Olympus Generation

Traditionally, they're known as the Olympus generation in reference to the Olympian gods of classical mythology, because most of them belonged to an oligarchic elite with political and economic power obtained from the international coffee trade during the second half of the 19th century.

[2] In the 1880s, a series of liberal reforms were promoted in Costa Rica, driven by a circle of intellectuals, scientists and politicians nicknamed "el Olimpo", due to the superb way in which these changes were carried out.

At the same time, they sought to "civilize" popular cultures, converting people from the lower classes into literate citizens, identified with work and moral discipline, hygiene, science and patriotism.

[3] While politicians were setting up the new Liberal State in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, a group of intellectuals consisting of teachers, historians and writers are responsible for developing a new Costa Rican official mythology, with its national history, culture and literature.

The discourse of modernity, on the other hand, is associated with individualism, the growth of mercantile relations, the power of money, the dissolution of traditional ties: it can be synonymous with freedom and progress, but also with moral and social decomposition, debauchery, alienation, agent of ideas and exotic customs that produce loss of national identity.

[2] The image of the national reality of its writers is limited to the Central Valley of Costa Rica, habitat of the coffee oligarchy, and excludes the spaces of indigenous cultures, the Caribbean and the cattle and mining regions of the northeast of the country.