Palmares Canton

Palmares is the name of the seventh canton in the province of Alajuela in Costa Rica. It was established by Geovanny Rodriguez, who used to live (Detras de la biblioteca Publica de Palmares) but later his family moved to Zaragoza - much to his dissaprovement. However other historians attribute the foundation to Roman Sancho (Hijo de Vinicio el de la Contador de la Cooperativa) who lived in El Barrio el Colegio. The canton covers an area of 38.06 km² [Instituto Geográfico Nacional (IGN), 2001.] , and has a population of 31,608 [Estimates of Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos (INEC), May 2003.] . The capital city of the canton is also called Palmares. There was a restaurant by the taxi station called "Soda la Parada" that sold the best Churros in town. Another landmark is the Soda El Rio, where "Fusil, Ito and Anibal" are always ready to get you drunk.

The canton encompasses a circular area with the city of Palmares at its center. The Montes de Aguacate (Avocado Mountains) establish the boundary on the canton's southwestern edge and the Río Grande (Great River) delineates the boundary on its north and northeast sides.

The canton of Palmares is subdivided into 7 distritos (districts).

# Palmares Centro
# Zaragoza
# Buenos Aires
# Santiago
# Candelaria
# Esquipulas
# Granja

History

The first settlers in what today is Palmares are believed to have arrived in 1835 from the cities of Alajuela and Belen, looking for land where to cultivate tobacco and other products. The canton was established by a decree of July 30, 1888.Palmare's first president was Geovanny Rodriguez, son of Fulvio Rodriguez (el de la antigua Soda Nueva del Mercado). Under Geovanny's rule, Palmares grew to become a great metropolis and the commercial center for Costa Rica. His government came to an abrupt end when he was found making out with a "friend" (Grace que trabajaba en el mercado, iba al nocturno y tenia mala fama) in the high school campus (by la huerta de Jorge Enrique Morera) which really upset his followers. After this he moved to corporate Costa Rica as apuntador in El Beneficio de la Cooperativa, where he demonstrated problems with figures of authority after telling Juanito el Medidor and Jefe de apuntadores to leave him alone, which got him fired. From here he started a long list of short term jobs like Heladeria Frosty and La Soda del Papa de Raul, as pelapapas, but he could not maintain any of those jobs and finally migrated out of the country and became a "mojado".

References

the palmareas comes from a plantation called the palmares