UN General Assembly
1960

143. In welcoming the newly independent peoples, there is one last experience which I should like to tell them about. We in Costa Rica found that keeping an army was of no use to us, for our habitual love of peace made it impossible for us to think that we might need it to make war on our neighbours. The barracks were used only to train a military class which kept Government in power against the will of the people or acted as an electoral instrument, frightening the voter with its strength and its ability to seize power and impose Governments ready to protect its privileges. We believe that our regional agency, the Organization of American States, and the United Nations are adequate safeguards for peace and justice in the unlikely event of any aggression against us. Convinced as we are of the uselessness of an army in Costa Rica, we finally abolished it under the 1949 Constitution. The Costa Rican budget does not allocate a single cent for armaments. Costa Rica settles its disputes by reason and not by force. It takes its decisions with votes, not bullets. We warmly recommend this attitude to all the new nations, which will find the best safeguard for the stability of their institutions not in armies but in the institutions themselves. I assure my new colleagues that it is much more useful to spend the people’s money on schools than on armaments.