This depiction of a perfectly egalitarian society has been questioned by academics such as Iván Molina, who challenge the image of a colonial and post-colonial, democratic and horizontal Costa Rica, arguing that in fact there existed a powerful, liberal, coffee-growing bourgeoisie that controlled the country.
[2] Nevertheless, it is generally accepted that unlike many of its neighbors, the social hierarchy in Costa Rica was never so marked, especially in the absence of an aristocracy with noble titles imported from Spain as in other Latin American nations, and the configuration of land ownership prevented the emergence of large latifundia.
[3] This myth is deeply rooted in Costa Rican ideology and has been consciously or unconsciously used throughout history as a form of exclusion from the ethnically diverse populations, immigrants and peripheral provinces supposedly more mestizas.
[5] For example, the book of the theosophist and first lady María Fernández Le Cappellain Zulia and its prequel Yolantá occurred both in the pre-Hispanic period and presented the Costa Rican indigenous peoples in utopian and idealized versions and as heirs of esoteric knowledge.
Fernández was the wife of Federico Tinoco, a Costa Rican politician who led a coup d'etat that overthrew the constitutional president Alfredo González Flores and in whose government several theosophists held positions, described by some academics as a nationalist.