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The Limón Province Costa Rica is a small, relatively poor Central American republic situated between Nicaragua and Panama. Its land area of 20,000 square miles is home to approximately 3.8 million people. The province of Limón, which stretches along the entire Caribbean seaboard of Costa Rica, accounts for 18 percent of the country’s land area but only 8.9 percent of its population. Limón differs markedly from the other provinces of Costa Rica. It is very hot and humid, holds the largest concentration of Blacks, Indians and Chinese, and is one of the poorest provinces. The creation of Limón’s unique ethnic identity began with the arrival of the Spaniards with their African slaves in 1502. During the latter part of the 19th and early 20th centuries another wave of blacks, from Jamaica and other Caribbean islands, and Chinese settled in the province. After centuries of persecution, the Bribris, Cabecares, Teribes and Guaymies Indians made Talamanca, in southern Limón, their refuge. Over the years these groups mixed among themselves and with whites, generating a distinctive Limonense population, comprised of varying degrees of mestizos (Indian and white), mulattos (black and white), zambos (black and Indian), and other mixtures. Such racial and cultural distinctiveness has inspired suspicions and prejudice in the rest of the population, which is mostly mestizo, and the government. This prejudice accounts for bad government policies in the region such as low investment in infrastructure and poor public services, as compared to other provinces.
The Limón people, known as Limonenses, suffer every imaginable need, from hopelessly inadequate health and education services to high unemployment and under-employment, general poverty, and malnutrition. Of the 5,000 industrial firms operating in Costa Rica, only 111 (2.2 percent) are based in Limón Province. Ministry of Commerce figures indicate that current unemployment rate is 7.7 percent, while in the Central Valley it is less than 5 percent. According to the National Statistics Institute, the average monthly income of a Limonense is only US$275, and one out of four Limonenses are having difficulty meeting their basic nutritional needs. At 16 per thousand births, Limón has the highest infant mortality rate in the country. In Limón’s canton of Talamanca, where most of the country’s Indian population is concentrated, the average index of infant malnutrition is three times greater (6.5 percent) than in the country as a whole. There is also a sharp disparity between the quality of education in Limón and that in other parts of the country. In 1998, of all persons in Limón aged twelve years or older, seventy percent had completed only primary education. The dropout and failure rates of 7.5 and 10.1 percent in the primary grades, and 17.5 and 40.4 percent in the secondary grades were the highest in the country. This deplorable situation is the product of misguided government policies, such as the nationalization and subsequent shutting down of Limón’s railroad, the prohibition of Blacks from owning land until after World War I, the inadequacy of public services, and the national government’s stifling control of the provincial economy through heavy regulation and ownership of the major industries; namely, petroleum, electric power generation, telecommunications, and insurance. Each of these is monopolized. The government also controls the social security system, including medical services (hospitals) and pension funds, and most of the banks and schools. Because these enterprises are managed by strict political criteria, the services are poor and costly. Until now, the Limonense approach to solving these problems has been to resort to violence (road blocking, strikes, port blocking) to demand subsidies and more constructive government intervention in the economy. No less than six protests occurred between March and September 2000. In one of them, telecommunications workers, combined with workers from several other unions, blocked the main roads in the province in protest against allowing some competition in the telecommunications market. In another, laid off dockworkers joined with banana workers to demand supposedly deserved compensations; and in a third, unions at the ports, the petroleum refinery and other businesses blocked roads protesting the loss of perquisites. And the government has always obliged, by providing a few handouts while simultaneously tightening the shackles that prevent the Limonenses from helping themselves. Such is the picture of a province that, paradoxically, is blessed with riches. Limón enjoys a tropical climate and abundant natural resources, including highly diverse scenic beauty conducive to nature-oriented tourism. Its fertile soils offer no end of productive options for agriculture, animal husbandry and forestry. Moreover, it is strategically located to become a center for vital services such as ports, airports, finance, transportation, insurance, telecommunications, and electric power. With such an array of resources, Limón could become a tropical paradise, its people enjoying unprecedented levels of well-being. Almost nothing however, has been done with this potential.
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