The Throwaway: Where are all of the Natives?

When I arrived in San Jose, I was determined to make up for lost time after being in Nicaragua for so long: I really hadn’t had time to be so tuned in to details and things as I typically am, if you couldn’t already tell by what may have been my least eventful “Conscious Traveler” article to date. So, when a friend that I had met while in San Jose, Lulu, told me about how Costa Rica/ San Jose had the least dense population of natives of all the other Spanish speaking countries in Central America, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed it myself.

In most countries, though natives often reside in the countryside, they often still have a visible presence within their respected capital city — at least within Central America. Excluding Belize, I feel like there are more natives in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, which is considered a black country in many regards, than there were in San Jose.

So why is it that San Jose, Costa Rica, has such inconspicuous native residents, if any at all?

Looking back at the days of colonization, Spain objectively didn’t put as much effort into colonizing Costa Rica as they did the surrounding countries, likely the same reason Haiti was more intensely colonized than its neighbor Dominican Republic. An arguably under-discussed framing of Spanish colonialism is that they were relatively poor compared to the other colonial empires, France, England, Belgium and Portugal, etc. However, while the immense amount of land and stretched resources might have limited their advancements, the Spanish empire harmed indigenous populations through disease and enslavement all the same. To resist subjection to the empire, many natives performed retaliation which resulted in mass casualties. All of these forces worked with the terrain of Costa Rica, mountainous and more isolated, and shaped the establishment of indigenous environments.

Nicaragua and Guatemala in the north were inhabited earlier than Costa Rica, leading to larger and more established native groups. In other words, these communities had the privilege of time. In the south, indigenous groups experienced population growth after later migrations and used the dense terrain to stay hidden from many conquistadores. This wasn’t for those in Costa Rica.

In reality, Costa Rica's harsh, foliage dense terrain encouraged indigenous populations to establish smaller tribes of people than in Guatemala, whose culture had already ushered in larger community sizes. Whereas natives in South America were hidden from colonizers by dense foliage. Indigenous Costa Ricans, while a bit isolated from each other, still had to deal with colonization like that of in Nicaragua or Panama.. In short, Costa Rica’s harsh environment led to isolated tribes, but not isolated enough to go un-contacted like many of the hidden communities in the south.

Additionally, , later in the process of colonization, Spaniyards in Costa Rica more strongly emphasized assimilation instead of separation. After centuries of miscegenation with newly arrived slaves and descendants of older Spanish conquistadores, the native population that was left had significantly thinned out, leading to a decline in distinct tribal identities and features, and even difficulties in recognizing what were once distinct regional attributes. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing as I’m of the mindset that cultural exchanges and people coming together and procreating is a beautiful reality, the detriment to the native population and different native identities cannot be ignored.

A few months ago, while writing Conscious Traveler: Costa Rica, I added a link to a post about how indigenous agriculture workers in Costa Rica are essential to reversing climate change and global warming in Latin America. This post also acknowledged that indigenous populations are predominantly, and disproportionately, responsible for the caretaking and cleanup of our environment and nature in general, although the land they clean and mother, has been taken from them by the Costa Rican governing body.

Trouble becomes certain when the government places natives in charge of cleaning up wooded and natural areas in Costa Rica, after green lighting corporate overdevelopment on agricultural lands that cut up and separate indigenous populations; the government has been known to urbanize indigenous land in the hopes of developing smaller commercial hubs outside of San Jose. These conflicting agendas effectively shrank indigenous land and encouraged indigenous youth to relocate to economic hubs not only in Costa Rica, but mainly in neighboring Nicaragua and Panama as well.

All this to explain why the indigenous population is so low within the country. But why is the population within the capital city, even smaller? ? Like natives in the U.S., indigenous groups in Costa Rica are often politically and socially marginalized. Policy has been put in place that actively harms and strips them of resources and opportunities to make it even within San Jose; hence the frequent travel to foreign economic hubs for opportunity. All of this plays into declining birthrates amongst natives and a rise in emigration to the aforementioned neighboring countries.

An upsetting truth to digest is that many native populations have lost a lot of their culture, history and lifestyle through the years of modernization. Cultural assimilation for what it is, has led to a loss of identity within indigenous people. Though I am not personally familiar with any group trying to prolong native culture in Costa Rica, I know there has to be at least a couple trying to preserve their history. Declining native populations can be considered a sign of the times, a figure of assimilation over the years, but it can also be understood as the final leg of colonization wiping out the remaining population of people that the Spanish sought to conquer centuries ago.

When one goes to Guatemala, they’re sure to feel the deep indigenous culture. While there is an unfortunate rise of neo-Isreali Colonialism in certain places, it doesn’t overshadow the continued accessibility of Guatemalan textiles, culture and even ancient languages all over the country.

This can not be said for the natives within Costa Rica. When you arrive in Costa Rica, you are swept away by western influences like fast food, American fashion, and a tourism economy built more on making vacationers feel at home in a place they’ve seemingly come to feel different than what they are used to. The result? Costa Rica is now a vacationer’s hotspot, stripped, not only of its indigenous heritage, but of chances for native Costa Ricans to obtain resources and opportunities to access their own historic culture.