Category: Is Costa Rica Different?

There is no doubt that Costa Rica is a natural paradise. But none of Earth’s paradise is perfect.

Let’s face it—the social and political history of Latin America over the past two centuries has not been a felicitous one.

At the beginning of the 16th century, the territory that is now as Costa Rica was part of a spatial limbo between what was known as Castilla de Oro y Veragua.

On March 27, 2014, as Costa Rican Ambassador to the United Nations, I mounted the podium of the General Assembly with a clear mission: to express my country’s repudiation of the Russian annexation of Crimea, consolidated nine days earlier by Vladimir Putin through an illegal referendum with unbelievable results.

Everyone knows her as “Doña Nena.” At 75 years old, she has been a leader for half a century in the community of Luzón, in  Matina—one of the poorest counties in Costa Rica—on the Caribbean coast, 84 miles northeast of the capital: San José.