ABSTRACT
Costa Rica, the most southerly of the Central American republics, straddles the isthmus, and is bounded on the north by the San Juan river which forms its frontier with Nicaragua and on the south by Panama. It is divided into seven provinces. Area overall: 51,060sq km (19,730sq miles); capital: San José; population: 4.0m. (2002 estimate), comprising mestizos 94%, Africans 3%, Amerindians 1%; official language: Spanish; religion: Roman Catholics 87%, various evangelical Protestant sects. Constitution: The Constitution of November 1949 established a democratic, presidential republic. There is a single-chamber Legislative Assembly composed of 57 deputies elected by universal adult suffrage for a four-year term. The chief executive is a President concurrently elected for a four-year term, who may not be re-elected. Voting is compulsory. The Constitution bans the maintenance of an army. History: Although little European settlement took place in Costa Rica until the 18th century, by then disease had devastated the indigenous population, and Costa Rica’s society emerged as a relatively homogenous group of small landowners and subsistence farmers. Coffee, introduced in 1808, and bananas, introduced in 1878, became the main export crops, and when Costa Rica became independent in 1838 it was under a civilian government. However, for much the rest of the century Liberal and Conservative élites warred with one another for control until Tomás Guardia seized power in 1870 and implemented a programme of liberal reform, culminating in the introduction of free, universal primary education in 1881. In 1917 Federico Tinoco deposed the elected President and established a military dictatorship, only to be overthrown two years later by a popular revolt. The Government of Rafael Angel Calderón Guardia (1944-48) introduced a labour code and a social security system, but when it tried to nullify the victory of the opposition candidate in the 1948 presidential election, a coffee farmer, José Figueres Ferrer, led a successful uprising which forced the President out. Figueres’ provisional Government re-wrote the Constitution, abolished the armed forces and transferred their budget to education, and transferred power peacefully to President-elect Otilio Ulate (1948-52). Finding him too conservative, however, Figueres went on to form his own party, the Partido de Liberación National (PLN) and was elected President in 1952. Until 1990 the PLN dominated Costa Rican politics, and though towards the end of that time there was increasing concern about the cost of the welfare state, it was only in the mid-1990s, amid social unrest and under the leadership of Figueres’ son, José María Figueres Olsen (President 1994-98), that Costa Rica accepted the prevailing free-market model Latest elections: On 7 April 2002, in the second round of voting in the presidential election, a 69-year old psychiatrist and poet, Abel Pacheco de la Espriella, of the Partido Unidad Social Cristiana (PUSC) won 57.96% of the votes cast, defeating Rolando Araya Monge of the Partido de Liberación Nacional (PLN), who obtained 42.04%. In the
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first round of voting, held on 3 February, for the first time since the present Constitution was adopted in 1949, neither of the two leading candidates had secured the necessary 40% to win outright, as a third candidate, Ottón Solís Fallas, of the Partido Acción Ciudadana (PAC), obtained a record 26.2%, two other candidates receiving less than 3% between them. In concurrent elections on 3 February for the 57-seat Legislative Assembly the results were similarly indecisive, being: PUSC 19 seats, PLN 17, PAC 14, Partido Movimiento Libertario six and Partido Renovación Costarricense one. International relations and defence: Costa Rica is a member of the United Nations, the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Central American Integration System (Sistema de la Integración Centroamericana-SICA) and the Rio Pact. It has no armed forces, having abolished them in 1948. The country was invaded by Nicaragua on two occasions in the 1950s, when Costa Rica successfully invoked the protection of the OAS. The security forces include 2,000 rural guards, 4,400 civil guards and 2,000 border security police.
