The “First” Person Born in Nosara

According to archaeological research, Nosara has a human history that can be traced back around 2,000 years, although it is likely that records of even greater antiquity have yet to be investigated.

After the arrival of the Spanish, around 1524, the Nosara region experienced significant demographic changes among its Indigenous population. Many sought refuge in the mountains, while others avoided official records altogether to escape persecution. In some cases, they integrated into Creole families as a means to blend into colonial society, a practice that continued even after independence.

Following the Annexation of the Partido de Nicoya, the new State of Costa Rica abolished the institution of the caciques. This also applied to the last Chorotega cacique, José María García, whose records were lost after 1824, though it is known that a line of his descendants lived in Sardinal, Guanacaste.

After these events, there were no specific demographic records for the Indigenous population in Nosara. By the late 19th century, interest emerged in exploiting rubber, timber, and agriculture in Nosara. This opportunity attracted the first Creole or mestizo settlers—families of mixed Spanish, Indigenous, and mulatto heritage.

Among these families was the one to which the first recorded birth in Nosara belonged, at least according to the records of the Secretariat of Governance. This family was composed of Zacarías Constantino Castrillo and Teresa Valencia Montiel, who, on Nosara soil, had Plutarco Castrillo Valencia on June 28, 1916—over 109 years ago.

Sadly, Plutarco died just 24 years later in the community of Hojancha, due to tuberculosis, a disease that claimed many Costa Rican lives at the time.

The birth certificate reads as follows:

“Plutarco Castrillo Valencia,male, born in Nosara, district of the canton of Nicoya, Province of Guanacaste, at ten o’clock at night on the twenty-eighth day of the month of June, nineteen hundred and sixteen, legitimate son of Zacarías Constantino Castrillo, farmer, and Teresa Valencia Montil, domestic worker, both Costa Ricans and of the same neighborhood.

This is declared by the recommended witness Guadalupe Castrillo in front of Francisco Zúñiga, assistant of the Civil Registry of the Nation, at nine o’clock in the morning on the second day of the month of July, nineteen hundred and sixteen, according to coupon sixty-one, book two, issued by said official. San José, at three fifteen in the afternoon on the twenty-fifth day of July, nineteen hundred and sixteen. Signature.”

Registros de la Secretaría de Gobernación - Archivo Nacional