Crime, violence, and insecurity are perceived as society’s biggest problems in contemporary

Costa Rica. This degree of priority is especially remarkable because the country has

always been considered the peaceful exception in the violent Central American region. In

this paper I analyze four cornerstones of the nonviolent national self-perception in the

1940s and 1980s as the fundamental basis for the current talk of crime: the civil war, the

abolition of the military, the proclamation of neutrality, and the peace plan for Central

America and the subsequent granting of the Nobel Peace Prize. The result of the analysis is

the determination that these historical cornerstones were not publicly discussed as expressions

of the nonviolent identity for which they are today cited as evidence.