Contested Cornerstones of Nonviolent National Self-Perception in Costa Rica: A Historical Approach

Abstract

Crime, violence, and insecurity are perceived as society's biggest problems in contemporary Costa Rica. This degree of priority is especially remarkable because the country has always been considered the peaceful exception in the violent Central American region. In this paper I analyze four cornerstones of the nonviolent national self-perception in the 1940s and 1980s as the fundamental basis for the current talk of crime: the civil war, the abolition of the military, the proclamation of neutrality, and the peace plan for Central America and the subsequent granting of the Nobel Peace Prize. The result of the analysis is the determination that these historical cornerstones were not publicly discussed as expressions of the nonviolent identity for which they are today cited as evidence.

The Culture of Fear and Control in Costa Rica (II): The Talk of Crime and Social Changes

“…9 While this valuation cannot be dismissed completely-as there was and is more violence to investigate in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras-the catchphrase of the Central American exception has for a long time deflected attention from certain trends and changes concerning the talk of crime in Costa Rica. Together with some articles about the country (which I will present in the remainder of this section), our own work has filled this gap a little (Huhn/Oettler/Peetz 2007;2009;Huhn 2008a;2009a;2009b;Oettler 2007;Peetz 2008a;.…”

“…Most of the studies noted here interpret the fear of crime as a logical consequence of the crime problem, which they name as a very serious, extensive and threatening problem on the basis of a noncritical reading of crime statistics and public opinion polls (see also Huhn 2009b). Finally, the historical perspective is also widely ignored, 13 and the imagination of the crime problem as new and untypical in terms of national identity persists (see also Huhn 2008b andHuhn 2009a).…”

“…Single incidents-which often served as a story angle-were universalized as proof of a general trend. This trend was thereby proclaimed as new and unsettling, especially because the self-perception of being a civilized nation with a nonviolent identity had already existed for a long time and simultaneously played an important role in the evaluation of Costa Rica's own problems as well as those of other countries (Huhn 2008b andHuhn 2009a). …”

“…There are basically two reasons, among others, for this. Firstly, journalism was not yet that professional (Huhn 2009a) and, secondly, crime investigation was much less developed (Huhn 2009b). Therefore, crime was less visible to the public in general and, in particular, everything that happened in the country's periphery was often ignored in the media, all of which were produced in the central valley and especially in the capital.…”

The Culture of Fear and Control in Costa Rica (I): Crime Statistics and Law Enforcement

“…"They can rob or even kill someone and get arrested, and they are back on the streets the next day anyway," is an oft-expressed opinion (see for example La Nación, September 6, 2007). While this accusation has existed at least since the 1950s (Huhn 2009) and while the penalties for many criminal acts have been stiffened in the last decades-for instance, the raising of the maximum prison penalty from 25 to 50 years in 1994 (Asamblea Legislativa 1994b) or the maximum prison sentence for adolescents, which is one of the highest worldwide (Peetz 2008: 27) habitants between 2004 and 2007, the number was higher than ever. Figure 8 may not serve as an irrevocable disproval of the common thesis of weak legal actions, but it at least suggests that this assumption is questionable.…”