Costa Rica

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For cities in other countries, see Costa Rica, Sinaloa and Costa Rica, Mato Grosso
do Sul.
For other uses, see Costa Rica (disambiguation).
Coordinates:  10°N 84°W

Republic of Costa Rica

República de Costa Rica  (Spanish)

Flag

Coat of arms

Anthem: "Himno Nacional de Costa Rica" (Spanish)

"National Anthem of Costa Rica"

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 Capital San José
and largest city 9°56′N 84°5′W

Official languag Spanish
es
Recognized  Mekatelyu
regional language  Bribri
s  Patois

Ethnic groups   83.6% White or Mestizo
(2011[2])  6.7% Mulatto (mixed Black and Whi
te)
 2.4% Indigenous
 1.1% Black
 6.2% Others[1]

Religion   72.6% Christianity
(2021) [3][4]
 —47.5% Catholic (official)
 —22.5% Protestant
 —2.6% Other Christian
 27.0% No religion
 0.4% Others

Demonym(s)  Costa Rican

 Tico(a)

Government Unitary presidential constitutional republic

• President Carlos Alvarado

• 1st Vice-President Epsy Campbell Barr
• 2nd Vice-President Marvin Rodríguez

Legislature Legislative Assembly

Independence declared
• from Spain 15 September 1821
 • from First Mexican 1 July 1823
Empire
• from the Federal 14 November 1838
Republic of
Central America
• Recognized by 10 May 1850
Spain
• Constitution 7 November 1949[2]

Area
• Total 51,100 km2 (19,700 sq mi) (126th)
• Water (%) 1.05 (as of 2015)[5]

Population
• 2020 estimate 5,094,118[6] (123rd)
• Density 220/sq mi (84.9/km2) (107th)

GDP (PPP) 2020 estimate
• Total $95.791 billion[7]
• Per capita $18,651[7]

GDP (nominal) 2020 estimate
• Total $65.179 billion[7]
• Per capita $12,690[7]

Gini (2020)  49.7[8]
high

HDI (2019)  0.810[9]
very high · 62nd

Currency Costa Rican colón (CRC)

Time zone UTC−6 (CST)

Driving side right

Calling code +506

ISO 3166 code CR

Internet TLD .cr

.co.cr

Costa Rica (UK: /ˌkɒstə ˈriːkə/, US: /ˌkoʊstə/ ( listen); Spanish: [ˈkosta ˈrika]; literally "Rich

Coast"), officially the Republic of Costa Rica (Spanish: República de Costa Rica),
is a country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean
Sea to the northeast, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest,
and Ecuador to the south of Cocos Island. It has a population of around 5 million[10]
[11]
 in a land area of 51,060 square kilometers (19,714 square miles). An estimated
333,980 people live in the capital and largest city, San José, with around 2 million
people in the surrounding metropolitan area. [12]
The sovereign state is a unitary presidential constitutional republic. It is known for its
long-standing and stable democracy, and for its highly educated workforce, most of
whom speak English.[13] The country spends roughly 6.9% of its budget (2016) on
education, compared to a global average of 4.4%. [13] Its economy, once heavily
dependent on agriculture, has diversified to include sectors such as finance,
corporate services for foreign companies, pharmaceuticals, and ecotourism. Many
foreign manufacturing and services companies operate in Costa Rica's Free Trade
Zones (FTZ) where they benefit from investment and tax incentives. [14]
Costa Rica was sparsely inhabited by indigenous peoples before coming
under Spanish rule in the 16th century. It remained a peripheral colony of the empire
until independence as part of the First Mexican Empire, followed by membership in
the Federal Republic of Central America, from which it formally declared
independence in 1847. Following the brief Costa Rican Civil War in 1948, it
permanently abolished its army in 1949, becoming one of only a few
sovereign nations without a standing army.[15][16][17]
The country has consistently performed favorably in the Human Development
Index (HDI), placing 62nd in the world as of 2020, and fifth in Latin America. [9] It has
also been cited by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) as having
attained much higher human development than other countries at the same income
levels, with a better record on human development and inequality than the median of
the region.[18] It also performs well in comparisons of the state of democracy, press
freedom and subjective happiness. It has the 7th freest press according to the Press
Freedom Index, it is the 37th most democratic country according to the Freedom in
the World index and it is the 12th happiest country in the World Happiness Report.

