the Viceroyalty of New Spain and its largely autonomous subdivision the Capitancy-General of 
Guatemala. Independence came without a fight in 1821 as Spain lost its grip on its Central 
American provinces after being defeated in the Mexican War of Independence and the old 
provinces found themselves as independent states. Two years later, as two camps of Costa 
Rican society emerged, one favouring joining the Mexican Empire and one favouring full 
independence, and they resorted to civil war to settle their differences. The Republicans were 
victorious and the Republic of Costa Rica was established'?. 
Costa Rica developed considerably over the 19" and 20" Centuries. It was a backwater of the 
Spanish Empire, in part due to restrictive trade policies, so with independence came economic 
growth and in particular the development of the banana and coffee industries. While it had less 
instability and internal strife than other Latin American states, between independence and 1948 
eight Presidents were deposed by coups or uprisings. The last uprising was the Civil War in 
1948 that came about over a disputed Presidential election during which revolutionary forces 
overthrew the government. The uprising’s leader Jose Figueres Ferrer was successful in using 
his own militia, the Caribbean Legion, to defeat both the Costa Rican Army and a Communist 
militia and establishing himself as provisional President. Figueres set about enacting a number 
of social reforms in Costa Rica, chief among which was the abolition of the Armed Forces’. 
Figueres was no pacifist as his use of force to overthrow the Government demonstrated. 
Likewise the Costa Rican Army was a small force of less than 500 soldiers with little 
conventional capability for either power projection or national defence, a fact highlighted by 
their defeat’. Figueres was instead concerned about the loyalty and destabilizing nature of the 
military. The fact that it served no practical defensive purpose only added to his desire to 
remove it. As a revolutionary Figueres was of the view that the people would rise up against an 
invader or aggressor and an army was redundant. He abolished the Army because of his view 
that militarism was undercutting democracy in Central America®. 
Over the almost 70 years since the Costa Rican Army was abolished the stability of Costa Rica 
and the economic trajectory that stability has enabled have been in stark contrast to militarised 
countries in its neighbourhood such as Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, who 
  
122 John A. Booth, Christine J. Wade, Thomas W. Walker, Understanding Central America: 
Global Forces, Rebellion and Change, (6" Edition), (Boulder: Westview Press, 2015), 55-59. 
12 |bid, 72-74. 
124 Kirk Bowman, Militaries and Modern States: The Comparative Evidence from Costa 
Rica and Honduras, in Peter N. Stearns (ed.), Demilitarisation in the Contemporary World, 
(Urbana IL: University of Illinois Press, 2013), 191. 
"75 |bid, 189-195.