There are also about 72 Friends in Costa Rica. Monteverde Monthly Meeting was founded as a colony by a group of young Conservative Friends families in 1952, trying to find a place that was not militaristic. Many of the men in the group had been incarcerated in the United States as conscientious objectors and they were attracted when Costa Rica abolished its army. El Centro de Los Amigos para la Paz, with a small hostel, was founded as a community center and a home for San José Quakers' unprogrammed silent worship in the 1980s.