José Figueres Ferrer
José María Hipólito Figueres Ferrer was a Costa Rican politician who served three terms as President of Costa Rica: 1948–1949, 1953–1958 and 1970–1974. During his first term in office he abolished the country's army, nationalized its banking sector, granted women and Afro-Costa Ricans the right to vote, and offered Costa Rican nationality to people of African descent.
His son José María Figueres served as President of Costa Rica from 1994 to 1998.
Early life and career
Figueres was born on 25 September 1906 in San Ramón in Alajuela province. Figueres was the eldest of the four children of Mariano Figueres Forges, and his wife, Francisca Ferrer Minguella who had recently immigrated from Catalonia to San Ramón in west-central Costa Rica. Figueres' first language was Catalan.In 1924, he left for Boston, United States, on a work and study trip. There he studied hydroelectric engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Figueres returned to Costa Rica in 1928 and bought a farm in a remote area in the mountains of San Cristóbal, Desamparados. He named the farm "La Lucha Sin Fin" .. This would be his home and operational headquarters until his death in 1990.
Figueres became a successful coffee grower and rope manufacturer, employing more than 1,000 sharecroppers and factory laborers. Describing himself as a "farmer-socialist", he built housing and provided medical care and recreation for his workers and established a community vegetable farm and a dairy with free milk for workers' children.
His sharecroppers could either sell hemp grown on his plantation to him at market price for use in his rope factory, or sell it elsewhere if they were offered a better price.
Political career
Return to Costa Rica, the Caribbean Legion, and the Costa Rica Civil War (1944–1948)
When Figueres returned to Costa Rica in 1944 following two years in exile for criticising President Rafael Ángel Calderón Guardia, he established the Democratic Party, which a year later transformed into the Social Democratic Party. The party was intended to be a counterweight to the ruling National Republican Party, led by former President Calderón and his successor Teodoro Picado Michalski. The highly controversial Calderón had angered Costa Rican elites, enacting a large social security retirement program and implementing national healthcare. Calderón was accused of corruption by the elites, providing a rallying cry for Figueres and the Social Democratic Party.Figueres began training the Caribbean Legion, an irregular force of 700. Figueres launched a revolution along with other landowners and student agitators, hoping to overthrow the Costa Rican government. With plans of using Costa Rica as a base, the Legion planned next to remove the three Central American dictators. Washington officials closely watched the Legion's activities, especially after Figueres carried out a series of terrorist attacks inside Costa Rica during 1945 and 1946 that were supposed to climax in a general strike, but the people did not respond.
Former President Calderón supporters prevented and invalidated the 1 March 1948 presidential election in which Otilio Ulate had allegedly defeated Calderón in his second term bid with fraud. In March–April 1948, the protests over the election results mushroomed into armed conflict, then into revolution. Figueres defeated Communist-led guerrillas and the Costa Rican Army, which had joined forces with President Picado.
With more than 2,000 dead, the 44-day civil war was the bloodiest event in 20th-century Costa Rican history.
Figueres as the provisional president (1948–1949)
After the civil war, Figueres became president at the head of a provisional junta, known as the Founding Council, that held power for 18 months. During that time he took several actions:- abolishing the army Figueres said he was inspired to disarm Costa Rica by H. G. Wells "The Outline of History", which he read in 1920 while at MIT. "The future of mankind cannot include armed forces. Police, yes, because people are imperfect.", he declared. Ever since, Costa Rica has had no army and has maintained a 7,500-member national police force for a population of over five million.
- enabled women and illiterates to vote,
- put into effect basic welfare legislation,
- nationalised banks,
- outlawed the Communist Party,
- directed the writing of a new constitution,
- guaranteed public education for all,
- gave citizenship to black immigrants' children,
- established civil service to eliminate the spoils system in government, and
Once Figueres gained control, the legislation he passed regarding social reform was not that much different from Calderón's proposals. In fact, it is believed by some historians, such as David LaWare, that Figueres' social reforms were more or less the same as Calderón's Labor Code of 1943, with the primary difference being that Figueres had gained the power with which to enact the laws, holding the complete support of virtually all the country. Both of these leaders' programs were in many cases exactly like the ones Franklin D. Roosevelt passed during the Great Depression that helped lift the US out of its own economic slump and social decline it had faced in the 1930s. Figueres admired what president Franklin D. Roosevelt did; however, he noted that "the price he had to pay to get his programs through was to leave the business community free overseas to set up dictatorships and do whatever they liked...What we need now is an international New Deal, to change the relations between North and South."
