In a region often characterized by political corruption, poverty, and innumerable social problems, the prosperity of Costa Rica is a remarkable exception. The country has even been described as the Switzerland of Latin America.

A Costa Rican youth hones his skills off the Pacific Coast.

or anyone who has lived and traveled in Latin America and the Caribbean, Costa Rica stands out from its neighbors by all the things that it lacks: graffiti, trash, hostility, high crime, illiteracy, and unemployment.
        In fact, it slowly dawns on those visiting the West Virginia--sized Central American nation of about four million people, wedged between Nicaragua and Panama, that this country seems protected from the problems of the region. Just across the border to the north, Nicaraguans fought a long civil war in the 1980s to remove the Sandinistas from power. Nicaragua remains poor and unstable; the Sandinistas never gave up the property they seized, and the president who followed them has been charged with corruption.
        Panama, to the south, was in such chaos under strongman Manuel Noriega in the 1980s that a U.S. invasion was launched to remove him from power and bring him to justice. A U.S. court sentenced him to a long prison term for drug smuggling.
        Nearby Colombia is wracked by narcotics-related guerrilla warfare; Cuba is communist; Haiti is impoverished and unstable; and Venezuela is in a political crisis over its leader, Hugo Ch vez. The list goes on.
        Above all, throughout Latin America one finds the world's biggest gap between rich and poor: a yawning chasm between the astounding wealth and privilege of a tiny percentage of the population, mainly white, and the vast poverty of the majority, who are generally mixed race, Native American, or descendants of black slaves. Costa Rica is the exception to this rule; it's been called the "middle-class Latin American country."

Security abounds

or a visitor, even one like myself who speaks Spanish and feels comfortable traveling in most countries of the region, it is quite surprising to move around without fear of robbery. It is almost a shock to be in a country where local people don't seem to resent the flow of foreign investors, tourists, and new retirees, whose presence provides a boost to the economy.
        In the northwest coastal province of Guanacaste is the picturesque curved beach known as Playa Panama. At a time when the "clash of cultures" predicted by Harvard professor Samuel Huntington is coming true in much of the rest of the world, this resort area is a good example of the placid prosperity that Costa Rica has managed to create. The black sand beach--created by the volcanic eruptions of ages past--forms a perfect three-quarters of a circle and opens up into the deeper waters of the Gulf of Papagayo and the Pacific Ocean. A few resort developments scatter their small villas up the steep hills at the edges of the beach.
        It is easy to identify the usual American and European tourists sipping drinks at the bars or snorkeling off the rocks. But spend any

A policeman stands in the doorway of his station house in Playa del Coco. Police presence is fairly evenhanded in Costa Rica.

time at Playa Panama, and one soon notices that Spanish-speaking vacationers are among the crowds of foreigners and tourists. There I met a television producer from the capital, San Jos‚, and her copy-writing husband. Indeed, many middle- and upper-middle-class "Ticos," as the people from Costa Rica call themselves, enjoy spending their weekends along the beaches and in the national parks of resort areas like this, just a few hours away from the crowded capital.
        Walking along the undeveloped beach from one end to the other, I encountered half a dozen large Tico families from nearby towns who parked small pickup trucks or cars under the trees that line the edge of the beach and set up barbecues, portable radios that resounded with the ubiquitous salsa tunes, and aluminum folding chairs for family elders. Vacations and beaches are not just for the tourists and the wealthy in Costa Rica. When a tall young man walked toward me on a distant corner of the nearly deserted beach--an event that would make me nervous in most other countries of the region--I simply got a polite "hola," or hello, as he passed.
        While there is some crime in the country's capital, it is rare compared to Caracas, Bogot , or Guatemala City. And in Costa Rica's countryside, security seems to abound.

