brown expats

I will tell you that there are areas of Costa Rica where negro Costa Ricans do not go, they all seem to stay on the Caribbean cost near a town called Limon.  Jamaicans were brought to Costa Rica as cheap labour to pick bananas.
When the United fruit company left the country..... well.... I guess there was no use for having them in the country.
I don't think negros were allowed to enter San Jose until the mid 60s.  Anyway.... I don't hear anything about racism here, it's just a simple matter of people staying in regions where they are more comfortable.  We are on the Pacific coast near Quepos.  We have never seen a black Costa Rican in the four years we've been coming here, just the odd negro tourist.

By brown do you mean what we call "blacks" in the USA? If so, then all I can say is that there aren't a lot of blacks except on the east coast - the Caribbean side. You don't see that many black people in San Jose' and other inland or west coast areas.

Here's an interesting blog post about this:
http://rosebellkagumire.com/2010/02/19/ … ople-here/

Wikipedia says "Until 1948, the Costa Rican government did not recognize Afro-Caribbean people as citizens and restricted their movement outside Limón province.[4] As a result of this "travel ban", this Afro-Caribbean population became firmly established in the region, which influenced the decision to not move even after it was legally permitted.[5] The Afro-Caribbean community speaks Spanish and Limonese Creole, a creole of English."

This is an unfortunate aspect of Costa Rica.

The real estate agents that hide this information really bothers me.  A white man with a black wife from the Barbados purchased a home on the Pacific coast, and then discovered that there wasn't another black person living anywhere in the entire region.  I'm not sure how  things are working out for this woman, but I think the real estate agents should be making people aware of what the situation is in Costa Rica.

I don't know where you live in Costa Rica or where you frequent.  I supose if you live in a gated expat community you may not see many black (brown) folks.  Yes, many black people live in Limon where they were first introduced to help the build the railroad (after Irish, Italians and others were not up to the task)  but if you go to San Jose and open your eyes you will see many black people.  Racism does exist in Costa Rick but not nearly to the extent of the US.  Remember that Costa Rica is a "mestizo" country where the Native American influence is quite evident.  Also, many Guanacastecos are very brown, almost black, due to a mix of Indian and Zambo Misquito from the Carribean coast.  Most of us are able to get along quite easily.

Just so you know, you replied to a two year old post.

Hi everybody,

This thread is old and the initiator is no more a member of the website.
We are therefore closing this thread.

@ orcas06 > Please feel free to participate on more recent threads.

Regards,

Priscilla

[ Topic closed ]