It is right in the middle of some very unstable nations. Panama I can understand, the US wants it to remain stable for the Panama Canal. But how is Costa Rica so stable even thought they don’t have anything like that? Or do they and I’m not aware of it?
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On a map, Central America appears to be a small area with several geographically close countries. However, those countries are surrounded by dense jungle that was, until recently, inaccessible to people.
So even though Costa Rica looks like it shares a land border with Nicaragua and Panama, the truth is that the jungle on those borders is actually more of a barrier than the ocean is, so Costa Rica is almost like a geographic super island. Because of how difficult it has historically been to move between countries in that region, issues in one country tend to stay isolated within that country, rather than spreading throughout the region.
As to why Costa Rica is generally more stable? One of the longstanding issues in Latin America is the existence of a distinct, Spanish ethnic group of aristocratic landowners. That aristocratic class typically has economic and political dominion over countries that are composed mainly of poor, mixed race mestizos. The instability in Latin American countries is largely due to the ethnic and economic conflict between those two distinct ethnic/social classes.
Costa Rica’s ethnic makeup doesn’t look like other Latin American countries. There was virtually no indigenous population in Costa Rica when the Spanish got there and the indigenous population that did exist all lived in inaccessible highlands. Whereas in other Latin American countries, the large indigenous population was more or less interbred and enslaved to become the countries’ peasant class, in Costa Rica the tiny indigenous population spent most of the country’s history isolated in small bubbles in the interior of the country.
One of the effects of this is that Costa Rican society never stratified into a Spanish race aristocratic class and mixed race peasant class like other Latin American countries. Instead, Costa Rica formed into an ethnically homogeneous society of economically equal, small holding farmers. The fact that there were no large, distinct ethnic or economic groups to compete for power has kept the country stable.
IE, most Latin American countries are socially similar to countries in Africa, where you have one, distinct ethnic group that holds all of the wealth and political power lording over one or more extremely poor ethnic groups. Costa Rica, on the other hand, is socially similar to a country like Australia.
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