The myth of the “Pure Tico”

OUR FEATURE AT A GLANCE

Since pre-Columbian times, the diverse flows of migrants into Costa Rican territory have shaped the country’s genetic and cultural heritage.

• Genetic studies show that the majority of Ticos descended from an indigenous woman and a European male, with Afro-descendant and Asian footprints in their family trees.
• The last four Costa Rican presidents share a common ancestor: Catalina Tuia.
• Costa Rica has the third-highest percentage of immigrants in Latin America (9 percent) and the number of those who emigrate increased from 60,000 to 125,000 in the last decade.
• Of the 71,819 births recorded in Costa Rica in 2015, 13,213 were to immigrant mothers from 65 countries
• Immigrant labor represents 12 percent of the Costa Rican Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
• Nicaraguans make up the largest immigrant group and send an average of $110 per month in emittances to Nicaragua.

Meet a few of the many Costa Ricans who are proud of their immigrant heritage, from the President to a pop star to a university president;

Let our experts take you back in time to key moments in the history of Costa Rican immigration - travel 500 years in just a few minutes;

And share your own story with the hashtag #SoyMigranteCR.

Gloriana Pacheco – for The Tico Times and Punto y Aparte @glorianapacheco
Read why The Tico Times Staff is celebrating immigration and diversity in 2017.

It is easy for an average Costa Rican to speak out against discrimination against Latinos in the United States because he or she might have a relative or acquaintance there. That empathy is likely to increase because, although Costa Rica still has the lowest rate of emigration in Latin America – 2.4 percent compared to 4.8 percent for the region – the number of Costa Ricans leaving the country has increased.

The number of Ticos living outside of Costa Rica went from 60,000 in the year 2000, to 125,000 in 2011, according to data of Gilbert Brenes, researcher at the Central American Center of Population of the University of Costa Rica (UCR).

Have Ticos the same empathy with their immigrants? 83 percent of those surveyed by the Institute for Social Studies in Population (IDESPO) in 2016 agreed that Costa Rica should give migrants health services from the Costa Rican Social Security System (CCSS, or Caja) but 17 percent did not agree.

Data show Costa Ricans’ perception of immigration. The survey of Ticos’ perception of foreigners in Costa Rica, conducted by the National University’s Social Studies Institute, or IDESPO, in 2014, “found that many Costa Ricans view U.S. expats as ‘wealthy’ and ‘powerful,’ while they believe Nicaraguans ‘come to work’ and ‘seek the well-being of their families.’”

In the study “53 percent said foreigners come here to work seeking opportunities and a better life. Some 16 percent said foreigners migrate here to take jobs that Costa Ricans don’t want, which they said helps boost the economy.”

A specific study about Ticos’ perception of Nicaraguans by IDESPO in april 2016 showed a similar trend. Only 10.6 percent of the respondents said that "they should not come, they generate problems." In fact, the survey notes that 73.2 percent of respondents disagree with increased border restrictions on Nicaraguans coming to Costa Rica.

On the other hand, a significant 23.4 percent agreed with increasing restrictions. That percentage, the study concludes, "certainly speaks of some hostile attitude staying in a hard core of Costa Ricans against their Nicaraguan neighbors and can be exacerbated at junctures, particularly important when diplomatic and political tension increases between both countries."

Is there a breeding ground for ideas about restricting social services, employment or even entry to migrants?

It’s a good question for a country with a 9 percent of people born abroad –overtaken by French Guyana and Belize – according to the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA)

According to population projections made by the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INEC) and the Central American Population Center, that trend will stabilize or decrease by mid-century, along with the total population. According to those projections, “Costa Rica will have 6.2 million inhabitants in 2063, but from that year will begin to decrease to stand close to 5.9 million people in 2060.”

The diversity of nationalities is also expressed in the numbers of births. Of the 71,819 births in Costa Rica in 2015, 13,213 were to mothers who came from 65 countries, according to data from the INEC.

As a result of the Costa Rican refugee and migrant policies the country has been rewarded by the talent and heritage that hundreds of thousands of immigrants and their descendants – poor and rich – have delivered to the country in every field.

