Costa Rica built the state without armed forces

Costa Rica lies on the Central American isthmus, between Nicaragua and Panama, with the Pacific and the Caribbean as open sides. The state did not make a garrison out of that position. It abolished the standing army and built the republic around that decision.

San José lies in the central valley, not on the coast. The area is 51,100 square kilometres, the population 5,152,950. The valley is the settled heart. Anyone who wants a port has to cross mountains first. Rows of volcanoes separate the Caribbean side around Limón from the Pacific coast. The country is narrow enough that both seas belong to the interior, and mountainous enough that the capital still does not look like a port.

The valley between the oceans

The Pacific side is the longer one. In the north it is drier, in the south wetter. The Caribbean side has a history of its own. Around Limón an Afro-Caribbean population lives and speaks, whose English and whose Creole come from the banana coast, from people who came from the Caribbean islands to the plantations. Spanish is the official language of the republic. It is not the only language that carries ordinary life on this coast. The isthmus is not a uniform strip with a capital in the middle.

Nicaragua to the north and Panama to the south make Costa Rica a country of passage, whether it wishes to be or not. The land route between the Americas runs through the valley of San José. That position could have suggested a military state, a keeper of the passage. The political decision ran the other way. It cannot be deduced from the width of the isthmus. It is a choice written in the constitution, and without this position it would need less explaining.

A constitutional sentence without an army

After a civil war, the constitution of 1949 abolished the army as a permanent institution. Security lies with the police and with civilian forces. The absence of a barracks as the centre of the state did not empty the country. It shifted what budget and politics can argue about. Schools, clinics and the large national parks belong to what took the place of an army. The protection of forest here is a civilian history, not a quota attributed to the landscape.

The ban is not a climate and not a mood of the landscape. It is constitutional text. It can be amended, and it is defended in politics. That is different from a valley that would be peaceful by itself. Costa Rica had a civil war before it abolished the army. The abolition is the answer to that war, not proof that the isthmus is harmless. The currency is the colón of the central bank. That the United States dollar also circulates in tourism does not change the legal tender.

The army is not missing. It has been abolished.

— TerraTally · Countries desk

Staying civilian between the neighbours

The border with Nicaragua is not only a line in hill country. It has been disputed again and again, including where a river carries the political line. Panama to the south is the other neighbour, closer to the great waterway of the isthmus and to a border that is quieter and still divides the isthmus. Costa Rica decided not to be the garrison of this passage. The decision holds internally. It is not a guarantee that the neighbours take the same decision.

A state without a standing army on an isthmus remains dependent on police, on diplomacy, and on larger conflicts not using it as a marching ground. That is a political situation, not geographic innocence. San José governs from the valley because the people and the roads are there, not because a port or a barracks would define the state. The two seas stay visible. They are not the reason for the constitution. They are the reason this constitution stands out.

Costa Rica is narrow enough that both seas belong to the country, and stubborn enough to strike the standing army from the constitution. San José governs from the valley, not from the port and not from the barracks.