Costa Rica and Nicaragua each claim the dish with contradictory dates: Costa Rican tradition dates it to 1930s San Jose via a specific farmer's-feast origin story; Nicaraguan tradition holds it derives from a dish brought to the country by enslaved Africans considerably earlier. Wikipedia's own account calls the country of origin uncertain and disputed, and notes only general agreement that the dish's roots are Afro-Caribbean.
What would resolve this A documented pre-1900 written or oral-history source placing a recognizable gallo-pinto-style rice-and-bean preparation in one country specifically, or a scholarly source adjudicating between the competing Costa Rican and Nicaraguan origin narratives.
Openfood historyGallo pinto (Wikipedia)