Figueres stepped down after 18 months, handing his power over to Otilio Ulate, and ever since Costa Ricans have settled their arguments constitutionally.
"Your hands are not clean to fight communism when you don't fight dictatorships", Figueres told American interviewers in 1951. "It seems that the United States is not interested in honest government down here, as long as a government is not communist and pays lip service to democracy."
Second term as President (1953–1958)
In 1953, Figueres created the Partido Liberación Nacional, the most successful party in Costa Rican political history, and was returned to power in 1953. He has been considered to be the most important political figure in Costa Rica's history.During his various terms in office he nationalized the banking system and contributed to the construction of the Pan-American Highway that goes across Central America. He promoted the private industry sector and stimulated the national industry sector. He succeeded in energizing the country's middle class creating a strong buffer between the upper and lower classes.
What most alarmed U.S. officials was Figueres's material and moral support for the Caribbean Legion, even though Figueres had obviously lost interest in the Legion after he gained power. But Figueres still criticized U.S. support for the dictators, going so far as to boycott the 1954 inter-American meeting because it was held in Caracas, where President of Venezuela Marcos Pérez Jiménez, a military ruler, held sway.
Figueres happily cooperated with North American military plans. After the United States established the School of the Americas in the Panama Canal Zone to train Latin American officers in Anti-Communist techniques, more Costa Rican "police" graduated from the School between 1950 and 1965 than did officers of any other hemispheric nation except Nicaragua.
In 1957 Figueres was the subject of an assassination attempt by Cuban exiles, including Herminio Díaz García, who were operating under the orders of Nicaraguan dictator Luis Somoza Debayle and Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. Three days after their arrival they were arrested by Costa Rican authorities as they were staking out the Presidential Palace. Once captured they confessed to the authorities that Trujillo had promised them $200,000 and further aid to overthrow Batista in exchange for their services. They received a six month prison sentence.
Border war with Somoza's Nicaragua (1954–1955)
Figueres's support for the Caribbean Legion nearly cost him his job during this second presidency. Implicated in an invasion of Nicaragua in April 1954 by anti-Somoza exiles linked to the Caribbean Legion, Anastasio Somoza García launched a counter-attack, allowing the exiled former Costa Rica president Rafael Calderón to invade Costa Rica in January 1955.The Nicaraguan dictator withdrew, but not before extracting a commitment from Figueres that he would sever links with the exiles.
1958 testimony before U.S. Congress
In 1958, during a visit to Caracas, Venezuela, U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon was spat at by anti-American protesters who also disrupted and assaulted Nixon's motorcade, pelting his limousine with rocks, shattering windows, and injuring Venezuela's foreign minister. The event prompted the United States Congress to create a special committee to investigate the reasons behind it. Many people were invited to speak before it, including Figueres, who testified on 9 June 1958. Figueres condemned the Venezuelans, but said that he understood them, criticizing the United States for their support of Rafael Trujillo, resource extraction, and enabling of corruption and autocracy.Third presidential term (1970–1974)
The termination of Alliance for Progress funds as well as the collapse of the Central American Common Market, threatened to cripple the country's economy until Figueres discovered a new market by selling 30,000 tons of coffee to the Soviet Union in 1972. Costa Rica then became the only Central American nation to establish diplomatic relations with Moscow. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund also delivered millions of dollars to keep the economy afloat.When opponents of Nicaragua's President Anastasio Somoza Debayle seized a plane flying from Managua to Miami and forced it to land in San José in 1971, holding the passengers hostage and demanding fuel for a diverted flight to Cuba, Figueres ordered Costa Rican police to shoot out the engines and tires. The hijackers demanded a new plane in return for the release of hostages, to which Figueres agreed, and the hostages were released; however, when the four hijackers themselves debarked, the 160-centimetre-tall Figueres, with a submachine gun in hand, met them with 200 armed police, and a shootout ensued in which 2 hijackers were killed.
By his own account, he also nearly ruined a 1973 Central American summit when he lambasted five army generals, saying, "Isn't it odd that all you bastards are generals, and I'm the only civilian, but I'm the only one who's ever fought a war?"