To guide policy at the national level, Costa Rica’s Legislative Assembly approved the National Policy on Cultural Rights in December 2013; this policy will guide the decisions of the government until 2023. On August 24, 2015, President Luis Guillermo Solís signed a reform to Article One of the Costa Rican Constitution, changing the wording to state that "Costa Rica is a democratic, free, independent, multi-ethnic and multicultural republic."

In their reasoning when they approved the reform, legislators explained that "over time, diverse nationalities including Chinese, Indian, Italian, German, Jamaican, Polish, Chilean, Argentine, Jewish, Nicaraguan, Taiwanese, Guatemalan, Salvadoran, Colombian, Panamanian, among other groups, came here. Whether it was by their own free will, in the search for a better future, or forcedly fleeing wars or dictatorships, as political refugees, merchants, tourists, fugitives, residents or undocumented migrants, the reality is one: Costa Rica has its current appearance of multiculturalism and is multilingual, thanks to the migratory flows in its history.”

"The majority of migrants have at least partially fulfilled their expectations of better living conditions," said researcher Ronald Arce, in a study for the Latin American Center for Competitiveness and Sustainable Development (CLACDS-INCAE) and the Alliance for Migrations in Central America and Mexico (CAMMINA). Arce analyzed various indicators to calculate that the contribution of the immigrant population to the economy represents 12 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

As in many countries around the world, attitudes toward immigration vary sharply depending on the country of origin or socioeconomic context of specific immigration waves. In Costa Rica, for example, temporary or permanent residents with privileged socioeconomic status and high educational attainment, often known as expatriates have been settled for years, but the country has also been receiving for years waves of poor Nicaraguan neighbors, who became the majority of foreigners at the end of the 70s, 80s and 90s. Publications of the “Eye to Migration” platform and the Amelia Rueda website provide data and demystify many of the beliefs about Nicaraguan immigration and emigration of ethnic groups to the United States.

According to the third-quarter 2016 report on family remittance income from the Central Bank of Nicaragua, Nicaraguan immigrants in Costa Rica were responsible for 20.8 percent of remittances sent home to Nicaragua. The amount sent home during July-September 2016 was $65 million, up from $58.1 million in the same period in 2015 – a year-on-year increase of 11.9 percent. Nicaraguans make up the largest immigrant group and send an average of $110 per month in remittances to Nicaragua.

In Costa Rica, 30 percent of immigrants have irregular immigration status. The main cause for this is high costs and cumbersome procedures. In April 2016, the Immigration Administration stated that 120 applications for residency are filed daily; the department has a whopping 20,000 being processed (or en trámite, a phrase that quickly becomes familiar to any new arrival), but the government lacks the resources to resolve a request in less than a year.

Read on to find videos with the personal stories immigrants and their descendents, , and the commentary of renowned historian Vladimir de la Cruz, who captures in minutes the complex history and little-known anecdotes of Costa Rica’s migratory patterns.

The following is an X-ray of the immigrant population in Costa Rica that will be completed soon by the results of the First National Survey of Immigration and Emigration in Costa Rica, directed Jorge Barquero, a researcher at the Central American Population Center Sponsorship of the International Organization for Migration.

The immigrant population has mixed with locals throughout the country in a continuum that has enriched the genetic makeup of the inhabitants of Costa Rica since the first settlers. The bulk of the current population born in another country comes from Nicaragua and is concentrated in the Northern Zone, Central Pacific and the Talamanca area. In San José, the canton of Escazú is home to high concentration of immigrants.

The violence of the conquest led to the extermination of thousands of indigenous people from all groups. On this foundation of violence, the genetic heritage of today’s Costa Ricans was built. The conquest and the colonization of our territory were carried out by Spaniards but also by Creoles, mestizos (mixed Spanish and indigenous heritage) and mulatos (mixed black and white heritage).

There are three types of studies to analyze genetic patterns. The Y chromosome analyzes paternal inheritance, the maternal mitochondria and the nuclear joint family composition.

