The People of Costa Rica

Travel to Costa Rica, you cannot help but take notice that The Costa Rica people are different from their neighbors in the other Central and South American countries.  Here we do not see the obvious poverty as we do in Mexico and many of the Central American countries.  Costa Rica is a small country of flourishing villages half hidden with coffee and sugarcane plantations, where there is a sense of ease and simplicity and the family unit is the most important.

Tradition holds that almost all Costa Rica’s  heritage descended from rural Spanish yeoman farmers of hard working stock.   Yet from the Iberian Peninsula there were  Spanish Jews as well as Arabs.  There were Catalans and Basque  as well as Germans and English. The construction of the Railway to the Atlantic brought workers from Ireland and the USA, and also the West Indian Blacks.  

Young 15 year old at Saturday morning maket

Young mother selling jewelry

Chinese laborers from southern China joined the blacks in building the railroad.

Costa Ricans are essentially democratic and extremely patriotic.  They love peace and do not have a standing army.  It is often said that “Costa Rica  is a land of teachers, not soldiers.”  The country spends a large portion of it’s budget on education and the law requires that a child stay in school until the age of sixteen.  So most of  these youth can read and write, speak some English, and attend at least a technical school after graduation from high school.

Costa Rica is largely an agrarian society but  in recent years tourism has caught on here, especially ecotourism, due it it’s immense natural beauty of active volcanoes, verdant rain forest  and unspoiled beaches.   Today tourism is number one in earning power surpassing coffee exports.

Costaricalearn.com strives to bring you interesting articles about Costa Rica’s traditions and heritage.