks. These factors, along with an established ecotourism industry, have attracted foreign investment, which shifted the country’s once agriculture-based economy to one dominated by services and technology by the late 20th century.
Ticos, as the people of Costa Rica are called, use the phrase pura vida (“pure life”) in their everyday speech, as a greeting or to show appreciation for something. Ticos are generally proud of their political freedoms and their relatively stable economy.
Costa Rica’s well-populated heartland, formed in and around the upland basin known as the Valle Central or Meseta Central, is devoted to the cultivation of coffee, one of the country’s most important exports. In the region’s outlying reaches, bananas—the principal export—are grown. Pineapples have become a significant export, surpassing coffee as the number two export by the late 20th century.
Extending from northwest to southeast, Costa Rica is bounded by Nicaragua to the north, by the Caribbean Sea along the 185-mile (300-km) northeastern coastline, by Panama to the southeast, and by the Pacific Ocean along the 630-mile (1,015-km) southwestern coastline. At the country’s narrowest point, the distance between the Pacific and the Caribbean is only about 75 miles (120 km).
Two mountain chains together run almost the entire length of Costa Rica. These are, in the north, the Cordillera Volcánica, noted for its volcanic activity, as the name implies, and, in the south, the Cordillera de Talamanca. The Cordillera Volcánica may be divided into three ranges, from northwest to southeast: the Cordillera de Guanacaste, the Cordillera de Tilarán, and the Cordillera Central. Designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1983, the Cordillera de Talamanca is a massive granite batholith, quite different geologically from the volcanically active northern ranges. Costa Rica’s highest point, Mount Chirripó (12,530 feet [3,819 metres]), is in the Talamanca system. Two of the highest peaks in the Cordillera Volcánica, Irazú (11,260 feet [3,432 metres]) and Poás (8,871 feet [2,704 metres]), have paved roads reaching to the rims of their active craters. These volcanoes, overlooking the Valle Central, pose a serious natural hazard, as do earthquakes for most of the country. Arenal Volcano (5,358 feet [1,633 metres]), about 56 miles (90 km) northwest of San José, is the country’s youngest stratovolcano. Its last major eruption, in 1968, destroyed two villages, and the volcano continued to spew lava and breccia into the early 21st century.
The Valle Central is separated into two parts by the continental divide. The eastern part is drained by the Reventazón River to the Caribbean, and the western sector forms part of the basin of the Grande de Tárcoles River, which flows into the Pacific. Another large structural valley, the Valle del General, lies at the base of the Cordillera de Talamanca in the southern part of the country. To the north and east of the mountainous central spine lie the Caribbean lowlands, constituting about one-fifth of the country and reaching less than 400 feet (120 metres) in elevation. The Pacific lowlands, which contain several small valleys and plains, include only about one-tenth of Costa Rica’s territory.
Thermal convection and onshore breezes bring abundant rains to the Pacific coast in the wet season, generally May to October in the north and April to December in the south. Northeasterly trade winds on the Caribbean provide ample year-round precipitation for the country’s east coast, with the heaviest amounts occurring in the Barra del Colorado region. The higher mountain ranges have warm temperate climates, and the Pacific slopes have alternating wet and dry seasons.
Situated in the Valle Central at an elevation of 3,800 feet (1,160 metres), San José enjoys moderate temperatures and ample rainfall. Average monthly rainfall there ranges from well under 1 inch (25 mm) in February to more than 12 inches (300 mm) in September, with a yearly average of more than 70 inches (1,800 mm). Temperatures vary with elevation. San José has a mean temperature of 69 °F (21 °C), while means of 59 °F (15 °C) and 80 °F (27 °C) have been reported at stations located at 7,665 feet (2,340 metres) and 682 feet (210 metres), respectively.
Plant and animal life
Dense broad-leaved evergreen forest, which includes mahogany and tropical cedar trees, covers about one-third of Costa Rica’s landscape. On the Talamanca range grow numerous evergreen oaks and, above the timberline, mountain scrub and grasses. The northwest, with the longest dry season, contains open deciduous forest. Palm trees are common on the Caribbean coastline, and mangroves grow on the shallow protected shores of the Nicoya and Dulce gulfs along the Pacific. Mosses, orchids, and other tropical plants are abundant. Many of the world’s tropical biologists have carried out studies at the various research stations of the Organization for Tropical Studies, which has its headquarters in San Pedro, a suburb of San José, as well as at the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Centre (Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza; CATIE) in Turrialba.
