By David Swanson, (excerpted from the original)

In 1948 Costa Rica abolished its military, something widely deemed impossible in the United States. The forthcoming film, A Bold Peace: Costa Rica’s Path of Demilitarization, documents how that was done and what the results have been. I don’t want to give away the ending but let me just say this: there has not been a hostile Muslim takeover of Costa Rica, the Costa Rican economy has not collapsed, and Costa Rican women still seem to find a certain attraction in Costa Rican men.

How is this possible? Wait, it gets stranger.

Costa Rica provides free, high-quality education, including free college, as well as free healthcare, and social security. Costa Ricans are better educated than Americans, live longer, are reported as happier (in fact, happiest in the world in various studies), and lead the world in the use of renewable energy (100% renewable energy lately in Costa Rica). Costa Rica even has a stable, functioning democracy with far greater (required) participation, ballot access, diversity of platforms, and popular support (than the United States).

Costa Rica has developed a culture of peace, including an educational system that teaches children nonviolent conflict resolution. As someone who grew up being told that we should not use violence, while simultaneously noticing that my society’s biggest public project was the U.S. military, I can only imagine the power of consistency found in an educational curriculum that walks its own talk. Costa Rica has built up a society of low violence and of, as one speaker in the film describes it, “an attitude of non-aggression toward the poor.” The Ticos describe support for the welfare state and for cooperative businesses as “solidarity” and “love.”

How did this come to be? The film provides more context than I was previously aware of. Rafael Calderón Guardia, president from 1940 to 1944, began the welfare state in a major way through a unique pre-Cold War coalition of support that included the Catholic church and the communist party. In 1948 Calderón ran for president again, lost, and refused to recognize the results. A remarkable man named José Figueres Ferrer, also known as “Don Pepe,” who had educated himself at Boston Public Library and returned to Costa Rica to start a collective farm, led a violent revolution and won.

Figueres made a pact with the communists to protect the welfare state, and they disbanded their army. And after his own troops threatened a right wing coup, he disbanded his own army, that of the nation of Costa Rica.

Costa Rica was surrounded by enemies, hostile dictatorships all around, not to mention the longstanding
(image) Monroe Doctrine U.S. dominance of any Latin American nation that stepped out of line. On top of which Calderón and friends plotted a counter-revolution from Nicaragua and attempted it in 1949 and again in 1955, with the support of U.S.-backed Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio “Tacho” Somoza García.

What did Costa Rica do? On the model that Jefferson and Madison envisioned for the United States, Figueres maintained the ban on any standing army but called up a temporary citizens’ militia to fight off the invasion successfully twice.

Costa Rica has now gone for 66 and a half years without the problems that militaries have brought to other Latin American nations. Militaries in small nations have been used for U.S.-backed coups, but not for anything more beneficial. The film cites statistics: the United States has directly overthrown 41 Latin American governments, and indirectly another 24, between 1898 and 1994.

The idea that Costa Rica needs no military because it is protected under a U.S. military umbrella would be laughable if there weren’t people who believe it. Costa Rica has opposed U.S. militarism and promoted demilitarization around the world, running up against powerful U.S. lobbying on behalf of U.S. weapons dealers. When Arias obtained a U.N. vote on a treaty to ban arms sales to any nation spending more on weapons than on its people, the only No vote was from the U.S.

Costa Rica is also facing the destructive effects of corporate trade pacts, rising inequality, and crushing poverty. Yet it is still far from as unequal as the U.S.

The film presents a fair portrait, flaws included. I watched it with my 9-year-old son who now wants to move there. The film includes video of past and current presidents, activists, professors, and journalists. It even includes extensive commentary from Luis Guillermo Solís Rivera as a long-shot presidential candidate seeking to uphold Costa Rica’s pacifist traditions in a manner that Japan’s president is of course not attempting. Then we see Solís surge ahead and win. He is now president.

Costa Rica is an inspiration to those of us seeking to abolish war.

This article has been edited. To read the original, go here.