Limón is home to one of Costa Rica's largest Afro-descendant populations, shaped by migration from the British West Indies in the late 19th century. Excluded from citizenship and national identity, Black communities built their own institutions and cultural traditions rooted in Caribbean and diasporic belonging. From calypso music to Black feminist organizing, Afro-Costa Ricans have long resisted marginalization and continue to assert their presence as central to the nation’s past, present, and future.
Long before Spanish colonization, the area now known as Limón was home to Indigenous groups including the Bribri, Cabécar, and Talamancan peoples. Although Spanish explorers arrived in the 16th century, the Caribbean coast remained relatively autonomous and sparsely settled by colonial authorities. This isolation helped preserve distinct Indigenous and later Afro-Caribbean cultural and political formations.
In the late 19th century, the construction of the Atlantic Railroad reshaped the region, drawing thousands of Black laborers from Jamaica and other islands in the British West Indies. Afro-Caribbean laborers built the railroad and were later employed on banana plantations operated by foreign corporations like the United Fruit Company. Despite their essential contributions to Costa Rica's infrastructure and economy, West Indian migrants were denied citizenship and excluded from national belonging through explicitly racist immigration, naturalization, and land ownership laws that remained in effect until the 1949 constitution. Their English language, Protestant faith, and cultural ties to the Anglophone Caribbean marked them as foreign in a national project centered on Spanish-speaking Catholic mestizaje.
Many Afro-Caribbean Costa Ricans responded to these exclusions by building institutions outside the reach of the state. They established English-speaking schools, mutual aid societies, independent churches, and newspapers that circulated ideas of Black pride, self-determination, and political critique. Their identification with a broader West Indian and Black Atlantic world shaped a political and cultural orientation that challenged Costa Rica's assimilationist narratives. Rather than seek integration into a state that rejected them, many Afro-Costa Ricans developed alternative visions of belonging rooted in community autonomy and transnational solidarity.
Acts of resistance took many forms. Afro-Caribbean communities organized labor strikes, developed informal educational networks, and created their own sports and cultural clubs that nurtured community life outside of state control. The Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), founded by Marcus Garvey, established chapters in Limón in the 1920s and 1930s. These chapters organized lectures, parades, and vocational training programs while promoting Pan-Africanism, racial pride, and economic self-reliance.
Cultural production was also central to political expression. Calypso music, brought by West Indian migrants and rooted in oral storytelling, became a mode of critique and cultural memory. Musicians like Walter Ferguson, a self-taught calypsonian from Cahuita, composed songs in English Creole that addressed daily life, racial inequality, and local histories. Also known as Mr. Gavitt, Ferguson recorded hundreds of original calypsos over seven decades, many of which were distributed informally on cassette tapes. His music is widely recognized as a cornerstone of Afro-Caribbean cultural expression in Costa Rica.
Today, Afro-descendant communities in Limón continue to assert their rights and cultural legacies while navigating the lasting effects of historical exclusion and uneven development. State investment remains limited, and tourism and infrastructure projects often proceed without meaningful consultation. Local communities continue to preserve and reinterpret cultural forms, histories, and solidarities that challenge dominant narratives and insist on collective survival.
Black social movements in Limón have played a central role in confronting systemic racism and building political consciousness across generations. While early 20th-century organizing often centered around labor rights and diasporic solidarity through Garveyism and the UNIA, these movements have evolved in response to shifting forms of exclusion and state neglect.
Afro-Costa Rican women have shaped these movements through a range of cultural, political, and educational efforts. Eulalia Bernard Little was a pioneering poet, educator, and activist who worked to assert Afro-Caribbean cultural and political presence in national discourse. She helped develop bilingual education programs, published poetry in both English and Spanish, and advocated for Afro-descendant rights through cultural diplomacy and public engagement. Bernard was one of the first Afro-Caribbean women to run for national office in Costa Rica and helped initiate public dialogues on race, gender, and language in ways that reshaped national conversation. Shirley Campbell Barr, a poet and activist, has carried forward these legacies through literature and political thought. Her widely circulated poem "Rotundamente Negra" has become a statement of Black affirmation and resistance across Latin America. Through her poetry, Campbell Barr uplifts the voices and lived experiences of Afro-descendant women and uses creative expression to critique racism and gender-based exclusion. Epsy Campbell Barr, Shirley's sister, is an economist, organizer, and former vice president of Costa Rica. She began her career in grassroots movements focused on racial and gender equity and co-founded the Centro de Mujeres Afrocostarricenses. She has participated in regional Black feminist networks and has advocated for legal and institutional reforms to address systemic inequality. In 2018, she became Costa Rica's first Afro-descendant vice president and one of the first Black women to hold such a position in the Americas. These women are part of a broader tradition of Black feminist leadership in Costa Rica that is rooted in intergenerational organizing, cultural work, and care-centered political engagement.
