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History of the CR Caribbean
The region suffered continuous attacks by the Zambos of the Miskito Coast and pirates, in response to which Fort San Fernando was built to stop them but was soon burned down.
Republican Period (1848-1920)
The Caribbean was a peripheral space that was not linked to the center of productive and economic power, which was located in the Central Valley. The main road at the time was the so-called Camino a Matina.
Period of the First Republic of Costa Rica (1821-1949)
In the interest of facilitating the exportation of the coffee produced in the Central Valley and opening the country to the world market, Costa Rican governments starting with the administration of Braulio Carrillo made repeated efforts to build a new road through Turrialba.
In 1870, the Comarca de Limón was established, with the construction of the railroad beginning a year later from opposite ends of the route: Alajuela in the center of the country and the port city of Limón.
The process of building the railroad and port, together with the introduction of banana cultivation, would be an unprecedented transformation of the Caribbean, forever marking its history and future, along with its hopes, struggles and resistance.
Between 1880 and 1907, the land underwent an unparalleled transformation as natural forests were converted to an agricultural landscape of banana plantations that was both extensive in area as well as intensive in its use of resources and labor.
Period of the Second Republic of Costa Rica (1949-present)
The end of the Costa Rican Civil War in 1948 and the establishment of the Second Republic marked the
beginning of a process of accelerated integration of the Caribbean with the rest of the country that remains ongoing to this day.
In 1967, the port of Limón was opened as Costa Rica’s main international port.
The region was rocked by important changes in its socioeconomic and cultural landscape between 1980 and 2000 due to the cocoa crisis, with large, small and medium producers abandoning or selling their farms. It was in this context that tourism emerged as an alternative to supplement income and profit from the area’s natural and cultural riches.
Today, traditional peasant or indigenous farm production models coexist with agro-industrial plantations and tourism throughout the Caribbean region.
Banana production in the Atlantic
In territorial and institutional terms, the Atlantic- Caribbean region emerged as the Comarca de Limón, which was created by Decree 27 of June 6, 1870 and consolidated as a province by Decree 59 of August 1, 1902. The so-called Atlantic Railroad was a star project of liberalism, built between 1870 and 1890, which allowed the arrival of foreign capital, Afro-Antillean workers, mostly Jamaicans, beginning in 1872, and the emergence of banana plantations under an enclave model with the participation of the United Fruit Company (Hernández, 1990, pp. 191-240; Murillo, 1995; Viales, 1998; Viales and Diaz, 2014, pp. 113-137).
The banana plantation landscape transformed the Atlantic-Caribbean region of Costa Rica. Banana towns were established on the banks of the rivers, with the foremen’s house and the banana workers’ barracks near (but not on) the plantations. This led to a segmentation of production and society, mediated by the exploitation of labor, nature and society (Hernández, 1995, pp. 68-125; Abarca, 2005).
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