Costa Rica is well known for abolishing its military and for its
environmental consciousness. Almost as well known were the
social and political reforms which made it for many years the
envy of Latin America. All of this should be of interest to
libertarians, anarchists and pacifists. Perhaps some lessons
could be learned from both the successes and failures of the
Costa Rican experience. Costa Rica was the Cinderella of the
Spanish Empire. Its mountainous terrain did not allow for vast
haciendas and the absence of a Native population to enslave
meant that feudalism did not develop. (Not that there weren't
any Native People to begin with, it's just that most of them
died of European diseases) Instead, a very sparsely settled
colony of small farmers evolved, most of whom came from the same
region of Spain - Andalusia - and interbred with the few
remaining Natives. Even as late as independence (1824) there
were only 65,000 Costa Ricans in a few widely dispersed and
almost completely autonomous villages. Poverty