Black Migrant Workers on a Costa Rican Banana plantation circa 1905 (Courtesy of Tulane University Special Collections)

When World War I started in Europe in 1914 the price of food in the Caribbean increased and a business depression occurred that lasted until the summer of 1915. At the same time, a demand for labor with higher wages offered in Central America's banana industry occurred. By 1917, thousands of black folks from Caribbean and the US south migrated to banana plantations in South and Central American including Columbia and Costa Rica on United Fruit Company steamboats. As result Costa Rican received a large influx of blacks from the Caribbean and some from the Southern United states. This explains why so many Costa Ricans have English sir names.