Respect for one another

osta Rica has shattered the mold of Latin America; its culture has evolved in a way that creates an island of well-being amid the stark problems of the region. This may be traced to 1949, when--reacting to the frequent military coups that dominated the region's political history--Costa Rica's president, Jos‚ Maria (Don Pepe) Figueres Ferrer, abolished his nation's army. This act ended military influence in the country and freed up huge resources for education and health. Nearly a century earlier, in 1869, the country used its coffee wealth to make education free and obligatory. As a result, literacy is about 95 percent. Some 27 percent of the national budget is spent on education and culture, supporting four public universities, three symphony orchestras, and five state publishing houses.
        In Costa Rica, 95 percent of the population have telephones and electricity, compared to less than 68 percent in the rest of Central America. Even remote towns have drinkable water. Life expectancy, according to the CIA World Factbook, is 76 years, the highest in Latin America.
        Often called the Switzerland of Latin America, Costa Rica has supported enlightened social welfare programs since 1949. Among them are its public school system, a minimum wage, and near-universal health care. This may be part of the reason that Costa Ricans generally don't display jealousy, anger, and resentment toward foreign tourists and businessmen or the Latin American upper class. Even in the smallest villages, people are educated and can go to a clinic to obtain basic health services for themselves and their families. This gives a base to the society, a sense of well-being and entitlement.
        Some say the seeds for this kind of a society were planted centuries earlier, when Spanish settlers discovered that Costa Rica was not filled with gold and other wealth to loot; living there would require hard work on small farms in its two highland valleys. Others point out that elsewhere in Latin America, large black, Indian, or mixed-race mestizo populations were repressed

Ecotourism is a huge boost to Costa Rica's economy. Here a jungle bridge suspends visitors more than 100 feet over the lush gorges of national parks in the country's highlands.

and commandeered into tilling large plantations--the latifundia way of life. In Costa Rica, however, the hardworking Spanish settlers did the work themselves. Also they did not repress or intermarry with the Indian population, which remained small. The black population on the Caribbean coast remained separate from the mainstream of the country's leadership and economic activity until very recently. Today, an overwhelming 98 percent of the country is white. This has perhaps created a sense of cultural stability and national unity that may, in turn, have encouraged successive governments to assume responsibility for educating and maintaining the health of all its citizens. Certainly the situation in Costa Rica is quite unlike that in neighboring countries such as Guatemala, whose mainly white ruling class enacted policies that ignored the well-being of its large numbers of Indian and mixed-race inhabitants.
        The results of all these policies are evident in the neat houses along the roadsides of Guanacaste and Liberia, a city of 22,000 that has become a travel hub as its airport opened up this past year to international flights. The houses stand tidily, without the signs of neglect so often seen in the region; windows are not broken, and no trash blows in the wind. Schoolchildren in uniform walk home from school, and bicycles appear to be the most popular form of transportation. Buses and private cars slowly weave around them without frantic horn blowing. People are well dressed. If there is one word to describe the feeling in the streets, it is respect.
        In a 1999 speech to businessmen, Costa Rica's ambassador to the United States, Jaime Daremblum (a graduate of Tufts University), said, "This spirit of freedom and tolerance is our true wealth, this spirit is what made our country a 'rich coast.' " He added: "We find confidence in our history of peace, freedom, and democracy. We are working at present to further modernize our expanding economy. We look at the future with optimism. It is with this enthusiasm, with this encouraging outlook, that I want to extend a warm invitation to all investors to come to Costa Rica, a beautiful land blessed by nature and history, where you will instantly feel right at home."

Invest in people

aremblum also commented that Costa Rica's economic and cultural independence began thanks to the income produced by coffee: "the grano de oro--the 'golden bean'--as we Costa Ricans have affectionately nicknamed it, that allowed us to finally break away from long years of isolation and poverty as a remote backcountry of the far-flung Spanish New World empire."
        After the Panama Canal was built in 1914, bananas were added to coffee as an export. But in recent years, computer microchips, electronic

Two women relax with their dogs along the oceanfront.

