Neglected Heritage: Legal Implications of the Colonial Chapel Cemetery in Costa Rica

Abstract

Beneath the heart of San José, under stone and concrete, lie the fragmented traces of lives once lived and long forgotten. This study is more than a technical report on an archaeological rescue; it is an invitation to reflect on how a society chooses to remember; or erase its dead. The hurried 1993 excavation beneath the Catedral Metropolitana exposed not just bones, but the structural negligence, legal voids, and cultural failure that still echoes today. As Costa Rica grapples with the evolution of its heritage laws, this article urges readers to recognize that the past is not stuck in time, but rather demands something of us. How will we respond?