COSTA RICA. -
I. GEOGRAPHY
The smallest of the Central American republics bordering both oceans: 50,000 sq. km. (the relative figures are uncertain), with fewer than 800,000 inhabitants (472,000 in the last census, dating to 1927). Of the population, 90% is of European descent, 6% are Amerindians and mestizos, and 4% are Blacks and mulattos. The country consists of two flat zones near the sea, separated by a slender internal mountain range. The climate is tropical, hot, uniform, and humid, with local differences due to altitude. The national economy is essentially based on plantations and especially on coffee (of high quality) and bananas (exported to the United States), followed by cocoa, sugarcane, fruit, etc. Among minerals, gold and silver. The forests also yield good profits (timber for aircraft construction). Industry is still in its infancy.Costa Rica is a unitary representative republic with a single Chamber. The capital, São José (80,000 inhabitants), is connected by rail to the two ports of Limón on the Caribbean Sea and Puntarenas on the Pacific. Only about 5% of the population professes pagan cults; the state religion is Catholicism.
| Province | Area in 1,000 sq. km. | Population (in 1,000 inhabitants) | Principal Town (in 1,000 inhabitants) |
|----------|-----------------------|-----------------------------------|----------------------------------------|
| Alajuela | 9 | 157 | Alajuela (10) |
| Cartago | 3 | 111 | Cartago (13) |
| Guanacaste | 11 | 90 | Liberia (4) |
| Heredia | 3 | 55 | Heredia (11) |
| Limón | 9 | 40 | Limón (10) |
| Puntarenas | 10 | 50 | Puntarenas (9) |
| São José | 4 | 283 | São José (80) |
Total 49,786
II. EVANGELIZATION OF COSTA RICA
Discovered by Columbus on his final voyage in 1502, it was gradually colonized by the Spanish after 1526. It formed part of the Mexican province (Audiencia) of Guatemala and of the diocese of León in Nicaragua. The Indians, divided into numerous small tribes, among which the principal were the Talamancas and the Guaymís, fiercely resisted colonization and evangelization in the inaccessible mountains of Talamanca. Only through great sacrifices did the Franciscans succeed in the 17th and 18th centuries in establishing a few reductions, but efforts to reduce the other Indians remained fruitless. At the beginning of the 19th century, the mission went into steady decline, ceasing altogether in 1829 with the secularization of the Franciscans. In 1850, the diocese of São José de Costa Rica was erected. The mission was reopened by Mons. Bernardo Augusto Thiel, C.M., bishop of San José (1880-1902), among the Indian tribes, which had meanwhile diminished considerably. He repeatedly visited the Indians of the Talamanca mountains, publishing linguistic studies of great value. In 1894, the German Lazarists took charge of the mission among the Indians. In 1921, São José was elevated to an archdiocese with the suffragans of Alajuela (diocese) and Limón (apostolic vicariate).
III. CONTEMPORARY HISTORY
After the proclamation of Mexican independence, the captaincy general of Guatemala, of which Costa Rica was a part, declared itself free from Spanish sovereignty on 15 September 1821 and proclaimed its union with Mexico (5 January 1822). With the fall of Iturbide, a constituent assembly proclaimed the United States of Central America, comprising the five republics of Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Costa Rica. Soon, however, disagreements arose between the federal authority and that of the State of Guatemala, resulting in the dissolution of the confederation, decreed by the federal congress on 14 November 1838. In 1842, the former federal president Morazán came to Costa Rica with the intention of reconstituting the United States of Central America and deposing R. Carrera, president of Guatemala. Costa Rica once again worked in favor of the Central American federal arrangement, but after Morazán’s defeat and death, it definitively constituted itself as an autonomous republic. The presidency of Juan Rafael Mora, which lasted nearly a decade until 1859, marked a period of significant economic, political, and social progress for Costa Rica. At that time, a concordat was also signed with the Holy See on 7 October 1852, by which the Catholic religion became the official religion of the state, and the ecclesiastical authorities obtained control over education and full freedom to communicate with Rome. Although since the second half of the last century anticlerical trends have strengthened in Costa Rica, relations with the Church have generally remained good. The Catholic religion is still considered the official religion of the state, and the representative of the Pope is surrounded by the greatest respect. During the disturbances of 1948, the skillful action of the nuncio, Mons. L. Centoz, led to a cessation of hostilities and an agreement between the contending parties.COSTA RICA - 1) State boundaries; 2) Ecclesiastical circumscription boundaries; 3) Railways.
A chronicle from Cologne, attributed to G. Koelkoff and published in 1499, reports the testimony of Ulrich Zell, a pupil of Gutenberg, according to whom the master drew directly, for his invention, from the technique used in Holland for printing certain grammars of Donatus. This circumstance, linked with other indications found in various Dutch chronicles and supported by the publication of the *Batavia* by Hadrianus Junius (1588), in which a fanciful account by a servant of C. is recounted, has given rise to a legend according to which the Dutchman, having carved for amusement some beechwood type, conceived the idea of replacing them with lead type and with these printed various books, including a *Speculum*. However, Gutenberg, having learned of his method in Aix in 1440, allegedly stole the press and the type and transported them first to Cologne and then to Mainz.
The implausibility of certain elements, the absence of any reliable biographical data, and the doubt that the very *Speculum*—of which only a memory remains and which is known to have had its pages printed on one side only (anopistographs)—could have been a xylographic book, render the Costerian tradition purely fanciful. It cannot even be affirmed that he was the first Dutch printer, and some have even gone so far as to question his very existence. Unfortunately, the editions attributed to him lack any colophon, and thus nothing can be said about the place and date of their publication.
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CONSTITUTION
From *cum* and *statuere*, in the ancient sense, it refers to the morphological structural complex of the human body; the original architectural type of the individual, essentially hereditary and congenital, however formed during the intrauterine and extrauterine period of development.
Today, in the concept of *c.*, especially through the work of the Italian medical school (A. De Giovanni, G. Viola, N. Pende), the dynamic individual aspect or functional temperament is also included, inseparable from the characterological aspect. The science of *c.*, thus understood, has been termed by Viola as individualistic; more expressive and synthetic is Pende’s term *biotypologia individuale*. But for many, *c.* still refers to the morphological aspect of personality with its anomalies and morbid predispositions, which are called constitutional anomalies and constitutional morbid dispositions, abnormal and supernormal morphological habits. Biometrics (v.), in the form of anthropometry, is in fact still the fundamental diagnostic method for the study of individual *c.*
Diseases that have a fundamental root in the hereditary *c.* of the subject are called constitutional diseases and are often confused with hereditary and familial diseases; but the term is somewhat improper, because modern human genetics teaches that diseases are not inherited, but rather predispositions to diseases.