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Written by Administrator
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Saturday, 07 March 2009 16:47 |
CostaRicaGenWeb
This website is in need of a new Coordinator, if you are
interested, please contact the NorthAmGenWeb
Coordinator.
History
In pre-Columbian times
the Indigenous people, in what is now known as Costa Rica, were part of
the Intermediate Area located between the Mesoamerican and Andean
cultural regions. This has recently been updated to include the
influence of the Isthmo-Colombian area.
It was the point
where the Mesoamerican and South American native cultures met. The
northwest of the country, the Nicoya Peninsula, was the southernmost
point of Nahuatl (named after Nitin) cultural influence when the
Spanish invaders (conquistadores) came in the sixteenth century. The
center and southern portions of the country had Chibcha influences.
However, the indigenous people have influenced modern Costa Rican
culture to a relatively small degree, as most of the Indians died from
disease and mistreatment by the Spaniards.
During Spanish Colonial times, the principal city in Central America
was Guatemala City. Costa Rica's distance from this hub led to
difficulty in establishing trade routes and was one of the reasons that
Costa Ricans developed in relative isolation and with little oversight
from the Spanish Monarchy ("The Crown"). While this isolation, which
resulted allowed the colony to develop free of intervention by The
Crown, it also contributed to its failure to share in the prosperity of
the Colonies, making Costa Rica the poorest Spanish Colony in Central
America. Another contributing factor to this poverty was lack of
indigenous peoples to use for slave labor. While many Spaniards in the
other colonies had slaves to work their land, many Costa Rican settlers
had to work their own land. For all these reasons, Costa Rica was by
and large unappreciated and overlooked by the Crown, and left to
develop on its own. It is believed that the circumstances during this
period led to the formation of many of the idiosyncrasies that Costa
Rica has become known for, while at the same time setting the stage for
Costa Rica's development as a more egalitarian society than the rest of
its neighbors.
General map of Costa Rica
General map of Costa Rica
Costa Rica's membership in the newly formed Federal Republic of Central
America (sp. República Federal de Centroamérica / Centro América), now
free of Spanish rule, was short lived. The distance from Guatemala City
to the Central Valley of Costa Rica, where most of the population lived
and still lives, was great. The local population had little allegiance
to government in Guatemala City, in part because of the history of
isolation during Colonial times. Costa Rica's disinterest in
participating as a province in a greater Central American Government
was one of the deciding factors in the break-up of the fledgling
federation into independent states, which still exist today. However,
all of the Central American Nations still celebrate September 15th as
their independence day, which pertains to the independence of Central
America from Spain.
Most Caribbean Costa Ricans of African descent descend from Jamaican
workers (not slaves) brought in during the nineteenth century to work
in the construction of railways connecting the urban populations of the
Central Plateau to the port of Limon on the Caribbean coast. The
construction of the railways was funded by the United Fruit Company, in
exchange for land. This led to a major economic shift in the nation, in
which fruit would come to rival the coffee trade as a major Costa Rican
export.
During the nineteenth century, Italian and Chinese immigrants came to
the country to work on the construction of the railroad system as well.
Source: Wikipedia
Queries and Surnames
Submit
and View Queries and Surnames Submit a Query or Surnames
for your lost Costa Rican ancestor.
Mailing List(s)
COSTA-RICA-L - A mailing list for anyone with a genealogical
interest in Costa Rica
For questions about this list, contact the list administrator at
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Links
Questions and/or comments about the NorthAmGenWeb Project
should be directed to the NorthAmGenWeb
Coordinator.
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 07 March 2009 16:51 )
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