Sephardic Jews were among Costa Rica's early colonists

By Hubert Solano

Those 336 people didn’t have the slightest idea about their destiny. They had only heard about the possibility of starting a new life close to the sea in a rich territory.

And even they didn’t want to know about it. They, most of them Sephardic Jews, were just looking for an escape of the religious oppression of Spain.

That morning, in the port of San Lucas de Barameda, 250 men, 50 women, 23 boys and 13 girls weighed anchor and came to colonize Costa Rica.

There is no tribute, honor or glory of their great deeds. There is no single reminder of their bravery.
They were mostly peaceful Galicians from northwest Spain, calm and quiet.

They were Jews who converted to Catholicism, but Christians didn’t accept them, saying they had no Catholic blood. In Spain, the converted were oppressed by hate, depreciation, disgrace and faced with pitiless anger.

Two years before they left Spain, Diego de Artieda Chirinos had been announced governor of Costa Rica.

He studied this country and decided to go back to Spain to prepare the adventure of colonizing Costa Rica. On April 15th 1575, two ships left Spain’s ports with the governor and 336 Sephardim.

In 1575, the capital was at Cartago. By then the conquerors Juan de Cavallón, Juan Vásquez de Coronado and Perafán de Rivera had penetrated into the Central Valley.

Nevertheless, until 1575, 73 years after Columbus had stumbled upon the Limón coast of this nation, the discoverers and conquerors had only achieved the submission of the Indians.

Colonization had not yet started. But Chirinos had already begun to navigate the Atlantic heading toward Costa Rica. He was hoping to start colonization right away. But he had to wait another four years. In 1579 he finally gave property titles to the citizens of Cartago.

By then, his jurisdiction reached from the San Juan River in the north to the territories of Veragua, Panama. It stretched from the Tempisque River out west to the Chiriquí Viejo River, Panama. This was the area in which the colonists had to be distributed, starting from Cartago. But the poverty in which the captaincy of Guatemala held the province of Costa Rica worked against colonization. In addition, the Galicians continued with its religious persecution. Slowly but surely, however, with the passing years, the colonists scattered; some taking Indian wives.

They were afraid of living in groups and being easy targets for religious persecution.

Among ignorance, superstition and frustration, the Spanish colonization in Costa Rica developed.

The monarchy was so indifferent to this country that the colonists didn’t even have clothes. They used tree barks.

Their beds were a piece of leather. Some, who wanted to go to mass, borrowed the clothes to go. Almost at the end of the colonization period, the economic situation changed drastically with the discovery of the Monte del Aguacate gold mines in 1815. In 1821 Costa Rica became independent and a new life started. A few years later, it was fortified by the coffee trade. Nobody was ever interested in the Sephardim again. They were forgotten in history, although their blood remains a part of Costa Rica.