 The Quaker influence in the Monteverde area of Costa Rica can actually be traced to a small town in Alabama in 1948. At the end of that year a man named Marvin Rockwell and two of his nephews and a family friend, Wilford Guindon, were arrested for refusing to register with the US Selective Service. While serving their sentence they contemplated what it meant to them to live somewhere where their pacifist beliefs were not completely honored and they began to research alternative communities for relocation. After considering and rejecting Canada; too cold, and Mexico; confusing property ownership laws, they decided on Costa Rica. Just several years before, Costa Rica had disbanded its army and was becoming well established as a healthy, peaceful place for resettlement.
In October of 1950, the Quakers were covered in an article in TIME magazine and were quoted as saying, “ In Costa Rica we can only hope to make a modest living, but it will not be directly tied in with a military economy.” Thirty-one Alabama Quakers made the long journey the following spring, some on an arduous journey through Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua which took over three months to complete. After an exhausting journey and an equally exhausting and thorough land search, The Quaker group was able to purchase a thirty four hundred acre parcel of land near the town of Santa Elena from the Guacima Land Company The land was difficult to get to, only accessible by a twenty five mile, narrow path, and required months of labor to make motor vehicle traffic possible. This task was made possible by sometimes attaching oxen to their Jeeps to make the paths safe and wide enough for commercial traffic.
The Quakers named their new homeland “Green Mountain” which translates to Monteverde in Spanish and is the name that the area is known as now. They eventually subdivided the land for individual dwellings and constructed a meeting house for worship and gatherings. They made friends with their Costa Rican neighbors and attempted to adapt their previous farming knowledge to a new and very different climate. Eventually it would the fortuitous purchase of fifty dairy cows that would establish the community as a influential source of dairy products, including a world class cheese factory that still exists in the area. Cheese is still a mainstay in the local economy.
One of the most important contributions the Quakers have made to the Costa Rican economy is their dedication and widespread promotion of ecological and conservationist ideals. Of their original acreage, nearly a third was preserved voluntarily in an effort to protect the water supply. The Quakers became staunch protectors of the area and were instrumental in raising funds for research, housing visiting scientists and raising foreign awareness on the importance of preserving this beautiful part of Costa Rica. In 1972 a visit from an American graduate student, George Powell visited Monteverde and instantly realized its value as a unique group of ecosystems. By forming a partnership with one of the original pioneers, Mr. Wilford Guindon, George Powell was able to actively promote the establishment of a natural preserve of extraordinary beauty and value as a Costa Rican national landmark. The two in concert with many other concerned supporters were able to thwart the influx of squatters, land speculators and hunters/poachers that had begun to threaten the natural beauty of the preserve. Many additional parcels of land were purchased and the original watershed land was annexed to form the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve which became managed and protected by the Tropical Science Center in 1975. The dedication and vision of the Quakers was crucial in the formation of this most spectacular and diverse of nature sanctuaries.
The Quakers continue to have a presence in ever day life in Monteverde. The cheese factory and dairy products that are still produced are of world class quality and are a large part of the Costa Rican economy. They are active in the continued battle to preserve and maintain the delicate ecosystem of the preserve and its surrounding areas. They fight tirelessly in order to disseminate information about continued efforts to save the environment. They recently were active in a vote to limit the paving of roads in the area because they feared that the increase in tourists would be detrimental to the delicate balance they had fought so hard to save. The Quakers are credited with helping open the eyes of the Costa Rican people about the importance of environmental education and activism
Lynn Bateman
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