Contents

 1History
o 1.1Pre-Columbian period
o 1.2Spanish colonization
o 1.3Independence
o 1.4Economic growth in the 19th century
 1.4.120th century
 2Geography
o 2.1Climate
o 2.2Flora and fauna
 3Economy
o 3.1Trade and foreign investment
o 3.2Tourism
 4Government and politics
o 4.1Administrative divisions
o 4.2Foreign relations
o 4.3Pacifism
 5Demographics
o 5.1Largest cities
o 5.2Religion
 o 5.3Languages
 6Culture
o 6.1Cuisine
o 6.2Sports
 7Education
 8Health
 9See also
 10References
 11Further reading
 12External links

History
Main article: History of Costa Rica

A stone sphere created by the Diquis culture at the National Museum of Costa Rica. The sphere is the icon
of the country's cultural identity.

Pre-Columbian period
Main article: Pre-Columbian history of Costa Rica
Historians have classified the indigenous people of Costa Rica as belonging to
the Intermediate Area, where the peripheries of
the Mesoamerican and Andean native cultures overlapped. More recently, pre-
Columbian Costa Rica has also been described as part of the Isthmo-Colombian
Area.
Stone tools, the oldest evidence of human occupation in Costa Rica, are associated
with the arrival of various groups of hunter-gatherers about 10,000 to 7,000
years BCE in the Turrialba Valley. The presence of Clovis culture type spearheads
and arrows from South America opens the possibility that, in this area, two different
cultures coexisted.[19]
Agriculture became evident in the populations that lived in Costa Rica about 5,000
years ago. They mainly grew tubers and roots. For the first and second millennia
BCE there were already settled farming communities. These were small and
scattered, although the timing of the transition from hunting and gathering to
agriculture as the main livelihood in the territory is still unknown. [20]
The earliest use of pottery appears around 2,000 to 3,000 BCE. Shards of pots,
cylindrical vases, platters, gourds and other forms of vases decorated with grooves,
prints, and some modelled after animals have been found. [21]
The impact of indigenous peoples on modern Costa Rican culture has been
relatively small compared to other nations, since the country lacked a strong native
civilization to begin with. Most of the native population was absorbed into the
Spanish-speaking colonial society through inter-marriage, except for some small
remnants, the most significant of which are the Bribri and Boruca tribes who still
inhabit the mountains of the Cordillera de Talamanca, in the southeastern part of
Costa Rica, near the frontier with Panama.
Spanish colonization
The name la costa rica, meaning "rich coast" in the Spanish language, was in some
accounts first applied by Christopher Columbus, who sailed to the eastern shores of
Costa Rica during his final voyage in 1502,[22] and reported vast quantities of gold
jewelry worn by natives.[23] The name may also have come from conquistador Gil
González Dávila, who landed on the west coast in 1522, encountered natives, and
obtained some of their gold, sometimes by violent theft and sometimes as gifts from
local leaders.[24]

The Ujarrás historical site in the Orosí Valley, Cartago province. The church was built between 1686 and
1693.

During most of the colonial period, Costa Rica was the southernmost province of
the Captaincy General of Guatemala, nominally part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain.
In practice, the captaincy general was a largely autonomous entity within
the Spanish Empire. Costa Rica's distance from the capital of the captaincy
in Guatemala, its legal prohibition under mercantilist Spanish law from trade with its
southern neighbor Panama, then part of the Viceroyalty of New
Granada (i.e. Colombia), and lack of resources such as gold and silver, made Costa
Rica into a poor, isolated, and sparsely-inhabited region within the Spanish Empire.
[25]
 Costa Rica was described as "the poorest and most miserable Spanish colony in
all America" by a Spanish governor in 1719.[26]
Another important factor behind Costa Rica's poverty was the lack of a significant
indigenous population available for encomienda (forced labor), which meant most of
the Costa Rican settlers had to work on their own land, preventing the establishment
of large haciendas (plantations). For all these reasons, Costa Rica was, by and
large, unappreciated and overlooked by the Spanish Crown and left to develop on its
own. The circumstances during this period are believed to have led to many of the
idiosyncrasies for which Costa Rica has become known, while concomitantly setting
the stage for Costa Rica's development as a more egalitarian society than the rest of
its neighbors. Costa Rica became a "rural democracy" with no oppressed mestizo or
indigenous class. It was not long before Spanish settlers turned to the hills, where
they found rich volcanic soil and a milder climate than that of the lowlands. [27]
Independence