Costa Rica Welcomes U.S. Migrants to a Cold War Paradise

Abstract

Cold War Paradise delves deeply into the histories of a small group of people: U.S. expatriates in Costa Rica in the decades after World War II. Yet historian Atalia Shragai successfully plumbs their stories to reveal a lot about the Cold War U.S. and global orders, and the nature of particular U.S. cultures, identities, and ideologies that unite government representatives and political dissidents. The several thousand or more U.S. citizens who chose to settle in Costa Rica from the 1940s to the 1970s considered themselves a diverse group, though Shragai carefully outlines the ideas and characteristics that they shared. The earliest group consisted primarily of staff affiliated with the U.S. Embassy and its growing programs in the country, employees of U.S.-based businesses like United Fruit, and their families. They were followed by counter-cultural dissidents, from Quakers opposing the Korean War in the 1950s to hippies establishing communes, anti-war veterans and protesters, and artists in the 1970s. The Costa Rican government encouraged U.S. investors and retirees to the country with generous benefits, at least until the late 1970s when an economic crisis and investor scandals brought something of a backlash.