Costa Rica

Costa Rica, officially the Republic of Costa Rica, lies on the Central American isthmus between Nicaragua and Panama, five million people round the capital San José in a highland valley. Men hunted here nine thousand years ago; Spain planted Cartago in the sixteenth century and ruled a poor far province of captains and priests. Independence arrived in 1821 with Mexico's, the Federal Republic of Central America followed in 1823, and Costa Rica walked out alone and sovereign in 1847. Coffee paid for the republic: yeoman farmers, free schools, electric light in San José before many European capitals, a liberal constitution and the region's first honest ballot. The 1948 civil war lasted forty-four days and remade the country: Figueres abolished the army in the constitution of 1949, gave women and Black citizens the vote, and built clinics and classrooms instead of barracks. Bananas, chips and tourists followed coffee, and the unarmed democracy reached 1945 already the schoolhouse of Central America.