MONTEVERDE, Costa Rica—At the risk of sounding like the tourism authority, I am making a strong pitch for Costa Rica as a “must-see country,” which is so different from other tourist destinations elsewhere—clean, green, pristine, peaceful and probably the only independent nation in the world that does not have a military, but more about that later.
Costa Rica is a tiny “neck-in-the-woods” tropical spot with only 4 million people sandwiched between Nicaragua and Panama, but it is considered the most stable democracy in all of Latin America. This has been called “Costa Rica’s exceptionalism,” which undermines most of the stereotypes we hold of Latin America, a volatile region known for its military coups and brutal dictatorships in much of its history. Costa Rica has also been called the “Switzerland of Latin America” with its majestic mountain scenery and peace-loving people, who have a 95-percent literacy rate. Its former president, Oscar Arias Sanchez, was an early Nobel Prize for Peace awardee.
Right now my niece Sheila and I are in the middle of a dense rainforest in Monteverde, Costa Rica’s equivalent of our Cordillera on a smaller scale. It is called the “green cathedral” because you can see this amazing panoramic biological preserve from a canopy level high above the rainforest floor hundreds of feet below.
Our guide pointed out that this rainforest has 100 species of mammals, 400 species of birds (including 30 kinds of “hummingbirds”) and 2,500 species of plants (including 420 kinds of orchids all coexisting in this unique ecosystem). Its natural diversity is much more protected and preserved than those in other countries where human predatory practices, such as illegal logging and poaching, have destroyed much of the wildlife in the environment. There are bright green toucan birds, white-faced monkeys hopping from tree to tree, red frogs that are poisonous, yellow snakes, sloths and other colorful creatures so integrated with the environment it’s hard to see them clearly at times.
To view this natural splendor in its entirety, one has to negotiate several “hanging bridges” connecting one ridge to the other in a loop formation from your starting point. Since these hanging bridges sway a lot, they are not for the faint of heart and those suffering from vertigo or fear of heights.
Our guide instructed us how to walk on these swaying bridges without losing your balance as you step from one end to the other. And before you reach another bridge, you have to hike on rugged trails and slippery up and down muddy earth until you reach the highest point of the mountain where the view is simply out of this world.
I don’t recommend this adventure for retirees over 70, not even over 60, although it’s a good way to test how good your heart and lungs are, and how much your knees can hold up. If your bones start creaking at the first bridge, do not proceed.
Once up there, it gives you a thrill to see the young and adventurous negotiating the whole territory not only with ease but also strapping themselves into a harness and ascending a platform high above the forest floor for the “ride of their life” on a zip line for a magnificent view of the tree tops. They must literally get a “high.”
Costa Rica is also world-famous for that dangerous sport called “bungee jumping,” which seems to me like a bizarre attempt to commit suicide. You literally hold your breath watching these daredevils. It’s just awesome.
All I can say is that this is my last nature walk ever. For a while I thought this was really a misadventure.
Back to the human factor of Costa Rica’s not having a military for its national defense, this is hard to explain in a few words, but the political leadership of this small country, which was plunged into a civil war in the late 1940s, did something right.
According to historians Ivan Molina and Steven Palmer, authors of “The History of Costa Rica” (2012), a transitional junta took over the country on May 1, 1948, and its most famous decree was “to abolish the Army, an act that had great symbolic importance and closed off avenues for future militarization.”
This was prior to the promulgation of a new constitution in January 1949 for the country’s “Second Republic.” It ushered in a dramatic era of institutional change that was “ideologically justified.” This transformation was done along “technical criteria” rather than along “pandering to patronage and political interests.” A new and more progressive electoral constituency came to power which weakened the executive and gave women and the “Afro-Caribbean” population the right to vote. Democratization and social reform were happening in Costa Rica at a time when military dictatorships, which would last a long time, were flourishing among its restive neighbors: Ubico in Guatemala, Hernandez Martinez in El Salvador, Carias in Honduras, and Somoza in Nicaragua.
Most of all, the country developed a large middle class and invested heavily in education, particularly constructing a “tidy schoolhouse” in every village. Protecting the environment was promoted with vigor with anyone only allowed four trees to cut down, which they must replant. Today, wherever you go, you see signs like “Nature is part of us. Respect it” and the hotels constantly remind guests to conserve water and electricity and “to save the earth.”
“In this context,” concludes Molina and Palmer, “Costa Rica’s political project was exceptional indeed: Social justice and state modernization would be converted into the basis for political democracy.”
In short, ideological reform and political will had forged a framework that was essentially nonmilitary right and noncommunist left for the country’s future combining “cultural development, democracy and social justice.”
More than the adventure with its spectacular natural diversity, this political development, which has stabilized the country’s history up to the present, is the most sobering thought one comes away with after visiting Costa Rica.
A political scientist and professor emeritus at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Dr. Belinda Aquino, founding director of the UH Center for Philippine Studies, is also a world traveler.