Page "History of Costa Rica" Paragraph 5

Another important factor behind Costa Rica's poverty was the lack of a significant indigenous population available for forced labor, which meant that most of the Costa Rican settlers had to work on their own land, preventing the establishment of large haciendas.

For all these reasons Costa Rica was by and large unappreciated and overlooked by the Spanish Crown and left to develop on its own.

The small landowners ' relative poverty, the lack of a large indigenous labor force, the population's ethnic and linguistic homogeneity, and Costa Rica's isolation from the Spanish colonial centers in Mexico and the Andes all contributed to the development of an autonomous and individualistic agrarian society.

Even the Governor had to farm his own crops and tend to his own garden due to the poverty that he lived in.

An egalitarian tradition also arose.

Costa Rica became a " rural democracy " with no oppressed mestizo or indigenous class.

It was not long before Spanish settlers turned to the hills, where they found rich volcanic soil and a milder climate than that of the lowlands.