Costa Rica, country of ________ America. Its ________ is San José. Of all the Central American countries, Costa Rica is generally regarded as having the most stable and most ________ government. Its constitution of ________ provides for a unicameral legislature, a fair judicial system, and an independent ________ body. Moreover, the constitution abolished the country’s army, gave women the right to vote, and provided other social, economic, and educational guarantees for all of its citizens.

Throughout the ________ and ’80s, Costa Rica managed to stay relatively ________ compared with its war-torn neighbours. It has one of the highest ________ rates (more than nine-tenths) in the Western Hemisphere and a solid educational system from the ________ grades through the university level. Several renowned universities and an active network of bookstores and publishing houses tend to make San José the ________ of intellectual life in Central America.

Because of the country’s peaceful reputation and its commitment to ________ rights, several nongovernmental organizations and pro-democracy foundations have their headquarters in San José. Costa Rica is also known for its strong commitment to the ________ and for protecting its numerous ________ parks. These factors, along with an established ________ industry, have attracted foreign investment, which shifted the country’s once agriculture-based economy to one dominated by services and ________ by the late 20th century.

_______, as the people of Costa Rica are called, use the phrase pura vida (“pure life”) in their everyday speech, as a greeting or to show ________ for something. Ticos are generally proud of their political freedoms and their relatively stable ________. Costa Rica’s well-populated heartland, formed in and around the upland basin known as the Valle Central or Meseta Central, is devoted to the cultivation of ________, one of the country’s most important exports. In the region’s outlying reaches, bananas—the principal export—are grown. ________ have become a significant export, surpassing coffee as the number two export by the late 20th century.

Nearly four-fifths of Costa Rica’s population is of ________ descent, and, as a result, Costa Rica has the largest percentage of people of Spanish descent in Central America. The Valle Central, with more than half the country’s population, is the most predominantly Spanish region in both its manner of living and its ________. The next largest group consists of ________ (people of mixed indigenous and European ancestry), who constitute close to one-fifth of the country’s inhabitants. The roughly one-tenth of the country’s inhabitants who live in ________ provincia (province) are a blend of the descendants of colonial Spanish, indigenous, and African peoples; the Spanish they speak is more like that of ________ than that of the Valle Central.

People of African ancestry, who comprise an even smaller percentage of the total population, live mostly in the Caribbean lowland of ________ province. The descendants of workers brought from the ________ Indies (mainly from Jamaica) in the 19th century to build the Atlantic Railroad and work on banana plantations, they were the targets of ________, and for many years residence laws restricted them to the Caribbean coast. Moreover, in the late 1930s, when ________ disease hit the banana crop on the Atlantic coast and operations shifted to the Pacific coast, forcing many of Limón’s inhabitants to seek work elsewhere, some Costa Ricans lobbied for laws barring the employment of ________.

Costa Rica’s president signed a law in 1935 prohibiting banana plantation owners on the Pacific coast from employing “coloured” people, claiming that their relocation would upset the racial ________ of the country. It was not until 1949 that the government abolished what was in effect Costa Rica’s version of ________ and allowed black residents of Limón to travel, enter the Valle Central region, and become citizens. Discrimination is still present in Costa Rica (though less obvious than before); many among the country’s Spanish-descended ________ consider blacks inferior because of economic, cultural, and perceived “racial” differences. Because of these circumstances, the black community remains ________ from the national culture and faces many economic and social ________.

There is a small ________ population, many of whom are also the descendants of imported labourers. The Chinese community has its own social clubs, although it has assimilated into mainstream ________. Many Costa Ricans of Chinese descent own businesses in the retail and ________ industries. Less than 1 percent of Costa Rica’s population today are indigenous people—usually referred to as ________. Although estimates indicate that about 400,000 indigenous people lived in what is now Costa Rica before the Spanish conquest, that number was drastically reduced by the conquest itself, disease, and ________-raiding expeditions.

The Bribrí and Cabécar reside in the Cordillera de Talamanca, and the Boruca (Brunca) and Térraba live in the hills around the Valle del General. A small number of ________ reside on the northern plains in Alajuela province. Most of Costa Rica’s Indians are rapidly becoming ________, but those on the Caribbean side in the southern Talamanca region maintain their separate ways, including their ________ religions. Although Costa Rica’s indigenous groups are legally assigned to protected ________, the land is infertile, and most survive through subsistence ________. They are among the country’s poorest people.

Spanish in Costa Rica is spoken with a distinctive national ________ and employs peculiar usages. Costa Ricans replace the diminutive ending -tito with -tico (hence their nickname), a practice known elsewhere but uncommon in Central America. Descendants of Africans in Limón province speak both Spanish and ________ Creole, which resembles Jamaican English. The principal Indian languages spoken in Costa Rica are part of the ________ language family and include ________, Cabécar, Maléku Jaíka, Boruca, and ________.