Archaeological findings on various parts of Coiba Island indicate that the island was the site of Precolombian settlements whose populations are assumed to have disappeared shortly after the arrival of the Spanish in the 15th century (Quirós 1971). Coiba Island was designated as a penal colony in 1919 and from that point up to the present, the island has remained largely uninhabited except for an inmate population that has ranged from 100-1000 prisoners and the police force assigned to guard them. Aside from a stretch of land that has been designated for agricultural use to supply food for the inmates, the impact of the penal colony on the rest of the island has been insignificant (Ibáñez 2001).
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