COSTA RICA: Turn to Turtle

Costa Ricans thanked the petulance of a neighboring dictator for an elegant revision of the national diet. It used to consist chiefly of beef. But Nicaragua’s Anastasio Somoza changed that. Wounded by Costa Rica’s hospitality to his political enemies, he closed the southern frontier to the export of cattle. His Costa Rican neighbors thereupon turned to sea turtle —a delicacy formerly earmarked for gourmets in the U.S.

This modification of the Costa Rican bill of fare has revived a small industry that was nearly killed off by the war. Now Costa Rican markets are selling some 20,000 pounds of turtle meat a week. At first the people of the highlands in the interior refused to touch the stuff. There was a rumor that turtle meat caused leprosy. But that rumor yielded to another: that turtle meat is an aphrodisiac.