Pura Vida! A Brief History of early Costa rica

1. Pura Vida! A Brief History of early Costa rica Indigenous Peoples and the Formation of Costa Rica Isha'shke'ne (Greetings from the Bribri)

2. a. Indigenous peoples of AbyaYalain the late Fifteenth Century • By the time European explorers arrived in Caribbean, population of Western Hemisphere totaled +/- 60 million • The Hundred Years’ War between the Kaal and Mutalin Yucatan had destroyed the center of Maya civilization, and the jungle gradually overran the large Mayan cities as people abandoned them. • Mayan cultural legacy was immensely important. • Vestiges of Mayan phonetic writing, math, calendars, architecture and art still present throughout what became Central America and Costa Rica. • Long before, around 500 C.E., the Matambú people had fled to mountainous regions in what became Costa Rica to escape from the Maya.

3. The Mexica Aztec Empire • The Mexica, to the northwest, eclipsed the Maya by the fifteenth century and became the dominant political force in Central Mexico • Mexica territory was densely populated with up to 20 million people. • Powerful Aztec empire dominated surrounding peoples from its capital Tenochtitlan. • In 1486, Aztec armies led by Ahuitzotl swept through Oaxaca, Guatemala, and the Gulf coast, extending imperial control over the Triple Alliance and leaving only the Tarascans and Tlaxcalans undefeated. • MoctezumaII, who became emperor in 1502, linked himself to the god of war, Huitzilopochtli, to increase his power over nobles and commoners alike.

4. five million people lived on Central American isthmus • Shortly before Europeans arrived, the Mexica established trading colonies and spread their Nahuatl language throughout the Costa Rica region • The Maleku lived in western regions surrounding the volcano Arenal • The BriBrilived along the mountains of Talamanca in Central Costa Rica and on the Atlantic coast near Panama

5. B. Spanish Conquest of Costa Rica • Indigenous Resistance delayed Conquest of Costa Rica • Juan de Cavallón led successful expedition 1561 • Juan Vázquez de Coronado capital Cartago 1564 • GarabitoHuetar King • Settlers exterminated Native peoples in Central Valley • Encomienda: TP: What is this? • Thousands of lives and heavy costs • Spanish finally impose rule

6. C. Colonizing the Indigenous Peoples • Two Prizes: Who was Bartolomé de Las Casas? • Bartoloméde las Casas Bishop of Chiapas 1544 and the “New Laws of the Indies” • Catholic priests tried to force Native peoples into manageable communities, towns called Congregaciones, where they would be more accessible for labor and proselytism. • TP: Explain these dynamics in economic terms. • By resettling indigenous people into cities, colonists severed them from independent production and made them laborers willing to exchange their work for food. The extension of agriculture and appropriation of communal indigenous lands helped create landless indigenous workers for the Colonial economy. • In the Congregaciones, however, Indigenous people perished more easily from diseases because they were concentrated in villages rather than isolated throughout the countryside. • To resist state pressures and escape disease, Native people fled constantly back to their home communities. • The profits from indigenous labor in Colonial Latin American mines, as well as the treasure stolen from the indigenous empires, helped to fund the industrial revolution in Europe that began in the following century. • Throughout sixteenth century, 90% of the Indigenous people in Central America died from disease • Class simulation of Sixteenth-Century Demographic Collapse • SG: What is different so far from your country, Colonial U.S.? • Why not live harmoniously along with the Indigenous people?

7. D. Spanish Colonization • By 1550, Colonial ranchers, poor Spanish and people of mixed heritage moved into and took over Native communities • Living among the Indigenous people, these settlers hunted wild cattle for hides, made illegal liquor, and gradually took over Native cacao plantations • Native people worked all year to produce the cacao and controlled the actual plants themselves, European traders took the harvests and sold the final cocoa for their own benefit • Native people also lost their lands to expanding ranches and Spanish towns • Communities in the highlands, though, farther from Spanish settlements, did not lose their lands as quickly • Colonialism gradually altered indigenous ways of life and heightened their rivalries

8. E. Independence and The Neocolonial Period • Costa Rica won its independence from Spain in 1821 • Juan Santamaria Independence hero • Indigenous lands in Central America faced increasing demands for raw materialsby late 19th Century • Foreign demand for raw materials grew, drew frontier regions in Central America into capitalist relations • Demand for coffee grew in Europe • Costa Rica and El Salvador began exporting the beans in 1779 on the Meseta Central • New pressures on Indigenous lands and labor

9. F. Late 19th to Early 20th Centuries • Most People in Costa Rica simple subsistence agriculture for local markets • Export commodities Cacao, grown on Caribbean coasts • Coffee became most important export, shipped from port of Puntarenas on Pacific after 1850 • Modernization continued with education and democratization under José Montealegre until 1870 • Coffee peak 1883, 82 % of CR exports • CR pursued transisthmian plans that led to conflicts with Colombia and Panama • Material “progress” and scientific “development”

10. G. A Novel Concept for Social Justice • Civil War 1948 won by José Maria Figueres. • In Pacto de Ochomogo, President José Maria Figueresresolved in a pact with Communists, disarming them • President Jose Maria Figueres: social guarantees and benefits to middle, lower classes • Coup attempt by Sec of Security attempt to repeal labor code, social guarantees • President Figuereseliminated and then disarmed army as permanent institution, 1948 • Preserves Calderon’s social reforms, creates Social Welfare State based New Deal, Government expenditure for people • Modernized State and committed state treasury to common good • Figueres: “Nations need an army like people need a hole in the head” • Military Institution transformed into a national art museum and the nation's military budget recreated into Center for Justice, with funds redirected toward healthcare, education and environmental protection. • Dictators Somoza, Trujillo, Perez Jimenez, powerful enemies, all hated Figueroa. • Many enemies left the country, but Figueroa invested in state infrastructure and education

11. TP: Who was Oscar Arias? • President Oscar Arias Nobel peace Prize in 1987 • In 1987, Costa Rican President Oscar Arias made the happiness connection, obliquely, when he spoke before the U.S. Congress. • "I belong to a small country," he said, "that was not afraid to abolish its army in order to increase its strength. In my homeland you will not find a single tank, a single artillery piece, a single warship or a single military helicopter.... Today we threaten no one, neither our own people nor our neighbors. Such threats are absent not because we lack tanks but because there are few of us who are hungry, illiterate or unemployed." • Arias was addressing Congress because of his role in negotiating peace in the Contra war in neighboring Nicaragua. The United States had employed strenuous economic and diplomatic arm-twisting in hopes of getting Costa Rica to rearm and join it in fighting with the Contras against the FSLN (Sandinistas). When that effort failed, the Reagan administration was greatly annoyed. But two months after Arias' Washington speech, he received the Nobel Peace Prize.

12. Conclusions: Indigenous Peoples and Early Costa rica • TP: What did you learn today about PR history into20th Century? • How might this history influence your trip and experience? • Have a great trip to Costa Rica!!!