Word: costa
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...Costa Rica too has resisted U.S. attempts to turn it into a stronger military buffer against Nicaragua. Last week, in a show of independence from Washington, President Luis Alberto Monge announced that he had obtained $154 million in loans from Western European nations. The neutral Costa Rican government also ousted a contra spokesman by canceling his tourist visa...
...from civilian economies that are already in dire straits. Honduras has virtually ceased payment on its $2 billion debt to foreign Danks and international organizations, a move almost unnoticed during the Argentine debt crisis. Capital flight in the past two years alone has been estimated at $1 billion. Although Costa Rica is substantially better off (it receives more U.S. aid per capita than any other country except Israel), it can barely meet the interest payments on its $4 billion foreign debt...
...Costa Rica, by contrast, has sought to defend nothing more than its own implacable neutrality. Ever since a brief revolution in 1948, the country has had no army, no tanks and no troops. Indeed, its defense force might almost have been recruited from the chorus of a Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera. The air corps consists of seven planes; the 250-man company that is assigned to defend the capital of San José relies for transportation on a single Land Rover. More than half the 8,000 members of the Civil Guard are traffic policemen, who until recently wielded...
Such insouciance perfectly suits the region's showcase democracy. Costa Rica's 2.5 million citizens, most of them middle class, thrive on a relaxed and tolerant ethos founded upon a spirit of gentle compromise. For three decades the government has concentrated on building roads, schools and hospitals instead of arsenals. The country now boasts the highest per capita income in Central America ($1,520) as well as the lowest illiteracy rate (under 10%). "The last thing this country needs is an army," maintains José ("Don Pepe") Figueres Ferrer, the first President of neutral Costa Rica...
That happy nonchalance may, however, be a luxury for which Costa Rica will have to pay a price. In the past two years the country has become a home for the 3,500 anti-Sandinista contras of the Revolutionary Democratic Alliance (ARDE) and, in the process, a target for Nicaraguan reprisals. Just three months ago, after ARDE Chief Eden Pastora Gomez used his Costa Rican base to launch a 36-hour attack on the Nicaraguan port town of San Juan del Norte, Nicaragua struck back by firing 60 rockets at the Costa Rican border settlement of Poco Sol. Not long...