The sad passing of acclaimed British-American political writer and intellectual essayist Christopher Hitchens did not go unnoticed in Costa Rica. Besides the requisite obituaries published in La Nación and El País, there was a small flurry of activity in online social networks by members of Costa Rica’s digital literati.

Social psychologist and open source software advocate Carolina Flores name-dropped Hussein Ibish as a friend and shared his warm eulogy of Hitchens. Blogger Cristian Cambronero, 2009 recipient of the coveted Pío Viquez award for excellence in journalism also Tweeted about the writer’s demise. Juan Carlos Hidalgo, a scholar at the Cato Institute and columnist at El Financiero, remarked that even The Economist, a magazine not known for publishing obituaries joined in the mourning of Hitchens.

Hitchens was known for his deep intellect, caustic wit and penchant for atheism. Hitchens may have been even better known to Ticos had it not being for that last trait. That didn’t stop writer Nancy De Lemos from publishing her own eulogium on Revista Paradigma, a rare atheist online journal in a country that is constitutionally Catholic.

Christopher Hitchens visited Costa Rica back in 1989. He met with Eduardo Ulibarri, a native Cuban journalist who at the time was the editor of La Nación and who is now the Costa Rica’s ambassador to the United Nations. Coincidentally, Hitchens was then writing for The Nation in New York.

The late writer’s visit to this country resulted in an article that stands as one of the most accurate depictions of Costa Rica’s foreign policies during the turbulent decades of the 1970s and 1980s. “Squeezing Costa Rica” describes the country as a “contented little bourgeois El Dorado”, where social unrest and monistic doctrine are not welcome. He also took time to chastise Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Oscar Arias for ignoring the actions of American pilot and businessman John Hull, who at one point managed an extensive network of fincas and airstrips in San Carlos and points north. John Hull was an associate of disgraced Colonel Oliver North, and he is suspected to have aided the CIA and the contras run covert operations in Nicaragua. This episode in Costa Rica’s history would later inspire the acclaimed video game Metal Gear: Peace Walker.

“Squeezing Costa Rica” is an amazing essay that goes in depth about American intervention in Costa Rica, as well as the country’s attempts to contain it. In the end, Hitchens comes away impressed by what he called the “non-military character” and the ability of Ticos to achieve “judicious balancing” in the rough neighborhood known as Central America. The full article can be read online courtesy of Google Books.