Costa Rica: A Haven for Social Democracy and a Blue Zone

This March, we decided to revisit the country to see how things were changing in the face of political pressure and climate change...

(With this post, we’re adding a new feature to Wisdom School: a travel section. Hope you find it interesting and useful!)

A few years back, Louise and I traveled to Costa Rica to film part of what was planned to become part of Leonardo DiCaprio’s movie Ice On Fire. More recently, we discovered that Costa Rica is home to one of the world’s dozen or so “Blue Zones,” places where large numbers of people live to 100 and beyond.

This March, we decided to revisit the country to see how things were changing in the face of political pressure and climate change.

At the airport on our first trip, we picked up a taxi to take us to our destination, about an hour away. The driver was chatty and his English was nearly perfect, as is common across Costa Rica. Comparing stories about our families, we discovered his son was a physician, working at a hospital in the capitol city, San José.

“Here in Costa Rica, healthcare is free or very inexpensive, depending on how much money you make,” our driver told us. “The cab company deducts the cost from my paycheck, I think it’s around 7 percent of my pay, and there are no co-pays or deductibles. Poor people and the unemployed don’t have to pay anything.”

“What does it cost if you have to go to the hospital?” Louise asked.

“That’s totally free. There’s no charge. There’s also no charge for doctor’s visits or for drugs.”

We were both amazed that this tiny country that most Americans would consider “poor” has a healthcare system run much like the best in Europe. We later had lunch with an American expat who’d had two surgeries in Costa Rica and told us the hospitals were state-of-the-art, albeit not as fancy as American ones, and the care was the best he’d ever had.

Our driver then started telling us about his son, the pride of his life. The young man had gotten great grades in school, which made him eligible for college.

“Was that expensive?” I asked, thinking that most American cab drivers couldn’t afford the $200,000 to half-million dollars it costs to go to an American medical school and wouldn’t have a good enough credit rating to co-sign a loan.

“College is very inexpensive here, too,” he said. “It is heavily subsidized by the government; it cost about two thousand dollars a year for my son to go to medical school.”

This March when we visited the country, we stayed at the Occidental Tamarindo, a hotel complex on the Pacific Ocean. They have three restaurants, one Italian and one Sushi, as well as a giant all-you-can-eat buffet: all the food in all the restaurants is free, as are drinks. It worked out a lot less expensive than staying in a fancy hotel and having to find a nearby restaurant for every meal; the place also caters to families.

It still being spring here in the Northern Hemisphere, we expected the weather to be mild, but it was well into the nineties every day we were there. The locals — including an American who lived down the road in a large English-speaking expat community — said the weather was very unusual; the North Atlantic has been hitting record temperatures last year and this, as well as has the Pacific, the result of global warming.

The hotel was about a mile out of town, a small community packed with stores catering to tourists. One place offered horseback rides on the beach, another took people out for scuba or freediving trips, and there were dozens of restaurants. The shopkeepers were laid back, as were the restaurants; the place had a gentle rhythm to it that seemed to match the waves and surf all along the beach.

Every evening, folks staying at the hotel would join locals on the beach to watch the stunning Pacific sunset, joined by dozens of howler monkeys who’d flit from tree to tree and occasionally try to make off with food left out in the open by visitors who didn’t know the routine.

Talking with locals, we discovered that Costa Rica was the first country in the modern history of the world to abolish its own military. A brutal junta had ruled the country prior to the end of the Costa Rican civil war, which soured the people on the idea of a military that could again rise up to seize power.

On December 1, 1948, right after the civil war ended, the leader of the governing junta, José Figueres Ferrer, demolished a wall at the Cuartel Bellavista military headquarters signaling the abolition of the country’s army.

The following year, Article 12 of the new 1949 Constitution made it official: “The Army as a permanent institution is abolished. There shall be the necessary police forces for surveillance and the preservation of public order.”

In the years since Costa Rica set that example, Panama, Mauritius, Iceland, Vanuatu, Grenada, Dominica, and Liechtenstein have all abolished their standing armies.

Interestingly, that was the original goal of the Founders who promoted the Second Amendment here in the United States.

It started with Thomas Jefferson’s concern that the new nation he’d helped birth might end up the victim of a military coup because a standing army had risen up during times of peace (as had happened so often in European history).

Jefferson disliked and feared standing armies so much that he demanded that James Madison add a ban on them to the Bill of Rights. If Madison wouldn’t do it, Jefferson strongly implied (to Madison and many others), he’d sabotage the Constitution at the Virginia ratifying convention. And without Virginia’s vote for ratification, the Constitution would die.

An early draft of the Second Amendment shows this clearly: it included a conscientious objector provision for Quakers, letting them opt out of the militia.

Back then, “bear arms“ didn’t mean “own or possess a gun.” It meant, “be a member of an armed militia or army.”

  It read:

“A well regulated militia composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, but no one religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person.”

Jefferson’s idea was to replicate what Switzerland has done for centuries: every man between 17 and 47 years old was a member of a local militia, with his gun either at home or stored in a local armory, who could be mobilized in case of an invasion. Jefferson was so enthusiastic about the idea that when he became president in 1801 he refused to build up the army left over from the Revolutionary War.

That idealism came to an end, however, when England and Canada invaded the US in the War of 1812, making it so far south that they burned the White House. After that disaster, there was no more discussion here in the US about ending standing armies during times of peace.

Modern Costa Rica employs a strategy similar to Jefferson’s desire for what today we call the National Guard. There’s a national police force that’s well armed and could be called into the defense of the nation if it were invaded. In the meantime, they keep peace and order without the conspicuous displays of military parades and armaments characteristic of armies.

I asked a few Costa Ricans what they thought of this while we were there; universally, they both supported their nation’s lacking an army and were openly proud of it. 

Costa Rica has just about everything a tourist — particularly an eco-tourist — could want. The country’s east and west borders are the Atlantic and Pacific oceans with beautiful beaches, small towns, resorts ranging from the vegan eco-resort we visited while in Tamarindo to five star deluxe accommodations. You can find dozens of eco-tourism resorts, hotels, hostels, and accommodations all around the country, most quite reasonably priced.

There’s even a town on the coast that’s outlawed cars. Las Catalinas is an intentional town that was built starting in 2009; today it’s a bustling, thriving destination. Surrounded by a thousand acres of tropical dry forest, the locals call their pace of life “downshifting.” There are forty-two kilometers of walking trails through and around the town, along with the normal (but car-free) streets.

The “Blue Zone” peninsula of Nicoya has been the subject of much study by longevity experts and scientists. Residents frequently live past 100 and stay alert and active right up to the end. Their diet is about 95 percent vegetarian, people get lots of exercise, and there’s a vibrant sense of community, all contributing to a long, happy life.

There are mountains and dormant volcanos, jungles, forests, and miles of agricultural land in Costa Rica. The capital city, San José, has a population just over 300,000, and the second and third largest cities, Puerto Limón and Alajuela, are 55,000 and 42,000 people respectively. While there’s plenty in San José to satisfy anybody looking for the amenities of a big city, nowhere in the country do you feel like you’re in a dangerous or intimidating “big city.”

If you’re looking to escape the US for a few weeks or months, particularly during the US’s winter months, you can’t go wrong with Costa Rica. And you’d be supporting the people of one of the most progressive countries in the western hemisphere.