Archeologists know almost nothing about the various people who inhabited Costa Rica until about 1000 BC, though it is known that the area was a corridor for merchants and trading expeditions between the Mesoamerican empires to the north and the Andean empires to the south. Excavations of pottery, jade and trade goods and accounts of cultural traditions have shown that the
pre-Columbian
peoples of Costa Rica adopted liberally from both areas.
When the
Spaniards
arrived in Costa Rica in the early sixteenth century it was inhabited by as many as 27 different groups or clans. Most clans were assigned names by the invaders, which they took from the
cacique
(chief) with whom they dealt. Many of these groups had affinities with their neighbours in Nicaragua to the north and Panamá to the south.
The arrival of the Spanish
On September 18, 1502, on his fourth and last voyage to the Americas,
Columbus
sighted Costa Rica, and four years later King Ferdinand of Spain despatched
Diego de Nicuesa
to govern what would become Costa Rica. From the start his...
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Early settlers
It seems more appropriate to discuss Costa Rica's
lack
of colonial experience, rather than a bona fide colonization. In 1562,
Juan Vásquez de Coronado
became the second governor of Costa Rica. Coronado has always been portrayed as...
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Independence
The
nineteenth century
was the most significant era in the development of the modern nation state of Costa Rica. Initially, after 1821, when Central America declared
independence
from Spain, freedom made little difference to Costa...
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The twentieth century
The first years of the
twentieth century
witnessed a difficult transition towards democracy in Costa Rica. Universal male suffrage had been in effect since the last years of the nineteenth century, but class and power conflicts still dogged...
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Storm in the isthmus: The 1980s
Against all odds, Costa Rica in the 1980s and 1990s not only saw its way through the serious political conflicts of its neighbours, but also successfully managed predatory US interventionism, economic crisis and staggering debt.
Like many Latin...
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The 1990s
Until 1994, elections in Costa Rica had been relatively genteel affairs, involving lots of flag-waving and displays of national pride in democratic traditions. The elections of that year, however, were probably the dirtiest to date. The campaign opened...
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The future
Costa Rica's economic future rides on a wave created in the past, a constant see-sawing between the price of the country's bananas and coffee on world markets and the amount it pays for imports. Still, the economy continues to grow, in large part fuelled...
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