[LINK] "Costa Rica’s Quakers dodged US draft, now face perils of changing world"

[rfmcdonald]

I'd heard about the post-Confederate diaspora to Brazil before, but nothing about this much more recent Quaker migration to Costa Rica. My thanks to Al Jazeera's Ryan Schuessler.

[Marvin] Rockwell went to Monteverde 64 years ago. The year was 1951. He was 28 at the time and had just finished serving one-third of an 18-month prison sentence with three other members of his community. The men had refused to register for the draft. They were Quakers, a religious sect with a strong emphasis on nonviolence and equality that traces its roots to 17th century Protestant dissenters in England.

Taking another human life is against Quakers’ faith, but failing to register for compulsory military service in the United States was against the law.

“We and others in the meeting got to talking about it and thought, ‘Well, we ought to move out of the States,’” Rockwell said. A meeting is a congregation of Quakers. The denomination’s official name is the Religious Society of Friends.

The Quakers of Fairhope began looking for a new place to live. Canada was too cold. Australia and New Zealand were too far. The group started looking at countries in Latin America. One couple went to visit several countries in the region to scout out a new home for the community. They decided on Costa Rica, “which had abolished its own army in 1948,” Rockwell said with a grin.

A mere eight days after his sentence was finished, Rockwell joined 44 Quakers from 11 families in Fairhope as part of an exodus to Costa Rica. Some flew; Rockwell and his family drove, including his 72-year-old father and 65-year-old mother. The journey from Fairhope to San José, Costa Rica’s capital, took three months. It took one month alone to get to the first town across the border from Nicaragua — a distance of 12 miles. It was before the Pan-American Highway was completed. The Quakers from Alabama made roads when they found none.