[15] Its economy, once heavily dependent on agriculture, has diversified to include sectors such as finance, corporate services for foreign companies, pharmaceuticals, and ecotourism.

Many foreign manufacturing and services companies operate in Costa Rica's Free Trade Zones (FTZ) where they benefit from investment and tax incentives.

[24] Historians have classified the Indigenous people of Costa Rica as belonging to the Intermediate Area, where the peripheries of the Mesoamerican and Andean native cultures overlapped.

Stone tools, the oldest evidence of human occupation in Costa Rica, are associated with the arrival of various groups of hunter-gatherers about 10,000 to 7,000 years BCE in the Turrialba Valley.

[27] The influence of Indigenous peoples on modern Costa Rican culture has been relatively small compared to other nations since the country lacked a strong native civilization to begin with.

[29] The name may also have come from conquistador Gil González Dávila, who landed on the west coast in 1522, encountered natives, and obtained some of their gold, sometimes by violent theft and sometimes as gifts from local leaders.

[citation needed] On March 3, 1824, the government of the State of Costa Rica officially proposed to the municipality of Nicoya its voluntary incorporation into the country, through a document in which it invited it "if it was convenient to join its Province without going against its will."

On July 4, an open town hall was convened in Nicoya to discuss the matter, but attendees declined the invitation under the argument "that this Party... cannot be dissident.

After deliberation, the incorporation into Costa Rica was decided in an open town hall meeting, preparing a record in which the main reasons for it were noted, pointing out the advantages in terms of trade, the desire to participate in the advances that are palpable in Costa Rica, the economic, administrative and public service benefits, the creation of schools, security and quiet, referring to the state of war that Nicaragua was experiencing at that time and the fear that it would spread to the Partido populations, in addition to point out the poverty in which its towns find themselves and the geography of the territory as justifications for the union.

For this purpose, in the 1870s, the Costa Rican government contracted with U.S. businessman Minor C. Keith to build a railroad from San José to the Caribbean port of Limón.

In exchange for completing the railroad, the Costa Rican government granted Keith large tracts of land and a lease on the train route, which he used to produce bananas and export them to the United States.

[46][47] Historically, Costa Rica has generally enjoyed greater peace and more consistent political stability than many of its fellow Latin American nations.

In 1948, José Figueres Ferrer led an armed uprising in the wake of a disputed presidential election between Rafael Ángel Calderón Guardia (who had been president between 1940 and 1944) and Otilio Ulate Blanco.

[56] La Amistad and Chirripó present the climate of the páramo, at a height of more than 3000 meters above sea level, providing other types of flora and fauna, such as the white-nosed coati, the sooty thrush and Rogiera amoena.

Costa Rica is the first tropical country to have stopped and reversed deforestation; it has successfully restored its forestry and developed an ecosystem service to teach biologists and ecologists about its environmental protection measures.

[62] Many foreign companies (manufacturing and services) operate in Costa Rica's Free Trade Zones (FTZ) where they benefit from investment and tax incentives.

[64] Companies with facilities in the America Free Zone in Heredia, for example, include Intel, Dell, HP, Bayer, Bosch, DHL, IBM and Okay Industries.

As well, Costa Rica would benefit from more courses in languages such as English, Portuguese, Mandarin, and French and also in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM).

[98] Costa Rica is a member of the International Criminal Court, without a Bilateral Immunity Agreement of protection for the United States military (as covered under Article 98).

This freeze lasted 47 years until President Óscar Arias Sánchez re-established normal relations on 18 March 2009, saying, "If we have been able to turn the page with regimes as profoundly different to our reality as occurred with the USSR or, more recently, with the Republic of China, how would we not do it with a country that is geographically and culturally much nearer to Costa Rica?"

[100] On 14 July 2009, the International Court of Justice in the Hague upheld Costa Rica's navigation rights for commercial purposes to subsistence fishing on their side of the river.

Elayne Whyte Gómez is the Permanent Representative of Costa Rica to the UN Office at Geneva (2017) and President of the United Nations Conference to Negotiate a Legally Binding Instrument to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons.

Exceptions are Guanacaste, where almost half the population is visibly mestizo, a legacy of the more pervasive unions between Spanish colonists and Chorotega Amerindians through several generations, and Limón, where the vast majority of the Afro-Costa Rican community lives.

Costa Rica took in many refugees from a range of other Latin American countries fleeing civil wars and dictatorships during the 1970s and 1980s, notably from Chile and Argentina, as well as people from El Salvador who fled from guerrillas and government death squads.

[132] The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints claims more than 35,000 members, and has a temple in San José that served as a regional worship center for Costa Rica.

Costa Rica is a linguistically diverse country and home to at least five living local indigenous languages spoken by the descendants of pre-Columbian peoples: Maléku, Cabécar, Bribri, Guaymí, and Buglere.

[citation needed] Dance-oriented genres, such as soca, salsa, bachata, merengue, cumbia and Costa Rican swing, are enjoyed increasingly by older rather than younger people.

[139] The article included this summary: "Costa Ricans enjoy the pleasure of living daily life to the fullest in a place that mitigates stress and maximizes joy".

Reasons include the high level of social services, the caring nature of its inhabitants, long life expectancy and relatively low corruption.

Paulo Wanchope, a forward who played for three clubs in England's Premier League in the late 1990s and early 2000s, is credited with enhancing foreign recognition of Costa Rican football.