San Marcos is a
district
A district is a type of administrative division that, in some countries, is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or counties, several municipalities, subdivisions o ...
and the head city of the canton of
Tarrazú in the province of
San José in
Costa Rica
Costa Rica (, ; ; literally "Rich Coast"), officially the Republic of Costa Rica ( es, República de Costa Rica), is a country in the Central American region of North America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the no ...
.
History
The city was founded in the 1820s by agricultural migrants from the Central Valley. The region's earliest residents were dedicated to growing basic foodstuffs, namely beans, corn, and sugar cane. Local farmers started growing coffee in the highland valley in the 1890s. The region is best known for its high quality coffee.
Geography
San Marcos has an area of km²
and a mean elevation of metres.
It is located in a mountainous area known as
Los Santos Zone
Los Santos Zone ( es, Zona de los Santos) is a mountainous region in the San José Province of Costa Rica, in the center-south of the country. It is also known in Spanish as or just .
It corresponds to a wide sector of a series of intermontane v ...
, 70 kilometers south of the national capital city of
San José.
San Marcos de Tarrazu is located in the north bank of the Pirris River, in a highland valley surrounded by mountains that are part of the Talamanca Sierra in southern Costa Rica. Downtown San Marcos is 1350 meters above sea level but is surrounded by peaks as high as 3000 meters above sea level.
Its geography is suited to growing coffee, mostly because the slopes of the mountains face the morning light and the cloud cover protects the coffee trees in the afternoon. The red soil found in the valley is of
volcanic
A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface.
On Earth, volcanoes are most often found where tectonic plates a ...
origin. All this plus the altitude make ideal conditions to grow the coffees harvested by locals.
Image:San-marcos-de-tarrazu.jpg, Downtown San Marcos de Tarrazu - Catholic Church in the background
Image:Alto-quepos-tarrazu-costa-rica.jpg, Concepcion de Tarrazu highlands near Quepos Port, Costa Rica
Image:Tarrazu-mountains-near-naranjillo.jpg, Naranjillo de Tarrazu, as seen from Concepcion, near Port Quepos
Image:Coffee-farms-in-tarrazu-costarica.jpg, Coffee fields Quebrada Honda de Tarrazu
Image:Downtown-san-marcos-de-tarrazu.jpg, Downtown San Marcos de Tarrazu National bank branch to the left and the popular "Bar El Banco" to the right, in a busy December afternoon
Politics
This region has a deep-seated political relationship with the Liberación Nacional political party that stems back to the 1948 Civil War. Jose "Pepe" Figueres and his troops were not only headquartered in the neighboring community of Santa Maria de Dota, but the main concentration camp of political prisoners for these forces was housed in San Marcos' school. Moreover, a vast majority of Figueres' foot soldiers were from the present-day cantons of Tarrazu, Dota, and Leon Cortes. Furthermore, most of Figueres' workers at his cabuya hacienda, "La Lucha Sin Fin," were from this same region.
[Kordick, Carmen. The Saints of Progress: Coffee, Migration, and Costa Rican National Identity. University of Alabama Press, 2019.]
Economy
Traditionally, cultural and economic progress have been directly tied to the coffee industry. More recently, however, other agricultural products, namely avocados, have helped farmers keep afloat in years of coffee decline. Perhaps the key reason this region has managed to retain its coffee production, while other regions in Costa Rica have been unable to do so has been immigration. Indeed, since the 1960s this region has exported a considerable percentage of its workforce to the United States.
Transportation
Road transportation
The district is covered by the following road routes:
*
National Route 226
*
National Route 303
Flora and fauna
The district of San Lorenzo has been almost overlooked by coffee farmers mostly because of its lowlands and tropical weather. However, more recently tourism has flourished thanks to its pristine forests and clean rivers, the proximity to the
Quepos
Quepos () is a districts of Costa Rica, district of the canton of Quepos (canton), Quepos, in the province of Puntarenas Province, Puntarenas, Costa Rica.
Toponymy
The town is named for the native Quepo Indians who inhabited the place in the colo ...
plains and
Manuel Antonio National Park
Manuel Antonio National Park ( es, Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio) is a small national park in the Central Pacific Conservation Area located on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, just south of the city of Quepos, Puntarenas, and from the nation ...
. Giant pre-historic ferns and hardwoods can be found here. Birds such as the
Quetzal
Quetzals () are strikingly colored birds in the trogon family. They are found in forests, especially in humid highlands, with the five species from the genus ''Pharomachrus'' being exclusively Neotropical, while a single species, the eared quet ...
and small mammals are abundant.
Demographics
For the
2011 census, San Marcos had a population of inhabitants.
The majority of its people grow coffee in the mountains surrounding the city. San Marcos de Tarrazú has been known in the green coffee trade industry as a source of coffee beans. Nearby towns of Santa Maria and San Pablo are also sources of specialty coffee beans.
Roman Catholic
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...
s comprise approx. 90% of the local population. Due to coffee picking,
Nicaraguans
Nicaraguans ( es, Nicaragüenses; also ''Nicas'') are people inhabiting in, originating or having significant heritage from Nicaragua
Nicaragua (; ), officially the Republic of Nicaragua (), is the largest country in Central America, borde ...
and
Panamanian
Panamanians (Spanish: ''Panameños'') are people identified with Panama, a transcontinental country in Central America (a region within North America) and South America, whose connection may be residential, legal, historical, or cultural. For mo ...
native americans are settling in the valley in record numbers.
Culture
Local culture varies little from that of the rest of Costa Rica, in that the Catholic Church and the Costa Rican state both play a critical role in determining days of celebration. Indeed, the annual Patron Saints' Day Festival is both a civic and a religious event. Whereas much of Costa Rica has allowed the cultural importance of coffee production to decline, this region is deeply wedded to this crops' production. This is evident in the fact that a majority of the region's children continue to pick coffee, a custom that has largely gone out of fashion in the Central Valley where coffee picking is almost entirely done by foreign laborers, namely Nicaraguans.
The region has a number of bars, dance halls, and brothels but few other spaces for leisure activity.
Notable people
*
Maria Eugenia Bozzoli
María Eugenia Bozzoli (also, María Eugenia Bozzoli Vargas and María Eugenia Bozzoli de Wille; born 26 May 1935, in San Marcos de Tarrazú) is a Costa Rican anthropologist, sociologist and human rights activist. She is one of the founders of ant ...
(born 1935), anthropologist
References
{{Districts of San José Province
Districts of San José Province
Populated places in San José Province