Until recently Costa Rican historiography has tended to focus on the Central Valley, an area that represents 6 percent of the territory of Costa Rica. This interest is due to the fact that this area contains most of the country's population and has been the backbone of its economic, social, and political life since the colonial era. An outcome of this trend has been that the past from other regions has been not extensively researched. Foreign scholars realized this and have made important contributions to the study of the coastal provinces of Guanacaste, Puntarenas, and Limón as well as border areas. Although some of these studies came in the 1980s, it was only after 1990 that this trend fully developed.
Organized into three chapters, Alejandra Boza Villarreal's book is one of the best exponents of the new Costa Rican historiography on border areas and the indigenous communities who inhabited them....