In a human genome, the father and mother each contribute 50 percent; a grandfather represents 25 percent; a great-grandfather 12.5 percent; from a great-great-grandfather 6.25 percent; a great-great-great-grandfather 3.125 percent, and so on. Between siblings, the genetic characteristics vary.

For the study of genetic patterns of Costa Ricans, geneticists Bernal Morera and Ramiro Barrantes randomly collected blood samples from different hospitals throughout the country, detecting that a large portion of the population in general had the same genetic markers. They published their study in 2001.

Barrantes and other colleagues published another report in 2013 that found similar values for European, Amerindian and Afro-descendant heritage, and recorded an Asian presence of 9.2 percent in Costa Rican genetic inheritance.

In 2017, Morera will publish a new study, whose findings will collaborate with the genetic mapping of Costa Ricans.

All that cultural wealth has created a lot of diversity in Costa Rican homes from Casa Presidencial on down.

With the guidance of genealogist Mauricio Melendez, we studied for this project three lines of descent of the family trees of the last four presidents. The results proved once again our genetic inheritance because they descend from the same indigenous women.

The indigenous women Catalina Tuia —also known as Pereira, the name of her “encomendero” – had mestizos. According to studies based on the historical archives of Gabriel Gaspar, falls 80 percent of Costa Ricans and 60 percent of Costa Rican descended from her offspring, and she is a common factor in the family trees of Luis Guillermo Solís, Laura Chinchilla, Oscar Arias and Abel Pacheco.

This study was carried out based on genealogical analyses of the expert Mauricio Meléndez on records of Costa Rican inhabitants since 1594, as well as records from ecclesiastical authorities, who recorded the baptisms, deaths and marriages, but not births. These documents have served to bring together the puzzle pieces of the Costa Rican past.

Since 1888 the entity that safeguards these files is the Civil Registry. At the top of his list of family names is Rodríguez, the most common among Ticos, with a total of 122,450 people (as of September, 2016). They are followed by Vargas with 102,033 and Jiménez in third place, with 101,397 people.

Luis Guillermo Solís Rivera: His Afro-Caribbean roots are recent: his maternal grandmother was the daughter of Caribbean immigrants. William A. Allen arrived in Costa Rica with his wife, María R. Taylor, from Kingston, Jamaica.

Likewise, Solís has Spanish ancestors, a branch of the Castro family, which he shares with former president Oscar Arias Sánchez.

Former president Laura Chinchilla Miranda has ancestors with the last name Fallas, but from two completely different branches: one is Spanish, and the other goes back to a slave.

Former President Oscar Arias shares his indigenous line with all three of the other leaders, and his Spanish line with Luis Guillermo Solís. Arias also has a mixed-race or mulata line, originated by Ana Cardoso.

Finally, of Abel Pacheco de la Espriella’s 16 great-great-grandparents, six were Colombians, five Costa Ricans, three Nicaraguans and one Panamanian.

Of the 16 great-great-grandparents, 62.5 percent had been born outside of Costa Rica, according to Meléndez.

The history of Costa Rican immigration can be seen in the faces and family histories of the population, but also in the country’s most beloved cultural institutions. In November 2005, UNESCO declared the tradition of the boyeo (oxcart driving) and the Costa Rican carreta (oxcart) a "masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity." Since 2003, the University of Costa Rica (UCR) has been working on the communal project "Contribution to the conservation and revitalization of traditional Costa Rican cuisine, traditional games and turnos (community street fairs),” which preserves and celebrates a wide range of traditions, working with both young people and older adults. All of these demonstrate the influence of mestizaje (indigenous and non-indigenous blending) as well as cultural influences from other migratory flows.

And Costa Rica’s international history can be seen on the plate. The UCR is also the leader of the National Plan for Sustainable and Healthy Gastronomy together with the Costa Rican Chamber of Restaurants (CACORE), seeking new legislation to celebrate and preserve the diversity of Costa Rican culinary heritage, as has already been done in 21 Latin American countries.