Maintaining the Patriarchal Order: Drinking, Bootlegging, and Domestic Violence in the Costa Rican Countryside, 1900–50

Costa Rica has long been celebrated as Central America’s peaceful republic.  Like all myths, Costa Rica’s peace narrative is rooted in some realities, namely the decision by Costa Rica’s President José Figueres in 1948 to disband the nation's military.  This action became the foundation upon which Costa Rican scholars in the 1970s constructed an exceptionalist historical narrative that continues to shape the field of Costa Rican studies to this day.  Seeking to help overturn Costa Rica’s peace myth, my paper, examines how the Costa Rican state attempted to enforce and protect an extremely lucrative state-controlled liquor monopoly.  My paper highlights deep-seated tensions between peasants in rural regions and state authorities in the capital over liquor production and sales.  More importantly, however, my paper places into focus a long history of state authorities employing torture, the threat of torture, and other forms of intimidation to uncover, arrest, and prosecute liquor producers, consumers, and sellers of homemade liquors in rural areas.  My examination of the liquor monopoly, bootlegging, Costa Rica’s masculine drinking culture, and state attempts to police liquor production suggest a violent Costa Rican state and in this way pokes holes in Costa Rica’s peace narrative.