Another foundational figure is Quince Duncan, widely regarded as Costa Rica's first Afro-Caribbean writer in the Spanish language. Born in 1940 in San José, Duncan's fiction and essays center the lives of Afro-Caribbean communities in and around Puerto Limón. His novels, including Hombres Curtidos (1971), Los Cuatro Espejos (1974), and Final de Calle (1975), broke with national literary norms by centering Black working-class characters and exploring themes of racial exclusion, migration, and cultural identity. He has received multiple national literary awards and is also the author of the English-language novel A Message from Rosa. In 1972, Duncan collaborated with historian Carlos Meléndez Chaverri to publish El Negro en Costa Rica, one of the first scholarly texts to document the contributions and historical erasure of Afro-descendants in the country.
Across generations, Afro-Costa Rican women, artists, intellectuals, and organizers have refused erasure. Through poetry, education, cultural production, and political engagement, they continue to assert that Black life on the Caribbean coast is not marginal, but central to Costa Rica's past, present, and future.
● Casa de la Cultura de Limón — Cultural center that promotes and actively fosters the development of arts, music, dance, and literature while offering workshops and organizing events to uplift and showcase the talents of local artists.
● Centro de Mujeres Afrocostarricenses — Association/center for the Development of Black Costa Rican Women
● Eulalia Bernard Little — Pioneering Afro-Costa Rican poet and writer whose bilingual work explored Afro-Caribbean identity, social justice, and the Black experience in Costa Rica. Her poetry often blended Spanish, English, Creole, and Jamaican Patois, reflecting the cultural and linguistic richness of her community.
● Shirley Campbell Barr — A renowned poet whose work centers on the experiences of Black women, exploring themes of race, identity, and Afro-Caribbean pride. Her poem "Rotundamente Negra" stands out as a powerful anthem of empowerment and celebration of Afro-descendant identity.
● Quince Duncan — Celebrated Costa Rican author whose award-winning novels and short stories explore the lives of Afro-Caribbean communities, particularly in Puerto Limón. His work has earned honors like the Costa Rican National Literature Prize and the Editorial Prize.
● Walter Ferguson — A legendary calypso musician from Limón, Ferguson played a pivotal role in preserving and promoting Afro-Caribbean music in Costa Rica. He was honored with an honorary doctorate by the National University, and May 7, his birthday, was declared the National Day of Costa Rican Calypso in recognition of his legacy.
● Duncan, Quince and Carlos Meléndez. El Negro en Costa Rica. San José: Editorial Costa Rica, 1972.
● Harpelle, Ronald N. The West Indians of Costa Rica: Race, Class, and the Integration of an Ethnic Minority. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001.
● Putnam, Lara. The Company They Kept: Migrants and the Politics of Gender in Caribbean Costa Rica, 1870-1960. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.
● Foote, Nicola. "Rethinking Race, Gender and Citizenship: Black West Indian Women in Costa Rica, c. 1920-1940." Bulletin of Latin American Research 23, no. 2 (2004): 198–212.
● Palmer, Paula. What Happen: A Folk-History of Costa Rica's Talamanca Coast. San José: Zona Tropical, 2005.
● Leeds, Asia. "Representations of Race, Entanglements of Power: Whiteness, Garveyism, and Redemptive Geographies in Costa Rica, 1921-1950." PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2010.
● Gordon-Chipembere, Natasha. "Legacy of Costa Rica Afro-Caribbean Immigrants in the 1930s." The TicoTimes. April 25, 2021. https://ticotimes.net/2021/04/25/a-look-back-at-1930s-limon-and-the-real-legacy-of-afrocaribbean-immigrants-3.
● Muñoz-Muñoz, Marianela. "Black Motherhood Politics in Costa Rica: Diasporic Genealogies and Links to the State." Latin American Research Review 58 (2023): 243–263.
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