devices, textiles and apparel, and pharmaceuticals have become the leading exports and, together with tourism, the main sources of hard-currency income.
        The powerful economy, giving Costa Ricans a per capita income of about $8,500 per year according to the CIA, is based upon its political and social culture. Daremblum calls it "the Latin American region's oldest and most stable democratic system. Add to all this a climate of freedom and tolerance, plus an open-minded receptiveness to new ideas and know-how."
        After a few encounters with Costa Ricans, a visitor soon understands that this country has invested in its people. The television producer and her husband I met in Playa Panama spoke perfect English, although neither had ever visited the United States--they learned it in school. Some 45 percent of children in primary schools study English as a second language; in high school, 96 percent study English.
        The UN Human Development Index has invariably ranked Costa Rica as having the best professional quality of human resources among developing nations--scoring it as forty-third in the world in 2002, ahead of all its Latin American neighbors. Because 95 percent of the national population enjoys direct access to public medical care, the Economist Intelligence Unit says that Costa Rica is the country with the highest health standards of Latin America.
        Due to the reliable and educated workforce, and the country's stability, new investors in Costa Rica include Intel, Lucent Technologies, Acer, Abbott Laboratories, H.B. Fuller, Microsoft, and other high-tech companies. Software exports reached $200 million in 2000. The rise of the microchip was itself a miracle. In 1997, Costa Rica exported $788 million worth of textiles, $560 million in bananas, $391 million in coffee--and zero in microchips. By 1999, Intel's microchip exports were worth almost twice as much as textiles, bananas, and coffee combined.

Solving problems

evertheless, Costa Rica has been dealing with problems coming through its borders. Drugs, refugees, and crime are feared to be on the rise. While waiting for a flight in Liberia, I saw two large DC-6 planes land. Both bore the words U.S. Customs Service, and one had a large radar dish attached to its fuselage. It appeared they were conducting antidrug air patrols along the Pacific coast. Liberia perhaps replaces airstrips in the Panama Canal Zone that were returned to Panamanian control as part of the treaty giving back the canal in 2000. So far, Costa Rica has escaped the worst effects of the drug trade, which have led to guerrilla warfare, corruption, and insurgencies in Colombia, and corrupt governments in Panama and portions of Mexico.
        Refugees are another problem. Many of them are Nicaraguans fleeing poverty and the effects of disasters such as Hurricane Mitch, which devastated the region in 1998. Costa Rica recently allowed some 400,000 Nicaraguans to become citizens, a number equal to 10 percent of its population. Although the refugees are a large burden, given that many lack skills and education, Costa Rica felt that accepting them would be an investment in the future stability of the country. It avoids creating a disenfranchised underclass of illegal immigrants who in many other countries contribute to crime and other social problems.
        While relying more on manufacturing and high technology for income, Costa Rica has protected its incredible natural resources, including its wildlife, beaches, and jungles. Costa Rica shelters more bird species than the United States and Canada combined, and has more butterfly species than the entire African continent. Over 25 percent of the national territory is either protected or under a resource management program.
        A recent ecotourism scandal tells a lot about how the country is using its ecology and its reputation for being law-abiding to move ahead. Canadian transplant Darren Hreniuk, owner of The Original Canopy Tour, claimed he invented the concept of sliding tourists, secured in harnesses, through the rain forest canopy along a steel cable. However, some eighty other companies copied the concept, he charged, and were offering the tours as well, making tens of millions of dollars. Hreniuk filed for and won a local patent, then moved to shut down his rivals.
        The battle of the canopy tours was spread across the English-language Tico Times as well as the Spanish-language La Naci—n. It was dragged into the courts. They ruled for the Canadian, who then visited several rivals and actually cut their cables himself. Then the security minister suspended an order to close the rivals and halted the cable cutting. The colorful case pitted Costa Rica's desire to be a nation of laws against keeping the tourists sliding through the jungles.
        The battle for jungle cables is so radically different from the problems facing the rest of the region that it symbolizes how Costa Rica has moved into the modern age so far ahead of its neighbors in creating a prosperous, peaceful, tolerant culture.