Costa Rica’s numerous and varied life zones make the country attractive to biologists. Mammalian life is both abundant and varied and has major ties to South and North American populations. The South American species include monkeys, anteaters, and sloths, and the North American species include deer, wildcats, weasels, otters, coyotes, and foxes. There is a wide variety of tropical birds in the lowlands, and reptiles, such as snakes and iguanas, and frogs are common.
Nearly four-fifths of Costa Rica’s population is of European descent, and, as a result, Costa Rica has the largest percentage of people of Spanish descent in Central America. The Valle Central, with more than half the country’s population, is the most predominantly Spanish region in both its manner of living and its ancestry. The next largest group consists of mestizos (people of mixed indigenous and European ancestry), who constitute close to one-fifth of the country’s inhabitants.
The roughly one-tenth of the country’s inhabitants who live in Guanacaste provincia (province) are a blend of the descendants of colonial Spanish, indigenous, and African peoples; the Spanish they speak is more like that of Nicaragua than that of the Valle Central.
People of African ancestry, who comprise an even smaller percentage of the total population, live mostly in the Caribbean lowland of Limón province. The descendants of workers brought from the West Indies (mainly from Jamaica) in the 19th century to build the Atlantic Railroad and work on banana plantations, they were the targets of racism, and for many years residence laws restricted them to the Caribbean coast. Moreover, in the late 1930s, when Panama disease hit the banana crop on the Atlantic coast and operations shifted to the Pacific coast, forcing many of Limón’s inhabitants to seek work elsewhere, some Costa Ricans lobbied for laws barring the employment of blacks. Costa Rica’s president signed a law in 1935 prohibiting banana plantation owners on the Pacific coast from employing “coloured” people, claiming that their relocation would upset the racial balance of the country. It was not until 1949 that the government abolished what was in effect Costa Rica’s version of apartheid and allowed black residents of Limón to travel, enter the Valle Central region, and become citizens. Discrimination is still present in Costa Rica (though less obvious than before); many among the country’s Spanish-descended majority consider blacks inferior because of economic, cultural, and perceived “racial” differences. Because of these circumstances, the black community remains isolated from the national culture and faces many economic and social barriers.
There is a small Chinese population, many of whom are also the descendants of imported labourers. The Chinese community has its own social clubs, although it has assimilated into mainstream culture. Many Costa Ricans of Chinese descent own businesses in the retail and hospitality industries.
Less than 1 percent of Costa Rica’s population today are indigenous people—usually referred to as Indians. Although estimates indicate that about 400,000 indigenous people lived in what is now Costa Rica before the Spanish conquest, that number was drastically reduced by the conquest itself, disease, and slave-raiding expeditions. The Bribrí and Cabécar reside in the Cordillera de Talamanca, and the Boruca (Brunca) and Térraba live in the hills around the Valle del General. A small number of Guatuso reside on the northern plains in Alajuela province. Most of Costa Rica’s Indians are rapidly becoming assimilated, but those on the Caribbean side in the southern Talamanca region maintain their separate ways, including their animistic religions. Although Costa Rica’s indigenous groups are legally assigned to protected reserves, the land is infertile, and most survive through subsistence agriculture. They are among the country’s poorest people.
|Official name||República de Costa Rica (Republic of Costa Rica)|
|Form of government||unitary multiparty republic with one legislative house (Legislative Assembly )|
|Head of state and government||President: Luis Guillermo Solís|
|Official religion||Roman Catholicism|
|Monetary unit||Costa Rican colón (₡)|
|Population||(2013 est.) 4,402,000|
|Total area (sq mi)||19,730|
|Total area (sq km)||51,100|
|Urban-rural population||Urban: (2009) 63.9%|
Rural: (2009) 36.1%
|Life expectancy at birth||Male: (2011) 76.9 years|
Female: (2011) 81.8 years
|Literacy: percentage of population age 15 and over literate||Male: (2008) 95.7%|
Female: (2008) 96.2%
|GNI per capita (U.S.$)||(2012) 8,740|