Keywords
Province of Limon (Costa Rica) history
creole language
Linguistic identity
How to Cite
Abstract
In the XIX century, a mostly Afro-Jamaican linguistic minority settled down on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, a Spanish-speaking country. They went there to work for Minor C. Keith, an enterprising U.S. engineer who had been commissioned by the Costa Rica government to build a railroad that would join an eastern port to the Central Valley capital, San Jose. Later, to help finance that enterprise, he founded the United Fruit Company and the Jamaican workers remained in the Province of Limon to plant bananas. Their English-based Limonese Creole language has remained extant in spite of many government attempts to eradicate it, most likely because it acts, among other elements, as an identity marker for its people. But, will it survive globalization? And if so, for how long?The journal Memoria y Sociedad is registered under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License. Thus, this work may be reproduced, distributed, and publicly shared in digital format, as long as the names of the authors and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana are acknowledged. Others are allowed to quote, adapt, transform, auto-archive, republish, and create based on this material, for any purpose (even commercial ones), provided the authorship is duly acknowledged, a link to the original work is provided, and it is specified if changes have been made. Pontificia Universidad Javeriana does not hold the rights of published works and the authors are solely responsible for the contents of their works; they keep the moral, intellectual, privacy, and publicity rights.
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