Costa Rica, officially the Republic of Costa Rica, is a country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the northeast, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, and maritime border with Ecuador to the south of Cocos Island. It has a population of around five million in a land area of 51,060 km2 (19,710 sq mi). An estimated 333,980 people live in the capital and largest city, San José, with around two million people in the surrounding metropolitan area.
San José is the capital and largest city of Costa Rica, and the capital of the province of the same name. It is in the center of the country, in the mid-west of the Central Valley, within San José Canton. San José is Costa Rica's seat of national government, focal point of political and economic activity, and major transportation hub. San José Canton's population was 288,054 in 2011, and San José's municipal land area is 44.2 square kilometers, with an estimated 333,980 residents in 2015. Together with several other cantons of the central valley, including Alajuela, Heredia and Cartago, it forms the country's Greater Metropolitan Area, with an estimated population of over 2 million in 2017. The city is named in honor of Joseph of Nazareth.
Cartago is the head city of Cartago canton of the Cartago Province, and is composed of the Oriental and Occidental districts as stated in the administrative divisions of Costa Rica. It was the capital of Costa Rica from 1574 to 1824.
Guanacaste is a province of Costa Rica located in the northwestern region of the country, along the coast of the Pacific Ocean. It is bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Alajuela Province to the east, and Puntarenas Province to the southeast. It is the most sparsely populated of all the provinces of Costa Rica. The province covers an area of 10,141 km2 (3,915 sq mi) and as of 2010, had a population of 354,154, with annual revenue of $2 million.
The Centro Cultural de la Raza is a non-profit organization with the specific mission to create, preserve, promote and educate about Chicano, Mexicano, Native American and Latino art and culture. It is located in Balboa Park in San Diego, California.The cultural center supports and encourages the creative expression “of the indigenous cultures of the Americas.” It is currently a member of the American Alliance of Museums.
Darío Escobar is a Guatemalan artist.
Relations between Costa Rica and the United States have been historically close; nevertheless there were instances in history where the US and Costa Rica disagreed. One such example might be the case of Freebooter William Walker. Nevertheless, considering that Costa Rica generally supports the U.S. in international fora, especially in the areas of democracy and human rights, modern day relations are very strong.
Laura Chinchilla Miranda is a Costa Rican politician who was President of Costa Rica from 2010 to 2014. She was one of Óscar Arias Sánchez's two Vice-Presidents and his administration's Minister of Justice. She was the governing PLN candidate for president in the 2010 general election, where she won with 46.76% of the vote on 7 February. She was the eighth woman president of a Latin American country and the first woman to become President of Costa Rica. She was sworn in as President of Costa Rica on May 8, 2010.
Centro Costarricense de la Ciencia y la Cultura is a science and culture museum complex in Costa Rica. Located in a fortress-like building that once served as the central penitentiary between 1910 and 1979, the center was inaugurated in 1994. It contains a number of important institutions including the National Auditorium, the Museo de los Niños, the National Gallery and a number of others.
Ibo Bonilla Oconitrillo is an architect, sculptor, mathematician and educator of Costa Rica. He has Costa Rican and Spanish nationality.
Carmen is the first distrito of San José Canton in Costa Rica, and one of the four administrative units that form San José downtown. This district is not heavily populated although it is a busy downtown area in daytime.
Hospital is a district of the San José canton, in the San José province of Costa Rica. It is one of the four administrative units that form San José downtown properly. The district houses, along with Merced district, the main commercial activity of the city, and is the most populous of the four central districts.
Italian Costa Ricans are citizens of Costa Rica who are of Italian ancestry. Most of them reside in San Vito, the capital city of the Coto Brus Canton.
Paseo de los Estudiantes is an urban area in San José, Costa Rica, the capital of Costa Rica. The area began to develop as a commercial center during the last decades of the twentieth century, basically with the advent of supermarkets, shops and some restaurants whose owners are Chinese.
Virginia Pérez-Ratton is the pseudonym for Virginia Pérez Johnston (1950–2010). She was a Costa Rican artist, art historian, art critic and curator. She devoted a large part of her life to the promotion of visual arts and the development of artists in Central America and the Caribbean.
Rosina Cazali is a Guatemalan art critic and independent curator. She serves as an advisory committee member for CIFO. Cazali currently works as a columnist for El Periódico, a Guatemalan newspaper. She recently co-curated the 2014 Guatemalan Biennial, XIX Bienal de Arte Paiz, along with Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, Anabella Acevedo and Pablo José Ramírez.
Centro Cultural da Penha is a cultural center, a public facility aimed at the dissemination of culture, the spread knowledge and the appreciation of the history of the Penha neighborhood where it is located. The site is connected to the Department of Cultural Expansion, the Secretary of Culture of the Municipality of São Paulo. It consists of the Mario Zan Cultural Space, Library José Paulo Paes, Theatre Martins Pena, the telecentre, recording studio Itamar Assumption, and study rooms on every floor of the building.
Spanish Costa Rican are people from Costa Rica with Spanish ancestry from both the conquerors of the colonial period as immigrants who arrived after independence and the Central American Federation of disunion. Historically this part of the population was called Criollo and were privileged but did not have equal rights with the Spaniards, some of them were mixed with Mestizos. Approximately 16,482 Spanish citizens living in Costa Rica for 2009.
Man Yu Fung Li, commonly known as Man Yu, is a Costa Rican artist, born in Hong Kong. She specializes in painting, but also incorporates multiple multidisciplinary media such as installation art, video art and performance art. Part of her work focuses on human anatomy, the different non-physical layers of the human being, humanism and respect for living beings.
Victoria Cabezas Green, is an American photographer, conceptual artist and multimedia artist who has developed her production in Costa Rica.
