Contested Identities In Costa Rica

Costa Rica is a country known internationally for its eco-credentials, dazzling coastlines, and reputation as one of the happiest and most peaceful nations on earth. Beneath this façade, however, lies an exclusionary rhetoric of nationalism bound up in the concept of the tico, as many Costa Ricans refer to themselves. Beginning by considering the very idea of national identity and what this constitutes, this book explores the nature of the idealised tico identity, demonstrating the ways in which it has assumed a white supremacist, Central Valley-centric, patriarchal, heteronormative stance based on colonial ideals. Chapters two and three then go on to consider the literature and films produced that stand in opposition to this normative image of who or what is tico and their creation as vehicles of soft power which aim to question social norms. This book explores protest literature from the 1970s by Quince Duncan, Carmen Naranjo, and Alfonso Chase who narrate their experiences from the margins of society by virtue of their identity as Afro-Costa Rican, feminist, and homosexual authors. Cinema from the twenty-first century is then analysed to demonstrate the nuanced position chosen by national directors Esteban Ramírez, Paz Fábrega, Jurgen Ureña, and Patricia Velásquez to challenge the dominant nation-image as they reinscribe youth culture, a female consciousness, trans identity, and Afro-Costa Rica onto the fabric of the nation.

The core claim of this book is that Puerto Rico is the outcome of distinct imperial policies that shaped the identity. The US takeover in 1898 became a critical point whether to preserve the imperial identity or to embrace the North American, identity and culture. In their effort to maintain their control over Puerto Rico, the local elites embraced the nation-state's idea to block attempts of assimilation and invent a Puerto Rican national identity. This political objective became divisive and led to clashes between the clusters of the elite competing for power. One cluster of the Puerto Rican elites supported independence from the United States. The other cluster promoted cultural nationalism within the United States. Hence, in their political discourse, for both clusters, the other was the United States.

A decline in public expenditure has affected cherished national institutions & values in Costa Rica, with the blame tending to be placed on immigrant Nicaraguans. This book explores the construction of the 'other' in Costa Rican imagery & considers the role of national identification in modern societies.

Some programs include also the programs of societies meeting concurrently with the association.

In Place, Language, and Identity in Afro-Costa Rican Literature, Dorothy E. Mosby investigates contemporary black writing from Costa Rica and argues that it reveals the story of a people formed by multiple migrations and cultural transformations. Afro-Costa Rican writers from different historical periods express their relation to place, language, and identity as a "process," a transformation partly due to sociohistorical circumstances and partly in reaction against the national myths of whiteness in the dominant Hispanic culture. Black writers in Costa Rica have used creative writing as a means to express this change in self-identity--as West Indians, as Costa Ricans, as "Latinos," and as a contentious union of all these cultural identifications--as well as to combat myths and extrinsic definitions of their culture. Mosby examines the transformation of identity in works by black writers in Costa Rica of Afro-West Indian descent as particular national identities find common ground in the expression of an Afro-Costa Rican identity. These writers include Alderman Johnson Roden, Dolores Joseph, Eulalia Bernard, Quince Duncan, Shirley Campbell, and Delia McDonald, all of whose works are analyzed for their use of language and their reflections on place and exile. Their works are also read as articulations of generational shifts in the assertion of cultural and national identity. Mosby convincingly argues that Afro-Costa Rican literature emerged out of the African-derived oral traditions of Anglo-West Indian literature. She then goes on to show how second-generation writers included this literary tradition in their work, while fourth-generation poets refer to it only through occasional allusions. With the current growth of interest in Afro-Hispanic and Afro-Latin American cultural and literary studies, this book will be essential for courses in Latin American and Caribbean literature, comparative studies, Diaspora studies, history, cultural studies, and the literature of migration.