Word: costas
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...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...
Hard-liners within the Reagan Administration seized upon that request with glee. One low-level State Department cable even proclaimed that it "could lead to a significant shift from [Costa Rica's] neutralist tightrope act and push it more explicitly and publicly into the anti-Sandinista camp." Although the message did not reflect official policy, once leaked it produced an understandable outcry in Costa Rica...
Actually, Costa Rica violated its military abstinence three years ago, when the Sandinistas began drawing closer to Cuba and the Soviet Union. At that point the government accepted $30,000 from the U.S. to send local guards to be trained in Panama, and allowed Washington to sup ply the nation with boots, tents, Jeeps, ra dios and even some low-key training. Last year the U.S. offered to rebuild a main road through the dense jungle in northern Costa Rica...