Monteverde Day

Today, April 19 is Monteverde Day here in Monteverde. It marks the sixtieth anniversary of the arrival of the scouting group of three Quaker men who were to report back to a larger group of their findings. They were looking for cheap land suitable for farming and to set roots in a country that welcomed their peaceful values.

At a special picnic today, one of the original fifty or so pioneers that settled in Monteverde in the early 1950’s exclaimed that they decided to leave the United States due to its increasingly “militaristic and materialistic culture.” He, including several others had received international attention for serving prison sentences due to their refusal to register for a peacetime military draft after WWII. One of the core ‘testimonies’ of Quakerism is to practice peace in all ways, and thus denying support for war, militarism, and violence in any way.

The members of this first Monteverde group were true pioneers that had risked almost everything to save that which was most important. They desired to raise their children in a place where war was not institutionalized and where battle was not aggrandized. Even better, they wanted to move to Costa Rica because it had just abolished its military in 1948. The Quakers could support and participate in this new national experiment. The president himself received the Quaker group with open arms. Many areas of Costa Rica had not been developed and the government was encouraging farmers to tame the tropical landscape and produce goods for human consumption. A match was made.

These pioneers slept in tents for the first years until they had built their houses from trees they had cut. They soon discovered the trials associated with a rainy season that was incredibly rainy, a windy season that was incredibly windy, a dry season that was incredibly dry. They had traveled down with very little and learned to live with even less. They learned and shared medical knowledge, communicated with the locals in a different tongue, opened a cheese factory, and prepared locally grown food. Their stories and those of their children are numerous. The community of Monteverde has a rich history considering it has existed for only sixty years.

To find out more about Quakers, visit http://www.quakerinfo.org/index.html


Signed M