Costa Rica prohibited by law to participate in any war

Without that official history further clarification about the participation or the distance that took Costa Rica in the wars of its central American neighbors in the eighties, the neutrality of the State to all armed conflicts has been elevated to the rank of law this month in a country that it takes 65 years without an army. A plus sign in the Costa Rican pacifist image.

The Legislative Assembly has voted a law that declares peace as "a fundamental human right" and that orders apply the "perpetual neutrality, active and not in armed conflicts between and within States", in line with the statement issued 31 years ago by President Luis Alberto Monge, questionable because he blames have opened the Costa Rican territory to the Nicaraguan Contras, the forces funded by the Government of Ronald Reagan against the Sandinistas. Central America was then at the late stage of the Cold War.

Did not want to do more retrospectives, but already much has been said and written. Your web site still exhibits the criticism: "had an agreement that existed between the governments of don Luis Alberto and Ronald Reagan, through which facilitated the use of the national territory to allow Against operate from Costa Rica. It is operated from an airport in Potrero Grande, Guanacaste, and had been installed radar and clandestine hospitals to care for the wounded of the against. This is all done on the backs of the Costa Rican people and of the international community. From national territory was supplied to the Against with food, weapons and medicines, while proclaiming to the world the 'neutrality'.

The spirit of Monge, 88-year-old, sick and almost alien to the political debate, is invoked in the law passed three weeks before celebrating the 66 anniversary of the abolition of unilateral army, by decision of the then-ruling José Figueres Ferrer. Although the decision took their rims and its political expediency (recently finished the Civil War of 1948), became over the years in a milestone of the pacifism of Costa Rica, that he decided to leave its internal security in the hands of the civilian police (14,000 agents at present) and his defense in international law.

"This law is a reflection of the trait historical, cultural and social of a country that abolished the death penalty in the nineteenth century, which abolished its army in half of the twentieth century, who opted for the perpetual neutrality in 1983 (with Monge) and that in the year 87 was recognized for its leading role in the Central American peace process, with the Nobel Prize to Oscar Arias," said Congressman Rolando Gonzalez, of the opposition PLN, aware of being exalting two opposing positions.