Quakers in Latin America: Quaker Archives Resources

In 1951, about a dozen Quaker families emigrated from Iowa and Alabama to Costa Rica to escape militaristic and materialistic American society. Four of their young men had been imprisoned for refusing to register for selective service – the draft – which had been reinstated at the outbreak of the Korean War. Costa Rica has not had an army since 1948. The Quakers bought 3,000 acres of land in the mountains and called their new home Monteverde.

After more than 50 years of growth and changes, “Monteverde” may refer to the original settlement, the Friends Meeting, or the diverse regional community of several thousand people, including English and Spanish speakers. The Friends’ cooperative cheese factory is a major part of the economy. An original 1,000 acres, set aside as natural forest, has grown into the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve.

Asociación de Amigos de Monteverde, Monteverde Jubilee Family Album, April 19, 1951-April 19, 2001, 50 years growing and spreading our roots (Monteverde, Puntarenas, Costa Rica, Asociación de Amigos de Monteverde, 2001).
Quaker BX7662.C8 A8 2001

Balderston, Joyce, Ann Kreibel, et al. Gracias a la Vida: The Ann Kreibel/San Luis Story (Friends Committee on Unity with Nature [1994]). Quaker BX7796.K74

Bird, Leonard A., Costa Rica, A Country Without an Army, Northern Friends Peace Board, (ca. 1979).
pamphlet in FHC folder: Monteverde

Bird, Leonard A., Costa Rica, The Unarmed Democracy (London, Sheppard Press, 1984).  
Quaker F1548 .B57 1984

Chornook, Kay and Wolf Guindon, Walking with Wolf: Reflections on a Life Spent Protecting the Costa Rican Wilderness (Hamilton, Ont., Wandering Words Press, 2008).
Quaker SD411.52.G85 C46 2008

Howard, Marian P., An Alternative Way of Being: the Ethnographic Study of a Quaker Community in the Cloud Forest of Costa Rica, (Thesis (D. Ed.), Teachers College, Columbia University, 1989).
Quaker BX7662.C8 H6 1989

Mendenhall, Mildred, Monteverde (Argenta, B.C., Argenta Friends Press, 1995, Canadian Quaker pamphlet series, no. 42).
Quaker BX7662.C8 M46 1995

Whitney, Norman J., Experiments in Community (Lebanon, Penn., Pendle Hill, 1966, Pendle Hill Pamphlet 149).
Quaker HM131 W54

Benarde, Scott, “Living on the Mountain: Friends Community in Costa Rica,” Friends Journal, Vol. 24, No. 2, January 15, 1978.

Hausman, Sandra E., “Iowans in Costa Rica Search for a Different Kind of Peace,” Des Moines Sunday Register, June 17, 1984.  [copy in FHC file: Monteverde]

Monteverde Meeting, “Monteverde Friends Reply,” Friends Journal, Vol. 38, No. 10, October 1992.

Schuessler, Ryan. "Costa Rica's Quakers dodged US draft, now face perils of changing world," Aljazeera America, January 15, 2015.

Fernald, Denny. "Quakers in Costa Rica," Western Friend, 2016.