Costa Rica is one of the longest standing democracies in Latin America. It is a politically stable, peaceful country with no army (its army was abolished in 1948, after a six-week long civil war). Costa Rica was an exception case in Central America throughout the bloody civil wars in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua—during that

Costa Rica is a small country on the Central American isthmus, where it nestles between Nicaragua, its neighbor to the north, and Panamá, its neighbor to the southeast. To give you some idea of how small the country is, Costa Rica comprises an area roughly equivalent in size to that of the state of West

Costa Ricans, who refer to themselves as Ticos, are predominantly of European descent. About 1% or 2% of the population is Afro-Caribbean—the ancestors of these Costa Ricans arrived mainly from Jamaica, in search of work on railroads and in banana plantations. Today, the majority of their descendants continue to live on the Caribbean coast, in