Barrantes says that in 1622 it had but fifty Spanish families, and these were in a condition of extreme poverty.
A report, which the King ordered to be made about that time for purposes of taxation, stated: “In Costa Rica no mines of any metal are worked; no gold-washings, no indigo cultivation, no sugar-mill exist. The people cultivate only maize and wheat. There is no money. The poverty is such that the flour and biscuits which are not consumed are exchanged for necessary clothing.”
When Gregorio de Sandoval was named Captain-General, in 1634, and reached his port from the Atlantic Coast, he noted the importance of having a better port than that then existing at the mouth of the river Pacuare, and, therefore, in 1639 founded that of Matina, connecting it by a mule-trail 102 miles long with Cartago.
From 1666 to the end of the century both the Caribbean and the Pacific coasts were ravaged by piratical expeditions.
In 1718 Diego de la Haya y Fernandez was appointed Captain-General. The following year he reported to the King on the condition of Costa Rica, which he pronounced the “poorest and most miserable of all America. The current money is the cacao seed, there not being a piece of silver in the entire country. There is not an eatable sold in street or shop. Every family has to sow and reap what it consumes or expends during the year. Even the Governor has to do this or perish. Meanwhile the inhabitants of the province are contentious, chimerical and turbulent, and among the whole of them there are not forty men of medium capacity.”
In 1797 the governorship and military command were conferred on Tomas de Acosta, but after ruling for twelve years he wrote: “There is not in the entire monarchy a province so indigent as this, for some of the inhabitants are clothed with the bark of trees, and others, that they may go to church, hire and borrow from their friends.”
This may be said to have been the condition of the country when the domination of Spain ended.
The fifty-eight Governors, who, since 1563, had followed the ill-fated Vasquez de Coronado, had been little more than managers of a neglected farm, which scarcely yielded sufficient to enable its laborers to eke out a miserable, half-starved existence. They had killed off or enslaved the indigenous population. Their poverty had precluded the opening of roads or the clearing and cultivation of the lands, while the exactions of Spain and its barbarous political and fiscal policy had smothered all commercial interests. In fact, Costa Rica had, during three centuries of Spanish domination, constantly retrograded, and when the Spaniard retired from it, he left it less civilized than when he entered it in 1502.
On September 15, 1821, Costa Rica joined Nicaragua in a decree of independence. On January 10, 1822, she proclaimed her union with the Iturbide Empire of Mexico under “the plan of Iguala,” but in 1824 she resumed her independence, declared herself a Republic, elected Juan Mora as President, who remained in office for eight years, and became one of the United Provinces of Central America. This weak, unmanageable union underwent a slow disintegration from 1838 to 1839. It fell in pieces for want of internal communications, like the old Columbian federation of New Granada, Venezuela and Ecuador.
Among the twenty-four presidents and dictators who have governed Costa Rica since 1824, several have been men of marked intelligence and devoted patriotism, and under their administration the country has slowly emerged from its former depression, until to-day it may be said to be in a healthy political and commercial condition.