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Before 1944, countless Costa Rican travelers perished on the narrow rocky trail that traversed the 3,491 meter Cerro de la Muerte. Undaunted, between 1941 and 1944 U.S. engineers and Costa Rican workers built a 49-mile segment of the Inter-American Highway that conquered the Cerro. For many, both in the countryside and in the city, the roadway was a symbol of progress and modernization that inspired an image of the San José-centered state as a benevolent patriarch and the United States as a wealthy and generous Good Neighbor. The roadway, however, also had its detractors, namely communist labor organizers, who saw the project as a symbol of U.S. imperial exploitation that threatened Costa Rican sovereignty and harmed workers. The Communist press and labor organizers sought to mobilize highway workers and popular discontent against the roadway, but their efforts were largely ineffective. Indeed, ultimately, roadway workers, their families, and neighbors were grateful for the increased transportation and communication the roadway furnished their communities and the well-remunerated labor opportunities this transnational infrastructure provided. In sum, the roadway’s detractors failed to foster negative perceptions of the roadway as a symbol of the exploitative nature of the U.S. Empire on the ground.

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