The Ministry of Culture, although it has many initiatives, these hardly see the light due to the lack of resources. However, it is worth noting the consistency and quality of the permanent programs, such as the National Symphony Orchestra of Costa Rica and the Youth Symphony Orchestra, which are a brilliant conjunction of two areas of work: Culture and Youth.
With regard to the plastic arts, Costa Rica is characterized by having high-quality painters, such as Francisco Amighetti, Gonzalo Morales Sáurez, Rafa Fernández, Rodolfo Stanley, among others.
According to educationvv, the culture of the Costa Rican is determined more by its popular aspect and less by the classical, academic aspect. This last aspect is privileged by official cultural institutions, who show a strong tendency to see popular culture as a lack, so they tend to ignore the preferences of a good part of nationals in cultural activities organized within an official framework. Despite this, it must be said that there has been some support for other areas considered minority or marginal, but never anything decisive. It is worth mentioning that in 2006 Costa Rica was declared the Ibero-American Capital of Culture.
Language
The Political Constitution of the Republic of Costa Rica establishes in its article 76, the Spanish language as the official language of the nation; However, Costa Rica is a multilingual country because, taking into account its small territorial extension, 5 autochthonous languages are spoken: Maleku, Cabécar, Bribri, Guaymí and Bocotá. Mekatelyu is spoken in the Caribbean area of the country, which is academically known as Limonense Creole English. The name is the result of the pronunciation of the phrase “May I tell you” in this variant of English. In the south-east of the country there is a large colony of Italian-speaking majority Sardinian and Sicilian However, the passage of time and the Costa Rican immigration to the south has created that the residents speak a linguistic variant that causes them to mix both languages, thus creating a dialect of the place. According to the English Proficiency Index of the international language school EF Education First, Costa Rica occupies the third position in Latin America in knowledge of the English language. According to the study, 15% of the Costa Rican population claims to have full command of the English language. [48]
Religion
Immigration in Costa Rica has a varied ethnic origin: Europeans, Asians and other Latin Americans for many decades, which has caused great cultural and religious diversity.The main religious groups in Costa Rica are Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists, Jews and Muslims, however people without religion (atheists, agnostics, etc.) represent 9% according to statistical data from 2013. [49] The Catholic religion is the majority and the official religion of the State, according to the current Constitution, however there is freedom of worship. 65% of the population declares themselves Catholic, although 23% do not consider themselves practicing Catholic. Among the religious festivities celebrated by Catholics are Holy Week, Christmas and August 2, the day of the Virgin of the Angels, patron saint of Costa Rica and Protectress of the Americas, characterized by the pilgrimage or pilgrimage to the Basilica of Our Lady. Lady of the Angels located in Cartago. At the Christian level, after Catholics, there are Protestants or Evangelicals of different denominations: Pentecostals, Lutherans, Anglicans, Baptists, Methodists, Seventh-day Adventists, Quakers, Amish, Latter-day Saints, [fifty]
Architecture
Its identity is rooted in the typologies of ancestral urbanization such as the engineering of Guayabo, the symbolic culture of the Diquís Valley and its stone spheres or the cosmic mysticism of the Baja Talamanca residential and ceremonial ranches, which became a synthesis that it oscillates between bioclimatic importance, fashionable styles and local creativity.
Cinema
The country maintains a constant production of documentaries, many of them commissioned by non-governmental organizations ; and a vast advertising industry that employs a good number of audiovisual professionals. In Costa Rica it is usual that advertising campaigns are carried out for the rest of Central America ; and many American, European and South American productions use the country as a location. Cinema as a university degree is offered by only one private university. The University of Costa Rica graduates audiovisual producers through the School of Collective Communication Sciences; and the National Learning Institute owns the Image Center, a technical school for video and television. There are graduate film specialists abroad, particularly in Cuba. Recent independent efforts to create a film industry have met with apathy from the state and the public. More fiction feature films have been produced in the last 10 years than in the previous 50 years. However, producers face an extremely small market that makes it difficult for them to cover production and distribution costs (only good export prospects could give some hope in this regard). The problem is aggravated when we observe that the public is more used to seeing American films than national ones, a problem that, far from being local, affects all Latin American cinema.
The Ministry of Culture has an office specialized in ensuring the development of Costa Rican cinema. The Costa Rican Center for Cinematographic Production is the state office with the smallest budget, compared to the entire state apparatus as a whole. However, there are co-production efforts between this office and independent producers. In addition, for 15 years the Costa Rican Film and Video Exhibition has been held, a festival that brings together the gross national production in fiction, documentary and video art.
