Afro-Caribbean Puerto Viejo: A Culture Guide

First by sea, then by rail. By 1828 the family of William Smith had settled at today’s Punta Cahuita. According to SINAC, Costa Rica’s national parks agency, the reef was fished by Black and Indigenous turtle fishers who sailed from Bocas del Toro and the Nicaraguan coast. Early settlers grew yam, cassava, cacao and coconut.

In 1872 the first organized group of Jamaican workers arrived to build the Atlantic railway from San José to Limón, completed in 1890. Workers also came from Barbados and St. Kitts. The work was deadly: one widely cited account puts the toll at up to 4,000 lives on the first 25 miles alone, mostly from malaria.

Minor C. Keith, who ran the railway project, began growing bananas to help pay for it. In 1899 his business merged with Boston Fruit to form the United Fruit Company. West Indian workers and their families became the backbone of the Caribbean banana economy, and they organized strikes, including in Sixaola in 1913 and 1918.

Puerto Viejo’s old English name was Old Harbour. In Limonese Creole it becomes “Wolaba”, now the name of the town’s heritage parade.

August 31 is the Día de la Persona Negra y la Cultura Afrocostarricense, the Day of the Black Person and Afro-Costa Rican Culture. Many people still use its older name, Día del Negro.

The date comes from the UNIA’s 1920 Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World, which proclaimed August 31 an international holiday. Costa Rica first recognized the day by executive decree in 1980. Law 8938 (2011) placed it in the school calendar, Law 9526 (2018) made August the Historic Month of Afro-descendance, and Law 10050 (2021) made August 31 a national holiday.

In Limón city, the Grand Gala Parade fills the streets with dance, calypso, floats and traditional dress; it was declared intangible cultural heritage of Costa Rica in 2022. In Puerto Viejo, the community’s own Wolaba Parade has taken over the main street in late August since 2013. Its 12th edition was held on August 29, 2026.

Spanish is Costa Rica’s official language. Many Afro-Caribbean families also speak Limonese Creole, also called Limón Creole English and known locally as Mekatelyu, from “make I tell you”. It grew from the Jamaican Creole of the railway and banana workers; a 1986 estimate counted about 55,000 speakers.

One word you’ll hear: Wolaba, Creole for Old Harbour, Puerto Viejo’s old English name. We don’t put made-up Creole phrases in our copy. If you’d like to learn some, ask the people who speak it.

Costa Rica has 8 Indigenous peoples living in 24 Indigenous territories. The Bribri and Cabécar peoples of Talamanca speak Chibchan languages and are among Conga’s nearest neighbors.

Këköldi, a Bribri–Cabécar territory, lies in the hills directly behind Puerto Viejo and Cocles. Since 1994 it has been run by the Wak Ka Köneke association, whose name means “caretakers of the land of Këköldi”; it runs an iguana breeding project and an observation tower. Farther inland lies the Talamanca Bribri territory, with communities such as Shiroles, Suretka and Amubri.

In Bribri tradition, Sibö is the creator, and a child’s clan comes from the mother. Cacao, tsiru, is sacred: Sibö chose Tsiru as his wife, and only women prepare the sacred cacao drink, which accompanies births, first menstruation, marriages and burials.

The Bribri ceremonial conical house, the Ù-sulë́, is thatched with woven suita palm and built from 16 plant species. Few remain; recent builds are part of a cultural revival.